A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole

Lachlan MacRieve is the King of the Lykae, headquartered in Scotland. But when he is kidnapped by the King of the Vampires- an all male race since they had to slaughter their women hundreds of years ago- he is imprisoned and tortured in their cave of fire beneath Paris.

All that keeps him alive is the promise of his mate, the one woman who will complete him and become his. So when he scents her from his prison, he does everything he can to escape- even cut off one of his legs when he cannot free it from his bindings. But then he passes out as his leg slowly begins to regrow...

Emmaline Troy is half vampire, half Valkyrie, and like many half-breeds, is both powerless and young compared to the Valkyries that have raised her for the sake of her mother, now dead. But they won't tell her a single thing about the Vampire that sired her, and now she has finally wrangled a trip to Paris, the city of Lights, and Lovers. Here, she hopes to track down her father, or at least find out something about him.

But before she can do any of that, she is grabbed by Lachlan, who is stunned to find out that his mate is a vampire. Thinking that he is wrong, that he must be insane or hallucinating, he forces her to come with him and get him back to Scotland, where his clan lives. But in his fury over his own imprisonment, he badly mistreats Emmaline and says things about Vampires that she can do nothing but take... for the moment.

Along the way, he realizes the truth: she really is his mate. And unlike his own 1200 year old self, she is just a babe in arms, kept innocent of the fights between the various species of the Lore. But the time is coming when the various species of the Lore must fight against each other to remain on the earth. When the Vampires steal Emmaline away with the promise of meeting her father, Lachlan is going to have to do a lot of bootlicking and apologizing if he ever wants to have his mate with him. But will Emmaline forgive him after the way he treated her?

Lykae are bastards. I came to that conclusion after reading both this book and Wicked Deeds at Nights Edge, another Kresley Cole book I had read. Both heroes end up really mistreating the women that are supposed to be theirs, and have to get their asses handed to them to admit they were wrong. I do suppose they clean up well, and after their noses are smooshed in the fact that they are wrong, they do better, but I didn't feel so kindly disposed towards Lachlan for most of the book. Even his later behavior still made me feel he should have been bitchslapped for the way he treated Emmaline.

About the only good thing that comes out of all the abuse is that Emmaline grows a backbone, and after years of being coddled by the other Valkyries, she needs to learn to stand on her own and endure some hardship. And it works, but the fact that it was all dealt out by the man who was supposedly her mate made me very annoyed. If I'd read this book first, I'd have been more cautious about reading the other ones in this series.

As it is, I can live with it. It's a good story, well-told, but it didn't really thrill me in the slightest. For most of it, I wanted to kick Lachlan where it hurts, and then some- he wasn't completely redeemed for me by the end of the story. However, YMMV, and I did begin to have some sneaking liking for him. So, this recommendation is with a caveat- read the other books in this series first, or you might find yourself turned off.