Chapter Twelve

 

 

I WAS standing at the counter with Ode when Varic came in through the back door, hair tousled, clothes rumpled, one eye open, one eye closed, looking annoyed.

My snort of laughter made him growl. “Morning, sunshine.”

“Where were you?” he groused.

I pointed at the clock. “It’s after eleven. Some of us actually work for a living.”

“It is not eleven,” he snapped, squinting at the antique clock on the wall.

“Oh, he is pretty, you were right,” Ode agreed, looking Varic up and down, smiling and nodding her approval. “I like him much better than the guy I set you up with.”

“Who were you set up with?” Varic asked, furrowing his brows into a dark scowl.

“Nobody,” I promised, walking over to him to give him a kiss, which he prolonged, sliding his hand around the back of my neck and up into my hair, holding me tight so I couldn’t move. I felt his raw possessiveness, the claiming and the dominance that demanded—even with a simple kiss—my submission.

“Oh… yeah,” Ode murmured, “I see the appeal.”

He let me go, pleased with himself, smug, and brushed by me to reach Ode, hand out.

She took it fast, holding tight. “Such a great pleasure to meet you.”

His smile went lethal that fast. “Did he tell you all about me?”

“He did. And I’m glad to hear that you weren’t, in fact, more interested in pretty boys than my man here. I understand that was just a misunderstanding.”

“My man,” he corrected, “and yes, it was.”

Her smirk over his correction was adorable. “Promise me you’ll take good care of him.”

He put his hand over his heart. “You have my solemn word.”

She was utterly charmed by him. I saw it in the slight tremble, the pop of her dimples, and her gleaming eyes. “Excellent,” she sighed. “And by the way, I love the necklace you gifted him with. Carnelian is such a magical stone.”

He stared into her eyes, narrowing his, and she met his gaze and held it. “Tell me about your parents,” he said.

Since they were talking, I helped customers and answered the phone, and then a bit later, as Ode gave him the tour, talked to more people who came in. I had to go to the stock room to grab more of our signature scent Spark and Ember candles, and when I returned to the sales floor, Varic was leaning on the counter, smelling pieces of Palo Santo wood arranged in an abalone shell.

“You done flirting with my friend yet?” I teased him.

He chuckled and turned around to face me, then put his hands on my hips. “She’s like sunshine in a person.”

“Yes, she is,” I agreed, inhaling his delicious scent as he leaned me into him, his cheek in my hair. “Nice that you saw that too.”

He grunted. “I have to go back to the penthouse, shower, change, and meet with the state leaders this afternoon.”

I tried not to smile, but he sounded like he was going to face a firing squad. “Okay.”

“I would invite you to sit at my side as I address them,” he said, almost groaning. “But that would be mean, and I kind of like you.”

I laughed at him, stepping back and poking him in the ribs. “Prince of the noreia, your job is a snoozefest.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” he agreed, thumb and forefinger in his eye socket as though keeping it open.

I launched myself at him, wrapped my arms around his neck, and held him tight. “You know, with how cute and charming you are, you’re making it damn hard not to fall in love with you.”

“Well, I should hope so,” he whispered against my cheek before wrapping his arms close around me.

 

 

ODE WANTED to talk about Varic once he left, but my stomach was growling, and so was hers.

When I stopped at the deli close to the store, I found Leni, sunglasses on, head down, and hand braced against the door of a refrigerator full of cold drinks before she pressed her cheek to the glass. She looked like absolute hell. I cackled over her state, and she flipped me off.

“Maybe you should get into the fridge with the soda, huh?”

“Why are you yelling at me?” she almost cried.

“How do you guys even get drunk?” I asked, interested in the answer, careful not to say the word vampyr in the mixed company of the sandwich shop.

“We digest and metabolize just like you. Think about those shakes people drink to lose weight. Technically that’s a liquid protein diet too.”

“True.”

“We get drunk just as easy as you.”

I laughed softly. “Got it. So how late were you out, my darling?”

“What time is it now?”

I chuckled, put an arm around her, and leaned her into me. Her whimpering sigh made me smile. After I bought lunch for me and Ode, and coffee and water for Leni, we headed for the shop. But halfway down the sidewalk, I realized I was by myself. Trotting back to her, I saw her frozen there like a statue.

“You want me to carry you?”

Slowly she eased her sunglasses down her nose to reveal her now-bloodshot turquoise-blue eyes as round as saucers.

“What’s wrong with you?”

She pointed at me. “I thought it was something in the store that was freshly baked or—but it wasn’t. It was you. Why do you smell like that?”

“Like what?”

“Dessert,” she said in a breathless whine. “Candy. Gooey, thick, rich, and yummy.”

I grinned wide. “What does gooey smell like?”

“Beignets and sticky buns and cinnamon rolls with extra icing.”

“How would you know?”

“I might not eat them, but I smell them, and holy crap, Jase, why do you smell so good?”

“I have no idea,” I said, chuckling because it was not a bad thing to smell like sugary goodness. “Maybe I’ve always smelled like this, and you’re just now noticing.”

She shook her head gently. “No. This is new. Definitely new.”

“Well, it could be that—”

“Jason!”

We turned to see Avery, one of Benny Diallo’s guys, in the back seat of a Chevy Suburban, having called to me from his rolled-down window.

I moved to the curb and would have leaned into the window, but Leni took hold of my bicep and held tight.

I turned to look at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just stay here.”

It was weird. I had no idea she even knew Avery—not that I knew everyone she did—but it was strange. She was acting scared. She rarely gave me orders, and when she did, they were never delivered monotone, with her fingers digging into my arm.

“Jason,” Avery said to draw my attention from my friend. “Benny sent me to pick you up. He and Niko have a thing they need to discuss.”

“Okay, but everyone usually comes to the shop.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. He just said to come, so I came.”

Normally I wouldn’t have thought twice about going with him, and I definitely didn’t want to do anything to put the arrangement in the Quarter at risk. But Leni was out of sorts, and that gave me pause even though, besides the driver, Avery was the only one in the car.

“Seriously,” he snapped, impatient. “Benny is counting on me to bring you instead of Niko having to get Garrett out here, so—could you just fuckin’ come with me so I don’t look like an asshole?”

“Too late,” I said curtly, studying his angry face.

He flipped me off, and I nodded slowly, passing the food to Leni. “Sweetie, do me a favor and take this to Ode, all right? No reason for her to starve just because I will.”

“No,” she said, tugging on my arm, trying to pull me after her. “Let’s go back to the store together. If Benny wants to see you, he can come there.”

But it wasn’t my place to tell Benny to do anything. I didn’t know if there were new rules about listening to me now that I was Varic’s consort, but as far as I knew, he hadn’t shared that information with anyone outside of his immediate circle. Basically, I put myself at Benny’s beck and call because continued peace in the Quarter was something I truly wanted for all the people I cared about. “It’s fine,” I told her before I lifted my arm free and took hold of the door. “I doubt it’ll take long.”

“Jason,” she pleaded, “stay with me.”

When I saw her stricken face, I couldn’t say no.

I leaned on the door so I could see Avery better. “You know what, just tell Benny that—”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to insist that you come,” he said icily, and something—a needle—pricked the side of my neck.

I stared at him, utterly stricken, thunderstruck that he’d attacked me. I was betrayed and hurt, because even though we’d only ever spoken in passing, I’d counted him as a good guy. How could I have been so wrong? First Aziel, and now him. Clearly I was a crappy judge of character.

Leni’s scream seemed as long as a train whistle.

 

 

I COULDN’T see anything. My body didn’t immediately respond when I tried to open my eyes. It was like I was on a delay switch or something.

“There you are.”

Blinking rapidly, I could finally make out Garrett and Avery, the two of them standing off to the side with four guys I didn’t know—and Niko, and also Cooke, who was tied to a chair, bleeding. I could hear more voices than I could see people, so I had no real head count. I was suspended from the ceiling, my feet barely touching the floor, with my arms curled behind me over a thick metal bar and my neck in a noose I guessed would tighten if I didn’t keep my back rigid. Eventually, if I hung there long enough and my muscles got weak, the ropes would bow me backward, tighter and tighter in centimeters, compressing my spine and folding me in half. Either way—my spine snapping or strangling to death—I wasn’t long for the world. The kicker was the slight swinging back and forth on the ropes and the tips of my sneakers brushing over the unfinished wood beams. Shards of pain spasmed through my entire body. They didn’t call them stress positions for nothing.

“The hell is going on?” I rasped, barely able to pull enough air into my lungs to form words. The menial O2 I did gulp tasted like a rusted copper penny from the floorboards of a dirty pickup, which told me blood was filling up where it shouldn’t, adding asphyxiation by bodily fluids to my growing list of impending causes of death.

Niko punched Cooke across the face, and he pitched sideways, chair and all, and sputtered, spitting up blood as he tried to breathe. The sound his face made hitting the hardwood was something akin to a steel mallet pounding out raw meat. His face looked the part, resembling an oozing raw burger, most of his chiseled bone structure crushed to powder from the beating they’d given him.

Three guys clustered around his prone body, and now I could see eight who stepped out of the shadows, Avery and Garrett having moved next to Niko, with another four milling close to me.

I’d been in this situation before. Not exactly, there’d been no ropes, but I’d been tortured, held, bound, beaten, lung punctured, ribs broken, and cut with a knife.

The difference was the torture I’d endured was done specifically for information. In this scenario, I had nothing to tell.

“Niko!” I yelled, my panic rising. “The fuck do you want?”

The vampyr speed put him almost nose to nose with me in seconds.

“You won’t die, Jason,” he told me. “And you fuckin’ need to.”

“The hell are you talking about?” I rasped, so confused by the situation, utterly blindsided by his action.

He threw up his hands. “Friday night I had men attack Benny’s mansion and try and kill you. I figured everyone would assume whoever was after the prince accidentally caught you in the crossfire, and I even got you to leave so you’d be easy to pick off, but then you didn’t go…. What did you do, get lost?”

No. I found Varic and was captivated at first sight. I’d had no idea my new life started at that exact moment.

“And then later when my man got you to chase him from Benny’s place, his backup knocked you out instead of putting a bullet in you! Those idiots had one job, and they fucked it up because they got cold feet!” He huffed. “It would have been so easy, but they heard you were special and decided on their own to scare you instead of kill you.”

I was thankful they’d had a change of heart. “Did you kill them?”

“No, I did that,” Garrett chimed in, taking credit. “They were idiots!”

I had been called that as well that night.

“And then I hired a guy from out of town, completely untraceable, to catch you out. And when I saw you at the club, I made sure that everyone saw me talking to you—and then saw me leave before he killed you—but how the hell did you get away from that guy? He was highly trained.”

Clearly Niko’s idea of lethal and mine were very different things. I suspected I was the better judge of who was or wasn’t capable. “I’m scrappy,” I gasped because the pain was intensifying, my body cramping, wanting to stretch out, to relax, and finding no relief.

He nodded and then punched me in the face.

The blow sent shards of pain everywhere at once, and I shouted because I had nothing to prove. I wasn’t trying to impress these cowards who tied me and Cooke up.

“The only good thing I can say about the asshole that couldn’t get you out of the club is that at least he killed himself before Hadrian could get to him. I’ve heard he has methods of extracting information that will make you shit your pants, so I suspect that my hitman took the easy way out.”

From what I knew of Hadrian, I couldn’t imagine him being that scary, but I’d only ever irritated him, not sent him into a rage.

“Why not just shoot me?” I asked, curious and angry, getting madder by the second. Why not just take me out to the bayou and drown me and feed me to the alligators? Why all the in-my-face shit? “I’m only human. Lots of ways to kill me.”

“Because it had to look random. Accidental, unplanned,” he told me, slapping my cheek lightly, causing more pain than normal because of the earlier punch. “If you go missing, everyone will be looking for you. Everyone will want to know what happened. I’d have the entire community screaming for answers.”

I understood. I had made a difference being a matan. Niko and Benny, at the top of the food chain, would have to provide explanations by any means necessary. Benny, especially, would be on a warpath because people would look to him more than Niko. He was older, richer, better connected, and more than anything, the pureblood leader of the city. People would be all over him if I evaporated into the ether, and Benny, being the thorough man he was, would solve the mystery of my disappearance, much to Niko’s regret.

On the other hand, if I was killed during the attack at his home or became the victim of some random run-in with a creep at a club—no one would second-guess that. Everyone would see me dead; it would be open and closed.

“You know,” Niko continued, squinting at me, “I was going to make another attempt on your life, but then lo and behold, one of the prince’s whores and one of his own precious dreki tried to put you in the grave. Imagine my surprise when you and the prince’s puppy lived.”

“Tiago’s not a puppy,” I said, defending my friend, the irony not lost on me that, once upon a time, I’d thought of him as a bunny. “He’s actually pretty fuckin’ deadly.”

“He must be,” Niko granted, then took hold of my throat and squeezed, cutting off my air. “Because the wolves of the house of Maedoc are nothing to scoff at.”

I struggled, which tightened the ropes, but I needed air more than anything and so I squirmed and pitched, fighting for every small gasp of oxygen.

“Niko!” Avery shouted.

My lungs felt like they were going to explode, and the next second, I could breathe again as he released me.

“You can’t kill him like that!” Avery yelled. “He has to bleed out, and he has to be alive for that to fuckin’ happen!”

“Stick to the plan,” Garrett urged, shivering.

“What’s with you?”

“Nothing,” he snapped. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Garrett shuddered then. I saw it. Everyone did.

“Are you scared of something?” Niko baited.

“Fuck yeah, I’m scared. The prince is going to ask questions, and when he does, Hadrian does, and that guy scares the fuck out of me.”

Niko shook his head dismissively. “No one’s going to be the wiser. All we have to do is first kill Cooke—hell, he’s half-dead already—slice up Jason and make it look like Cooke did it, and everything is back to the way it was before he got here.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said, not wanting him to go back to working Cooke over. “Why do you hate me?”

He shook his head. “Are you kidding? You’ve been messing with my livelihood since fuckin’ Cooke over there happened into your shop.”

“How?” I asked as Garrett and Avery and two others joined us, knives in hand.

“I had a business,” Niko informed me. “One that was working well for all of us here.”

That’s right. I’d seen some of these men with Benny, and others with Niko. They were a mix of pureblood and made vampyrs.

“What business?” I asked, trying to buy time in case Leni was able to make a rescue call. I hoped she was alive. I’d heard her shrieking, but if they hadn’t wanted to leave a witness…. “You should at least tell me why I’m dying.”

Niko laughed over that. “It’s simple, Jason. Rich pureblood vampyrs don’t want to worry about their kids every time they step out of the house, so they hire Avery here to protect them. He’s the face because I can’t very well do it. I’m a made vampyr. They don’t trust me, but they do trust one of their own,” he said snidely, smacking my face again almost absently. “And now and then, when one of the kids not watched by Avery would get attacked or killed… well, that always got him new people ready to sign on for protection.”

“Garrett works the same angle from his side,” Avery boasted. “Made vampyrs afraid for their loved ones pay him insurance to watch children, parents, wives, girlfriends, husbands, boyfriends, even their pets. It’s an endless supply of revenue.” They were being defrauded by the very people they trusted to keep them safe.

It was reprehensible, and I was sick just looking at them. How could they look at people with kids and elderly parents and hurt them? And Jesus… what about the kids who were out and saw Avery or Garrett, and because they thought they were safe with them, went willingly to the slaughter? Adorable little faces snuffed out for greed. It was horrific, and I wasn’t surprised when my eyes filled and my heart hurt.

“You all deserve to fuckin’ die,” I choked out, my voice hoarse from him almost crushing my larynx. “You did this all for greed. You killed kids for greed.” Hot tears rolled down my cheeks as I thought about parents holding lifeless bodies and of the last moments of their children, the fear and betrayal and pain. “I hope you hear their screams in your sleep.”

“I sleep just fine, Jason,” Niko informed me snidely. “But you know, now and then business tapers off even with everyone paying, and so then we have to stir the pot.”

“Please,” I begged, my mind filled with images of dead kids. “I don’t want to—”

“That’s when I let anyone who has a grudge or just wants to let off a little steam have their fun. They go out and visit whoever’s turned them down for a date, or some pureblood who thinks they’re too good for a made vampyr gets what’s coming to them.”

They didn’t just kill; they raped too. “How many?” I asked, my breath ragged, my voice a harsh whisper.

“How many what, Jason?” Niko was patronizing me. “How many have we killed?”

“No,” I choked out, furious, barely able to look at him. “How many of you are there? Just you here, or are there more?”

“I think there’s more than enough of us,” he declared with a snicker. “But yes, I like to keep things small, so we all know our part. I had to hire out for the attack on Benny’s house. We needed some humans to help out.”

“Not that they lasted long,” Avery informed me. “Your kind is a bit delicate.”

“And yet we’re not hiding what we are,” I managed to get out. I looked over at Cooke. His breathing sounded wet. “Why did you hurt him?”

“I told you,” Niko explained, pointing at my broken friend. “We have a plan. He kills you, and then we kill him in revenge. It’s very tidy.”

“No one who knows me or Cooke will ever buy it,” I assured them, struggling for breath as all the ropes tightened with my weight pulling on them. “And especially not Benny,” I said to Avery. “Your boss is much smarter than that. He’ll figure it out.”

“Benny will take my word over that girl’s,” Avery assured me. “And once no one’s listening to her….” He leered. “We’ll all take good care of her.”

My stomach roiled at the thought of them touching Leni, but I swallowed my disgust and fear. “He won’t, though. Benny’s not like that,” I said confidently. The man I knew thought with his head first, heart second. “Even though he’ll want to trust you, he’ll talk to Leni and he’ll figure out that she’s the one telling the truth. You know he will.”

For the first time I saw a chink in Avery’s smug armor as he thought about Benny Diallo. I’d known him for only a short time, but I knew him to be tenacious and methodical. Avery had years with him but had apparently made a conscious decision to believe Niko instead and throw away everything else.

“You’re thinking that Niko is smarter, and you’re dead wrong.”

Niko turned to Garrett, who came forward, grabbed the front of my shirt to keep me still, and punched me hard in the face. I tasted blood, turned my head, and spat.

“The fuck is that?” Garrett growled, stepping back like I’d somehow zapped him with electricity. “Do you smell that now?”

“I thought it was something in here,” Avery grumbled, leaning close and inhaling, smelling me. “But it’s not. You’re right, it’s him.” He directed his words to Garrett before turning to Niko. “Why the hell does he smell like that?”

I would have asked Do I smell like beignets and sticky buns? but since I had to use my air sparingly, because I was panting now, taking short little sips of oxygen, I kept my mouth shut.

It had to be Varic. When he made me his consort, when he changed my blood, it must have altered my smell. I thought when he said it was sweeter, he’d meant to his taste. When he drank from me. I had no idea I’d started smelling like frosted baked goods. I would have to tell Leni when I saw her.

It had to be when and not if. That’s how I’d been trained. It was always when.

“I don’t know why he smells like that,” Niko admitted, his voice cracking for a moment, leaning in close to inhale my scent, then pressing the tip of the hunting knife in his left hand to the side of my neck. “But I’m going to drain him, so we’ll all know the answer.”

Cooke whimpered.

“Please,” I gasped, terrified, but not for myself. This was only meant to hurt me. And in hurting me, they were hurting Varic… and that was the part gutting me.

It would kill him to know he hadn’t been there to protect me. He would carry the failure and the rage and maybe even think he should never have reached out for me to begin with. He would curse the decision to take a frail human consort. And I was guessing I knew enough about him to know most of it was the truth.

“You smell like fear,” Niko advised, leaning close, so smug. “I like that scent on you, human.”

It was over-the-top and stupid. “You’re an idiot,” I heaved, choking for air.

It was useless to move, the way they had me trussed up, but I fought anyway, trying to get loose, twisting and straining. They laughed and jeered. The backhand across my face and Garrett cinching the rope sent another scalding lance of pain roaring up my spine.

“I’m going to—”

“Holy shit,” Garrett gasped, cutting Niko off, pointing, “what the fuck is that?”

It was difficult to see anything in the darkness filling the edges of the room. Flickering fluorescent lights illuminated us like a spotlight, and even Cooke lay within the circle, strapped to that chair, but beyond that…. I was fairly certain we were in some kind of warehouse. I strained to listen, and I could have sworn there was something in the shadows panting.

It wasn’t like I sounded, the light in and out, and it wasn’t like a golden retriever ready to slobber on you. It was heavy and rough, and the fact that I could easily hear it now meant it was getting louder. More importantly, to make a sound like that, it had to be big.

Very big.

The vampyrs gathered in the light and clustered together, peering into the darkness. Judging by the way they moved, whatever it was, was circling us.

“Goddammit,” the guy beside Garrett whispered, “you said we didn’t need guns for this!”

Why would they need guns? This wasn’t a movie; I wasn’t a rival cartel lord. No one came expecting a shootout. They’d obviously planned to cut me open and let me bleed all over the floor. No one needed a firearm for that.

Now, whatever lurked just beyond the light, they didn’t want to cut up. They wanted to shoot. I knew I should have been scared, but for the moment, I wasn’t being gutted, so I was thankful for the temporary respite and also strangely curious. I was always the guy who went to look, just as I had the night I heard Tiago scream. I had to know what I was up against, so I wanted it to step into the circle of light.

Cooke began crying softly and then shaking violently. I didn’t understand until an enormous fur-covered hand with claws at least four inches long broke into my line of sight and touched the floor right beside Cooke’s head.

Several men screamed, others cried out, and three ran. I could do nothing but watch, helpless.

I’d seen vampyrs do amazing things—the speed, the agility, the fighting skill—and it was extraordinary, preternatural, not outside the realm of science.

But I could not make sense of that appendage.

Those who ran drew the creature’s interest, as evidenced by the hand… now paw… lifting and retreating into the darkness, followed almost instantly by screams of horror and fear and pain.

A body was flung into the light, cleaved in half, a riot of gore and thick, viscous ooze, no longer a vampyr but instead a mutilated heap. More sounds, wet, like a bucket of water thrown onto a floor, made me thankful for the darkness.

“You want to die here like sheep?” one man yelled, turning on the flashlight on his cell phone, and a few others agreed and yelled their solidarity.

He turned, and a creature’s head filled the light: teeth, dripping jaws, and so much blood. If I’d had the air, I would have gasped or yelled or shrieked just like everyone else.

That cell phone hit the ground, landed so the light beamed straight up, enough to show us the bite that severed his head from his shoulders.

Blood splashed as the creature picked up the head and crushed it, muscle, flesh, and pieces of bone dripping from between its claws.

I could feel the bile rising in my stomach and fought hard not to vomit as the creature moved forward, all of it now in the light.

It was a wolf, of a sort, but the muzzle was wrong, distended, deformed, drawn-back, blood-soaked lips that didn’t cover teeth, so instead of a furry snout, caustic saliva dripped from long, viperlike fangs that gleamed like Damascus steel. Cruel contempt was etched on its monstrously disfigured visage. The way it was standing, on back legs with front legs elongated like arms, the proportions off, was somehow even more disturbing. A six-foot-something feral nightmare didn’t look natural… and if you weren’t sure what it was, how could you kill it?

“The fuck is that?” Niko cried, raising the hunting knife meant to gut me.

Flat and straight hair, sticking up at the ends, covered the creature, and its eyes were slits of amber in its enormous skull. It was massive in size and musculature, and the claws it dragged across the unfinished floor, leaving deep grooves in the wood, created a horrible tearing, scratching, that made everyone gasp.

The others, five left in all, counting Garrett and Avery, gathered close to each other as the werewolf—that was all it could be—circled and then leaped.

It flew forward like a locomotive cleaving the darkness and took two men, one in its enormous piercing grip, the other in its jaws, and dismembered them in seconds. Avery was next, his head torn from his body. I watched as it rolled out of the circle of light. His body was hurled away, discarded like nothing, and when it landed, was still twitching. It pounced on the next man and ripped him in half—blood, tissue, and flesh falling heavily to the floor in sticky wet clumps of gore.

Niko screamed. Garrett ran into the darkness toward the door, and his howl of pain echoed, followed by an audible splash of blood before the creature reappeared, its entire face painted a deep purplish claret.

I should have been horrified or scared, but I was too numb. I was prepared to die, and I was certain it would be fast. I’d just watched the creature eviscerate others right in front of me, after all, so I knew I’d only feel the pain for a split second.

I was surprised when the creature bolted forward, then stopped, breathed a dew of blood-filled air onto his face, and then instead of rushing me, closed in slowly.

It moved its claw faster than I could follow, and I fell hard to the floor. It winded me, and I was thankful I fell face-first and not on my back. Had I fallen backward, the snap of both of my arms would certainly have been my reality. Instead I lay there and gulped air like a fish on land.

“Oh dear God,” Niko whimpered, and I watched as he dropped to his knees and released the knife so it clattered to the ground beside his leg. “Is that the prince’s seal?”

The seal worried him? A creature out of nightmare was standing right there in front of us, and he was freaking out over a token of love Varic had given me?

I would have screamed at him if I’d had the air.

The pendant had slipped from inside my T-shirt and lay on the floor next to my cheek, the hammered gold chain catching the dim light.

“I’m the prince’s consort,” I rasped as the creature nudged my hip gently with its enormous viscera-covered snout. “Of course I wear his seal.”

It had never occurred to me to bargain for my life by announcing who I was to Varic. Honestly, I doubted Niko would have believed me, and even if I had thought to say “I wear the prince’s seal,” I was pretty sure Niko’s plan would have been to kill me anyway. He was in too deep the moment he had Avery grab me. He couldn’t have let either me or Cooke go, or everyone would have found out the truth about him. Killing us was his only option.

Niko started to cry as the creature rounded on him, reared back its head, jaw stretched wide, and emitted a guttural growl.

“I can’t breathe,” I managed.

The creature slipped a single claw under the rope around my neck. The binding sprang off with force, and I gulped air, panting at its feet, its hot breath on my face as it slipped its tongue between those wicked fangs and dragged it down the side of my neck.

“Wolf of Maedoc,” I said under my breath, the realization seizing me of what—or more accurately, who—I was looking at. “I understand now.”

Niko scrambled back a few feet, and I watched in awe as the beast from hell melted away to morph into a heavily muscled man covered in tattoos and brands, runes and glyphs I would have to remember to ask about later, and then finally, after a few long moments, to the naked form of the man I had been in bed with the night before.

Varic Maedoc, prince of the noreia.

His eyes remained amber as he slid a hand through my hair, and when I sighed, they returned into the deep, dark, primordial forest green I knew.

“You came for me,” I sighed, so happy and relieved to see him that I shivered.

“Are you scared now?” he asked, and I could hear the dread in his voice.

“No,” I said, smiling because he had to see on my face as well as hear in my tone that I loved him no matter what form he took. “I’m amazed. That’s incredible, what you can do. How is that possible?”

“As you said, the wolf of Maedoc.” He leaned sideways to grab Niko’s knife and started sawing at the ropes. “It’s genetic in my father’s line.”

I glanced at Niko, making sure he wasn’t moving, and found that not only was he still, but he’d folded up his arms and legs as tight as he could against his body. He also had his face pressed to the floor, totally submissive and quaking in fear.

“So he can do that too?” I asked, focusing again on Varic.

“He used to,” he said, removing the brace from behind my back, which allowed my arms to fall to my sides. “But once the prince is able, the king refrains because the burden of keeping the law lies with the prince, as well as the punishment.”

“It’s probably present in your blood for wartime as well, right?”

“It is,” he said, helping me sit up, then propping me against him as he got the last of the ropes off and then drove the knife down hard into the floor, embedding it there. “It goes back to the berserkers we were talking about before, and the blood frenzy.”

“Did your brother change into the wolf before you?”

Quick nod, his brow creasing like it hurt to remember. “He did. He used the middle form for most of his fighting, which was how we lost him. He couldn’t—” He coughed, clearing his throat softly. “There’s no thinking in either form. It’s all adrenaline and rage.”

That couldn’t be right. I’d seen him calm with my own eyes. He’d reached me and been gentle, the bloodlust gone in moments.

I reached up slowly as the blood rushing back to my arms caused sharp tingles, and cupped his cheek and drew him forward, not caring that his face, body, and hair were streaked and spattered with blood.

He resisted, holding himself back, not allowing the kiss. “No, you—you don’t want—”

“I do want,” I assured him, using my T-shirt to wipe the blood off his mouth before kissing those delectable lips. He was surprised—I saw it in his face when I eased back to look into his eyes. “I want all of you.”

A quick tremble rolled through him. “I should have known that my consort would want me, and see me, the prince, in every form I take and claim all of them—all of me.”

“Yes, you should have,” I said, taking his face in my hands and kissing him again.

Varic tucked me under his arm as a door opened and more lights illuminated the blood-splattered walls, exposing the many corpses.

Hadrian and Tiago rushed into the room with the rest of the dreki. Tiago checked on Cooke, and Hadrian reached us and draped a blanket around Varic’s shoulders before he took hold of mine and checked me over.

“I’m fine,” I reassured him.

“Thankfully, or the rampage would have been catastrophic,” he said flatly before he turned to Niko, lifted him off the floor, and savagely backhanded him. “You fool. Don’t you know you sacrifice your family, your entire line, when you attack the house of Maedoc?”

I was going to correct Hadrian and tell him I wasn’t part of the royal family, but as Varic collapsed into my lap, his head in my hands, his strength gone, wanting to be close, needing me exactly where I was, I realized that, ready or not, I belonged to Varic Maedoc, body and soul.

He was right that first night. Loving him was truly not for the faint of heart.