As he drives us back, I pull out my phone, getting some important things done to make this day more productive. And to distract myself from the fact our errant little monster is not making any damn sense this day.

“Are you texting Vance or Emit?” Damien asks, his entire tone and body tense.

“Neither. I’m shopping for Violet’s wedding gift.” I pause, holding up a finger. “Actually, I just found her gift. I do love the ease of purchases these days,” I tell him, feeling all too merry now that I’ve found this gem.

It’s a pencil holder with a ribbon corset around it. I think someone had us in mind when they designed it.

“Are you fucking serious right now? There’s a small pack of dead shifters, and our girlfriend is going to once again press Idun’s buttons. All while failing to mention any of this to us,” he gripes.

Smiling too broadly, I hold my phone up to show him the pencil holder. “Isn’t it perfect?”

His eyes cut to me and narrow.

“I only picked you to come with me because of your desperate need for bloodshed and worrisome speed. Not your stupid fucking random train of thought,” he says between gritted teeth.

I give him a bored look. “What can I use my desperate need for bloodshed and worrisome speed for at this moment, Morpheous? I’ve told all of you to rein Violet in. Instead, you make me look like the prick every time I try, and now she’s off the rails. Congratulations. The tension is about to get suffocating in our small town. It’s possibly time to evacuate the humans.”

He opens and closes his mouth, no words leaving him, though his ire does seem to double.

“I should have picked the Van Helsing,” is all he says. “Never again.”

They always hate it when I’m right. We’re too far down the rabbit hole to turn back now.

I guess I’ll finally be going to war with Idun.

We’ll see how we fare when it’s four against one, instead of three against two.

“The necklace may as well be a farce,” I tell him. “It gave her some added bonus powers, somehow, but in the end, the fear she’s accumulated even from the grave has made her strength undeniable. You feel her presence. It’s more commanding than ever. She’s not even bothered trying to retrieve the necklace.”

He says nothing for a long minute, until he reaches for his phone.

“There’s a heap of severed shifter betas someone left to be found, and Idun doesn’t seem to know about it. Yet. Or she’s pretending she doesn’t. Violet either does or doesn’t know what’s going on, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell what she’s up to these days. I don’t know anything anymore, Vampyre. I’m tired of pretending I do.”

Glancing out the window, I smirk.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” I ask.

“No. Not really,” he quickly confesses. “I’ve been on my own for a long damn time, shirking all the responsibility I could manage to shrug off, because I got sick of this game. We’re getting sucked in, and it’s because Violet’s getting sucked in. She’s simply too young to realize she’s doing exactly what Idun wants.” He pauses, as though a thought has occurred to him. “Avery could have taken that many beta shifters.”

Avery is an impressive knight. It’s certainly possible and the most plausible explanation.

What’s done is done.

There’s no way to go but forward from here.

“I hope Violet’s ready for the fight she’s about to pick. Idun’s playing her. But, at least I’ll finally be able to prove my loyalty.”

“I hope you have some tricks up your sleeve, Vampyre,” he says.

I smirk with false confidence, not letting on that I’m doubting a great number of my plans. Aside from a nuclear detonation—that will likely not be okay with Violet, since she fancies humans—I don’t see many chances to weaken Idun—neither physically nor within her House.

She broke free from the frost tank sooner than I’d hoped, and she was completely healed. The loss of the necklace hasn’t rattled her confidence even a little.

My cards are quickly falling on the table, and they’re not matching up with Idun’s hand as well as I’d hoped. I almost think she left me that necklace on purpose, sacrificing a little, in an effort to set me up for failure, in the event I finally betrayed her.

As if she gave me a trinket to make me feel more powerful.

I used to love her for being so dangerous.

But that’s before she became my enemy.

I never believed such a day would come.

Chapter 21

VANCE

“Fuck’s sake, Violet, where the hell are you?” I snap.

“Over here,” she calls, as I push through more of the thick forest.

“It seems like every time you answer with that, your voice comes from another direction,” Emit gripes from somewhere across from me.

“That’s because I’m lost!” she says, as though that’s somehow an explanation.

“That’s not an excuse for your voice disappearing from one second to the—”

There’s barely a rustling to my side, and then the breath is nearly knocked out of me, when Violet boulders into me. I grab her at the shoulders, and her head slings back, revealing wide, surprised eyes.

“Vance!” she shouts like some startled wild animal.

“Surely it can’t be that surprising to find me after several minutes of me whacking through the forest and shouting your name,” I state in a dry tone.

She opens her mouth, as if to speak, when Anna suddenly appears at her side, grinning for no particular reason.

“Oh, Violet, they’re waiting for you. Talbot has done everything you requested,” she tells her.

My brow furrows at the cryptic message, and Anna vanishes from sight.

Violet gives me a timid smile, pushing a long piece of hair out of her face. Her hair’s a mess, actually.

“The forest doesn’t agree with you,” I note, since it looks like she’s been camping for a week, rather than stuck in here for less than ten minutes.

“Sorry. Something really important has come up,” she says very abruptly, before suddenly darting off.

She’s a terrible runner, and it distracts me from the fact we need to have a very serious conversation about what her monster really is.

A poor man’s Simpleton monster.

How can I break her heart that way? She genuinely thinks she’s fierce.

I’m left scratching my head at the bizarre, frustrating start to my morning.

Oddly, Talbot’s car drives down the small side-road, barely slowing down long enough for Violet to hop in, and then they race off.

“Something’s amiss,” I mutter to myself.

“What’s not right is having briars stuck to your cock,” Emit retorts from the woods, swearing vengeance on a prickly bush of some sort, given the rest of his muttered commentary that I barely pick up bits and pieces from.

“If anyone’s cock deserves to get stabbed by briars, it’s yours,” I assure him, distracted by the day’s random events.

Emit lumbers out behind me, cursing when he trips on a set of stubborn vines. “The bloody undergrowth in this place is unnatural. You should do better maintenance on your lands, Van Helsing. Where the hell was she off to in such a hurry?” he asks as though I’ve had a secret conversation with her he couldn’t overhear.