She was the woman he loved back when he was another man. One with less confusion and constant uncertainty. One with faith and a path. One who had hope for better days and wouldn’t shed a drop of blood.

Arion gives and gives, rarely ever defying her openly. She rewards him by weakening him, treating him like shit, and never once showing him an ounce of kindness.

“Sing, gypsies, sing of your truths,” I sing, unprepared for the truth.

I’m rather sick of all the obvious surprises by this point.

Chapter 17

VANCE

After I finish pulling my sword from yet another wolf I’ve downed, I turn and put on the show everyone needs to see, damning Emit.

He, in turn, puts on a show of condemning me to hell. Idun backs me, and Emit shrinks back, as we close in on him and Damien.

Arion’s sitting this one out, since he always takes killing the wolves too far.

Idun runs her finger up my arm, kissing my shoulder, and I shrug her off, since she knows better than to touch me so intimately in such a public setting.

Glaring at her earns me a scowl, but I turn and head toward the woods, while Emit and Damien retreat.

We meet in our private spot, just as we always do after a big show or over-the-top battle—a rundown safehouse in the woods.

Damien is sitting and laughing with Emit about something, and they both flip me the finger when I enter.

Arion’s working on painting a picture. He’s carried around that small canvas for weeks.

Idun goes to sit on Emit’s lap, and though his jaw grinds, he allows it, while she sticks her hand out to show Damien the minor wound he left her with.

Eyes sharp and somewhat narrowed, he takes her hand, kissing it, even as his jaw clenches with the action.

It gets harder and harder to play these games. Idun and Arion love them far too much. Despite their effectiveness at controlling population, it’s gotten too cold.

It happens too often these days.

The numbers are harder and harder to keep tamed with so many fresh turns out there running rampant with no sight of the laws.

We need a better system.

“Games,” a familiar voice says in nearly an echo.

Where’ve I heard that voice before?

Words leave my lips in response to something Idun’s said, but it’s all done as if on autopilot.

“Arion kept saying he thought it was all part of the game, but I didn’t understand,” the voice carries on, seeming to drift into the fog just beyond the window in front of me. “He’s a psychotic vampire, so sometimes the things he says aren’t really supposed to make sense to someone who isn’t quite that crazy. Now I realize he’s not always talking nonsense.”

I squint, trying to see better, only to receive an even blurrier vision that damn near gives me a migraine.

“You played a part in front of the betas and omegas, creating conflict and war to keep the numbers under control, because it got complicated really fast. It damn near spiraled out of control when the bad bloodlines popped up.”

Who the bloody hell is speaking?

I hear my voice behind me, responding to someone’s question, and glance back, spotting Idun, Arion, Damien, and Emit all staring at the spot I was in moments ago.

“But in truth, you were all still in love all these many years. Until it got out of hand and Idun got too bloodthirsty with too little mercy. The omegas warmed your cold hearts by wiggling their ways in, starting with you.”

I turn around, hearing that voice behind me, and blink a few times at the girl standing with her back turned to me. She’s wearing…I’m not sure what she’s wearing.

It’s black leather and tall boots. The leather is thinner than I’ve ever seen, and it shows off the perfect curve of her ass. My eyebrow arches, because I’m not quite sure how this girl got in, nor am I sure why Idun doesn’t have a problem with the girl hugging the wolf.

The wolf doesn’t even seem to notice her, as he talks about nothing in particular.

She moves to stand in front of Damien, and her words sound closer, less like an echo, when she speaks, using a language I’m not even sure how I understand.

“You didn’t give up on being an alpha. It hurt you the worst when she tricked you into loving her again. You really did try to get over her, but you’re a lover. You’ve always wanted someone to love. She tortured you the worst in that area.”

Why is she telling him that?

Why is she sniffling and wiping away tears as she hugs him?

Damien would eat this sweet girl alive and leave pieces of her heart scattered across the sea just to teach the foolish dove a lesson. Daft female.

She turns and finds me. The voices mingle around like steady noise, making it seem as though everyone is talking at once.

“She really hurt you,” this very interesting woman tells me.

Why is Idun not flustered by this very scandalously clad young lady, who is running her fingers through my hair right now? How did she even find us?

I’m too intrigued, and my head is so fuzzy. My body feels too heavy to move too quickly, and my mind isn’t the sharpest.

“You just always pretended it didn’t hurt as much as it did. You’re just that sort of man. You take the most pride in being hard to provoke. You take yourself and your role the most seriously. Centuries of responsibility and obligation, mixed with hard decisions and even greater sacrifices than you could have imagined,” she tells me so softly, as though she’s peering into the parts of my mind she shouldn’t be able to touch.

She smiles up at me, even as I glare down at her for knowing too much.

My lips won’t move to form the words I want to speak, and I struggle to make even one muscle twitch.

“It feels like you’re looking directly at me,” she says with that smile, even blushing a little. Then her smile falls, and she abruptly looks a little angry. “I’m going to kill Damien for this outfit. Clearly, it’s not the one that would grab your attention, but it is hella embarrassing. Mostly because I’m not the kind of a girl who can rock a camel-toe.”

Why in the heavens would she be speaking of a camel’s toe?

I blink a few times, the only action I can seem to make.

As she twists to check out her backside in a mirror, she speaks again. “And it’s tighter than that Catwoman suit I tried out my senior year, when I thought I wanted to be sexy at a Halloween party. I don’t get to be sexy, apparently, because the ass of it split. It wasn’t a sexy sort of split, either. Nooo. Part of my ass cheek poked out like a can of freshly popped biscuits, because the suit was that tight. I had to walk out, while everyone threw things at the lump of skin poking through the split, that gradually split more and more, carrying more biscuit-ass with it. Pretty soon, my whole ass was going to be squeezed out like a flowering blossom or something. Talk about the queen of all nightmares.”

This woman is possibly unstable.

She glances back to my eyes, studying me. I glance around the room, feeling my head turning, as just a bit more fog lifts.

“Vance, can you hear me? As much as I want you to say yes, I want you to also tell me you didn’t just hear all that,” she says with a notable amount of dread in her tone, as I study the curious room.

No one seems to notice us.

“What trickery is this?” I manage to ask at last, moving my gaze back to the witch before me.