Chapter TWENTY-SIX

JADEN DRIFTED, as he always did when the sun rose, in a place somewhere between sleep and waking. As the sun went higher, he would sink deeper, sometimes dreaming, sometimes simply existing in his own darkness before the moon rose again.

His body relaxed as his mind slipped away, peacefully floating.

Then the noises began.

He heard them from far away at first. A shout. The sounds of feet moving, scuffling. A snarl. Lyra’s voice crying out.

Lyra’s voice.

Jaden struggled upward, fighting the currents his body had become accustomed to for so many years. He clung to his consciousness by a thin thread, using it to pull himself out of the dark. He strained, forcing it long after he should have let go—the sun had to be in the sky by now. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow… he could feel each cool bead form and roll.

And slowly, the voices grew louder.

“I’ll never let you take me, you son of a bitch!”

His eyes flew open in the darkness of his room. Jaden tried to get out of bed, but his movements were sluggish, like trying to walk through molasses. Still, he managed to get one foot down, then the other, and push onto his feet. He stood there for a moment, swaying, his body feeling as though it weighed a thousand pounds.

There was a crash, then a masculine shout.

“Stop fighting me, Lyra! There’s no one here to hear you!”

Simon.

Anger sparked and began to work its way though his blood like wildfire, warming limbs cold and heavy with sleep. He righted himself and began to move more quickly. Still, he opened the door to his room cautiously. There weren’t many windows here, only at the end of the hall, but he would have to be careful not to step into a pool of sunlight.

Sunlight. How the hell was he even up?

Jaden didn’t have time to ponder. There was another crash on the floor below. And as he thought of her, Jaden could feel the adrenaline pumping through Lyra’s veins, taste the metallic tang of fear on his own tongue. She was scared for her life.

“Don’t make me do this, Simon!”

Laughter. “You can’t hurt me, Lyra. Your father was right. You didn’t have a prayer against the rest of us. And especially not me. I know you too well.”

“You don’t know shit about me!”

“I know that if you have a choice between getting in this collar or me taking your father’s life, you’ll take the collar.”

Then Jaden was running, his feet barely touching the floor as he leaped down the stairs, barely registering the light streaming in the windows on the east side, the halls illuminated in a way his eyes had not seen in well over two hundred years.

All he could think of was Lyra. And as though she had felt him thinking of her, she cried out his name.

“Jaden! Can you hear me? Help me!”

He burst into the room as Simon was circling her, laughing.

“Like calling a vampire for help after sunrise is going to do anything for you. Nice one.”

“It was, actually,” Jaden growled, and both heads whipped toward him at once. Jaden saw immediately what was happening. A dagger, long and smeared with crimson, extended from Simon’s hand. And Lyra was trying to keep between Simon and her father.

The relief on her beautiful face was all he needed to see. Though the sheer terror on Simon’s was a bonus.

“Would you like to take him out, or shall I?” Jaden asked.

Lyra sank to the floor, and he finally noticed the spreading red stain on her shirt. She shook her head. “You’re going to have to take it.”

Simon’s final seconds were consumed with a single sight: a pair of feral cat’s eyes lighting with a bloodlust so dark and elemental that he knew there would be no defense against it. He flung up his hands and screamed as the cat leaped.

And Simon Dale knew no more.

It seemed to take days instead of hours, but by late afternoon, Lyra stood in the place she’d never thought she would see again: home. And in the basement where Jaden had spent so many days was Eric Black, tied and beaten, but with a fire in his eyes that told her he’d be all right.

Lyra quickly severed the bonds holding him, seeing the shimmer of silver in the rope. A clever way to hold a wolf, but easily undone with help, she thought, wincing only a little at the sharp pain in her side where Simon’s poison-dipped blade had pierced her. The wound had been cleaned and bandaged as best she could, but it burned. Jaden had assured her it would subside before long.

He had slipped back upstairs, into the dark and shuttered house, once he’d checked the rest of the basement. Lyra could barely think of him without her heart feeling like it might burst out of her chest. When she’d needed him most, he had been there. He’d saved her.

And strangely enough, having been saved didn’t piss her off at all. It made her feel safe, secure… loved.

The thought of having a man to count on, to have her back in a fight, turned out not to be so hard to swallow after all.

And the fact that he’d asked, very politely, if he could take Simon out didn’t hurt. The memory, despite the terror she’d felt at the time, made her smile. Only Jaden would decide to get proper at a time like that.

Gods, she loved him. And she would have told him already, if he hadn’t been busy alternating between plotting to take out the entire house of Ptolemy and marveling at the sunshine the entire way here. His wonder at the first touch of light on his skin in centuries had been a precious gift to see.

The poem had been right, though she’d had to remind him. Night and day are thine. She’d gotten his life span. He’d gotten her ability to walk in the sun.

They were stuck with each other now, both officially freaks of nature, even for the world of night. And she couldn’t have been happier.

“Are you okay?” Lyra asked Eric as she pulled the gag out of his mouth. He looked at her warily as he flexed and moved muscles that had to be stiff and sore from being bound.

“Yeah. I actually preferred the days. This is like storage. At least it’s quiet and I’m not in that damned collar. Nights were…” He trailed off, then shook his head. “Did you kill Simon?”

“Yeah. Well, Jaden did.”

His eyes darkened. “Good.” He stood up, and Lyra watched him, realizing she didn’t really know her cousin at all. She’d spent all these years believing the worst of him, things that weren’t remotely true of anyone in the pack except, perhaps, Simon himself. The thought of him made her nauseous. The thought of how long he’d deceived her made her feel worse. But she knew that eventually she would mourn, if only for the idealistic dreamer of a child he’d once been.

“I take back what I said about your man,” Eric said, looking over his shoulder at her. “I only had a couple nights of the Ptolemy. He had, what, a couple hundred years? No thank you.” He paused, then looked away. “I was wrong. Blind. You were never the one who didn’t deserve to be here.”

It was a big admission. And Lyra felt she owed him one in return.

“And I… apologize. For all the terrible things I said about you,” Lyra said. He looked back at her sharply, as though he thought he hadn’t heard her right. She nodded. “I bought a line of bull without knowing you. That’s on me. Maybe we’ll get along, maybe we won’t, but I’ll make that up to you, Eric, if I can. If you’ll let me. You’re my blood. I’d like to get to know you as my cousin instead of just a rival.”

The flicker of surprise and cautious pleasure on his face told her she’d done the right thing. He might never be her cup of tea… but then, Mr. Law and Order might not be so bad either. At least now, she would have the opportunity to find out.

“I’d like that,” he said. “I think… after all this… I’m going to have to reassess some things. I hope you’ll come back to us, Lyra.”

Lyra found she didn’t have an answer for that. Not yet.

“We’ll see. Come on,” she said. “Jaden’s upstairs looking for Arsinöe.”

“He won’t find her,” Eric replied, following her up the stairs into the kitchen. “The woman has some serious protection around her. She wasn’t spending her days in town. None of them were. Simon made a big deal out of the fact that he’d hooked a big dynasty to help give the pack a leg up. I don’t think the pack was too nuts about it. Or him. He started to get seriously strange after you… after I, um…”

Lyra raised an eyebrow. That, he was perfectly allowed to feel like an ass about. Forever.

“You know you have my apology. And for what it’s worth,” Eric said quietly, “it turns out the pack wasn’t too pleased about that either. You should know that. They followed the law, but invoking it hasn’t exactly made me popular.”

Jaden reentered the kitchen, silent and graceful as a ghost. He didn’t look happy.

“Not here,” he growled. “I thought this would be it. I could put a stake in her and end one very big problem for our kind.”

Eric stared at Jaden for a moment, as though only just realizing something. “You’re out in the day how, exactly?”

“Long story,” Jaden replied.

“We’ll find her,” Lyra said. “Though… if she’s as powerful as you say, killing her might create more problems than it solves. Especially because everyone’s going to suspect it was someone attached to your dynasty.”

Jaden shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Not right now. All that matters today is that she won’t be coming back here. The woman’s got a sixth sense about places where her neck’s at risk.”

Eric looked between them, and Lyra realized how beat he looked. “Gods, Eric, I wasn’t thinking. Go home. Though if you’d stop and tell Gerry about Dad, that would help. Jaden and I will be over to tell him everything. Soon.”

He looked relieved, and exhausted. “I can do that. And… thanks. To both of you. I didn’t realize—” He stopped, then smiled. At that moment Lyra recognized a young version of her father, handsome as sin with that smile. Maybe now he would do it more often.