by Sierra Dean
“Great. So I get kicked out of my city to go keep your nutcase vampire grandson from getting killed by his own council? Is that about the gist of it?”
“I have a feeling you are the perfect person for the job.”
“I’m thrilled. Can’t wait.” I put mock enthusiasm into my words and pumped my fist in the air.
Sig was giving me a strange look, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with my reaction. His usual cool smile was gone, and there was something like concern on his face.
“What?” I dropped my hand back to my lap.
“I hope I’m not making a mistake,” he said.
“Have you ever made a mistake?”
“Two thousand years is an awfully long time, Secret. You’d be amazed how many mistakes one can make. You’ve been alive only twenty-three years, and look how many you’ve made.”
Burn.
“You’re so sweet to me.”
“I’m far sweeter than you deserve sometimes. Don’t you forget that.”
“Says the man who once offered to devour my humanity.” I leaned back in the throne, resting my head against the heavily carved wood. “I still want Holden with me. It will make me feel better, and it fits with the cover story. If I’m traveling for the council, it makes sense I’d have an envoy.”
“Very well. If we are to have a party travel with you and we want this to appear as real as possible, I will also select someone to go with you. Someone who will keep my interests for you at the forefront of her mind.”
Her? I didn’t like the sound of that one bit.
“Sig…not…”
“You’ve made your request, and I’ve agreed to let Holden go with you. In spite of knowing full well his emotional—and sexual—attachment to you blinds him to what is right.”
Hearing Sig say sexual made my stomach churn. Was there really nothing he didn’t know about me?
“But can’t you pick someone else?” I already knew who he was talking about, and the idea of her joining my travel party didn’t thrill me. He was right, though. She would keep his interests at heart.
“Ingrid will join you. That’s final.”
Ingrid was Sig’s daylight servant. She was bound to serve him for as long as she lived, and in return her lease on life was extended. In spite of how degrading their title was, daylight servants had a pretty sweet deal. They got to stay human, but borrowed the immortality of their master. Ingrid was over seven hundred years old but didn’t look a day over nineteen. Sure, she had to do everything her master commanded, but Sig didn’t seem like a slave driver.
My problem with Ingrid wasn’t her status as a daylight servant, although forced service did weird me out. No, my issue was that she seemed to genuinely loathe me, and I’d never been able to figure out why. A lot of people hated me, and I’d come to accept it, but most of them hated me for a good reason.
Or a bad reason. But at least a reason.
As far as I could tell with Ingrid, the only thing she disliked about me was Sig’s affection for me. It was an inverse relationship. The more Sig liked me, the more Ingrid grew to loathe me. He must be very attached to me by now because she was less fond of me than ever. Either that or hating me had become so habitual she couldn’t stop.
“Anyone but Ingrid,” I pleaded.
“I don’t trust anyone the way I trust Ingrid. If you’re concerned she’ll be acting as some kind of spy and reporting your every action to me, I should tell you not to be so paranoid.”
I scrunched my face up and gave him a don’t treat me like an idiot expression. “Of course she’s going to report my every move.”
“Perhaps she will, but that’s not why I’m sending her. I could just as easily have wardens trailing you the whole way, and the intelligence results would be the same. Ingrid isn’t going along to be your keeper.”
“Then why bother sending her?”
“If hard choices need to be made on my behalf, I want her with you. She’ll know where I stand on all matters. I’m trusting you, however, to be the best representative of our Tribunal when you’re there. You are, after all, one of the leaders on the East Coast, and what you do and say reflects on not only Juan Carlos and me, but the entire council as well. Please try to be respectful.”
“Don’t tiptoe around it. Just say what you want to say.”
“Don’t be yourself. Or, if it’s essential you be Secret McQueen while there, could you be the version of yourself that is appropriate for the audience? I know she’s in there.”
“Be Tribunal Secret, not real Secret. Understood.”
“Thank you.”
“Now I have a request for you.”
His response came in the form of one raised eyebrow, which I took as license to carry on.
“You’ve made it obvious enough you know people are out to get me, and those people will stop at nothing to see me dead. While I’m gone, I can’t protect my friends. Tyler, Mercedes and Nolan all belong to me, according to the laws of the council.” I’d declared the three of them mine, and much like licking a dessert, it marked them as my possessions. “Since I’m not going to be here to protect them, I’m giving temporary guardianship responsibilities to you.”
Sig grimaced. “That’s not standard—”
“You want me to go to Los Angeles to look after what belongs to you? Then you have to look after what belongs to me. So while we’re at it I want to declare—officially—that Desmond Alvarez is mine. As is the entire Alvarez family. Shane Hewitt is mine.”
“Shane belongs to the council.”
“You made a point of saying he’s at risk. If the risk to his life is because of me, that means he’s mine. Not the council’s.”
“Anyone else? Would you also like to lay claim to the entire West Village? Perhaps the whole island of Manhattan?”
“If I could, I would.”
“And what about your wolf king, Lucas Rain? Is he yours as well?”
I got to my feet, considering his words. All I had to do was say yes. One word and the council would protect Lucas from any vampire forces who might attack him to get to me.
I looked back at Sig.
“Fuck him.”
Chapter Seven
I texted Desmond as I left the council headquarters. There was no way I’d get to see him one-on-one before I was shipped off to the City of Angels, but that didn’t mean I was going to leave without telling him what was happening.
I’d done that once before, and he’d barely forgiven me. If I did it again, I suspected he’d be done with me forever.
Holden would be glued to my side until Peyton was caught. After the earful Sig gave him, I’d be surprised if I got to shower on my own, let alone have some quality time with my boyfriend.
Things between the werewolf lieutenant and me had been strained to say the least. After our short breakup in the spring, we still hadn’t fallen back into our stride as a couple again. It didn’t help that I’d slept with Holden—a fact Desmond wouldn’t acknowledge and didn’t want to discuss at all—and I was worried our unresolved issues were a powder keg waiting to blow.
Whenever we were together it was hard to just relax and be us because the threat of my death was lingering, and we knew we were being watched. That, coupled with the fact I’d chosen Lucas instead of him months earlier, meant Desmond was having a difficult time being with me.
While very few things had ever been easy for us, loving each other had always come naturally. I had to believe once Peyton and my mother were no longer in the picture, Desmond and I would be able to hammer out the problems we were having and try to make things right again.
For now, I’d stick with positive thinking. He still loved me. He still wanted to be with me. And in spite of the insanity of our lives, he’d let me back in.
It was a start.
He was waiting in my apartment when Holden and I arrived. Instead of trading any barbs, the vampire and werewolf shared an uneasy silence, and Holden ducked into the bedroom saying, “
I’ll pack some things for you.”
I wouldn’t trust any man other than Holden to pack a bag for me, and I knew he’d make appropriate choices for the audience, if not for my comfort.
“Going somewhere?” Desmond asked, though he sounded beat down, making me believe he already knew the answer. When I’d texted, I just said, Meet me at home, something has come up. Not the best way to break news to him, sure, but better than an ominous We need to talk.
“I blew up a building, so Sig is making me go to Los Angeles.”
“What?”
I led him back to the loveseat where he’d been sitting, and we sank into the cushions together. His hands were big, and I couldn’t hold them properly in mine, but I tried. His warm skin felt good, bringing me tactile memories of the way his palms felt in the dark as they explored my naked body.
It had been three months since I’d had sex with anyone, and I was starting to get a little squirrelly. But I didn’t trust myself, not after what had happened with Holden. I’d slept with him in a frigging fairy castle, and though I had no regrets—it had been a long time coming—I no longer knew what I wanted.
The truth was I wanted them both, but trying to date Lucas and Desmond at the same time had been an unmitigated disaster. It had destroyed their friendship and almost caused the wolf pack to crumble. Since Holden and Desmond didn’t like each other to begin with, I wasn’t concerned about their feelings towards one another, but I also no longer believed I could be with two men and not be destroyed by the guilt of it.
The problem was, there were two parts of my being—the vampire half and the werewolf half—and each of them was demanding something different. The vampire wanted Holden, and whenever we were together I was reminded of how good his bite felt and the way he still understood me when I acted more like a monster than a person.
The werewolf, though, she took one whiff of Desmond and told me, Mate.
There was one side effect from my experience in the fairy realm I was grateful for though. During my brief stint as a human, and my subsequent return to what I was, something in my connection with Desmond had been reset.
When we’d first met, each time I got near him the taste of lime filled my mouth. It was meant to be a signal, letting us know we’d found our soul-bonded mate. After I’d completed my mate bond with Lucas, and he and I had been married in a werewolf ceremony, the flavors had vanished. Every day without the taste of Desmond had been a harsh reminder of what I’d lost.
But coming back from the fairy reality, it had all changed. I could taste the lime again. I hadn’t spent any time with Lucas since realizing it, so I wasn’t sure if his cinnamon taste would be there. I also didn’t know what it meant in terms of my mate bond with the king, or our lupine marriage. I was sure the consequences would spread out a lot further than just the taste, but for the time being it was the only thing that mattered to me.
It was like losing a limb and having it magically restored to you. I’d known I missed the taste of him but hadn’t realized how much until the flavor was back.
I leaned forward and kissed him gently, his lips tangy and sweet, and rested my forehead against his, breathing in the comfort and familiarity of his scent. I wanted so badly to bring him with me, but there was no way I could go on vampire business with my werewolf boyfriend in tow.
“Don’t think you can kiss me and I’ll forget what you said,” he teased, some of the darkness leaving his voice.
“What if I kiss you a lot?”
“It would take a solid decade of making out for me to overlook you blowing up a building.”
“To be fair, I didn’t actually blow it up. It just sort of…blew up around me.”
I sat back and watched his expression change from amused to concerned. His gaze shifted, looking over every part of me he could see while I was sitting, before meeting my eyes again.
“You’re okay?”
“Of course I’m okay.”
“But Sig is sending you away.”
“He says it’s not safe anymore. Not just for me, but for everyone. He thinks Peyton is gaining support from other rogues, and if that’s the case, there’s nowhere for me to hide in this city. If they can’t come at me directly, they’ll come at me through the people I love.”
“And you think they won’t still try that if you’re gone?”
“Not if we make it known I’m leaving. On official council business of course.”
Desmond pulled his hands free of mine and balled them into fists in his lap like he wanted to hit something but had no obvious target.
“I want to go with you.”
“You can’t.”
“Secret…”
“You can’t. I know you want to be with me, and I know you want to protect me, but if you come, you’ll only put me at greater risk. I can’t explain to the West Coast Tribunal why I have a werewolf with me. They won’t overlook it the way Sig does.”
“Why should it matter who you have with you?”
“Desmond, please. When I was in New Orleans with Lucas, Holden showed up. He was there all of five seconds before Lucas freaked out and made me get rid of him. And he was just bringing me clothes. How do you think the vampire council will react when I show up as a half-vampire and say, Oh, by the way, this is my werewolf boyfriend?”
His silence said he understood, but the hurt expression on his face worried me more. Touching his arm, I added, “I wish you could come, but I have to play this one by the book.”
“So you do know how to abide by the rules sometimes, then. How long are you going to be gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“And is he going with you?”
I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say. I wouldn’t lie, but I wanted the truth to be as painless as possible. “Yes.”
“In what capacity?”
“Des…”
“In what capacity?”
“Holden will be my personal guard. He’s acting as part of my council envoy. I’ll also be with Ingrid, if that makes you feel any better.” Desmond and Ingrid had met and gotten along surprisingly well, all things considered.
“Telling me you’re not leaving would be the only thing to make me feel any better.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then tell me you’re coming right back to me.”
I opened my mouth, and instead of words a sad, gulping noise came out. The look of guilt that overcame him when I made the sound assured me any argument we were having was effectively over. He crossed the distance between us and pulled me in tightly. With his strong arms wrapped around me and the familiarity of his warmth and scent, I felt safer and more at home than I had in weeks.
If I closed my eyes, I could pretend this was the Desmond and me of a year ago, living together in this apartment, happy together with our slightly messed-up werewolf love triangle. And if I tried to imagine a time ahead, when he lived here with me again and there was nothing tripping us up or keeping us apart, I might never leave his arms.
Just being near him was a more convincing argument for why I should stay than anything he could say. Desmond’s arms felt like home. And I was being forced to leave.
Holden had come into the room while Desmond hugged me, and cleared his throat to announce his presence. The werewolf was in no hurry to let me go, but I knew time was of the essence. I still had to fly across the country and somehow manage to get to L.A. without being burnt to a crisp by the rising sun. I was sure Sig had a plan in place for Holden and me to travel safely, but it didn’t make me any less uneasy about the prospect.
“We need to go,” Holden said, as if I didn’t already know.
Desmond growled, drawing me in closer. The rumble of his warning buzzed through my cheek, and in the pit of my stomach, something responded. My inner werewolf and I had come to an uneasy peace with one another since my time with the fairies. She’d shown herself as a force to be reckoned with, and I’d had to acknowledge she was a real entity, not just a figment of my im
agination.
Since my return, she’d let me keep her in check, and I’d avoided contact with other wolves during the full moon so I wouldn’t be forced to shift. I had no illusions of being in control of her, though. I understood full well she was allowing me the illusion of command. My inner wolf was a tricky, manipulative bitch if ever there was one. I was just grateful she was letting me live a semblance of a normal life given how fucked up everything else was.
Maybe she understood we didn’t have the luxury of slipping up right now. The last thing I needed was to shift into a wolf during the full moon and run through the streets of New York. That would not have gone unnoticed.
But I wasn’t foolish enough to think she wouldn’t show herself again. She was merely biding her time, like a hunter stalking its prey waits for the right moment. My wolf was holding out for her moment.
She was also excited by Desmond’s growl and made her presence known inside me. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to that. She wasn’t an imaginary energy or a mere voice inside my head. She was a physical entity, and some days it seemed as though there were a real wolf just under the surface of my skin waiting to bust loose.
That wasn’t how the whole shifting thing worked, but it felt like it sometimes.
She stretched, and I swear to God I felt fur rubbing up against the inside of my belly.
I pressed my palms flat against Desmond’s chest and pushed myself free of his arms, whispering, “Shh.”
At first he looked hurt, but there must have been something in my eyes or on my face that showed him how wigged out I was because he took a step back and lowered his arms. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. She’s just…”
“She?” Holden asked.
“Her wolf,” Desmond said. “I woke up her wolf.”
My tummy churned, and I sucked in a deep breath, shutting my eyes tightly. He is unhappy, she told me.
