Chapter Eight
Tiana's office was littered with framed articles. Every time Audrey talked with her boss, she envied the litany of reporters that had proven themselves worthy to be hung on the walls. Even if Tiana wanted plenty of the gossipy stuff, she also had produced a lot of good reporters and rewarded them for their efforts.
But somehow that didn't seem so important anymore.
The previous night with Dimitri and Sanjay had been the best she ever had. She still felt a little tender this morning, although she wouldn't trade it for the world. She had a future with them, one where she wasn't alone with just her work to give her purpose. It was worth far more than any framed article hung on the wall.
"Your articles have gotten very popular," Tiana said. "We have people writing in, praising us for providing such a balanced view on the non-humans. A lot of them have questions, too."
"I can incorporate their questions into my further interviews," Audrey said. "And I know you want more information about the woman that was found murdered, but the last article I sent in yesterday has everything I know about it."
"It's not much. Especially considering that you're banging the vampire king."
"Excuse me?"
"You told me that he chose you as his mate. Everybody knows he spent the night with you, Audrey. It's in all the gossip magazines." Tiana leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. "Why haven't you used this to your advantage yet?"
"I don't know what you mean," she said coldly
"You have to interview him. You could go even further. A blog about what dating him is like. We would draw in thousands more readers."
Since when was drawing in readers more important than her relationships? Audrey frowned. "I'm not going to use him to advance my career. He loves me."
Tiana snorted. "You've only been there for what? A week? Any man who says that he loved you after that much time is just trying to get into your pants. Which apparently he has."
"Vampires don't work the same way humans do." Audrey glared at her boss. "And neither do shifters. It's less complicated for them. They can smell the person they'll be happy to spend the rest of their life with. You can't think of them in human terms. At least not with everything. Dimitri… both of them. Sanjay, too. They love me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. They're already compromising on things and giving me what I want over what they want." She hesitated, but Tiana was the closest thing she had to a friend. Who else could she share her good news with? "This doesn't leave this room, but they want a polyandrous relationship with me."
"Hmmm." Tiana peered at her. "Look, Audrey, you are in an amazing position right now. How many reporters out there would kill to be close to the vampire king? You have the ability to—"
Audrey shook her head. "Stop."
Her boss fell silent. If only for a moment. "Wait… you're falling in love, too, aren't you?"
"Not falling. Fell. Hard." Audrey took a deep breath. "I was terrified at first, but that was because I never thought that they would actually want me, and my feelings were getting too strong to deny. I love them, and I want to be their mate."
Tiana's face creased. "What about your career?"
"There are more important things than a career. For the first time in forever, I feel like a real person. There are people who love me for me, not because I wrote a fantastic article."
"You're in deep."
"Yes. And loving every second of it."
***
By the time her meeting with Tiana was done, Audrey was exhausted. She drove back to her apartment with heavy eyes. It probably wasn't the best idea to drive all the way back to the palace in this state of mind. As much as she wanted to go home to her vampire and shifter, safety came first. She was too tired to drive any distance. A quick nap would take care of that.
Once in her apartment, she checked her phone. A frown crossed her brow. There were a half-dozen missed calls from Dimitri. She quickly phoned him back as she kicked off her shoes. It only rang once before he answered.
"Audrey, are you okay?"
"Yes."
"You weren't answering your phone."
"I was in a meeting with my boss. Why? What's wrong?"
There was a brief pause, and then the phone call took on a slightly echoing quality that indicated that Dimitri had put it onto the speaker. Sanjay's voice came over the line.
"Have you seen anything suspicious?"
Audrey's heart began to beat faster. "No. Why?"
"Another woman was murdered this morning," Dimitri said. "She was seeing a shifter. They were both killed and dumped at the palace gates."
A cold ball of dread hit Audrey hard. She clutched her phone tighter, trying to calm her racing heart. "I'm coming back right away."
"No," Dimitri said. "We'll come get you. Our relationship is all over the tabloids, I wouldn't be surprised if you were being watched. It would be too easy to run you off the road on your way here and take you. Lock your doors and sit tight. We're already on our way. We'll only be fifteen more minutes."
"Okay." Audrey pinched the phone between her ear and shoulder as she rushed around her apartment, stuffing everything she needed into her laptop bag. It was a good thing she had left most of what she needed at the palace when she left yesterday.
"You have to tell her," Sanjay said over the phone, his voice lowered like she wasn’t supposed to hear.
Audrey stopped her frantic packing. "Tell me what?"
Silence.
"Tell me what?"
"Dimitri has received a lot of threats of late."
"There are always a certain amount of threatening letters written around the time of the Harvest Moon Festival," Dimitri interrupted. "There have been more than usual this year. The most recent ones we've received have stated that there will be more murders unless all the women who participated in the festival are ejected from the vampire palace, and all vampires with human mates are handed over to human authorities on charges of rape."
Could the Fist of Humanity people really be so deluded as to think that Dimitri would bow to such demands? Let alone the humans who had vampire mates. They would never accept it.
"They aren't concerned about the women," Audrey realized. "Otherwise they wouldn't be murdering them."
"Exactly." Dimitri's voice was grim. "We're almost there, hang tight."
Audrey opened her mouth to confirm she was ready as soon as they got there, but never got the chance.
There was a loud crashing behind her. The door flew off its hinges, splinters of wood shooting every which way. Half a dozen men wearing ski masks and carrying semi-automatic weapons surged into the room. Audrey screamed. One of the men yanked her phone from her hand while two other grabbed her arms and began pulling her out.
"King Dimitri, I presume," the man who had taken her phone said. He chuckled and dropped the phone, crushing it beneath his foot.
"Let me go!" Audrey screamed. They didn't so much as slow down as they dragged her towards the stairs.