Ruled by Blood, Tome 1: Blood Huntress

Chapter 1

NINA

The wind whipped my hair as I moved through the city, the thrill of danger sending bolts of excitement through my bones. No matter what, every night never failed to deliver that initial surge of excitement. Four years I’d been hunting, four years of nightly escapades into the city, and it had never grown old.

Sometimes, I liked to think that I’d been born for this. That God had seen fit in his creation of me to make me perfect for melding in and out of the shadows, for darting down darkened alleys, for passing by unsuspecting strangers without notice. I knew better than that, deep down, but it was a nice thought to hold on to while the adrenaline surged through me.

You were made to heal.

My abuelita’s words echoed in my mind. That was what she’d always taught me, that blood mages were put on this Earth to heal the pain that others brought to them. That we were what was good in the world, not what was dark and ugly. It was such a contrast to what everyone else liked to say about us—that we were monsters who needed to be put down.

Even the other witches liked to look down on us, calling our magic ‘dirty’.

It was an argument of the past. Blood mages had long been hunted by the true monsters of the night: the vampires. Through old magic bound to iron, they had devised a collar that locked down our abilities. With that creation had come the dawn of a new age.

An age where vampires ruled.

I shook the thoughts from my mind. They were unimportant, compared to my task.

Conall—the werewolf who had saved me from the cage I’d been locked in for twelve years—had trusted me with an assignment of the utmost importance, something he had never done before. He had to believe I was capable of it, because for once he hadn’t assigned it to one of his wolves at the same time.

Normally, we competed for our kills. Three failed kills in a row, and you were out of the compound. There was no room for failure in his world. It was hard, competing against wolves who were naturally stronger and faster than I was, but I’d learned to use what talents I had to give myself what little upper hand I could.

I was the underdog, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t something dangerous in my own right.

And the wolves knew that. A blood mage was a thing to be afraid of, for the power we had could take life as easily as we could save it. They all feared that I’d sneak into their souls and steal their free will from them.

I wasn’t that kind of blood mage.