The following evening, I make sure I’m dressed and ready when the king and his entourage show up. I even do my hair and makeup, sitting at the desk in the purple gown with an exaggerated look of boredom on my face.

In reality, I’m anything but bored. In fact, I’m in the best mood I’ve been in in months. Regular sex’ll do that to a person.

“This is...” King Vesnic says as he stares at the dozens of golden bars stacked on the floor. I even took the time to remove them from the molds and make an impressive pile in the corner. Vyce actually stayed to help before kissing the shit out of me, and then disappearing while my back was turned. I still have no idea how he’s getting in and out of here. Fucking blows my mind.

The king turns to look at me, taking in the tight purple dress with the flared mermaid skirt, the diamonds earrings, and the frothy gold curls of my hair. I didn’t have to do shit to it this morning. That freshly fucked look is in and well, I spent all day getting fucked. Now that the sun’s gone down and I haven’t gotten any sleep...well, I’m actually as energized as I’ve ever been. Sex and blood are like energy drinks to a vampire—even a half-breed like me.

“How the fuck are you doing it?” the king asks, spinning toward me with a fiery rage burning in his eyes. He comes at me so quickly that I barely have time to leap from the seat and roll. He doesn’t stop, lunging in my direction, and coming up short when Wolfe’s hand curls around his shoulder and squeezes hard.

“I’ve been sent by House Stiltz to ensure that you uphold your own proclamation,” he growls out, looking fierce as fuck in a friggin’ leather duster and black button-up. He’s got just enough of that cowboy look that I’m intrigued. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”

Vesnic tears himself from Wolfe’s grip and fixes him with a look that’s even more vicious than the one he threw me. His blue gaze flicks between me and Wolfe in a near-panicked state.

“She’s not met all the requirements to become queen just yet,” he snaps out, sweeping from the room with his entourage behind him. They’ll take the gold and test it. Honestly, if I didn’t have Vyce, Sorrow, and Wolfe looking out for me, I’d be worried they’d find some way to fuck me over. Clearly, the king is pissed.

“So today is your day, huh?” I ask, but Wolfe doesn’t even so much as smile at me. He just stands there and looks me over in the purple dress. But he can’t hide the approval in his eyes. Not even close.

“You figured out our schedule, good for you,” he grumbles, looking me up and down and then holding out an arm. It takes me a moment to realize he’s actually offering to take me downstairs for dinner.

Vamps might get up at night, but our first meal of the day is still ‘dinner’, both in the timing and the food choices. Usually something meaty—you’re not going to find a vegetarian vampire. Like, never. Honestly, pretty sure our people can’t survive without meat.

“So we’re fucking sometime in the next twenty-four hours?” I ask, but Wolfe doesn’t even bother to look at me, just keeps walking with his face forward, those gray eyes stone-cold.

“Keep your head. If you think the king is upset about a dhampir stepping forward to claim the crown then you haven’t seen the royals.” Wolfe leads me down the curving staircase. We could theoretically leap over the railing and drop straight to the bottom floor, land in a crouch and walk away like it’s nothing. But it isn’t proper etiquette, so down a zillion floors we’ll walk, our footsteps echoing loudly around the empty space.

But I have no doubt we’re being watched.

“So you guys are keeping me alive...because you need me to have your baby?” I ask and Wolfe snorts. I take that as a yes. “I’ve been alone most of my life, so I’m damn good at talking to myself. You can ignore me all you want and I’ll just keep going.”

“I’m sorry,” Wolfe says, but his voice is ice-cold. He glances down at me, and I can’t get a read on his facial expression. “I spent a lot of time alone, too. Until I was paired with Sorrow and Vyce, even House Stiltz didn’t hold a lot of joy for me.”

Wolfe stops talking, leading me down the stairs while I gape up at him. Not only is he ridiculously tall, but he walks with his spine straight, shoulders back. I bet it kills the other vamps, to see a turned vampire with this much confidence.

“Did you just open up to me?” I ask, but he ignores me again, waiting until we get to the bottom floor before he says anything else.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he grumbles, waiting for a human servant in a long, white dress to approach and lead us through the massive manor to the formal dining room.

Nobody speaks when we arrive in the open double doors, gold chandeliers dripping over the table, casting strange shadows on the myriad faces that line the long rectangular table. Nobody’s breathing, nobody’s moving. On the far end, the king throws daggers at me with his eyes. At any moment, one of the fifty royals in this room could explode from their chair and make a play at me. But as we stand there, waiting for a cue from the king, I notice that after they get a nice long look at me, most of their gazes move over to Wolfe.

They’re intimidated.

And well they should be.

I saw this motherfucker blast holes in a hellhound with a revolver in either one of his huge hands.

“Have a seat,” the king says, but he doesn’t bother to introduce me or explain my presence. Everyone knows why I’m here. But I still have two days to go, two more rooms of straw to change into gold, and I have to pass all the tests his alchemists put my finished products through.

I’m not worried.

Rumpel Stiltz’ kin...they’ve got my back.

We sit down on the king’s right side, waiting for the human servants to move into the room and start laying out the food. Chatter starts up slowly around us, voices pitched low enough that I can’t hear. Doesn’t matter. I can tell by the hostile-but-hopeful vibe in the room that everyone here thinks I’m on my way to an early death. They don’t like me, but they’re not going to react to me...not yet. Maybe if I make it to the coronation then they’ll all start trying to murder me? Vamps can be super creative when it comes to death. One time, I saw a guy kill another guy with a Kleenex box. Basically, sharp cardboard corner, lots of force, physics… Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. Inventive though, very inventive.

“The hellhounds...those were from a hit?” Wolfe asks, leaning down to put his mouth near my ear. Everyone else is doing it, too, having these private sorts of conversation. I have to wonder if I’m not the only one wishing my dinner partner would bend down a little more and bite into my throat.

“Yep. Few weeks ago. King’s orders.” Wolfe listens to what I have to say and sits back up. The king hears me, too, I think, but he pretends not to notice, working his way through his food and then standing up from his chair without a word. He stalks from the room like a spoiled child. I resist the urge to flip him off behind his back; people have been killed for less. Vampires have been killed for shit like that, and I don’t even have the proper bloodline to back me up.

“If he’s going to send you on jobs like that, he should give you the proper training to defend yourself when you get backlash.”

I shrug, and I don’t eat a goddamn bite of my food. Hello, poison. But I’ve got enough of Vyce’s blood in my tummy to hold me over for now.

“How much training have you had?” Wolfe asks, reaching down to take my chin in his. He turns my face to look at him. Normally, I’d punch a guy for less, but his touch is gentle and his expression is earnest.

“Uh, self-taught?” I ask and from the way he wrinkles his face, I can tell he’s pissed.

“You’ve never had formal self-defense training? Weapons training? Magic?” I shrug and Wolfe curses under his breath. He looks like he wants to punch a bitch. Probably the king. And maybe most of the royals in the room.

After a respectable amount of time passes, Wolfe stands up and offers me his arm again. I won’t be allowed to leave the castle grounds, but surely I’m not going to be confined to my room all night?

As if he can sense the question brewing in my mind, Wolfe takes me into the back gardens instead. Guards follow us at a safe distance, but I’m not worried about them, not with Wolfe here. Seems strange that I could have such confidence in a man I barely know, but the thing is, I recognize this guy’s type. I know what he’s all about. He does things by the book. Whether it’s the same book that I follow or not, doesn’t matter. The rules of this contract state that one of these three men have to give me a baby, and that they’ll take it to raise. In order for that to happen, he’ll keep me safe. I can trust in that, at least. And selfish motivations, those I understand.

“Is Sorrow coming tomorrow night then?” I ask, but then I hear a laugh, echoing out from the trees at the far end of the walkway. In a second, Sorrow’s just there, hopping down from the branches and landing with a noisy thud on the cobblestones.

“Vyce got lucky last night. Wolfe and I had business to wrap up so we could be free to spend more time with you.” He grins at me and I have to wonder if, like Vyce, he snuck onto House Verenim grounds or if he’s on official ‘liaison’ business for House Stiltz again. “You did get lucky, didn’t you?” he repeats, and a second later, Vyce is strolling out from the shadows near the rose garden and pausing in a beam of silver moonlight like he’s been there all along.

“I sure did,” Vyce says, looking me over in the purple dress in a way that says he clearly appreciates my choice of outfit. “Cameron and I had an amazing time. We even managed to check off all our initial contractual obligations, didn’t we?”

I smirk at him, but I’m only pretending to be irritated. In reality, I did have a good fucking time last night…er…last day? Eh. You get what I’m trying to say. It felt kind of good to have someone stay in bed with me, talk about meaningless shit. It’s been so long since I’ve done that with anyone. Hell, maybe I’ve never done that with a man? I think the last person I stayed up all night and shot the breeze with was my mom.

Speaking of, it’d be awfully nice to know if these men had anything to do with her death before I go getting all attached to them and shit.

“And what are your plans for tonight?” I ask the three handsome men, remembering how incredible it felt to have two of them in my bed, let alone three. Dear God, how awesome would it be to have all three tucked between the sheets with me? “I assume you’re all staying with me?”

“Now that we have official clearance from House Stiltz, yes.” Vyce smiles as Sorrow walks a small circle around me and Wolfe, his black trench billowing out behind him.

“No, they’re not,” Wolfe corrects, the corner of his lip twitching. “We agreed to one day each in the beginning.”

“Wolfe doesn’t like to share,” Sorrow teases, poking his friend in the shoulder…and getting a revolver pressed to his temple in exchange. Wolfe moves so goddamn fast that I didn’t even see him reach for his weapon, but Sorrow doesn’t look surprised. His blue eyes find mine and he grins. “Although it’s so much more fun that way, don’t you think?”

“Piss off.” Wolfe tucks his gun away and tries to steer me deeper into the garden and away from his ‘brothers’. They follow along anyway.

“So, what are your plans for tonight?” Vyce asks, sweeping up alongside of me. “Lord knows Wolfe isn’t much of a conversationalist.”

“If you have to be here, then be here and make yourself scarce,” Wolfe snarls at him, his muscles tense and his gray eyes steely and dark. There’s a hint of possessiveness in his words that surprises me. I mean, the man doesn’t even like me and he’s playing keep away from his brother, a man that he considers more worthy than himself to take the throne? I don’t get it.

I look between the three men and shrug, trying to move the conversation along a bit.

“You could show me a few moves.” I make a few faux punches in the air, but as soon as I say moves, both Sorrow and Vyce get these pervy looks on their faces. Too bad their perv looks are super sexy, too.

“She doesn’t mean sex,” Wolfe growls out, but the other men look like they could care less.

“We could practice some fighting techniques. Not that Cam really needs them. She seems to be a bit of a bad ass.” Sorrow grins and mimes my punching moves right back, tagging me lightly on the shoulder.

“She needs proper training,” Wolfe says, like he actually cares to teach me. But that’s okay. If I need to up my bad-assery, I’ll take a Krav Maga class. Oh. Wait. I’d probably kill the instructor or one of my sparring partners on accident. And no supernatural class would want a dhampir in their midst.

Fuck my life.

But whatever.

I’d rather be queen anyway.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with a bit of training?” Vyce looks me up and down, his blood-red eyes sparking with lascivious memory. Ugh. This is why one-night stands are supposed to stay one night. If the sex is good and the person is interesting…then things get muddled, confusing. And I’m supposed to hang out with this man for how long? Too long is the answer. Or…maybe not long at all when they realize that even with their boss’s fertility spell, I’m not going to end up pregnant. I’m just hoping at this point that I’ll be past the coronation stage and in a position to fight back if Rumpel comes for me. “What do you want to learn?”

Wolfe scowls and says something about his brothers under his breath that would make a sailor blush—and not in a good way either.

“Lay out my options,” I say, leaning into Wolfe when he tries to pull away from me. I like how he smells, like leather and musk and…human. He smells a little bit like human and that’s comforting to me. Mom always said I was born with the strength of a vampire and the heart of a human. Now, I’m not sure that I’d go that far, but there’s definitely something in me that’s a little mushier than it should be, a soft spot in my chest that shouldn’t be there. If it wasn’t, maybe I wouldn’t miss my mother so much?

If it wouldn’t give me away, I’d ask these guys about her, if they knew who killed her, if they did it themselves. Gods, I hope not.

“That hellhound got the better of you, didn’t it?” Vyce asks as Sorrow bends down and adjusts a few decorative white rocks that’ve been kicked slightly out of place. I think it’s safe to say he may have some slight form of OCD. But when he stands up, he plucks a white rose from the bush and tucks it behind my ear, making me smile. What a shameless flirt.

“I suppose you could say that…” I hazard, the feel of Wolfe’s eyes on the side of my face an almost irresistible lure. I want to turn and look at him, connect with his gaze, slide my hands inside his trench coat and feel his warmth. Gross. What the hell is so interesting about these guys? I should want to shuck them like old corn and yet, I’m intrigued.

“You use weapons a lot?” Sorrow asks, tucking his hands into his trench coat and looking me up and down—and not in a flirtatious way this time. He looks like he’s scanning me for strengths and weaknesses. When he nods his chin and crosses his arms over his broad chest, I have to wonder if it’s that friggin’ obvious.

“Always,” I say, finally letting go of Wolfe’s arm and bending low to grab a handful of purple fabric. Slowly, purposefully, I drag the skirt up the pale skin of my legs and flash both Ethel and Lucy in sheathes strapped to my calf and thigh. The vamps don’t care if I’m locked and loaded. Like I said, none of them expect to be taken unawares by a dhampir and most especially not with something as banal as a gun. “Sword’s upstairs though. Too hard to hide a falchion blade in a skintight dress.”

“Can you fight without them?” Vyce continues, tracing the lean length of my calf, my thigh, flicking his gaze up to mine and making my breath hitch.

“Depends,” I say, letting the fabric tumble back to the gravel path beneath my feet. “Do I have to?”

“Wolfe is super dependent on his guns, too,” Sorrow says, hooking a thumb in the scowling man’s direction at the same moment the tail of his tattoo flickers across his throat and disappears again. “But it leaves you with a pretty big disadvantage if you lose them—like you did your sword.”

I move over to a nearby bench and take a seat, my stomach rumbling slightly. As a dhampir, I need both food and blood to survive. I’ll be okay for a few more days without eating, but my body isn’t going to like it. Maybe I can fill myself up with sex instead? Yeah, yeah, sex is good.

“If I specialize in hand-to-hand combat and then lose my hand, wouldn’t that also put me at a pretty big disadvantage?” I ask with a cheeky little smile. Training with these guys, picking their brains and stealing a few tips and tricks, that sounds like fun.

It sounds like more fun to take them all upstairs and see if Wolfe can’t be persuaded to share…

“You’re half-vampire,” Vyce says, his voice like shadows in the night, black on black. Just the sound of it makes me shiver, and I close my eyes. When I do, I can imagine lying on his chest and listening to him talk. We could have a conversation about cheese crackers and it’d turn me on, that’s how pretty his voice is. How dangerous. “Your entire body is a weapon.”

“Even this?” I ask, pointing at my crotch and noticing that Wolfe’s expression gets even more shuttered and closed-off. Guess he’s nursing a pretty big crush for you-know-who. “The muscles in there are so strong, I could probably take a man’s cock off.”

“You have a one-track mind,” Sorrow chuckles, slipping off his jacket and tossing it over the low limb of an oak tree. “Almost as bad as me.” He cracks his knuckles and glances at his fellow Stiltz brothers. “Why don’t we show her how to use that dangerous little body to scale a wall covered in wards and guards? I’m craving another Heartbeat.”

“Even though they taste like gin and tequila?” I ask, my voice a bit huskier than I mean it to be. Inside my chest, that mushy little heart of mine is thundering. I love the idea of sneaking out under the king’s nose, and holy hell, would I like to know how these fuckers do it. Plus, I want to see the cranky look on Harry’s scrunched up ogre face when he finds out I actually went through with my plan.

“You want to use my night to party and teach Cameron parlor tricks?” Wolfe says, his arms hanging loosely at his side. But I’m not fooled. He’s wound nice and tight. In an instant, he could be on me, snapping my neck or putting his gun to my temple. I have no doubt he could kill me if he really wanted to.

“That’s up to Cam,” Vyce says, glancing over his shoulder at the imposing stone walls of the mansion. The courtyard is in the center of literally everything, and those guards aren’t all that far behind us. If I didn’t trust the Stiltz kin to have a few tricks up their sleeves, I’d be certain that we were being listened in on. “It’s her night, too.”

“You want to teach me to break out of a virtually impenetrable fortress?” I ask, standing up and glancing down at my outfit. “In this?”

“Here, we’ll fix it,” Sorrow says, stepping close and bending down. Before I can even register what he’s up to, he’s tearing the bottom of the skirt off and leaving me with a ragged hemline just above the knee. “There we go,” he continues with a nod, standing up. We’re so close that when I breathe, the hardened points of my nipples brush against his chest.

“You ruined my dress,” I whisper, my voice low and deep, practically dripping with need. Sorrow lifts up a hand and traces a single finger down the side of my face, making me shiver before stepping back.

“You’ll be queen; there’ll be others,” he says, glancing over to where our bored looking guards are waiting. They hardly care what I’m up to. They think I’m dead meat anyway. And a dhampir? Hardly a match for any of the precious royals or crowns staying in the castle. “You know how to tap into your natural magic, right?”

“I have magic?” is my response to that question because while I know that all vampires have magic, accessing it can be a bit…complicated. Beyond simple everyday tricks—like rolling humans for example—I’ve never bothered to try.

“Tap into it,” Sorrow says as Vyce watches with his hands on his hips and Wolfe keeps glaring and scowling. It’s impressive, how good he is at keeping up that façade. But I won’t forget that he opened up to me earlier. Loneliness is something I know all about.

I just stand there and stare, and Sorrow sighs, stepping forward and literally tapping at my chest with his finger.

“Magic is just coiled energy,” Vyce explains as Sorrow traces that same finger up to my pulse and draws the breath from my lungs without even trying. “It’s like that feeling when your body is crouched and tensed, all that power waiting in your muscles that hasn’t been unleashed yet. Find it…” He turns and glances at the guards, exhaling long and slow and then throwing out a hand. Wind ripples through the courtyard, fluttering the leaves on the trees, teasing the delicate petals of roses. It feels like a punch to the gut, that magic.

“You won’t be able to do this overnight or anything, but it’s never too late to start,” Sorrow says, curling his fingers around the back of my neck and leaning in close. He hovers his mouth above my own, like he’s waiting for permission from me before taking the moment any further. When I don’t make any move to protest, Sorrow presses our mouths together, sliding his hot tongue between my lips and using his fingers on the back of my neck to pull me even closer.

As he does that, he draws something up and out of me with his mouth, an energy that’s both familiar and foreign. Magic. It tastes hot and metallic, and the scent of fire and ash in the air is unmistakable. Stepping back from me suddenly, Sorrow releases that energy and it snaps across the garden area the way Vyce’s did.

“Did you feel that?” he asks me, panting slightly, his mouth shiny from our kiss.

“It feels like you cracked my ribs open,” I say, putting a hand to my chest. “Or like you broke something.” Energy seems to bubble up from deep down, spilling past my lips.

“You’re not used to it,” Wolfe says, stepping forward and shouldering Sorrow out of the way. He offers his large hand, the sleeve of his jacket sliding up and revealing more of those gorgeous tattoos underneath. I wonder what he looks like naked? I should’ve added that to the contract—nudity required.

I reach out and take his hand, letting him lead me through the thick tangle of foliage over to the wall. Our guards don’t even seem to be interested in us anymore, drifting away and leaving the four of us alone out here.

Sick.

Now that is what I call magic. Rolling a human is easy, but doing the same thing to a vamp? That takes some serious skill. I don’t know what, exactly, these guys did to the king’s soldiers, but it’s like they either can’t see us anymore or just don’t give a shit.

“Now, climb,” Wolfe says, his expression just slightly less intimidating. “Fast.”

I don’t hesitate, reaching out and hooking my fingers around the edge of a stone block.

I’m up and over the Verenim Family House walls before I can even consider the consequences of jumping ship.

But then, consequences require getting caught.

Yeah, I don’t fucking think so, not with the Stiltz brothers on my side. No goddamn way.