"Valor!" Lyric appeared at the bars to my cell, her eyes sweeping over me with concern. "Let her out!" she snapped at the hulking brute who stood at her left.
Lachlan.
That prickle of awareness danced right down my spine and swayed in my stomach. If I'd been a romantic idiot, I would have called them butterflies, but I wasn't, and they weren't.
And besides, the six-and-a-half-foot vampire with the tatted-up arms was the kind of menace that killed delicate, breakable things like butterflies.
It was his actual job.
"I'm not the one who gave the order, my queen." He said the words to Lyric but didn't take his eyes off me.
I fought off the urge to wrap my arms around my knees and instead leaned forward on the wooden bench and crossed my legs, raising my chin. So what if the guy was a trained killer? That didn't mean I'd give him the satisfaction of intimidating me.
"I don't blame him," I said with a teasing smile. "If it had taken me six months to track someone down, I probably would have locked them up, too."
His eyes narrowed, and a low growl rumbled in his chest.
My breath hitched for a millisecond, but it sure as hell had nothing to do with fear. I'd always had a thing for the dominant, bad boy type, and Lachlan didn't just fit that mold—he fucking broke it without even trying.
If he'd been human, I probably would have climbed him like a tree just for the fun of it, but he wasn't...and I was.
So there would be no hot-highlander-against-the-wall sex for me. I didn't give a crap that his "branding mark" or whatever Jocelyn had called it had shown up on my neck like a bad spring break decision.
"I'm the one who told him to bring her here." Another vampire appeared, taking the place at Lyric's right.
Alek. The King. He was impossibly beautiful, just like every other vamp, but where Lachlan had dark, bottomless eyes, Alek's were an eerie shade of pale blue and were studying me like he could see straight through to my bones.
Maybe he could.
As much as we knew about vampires, it wasn't turning out to be nearly enough.
"Why would you do that?" Lyric leveled a glare on her husband and smacked his chest with the back of her hand. "She saved my life."
"She put your life in danger in the first place." He cocked his head to the side, and his gaze turned icy. "She's not leaving here until I know she has no intention of doing so again."
"I never wanted Lyric hurt." That was true. By the time I realized how far she'd fallen into the supernatural world, my father and brother had put their plan in place and stolen her right from under my nose.
She looked good now, though, thank God. Her blonde hair was thick and shiny, her cheeks were full, and her dark green eyes were bright and lacked the dark circles she'd had while we were in grad school. She didn't look mistreated...she appeared healthy and happy, which eased a little of the guilt in my chest.
"You just wanted to kill our king," Lachlan challenged, crossing his muscled arms over his chest.
Even his voice made my thighs shift.
"I didn't want to kill anyone," I snapped. "And if you'd been raised hearing half of the anti-supernatural bullshit I'd been spoon-fed, you'd think that protecting the human race was a pretty honorable thing to do."
"What do you think we're doing, lass?"
"Enough," Alek barked.
My heart jumped, and I white-knuckled the bench. My best friend's husband could kill me with half a thought, and then what would happen to Daphne?
"She is my best friend," Lyric whispered, reaching for her husband's hand.
"Which is why she's still alive," he countered.
Comforting.
"She's not lying." Another vampire stepped into my line of sight. Benedict, if I remembered correctly, the Armani-clad lie detector. "She didn't want Lyric hurt."
Lachlan grunted.
Lyric smiled. "See?"
Alek sighed, cursing under his breath. "Fine. Answer truthfully, and you'll live."
I nodded.
"Is it your intention to harm my wife?" His words were soft, but the menace in his eyes was anything but.
"No. Never," I answered. "I would never hurt Lyric. Or you, not that I could, anyway." I gestured down my body since it wasn't like my tank top and shorts were hiding much over here. "I'm fresh out of Night Thistle."
That was the only vampire weakness we'd ever found. Not we, I reminded myself. I wasn't one of them anymore.
"Funny." Lachlan arched a brow.
"Valor," Lyric said softly with a blatant plea in her eyes.
"Okay," I agreed, keeping my attention on my friend. "I would never hurt you. I have no intention of hurting any vampire. I haven't even heard from my family in five months, and even then, my brother told me to watch my back because they weren't just hunting vamps anymore—they'd be hunting me for betraying them, which I did to save you."
Benedict looked down at his forearms, which were inked with words I couldn’t make out from here, and nodded. "She's telling the truth."
Lyric's shoulders dipped in relief. "Good. Then can we please get her out of here? She has to be freezing."
I was, but I wasn't about to admit it. I was physically weak enough compared to them already.
"Lyric was the one who wanted you here," Alek stated, wrapping his arm around my friend's waist. "As my queen, she has every right to grant you asylum and safety. No harm will come to you while you are under this roof as long as you do not seek to harm anyone first."
So formal.
"Thank you."
"We won't even bite you if you help us out with some Moorehouse intel," Benedict added, flashing his fangs as he grinned.
Lachlan elbowed the guy hard enough to send him flying against the bars of the cell across from mine. "No one is biting her."
Lyric pressed her lips together to keep from laughing, and Alek shook his head.
"Asshole," Benedict grunted and rubbed the shoulder where he'd taken the hardest impact. "Fine, no biting. But we need the intel, and you know it."
Lachlan ran his hand over his beard, and I wondered what it would feel like on the insides of my thighs.
Stop it!
They wanted information on my family...at least what had been my family. Information they would use to kill them all, I had no doubt. Holy shit, was I going to be a prisoner here?
"No," Alek answered.
Fuck, I'd forgotten that he could read minds. My cheeks burned. What else had he heard?
"Enough," he answered, his lips quirking into the first smile I'd seen from him today...tonight...whatever time it was.
"Get out of my head."
He grinned, and I heard the lock on my cell click and open. "Come upstairs and have dinner with Lyric. We'll figure out what to do with you afterward." He pinned Lachlan with a smirk. "And since that's your brand she's wearing, consider her your responsibility."
* * *
"I'm not his anything," I said to Lyric as we sat in the same dining room where I'd been months before, offering my help to Alek to get Lyric out of one of the Moorehouse facilities.
"That's not what the back of your neck says," she gestured toward me with her fork before digging into her steak.
I'd already finished mine and half the potatoes. I couldn’t even remember the last time I'd eaten something that hadn't come out of a vending machine or paper bag. "So you eat real food?"
"Yep." She took a sip of her water. "Everything in balance. Too much blood, or too little, and we go mad. Those are the vampires in all the horror stories. And don't change the subject. When did the mating mark appear?"
I glanced toward the closed French doors where Lachlan stood guard just outside.
"It's okay. Alek put a noise glamour on the room. Lachlan can only hear if I break the glamour with a safe word."
"Kinky," I teased.
"He's a little...overprotective," she admitted with a shrug. "But it pretty much comes with the territory when you're mated to a vampire. You'l
l see."
"No, I won't."
The doors burst open, and a flawlessly beautiful brunette with delicate features walked in with a bright smile and another, more reserved brunette on her heels.
My stomach clenched. There were now three vampires in this room and one human...me.
"I heard there was another girl in the house!" The petite, graceful one took the seat across from me, while her leanly muscled counterpart leaned against the wall behind her and studied me carefully. They were both dressed in ballgowns. What the fuck.
"Avianna, meet my best friend, Valor," Lyric said with a smile. "Valor, meet my sister-in-law, Avianna, and her bodyguard, Olivia." She nodded toward the glaring one.
Wait. Sister-in-law. Alek's sister. Vampire royalty.
"Please tell me you guys have something, anything, more interesting to talk about than what's going on over there." She waved toward the giant mansion across the courtyard. "Because If I have to listen to one more whiny aristocrat drone on about the summer solstice unveiling ceremony, I'm going to vomit."
"Not your thing?" Lyric asked.
I kept quiet and chewed my food. Sure, Alek had promised me safety, but did everyone else know that? I was cool with having dinner, but I definitely didn't want to be dinner.
"God, no." Aviana shook her head and tugged her elbow-length gloves up her arm. "Being paraded about like some naive debutante while every eligible aristocratic male shakes my bare hand, hoping his mating mark will show up so he can claim me isn't happening. I'll be keeping my gloves on for as long as possible."
"Funny." Lyric tossed a sly look my way as Aviana took a drink of water I hadn't even seen her bring in. "Valor and I were just talking about mating marks, since she's wearing Lachlan's on the back of her neck."
Water spewed out of Avianna's mouth, and she slammed her hand over her lips.
The tablecloth between us was drenched.
"My lady," Olivia said, stepping forward with an actual handkerchief as she laughed.
"Thank you." Aviana wiped her mouth and shook her head. "At least that didn't happen over there, or I'd never hear the end of it," she muttered. "I'm sorry, but did you say..." She glanced between Lyric and me, her brows lifting over pale blue eyes.
"It's nothing to stress about," I grumbled, drumming my fingers on the table. "As soon as I can get out of Edgemont City, I'll find a tattoo laser removal place and get it burned off."
"You're leaving?" Lyric sputtered.
Avianna outright laughed.
"It's not safe for me here," I told Lyric. "I called Kyle once, about a month after...what happened to you, and he said the only person higher on their kill list than your husband is me." My fingers stilled, recalling the hatred in my brother's tone through that burner cell. "I know too much."
Aviana stopped laughing.
"You're safe here." Lyric reached for my hand and squeezed gently. "I've granted you asylum. No one would dare cross Alek, and Lachlan would kill anyone who even dared to come at you."
"I doubt that," I said about the last part. "He hates me just as much as I despise him." I glanced through the glass, locking eyes with the broody highlander.
Heat flushed my skin, and I could have sworn I caught the scent of pine from all the way over here. The guy always smelled like the forest and crisp mountain air, which was ridiculous.
No one should smell that good.
"I highly doubt he hates you," Lyric said.
"Even if he did, it wouldn't matter," Avianna added. "Sorry I laughed, but you can't just burn off a mating mark. It would come right back."
I blinked, my jaw dropping an inch. "Wait. What?"
Avianna nodded. "It's not in your skin, it's under it. It typically appears wherever the male touched you first, but that's not a hard and fast rule."
"So I'm stuck with this Celtic knot thing on the back of my neck for the rest of my life? Jocelyn didn't tell me that part."
"You went to Jocelyn but didn't come to me?" Hurt flashed in Lyric's eyes. "How do you even know her?"
I captured her hand before she could withdraw it. "I knew that witches could glamour me, help me stay hidden, and they all blew me off when I approached them at one of those clubs."
"I want to go to a club," Avianna muttered.
"Jocelyn found me and offered to help. I didn't come here because I wasn't sure your husband wouldn't kill me on sight. It had nothing to do with you, I promise."
Lyric sighed but nodded. "Alek has only been trying to find you because I missed you and wanted to make sure you were okay. We can get you out of Edgemont, too, if that's what you want. We have family overseas—"
"I can't leave without Daphne." I shook my head.
Confusion puckered the lines on Lyric's forehead. "Daphne? Your cousin?"
I nodded. "Her parents were killed a couple of weeks after you were taken in one of the facility raids."
"I'm sorry," Lyric whispered, knowing it had likely been one of her husband's assassins who had pulled the trigger. All hell had broken loose after she'd been taken, and I still couldn't believe that most of the violence had gone unreported by the human media.
"Don't be. My aunt and uncle were hate-filled monsters, but Daphne isn't. She's only sixteen, and she's never wanted any part of the Sons of Honor. She was the reason I called Kyle. I just wanted to get her out of there, but he won't let her go."
"Is she being kept in one of the Moorehouse facilities?" Olivia asked, her gaze turning shrewd. "Or one of the other families, perhaps?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. After we raided the one to free you, they instituted the safehouse protocol. The heads of each of the eleven families move houses every few days, and even I don’t know them all. They've changed all my access codes and shut off her cell, too."
"Is she in danger?" Avianna asked, her brow knitting in worry.
I nodded. "They already betrothed her to the head of another family for her eighteenth birthday. If she runs, they'll kill her."
"Betrothed? Like this is the eighteen hundreds?" Olivia shook her head. "Unbelievable. How many cows is she worth?"
I nearly laughed but couldn't. "The Sons of Honor do their best to intermarry, so they keep the society small and tight-knit."
"Sounds like a cult," Lyric muttered, her gaze focusing on Lachlan.
"It pretty much is," I agreed. I wasn't even going to think of the decrepit, old jackass my father had wanted me to marry. "Do you guys get a choice?" My throat nearly strangled the question, and it was all I could do to keep from rubbing at the mark on my neck. "Once this thing appears...is there a choice?"
"There's always a choice," Lyric promised with a compassionate smile. "No one would ever force you into anything you don't want."
"But the mark..." My gaze jumped to Avianna.
"You can't get rid of the mark," she confirmed. "But that doesn't mean you have to accept the bond, either. It's not unheard of to reject a mating bond."
"Maybe one in the last hundred years," Olivia muttered.
"It can be done." Avianna nodded. "Just...don't sleep with him."
Now I was the one nearly spitting out my water. "I don't think that will be an issue."
Lyric blushed. "Oh, but it is. The pull between mates is..." She got this far-off look in her eyes and bit her lower lip.
"So if I sleep with him, we're what? Linked for the rest of my life?" Getting under the highlander sounded like a hell of a lot of fun, but not if it came at that price.
"No, not exactly," Avianna said, lowering her voice. "But physical contact strengthens the bond, along with feeding—"
"Feeding?" I shouted.
"Just stay away from him," Olivia suggested, her eyes dancing. "If you want to. I personally would get as close as possible because damn, is he hot." She nodded.
My gaze narrowed on the bodyguard as a blast of something hot and ugly shot through my veins.
"Oh, she's got it bad," Olivia laughed. "Don't worry, little human. Jealousy comes with the whole matin
g bond thing. It's normal."
Jealous. I was fucking jealous. Why? Because this statuesque beauty admired Lachlan? Yep.
Shit.
"I have to go." I pushed away from the table.
"No!" Lyric cried. "You said it yourself, you're not safe out there. We can keep you safe here!"
"She makes a good point," Avianna pointed out.
"I can't just hide out here while Daphne gets shuffled into a marriage she doesn't want!"
"Another excellent point," Avianna mused. "Let's just solve both problems." She lifted her eyebrows at Lyric.
A slow grin spread across Lyric's face, and she looked through the doors at Lachlan. "Meerkat!"
"You're safe word is meerkat?" I shook my head at my best friend.
"Lachlan!" she called out.
Within seconds, he pushed through the doors, his gaze sweeping over the room as if scanning for threats before landing on me.
The intensity in those eyes went straight to my thighs. Damn, the man was sexy as sin and had a body that would no doubt deliver it. Not that I was ever going to find out.
"My queen?" He ripped his gaze away from mine to focus on Lyric.
"I want Valor to stay." Her smile didn't dim one bit.
"And what exactly would you like me to do about that?" Even his voice was sexy, and it wasn't just the accent, either. It was deliciously deep.
"I want you to propose to the Order that you will help her rescue her cousin."
He scowled, turning that stare back on me. "Your cousin?"
"Lyric," I warned my friend. What the hell was she thinking?
"You have a way better chance of getting Daphne out of there with the help of the Order. Trust me," she argued.
"She's right," Avianna agreed.
My mind spun. Alone, I had almost no chance of getting to Daphne. Even if I could get Jocelyn to help me again, the glamour hadn't been enough. "I don't even think you could help if you wanted to," I said to Lachlan.
He didn't reply, just stood there, staring at me like I was something he couldn’t wait to get rid of.
"Sorry, but it's true!" I shrugged. "They probably have her locked up so tight it would take an army to get her out."
Crimson Highlander: An Onyx Assassins Novel Page 2
