Blood Instinct Read Online Free

conversation with Corbin. She was advising him on wards to help protect entry points into the bunker from non-corporeal fourth species. There were no guarantees the wards would be infallible, but attempts to safeguard were better than nothing.
    ‘She’s good at this, isn’t she?’ Alisha said, leaning back against the wall alongside her sister. ‘Who’d have thought it: our petition-signing, peaceful-protest big sister advising an entire lycan army. It’s a long way from her cooking us macaroni and cheese.’
    ‘Everything now is a long way from her cooking us macaroni and cheese.’
    Sophia folded her arms and kept her gaze ahead, the motivation behind her little sister’s approach transparent.
    ‘I saw you looking over earlier,’ Alisha said, catching her gaze. ‘You don’t need to avoid us.’
    The ‘us’ grated more than she would have liked.
    Despite Leila and Alisha being rescued from the Third Species Control Division, the relief of the three sisters at being reunited after almost a year had been short-lived – not least when Leila and Alisha realised they were to be held with the pack against their will.
    Since then, Leila and Alisha had melded into an infallible united front. Not only were they barely out of each other’s sight, they had even insisted on staying in the same room as each other, reinforcing Sophia’s sense of segregation from them. The angst had been further heightened amidst her two sisters’ exasperatingly united defence of Caleb and Jake Dehain.
    ‘What do you mean you have no intention of killing him?’ Sophia had demanded of Leila.
    ‘How many ways do you want me to say it, Sophie? This is not about killing Caleb – it’s about preventing the prophecy.’
    Sophia had found it hard to curb her sarcasm amidst her frustration. ‘The last I heard the two were somewhat synonymous: you kill Caleb, which permanently closes off the fourth dimension, and you simultaneously take the pending vampire leader out of the equation. We need to make sure Caleb is dead so he can’t rise against Sirius and cause global devastation, and we need to close off the fourth dimension so those bastards don’t tear through the hole fully and destroy the world first. It sounds fairly simple to me.’
    But despite thinking she’d been stating the obvious, Sophia had instead felt like a kid again, trying to persuade Leila to lift her curfew whilst her big sister watched her futile attempts with that unwavering resolution in her eyes.
    Because when Leila had that look, nothing budged her.
    ‘There is only one way we’re going to persuade him off this hellish course of action,’ Leila had said, ‘and that’s to persuade him to work with us, not against us – something you’re not going to achieve by treating him as the enemy. Keeping me here is not helping. You have to persuade Jask to let me go back to him.’
    ‘And me,’ Alisha had piped up. ‘Don’t forget me. No one said anything about me not being able to go back to Jake.’
    ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Sophia had hissed. ‘What the hell have they done to you both?’
    She’d left them in the wake of a slammed door. Two subsequent conversations had ended the exact same way.
    ‘I’m not avoiding you,’ Sophia said, staring ahead as she felt her little sister’s gaze burn into her.
    The seconds scraped by like peeling back a Band-Aid.
    ‘How are you feeling?’ Alisha eventually asked.
    Sophia knew exactly what she intended by the question and the line of conversation she was no doubt hoping it would lead to. It seemed her sisters’ conspiracy to talk her around had transferred responsibility to Alisha.
    ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘Soph…’
    ‘ Don’t .’ She gave Alicia a sharp look. ‘I know Leila has put you up to this…’
    ‘You don’t think I have a mind of my own?’
    ‘I don’t know, do you?’
    ‘Like I keep trying to tell you: you weren’t in there. You don’t know.’
    ‘I know those Dehains have got to both of you