Rebel Obsession Read Online Free PDF Page A

with about as much gentility as a gnat. His temperament hadn’t improved since.
    Arms still crossed, she spun on the heels of her designer shoes and stared her father down. He stood at the head of the lavish, oversized table in the equally luxurious dining hall. His corded arms were extended straight down to hands twice the size of hers, pressed against the lacquered walnut table. Her mother, the queen, sat straight-backed beside him, her gaze giving nothing away of her thoughts as she watched Miriam.
    “Miriam. Sit. Down. I’m not finished,” he said, standing tall and pointing to her empty chair.
    “With dinner or with me?” Miriam rolled her eyes, her words dripping with sarcasm, and flopped back down in front of a plate of half-eaten cuisine.
    Cuisine. Not food. It was not called food in this home, which was as large as three city blocks. King Bain’s family ate cuisine. She mentally scoffed at the silly way things were done here.
    All of it—the opulence, the money, the ass-kissing servants, the even bigger ass-kissing guards…the cuisine —just wasn’t her. She knew it wasn’t, but trying to figure out who she was and where she fit in was as difficult as a mouse trying to defeat a cat with all the overbearing control her father tried to weigh her down with. Couldn’t she just call it food, for God’s sake? Couldn’t she just wear jeans or sweats to dinner once in a while?
    She looked down at the stylish, expensive pantsuit that had been laid out for her.
    Everything was always laid out for her. She never got to decide for herself. From her clothes to her bath towel to her food—no, cuisine —nothing Miriam did was of her mind unless she forced her will. And when she forced her will, she was branded a trouble maker. Miriam was never allowed to think or do what she wanted. She couldn’t even speak without permission most of the time.
    Her father sat back down, tossing her a cross look. “Both,” he said, answering her earlier question. “What’s gotten into you?”
    She gave a flippant, one-shouldered shrug. Her father refused to admit she had overdosed. He hadn’t spoken of it once, and Miriam imagined that he thought if he didn’t acknowledge her drug use, in his mind that meant it didn’t exist. But that was how he was, always sweeping the family problems under the rug instead of dealing with them. After spending all day handling the issues of the entire race, he must not have any energy left for her or the rest of the royal family. But especially her. She was invisible to her father. He saw her, but he didn’t see her. Really see.
    Case in point, if he had been paying attention, he would have known by now that nothing had gotten into her. She had been behaving this way for a while now, but he chose not to see it.
    Her father huffed, undeterred. “What were you thinking last night, Miriam? How am I supposed to rule a race when I can’t even rule my own daughter?”
    Last night, she’d snuck out with Persephone again, hitting a dealer and ending up at a party with less than agreeable humans pawing her as she had only just barely refrained from passing out. She had openly fed from a human’s vein, in front of other humans—most of them high, none sober. When the guards had fetched her, they’d had to clean every mind at the party to ensure no one remembered the pretty vampire girl who’d bitten the neck and drank the blood of their friend.
    Her brilliant sapphire eyes whipped toward her father. “Excuse me? Rule me? Is that what you said?”
    Her younger brother, Colin, ducked his head across from her just as her father slammed his fist against the table. The loud boom echoed around the room, and her father’s anger hung like an ominous storm ready to let loose.
    But Miriam wasn’t afraid of him. Not like her brother, and not like the spineless, sniveling liaisons who kissed her father’s royal ass on a daily basis. Unlike all the rest, Miriam’s inner package had come with fortitude