“I would say sorry.” She scooted off the bed. “But I’m not a very good liar.”
“Fuck,” he breathed, shaking off his pain, wondering if his dick was permanently scarred.
“Don’t want you making any more babies, do we?”
From his fetal position on the mattress, his gaze flipped up to find her. She stood just outside the door. In the hallway, where shafts of sunlight hit her neck and hair.
“I won’t be held here,” he told her through gritted teeth. “By you, your family. Even that hawk shifter who was only a few hours ago working her way into my bed.”
Shock registered on her face. She paled. “What?”
“She didn’t tell you?” he said evenly. Though he felt no emotion, he knew exactly how to extract it from others. Years of psych training in the military hadn’t been bled out of him. “Your small blond viper of a best mate, Dani?”
Petra shook her head. “She was there helping my brothers. Helping me.”
“Your brothers came later, love.” Recovered from the knee to the nuts now, Synjon pushed off the bed. He stood in the darkness, his eyes narrowed on the female who’d nearly turned him into a eunuch. This was going to be far trickier than he had thought. Her strength was amazing, strange, and couldn’t be matched. He would have to outwit her instead. An option that would take far more time and planning.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Whatever happened with Dani was just an act to get you off your guard, and you know it.”
“Well, she certainly fooled me. And I’m not easily fooled.” Synjon smiled coldly. “Must’ve been that black minidress, those come-shag-me heels, and the phrase ‘Where would you like me?’” His gaze moved over Petra again. “No paven alive can refuse that.”
Petra’s mouth thinned and she shook her head. “You really have no shame, no care, no feelings for anything, do you?”
No. He did not.
“’Tis compliments of your father, love,” he said tightly. “Now, step aside.”
Her expression changed to near amusement. “Where do you think you’re going? The sun’s shining. It’s day.”
“It’s still night in New York. I may get a bit singed on the departure, but nothing a few veanas can’t take care of.”
Her mouth dropped open and she just stared at him.
“I’m asking you to step aside.” His eyes locked with hers. “I will only ask once.”
She lifted her chin. “And if I refuse?”
“I shall make you,” he said simply.
Petra took a breath, then released it as she moved into the very center of the doorway. “Make me, Syn.”
His brow furrowed. It was a response he hadn’t expected. It was illogical.
She continued, her tone filled with an almost feverish excitement. “Make me get out of your way. I’ve dreamed of it—this clash—and everything inside me is begging for it. I’ve wanted to deny this new strength I possess. Or just not deal with it because I didn’t understand its purpose, and shit, maybe it even frightened me a little. But I think it’s the perfect time to see just how powerful I am.”
“The balas . . . ,” he began slowly.
“You won’t touch the balas.” She grinned, her eyes flashing with heat. “I won’t allow it. Ever.”
Again the strange sensation scratched at his insides, and again he forced it back. “I will show no pity, love. As you know, it doesn’t exist in me anymore.”
She sniffed, dropped into a fighting stance. “Trust me, Syn. It never did.”
He moved first. But Petra was only a second behind him. Fangs bared, blood surging in their veins, they collided in the center of the room: cold and lethal versus savage and ravenous.
4
Cruen stood where so many lesser beings had stood before him. Where he had called to them, pulled them into his reality, rejected them.
The Hollow of Shadows.
Under the spotlight of a full moon, Cruen wanted to sneer at his predicament. But the action and the emotion behind it would steal the minimal energy that remained inside him. And though he grew worse with each moment he breathed, he had to appear capable and highly functioning before Feeyan and the others. For now, for today, he would tell them his only issue was a glitch in his ability to flash, the reason most frustratingly undetermined. He remembered something similar happening to another member of the Order many years ago. He hoped at least seven of the ten members would recall it now.
The temperature around him dropped another five degrees, the cold gripping his bones, weakening them further. It was truly disgraceful. The once all-powerful, feared, and respected vampire reduced to this. Begging for entrance to the plane he had created. Begging for an audience before the table he used to rule.
Damn Synjon Wise for his trickery, his treachery. What was his reasoning for this? Why not keep him in Erion’s dungeon? Why not just kill him outright?
An owl screeched overhead as Cruen walked toward the mouth of the cave. If he could just sit for a moment, find and collect his breath, save his strength. He wondered if Feeyan and the Order were ignoring him, his call. After all, they were a new, modern bunch now, and he had abandoned them for greater things. His self-serving agenda was common knowledge. And yet, even as he worked out the thought, he felt their almighty hand reaching for him, their strong and faithful energy wrap around him and pull. A weightless sensation moved through him as the Hollow of Shadows grew smaller and further away, while in his mind anger flared with the knowledge that even if he’d wanted to, there was no turning back. Feeyan had the power now. She was great. She was the leader of the Order.
And he was only a shell of the paven he used to be.
An even deeper, more bitter cold assaulted him as his feet hit compacted snow. At first Cruen was confused. Had the Order changed their reality—his reality—from sand to snow? Then, as Feeyan appeared at his side, tall and imperious, and the clouds parted before him to reveal several glorious white-capped mountains, he knew where he was and why.
“It is good of you to call, Cruen,” Feeyan said, her eyes matching the snow that surrounded them, while her expression mirrored the cold. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
He matched her crisp tone. “I was hoping for an audience with the Order.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I am the Order.”
It was like looking at himself only a few years ago. Ambitious, arrogant, secretive. He quite admired her in that moment. “So I’m to have a private audience?”
“I think it best to start there,” she said, studying him. “Don’t you?”
Cruen hesitated, handpicking every word that was to come out of his mouth. His successor was a complex veana. Not unlike him, she went beyond the boundaries of the Order to further her agenda, seek power and alliances. He had counted on standing before the group of ten and stating his case, his concerns. Now, with just their leader, perhaps he needed to play this game a little differently.
“We have a problem,” he began, the cold invading his bones, looking to weaken them further.
“We?” she repeated disdainfully.
“The Eternal Breed,” he said evenly, forcing calm, coolness into his expression. “I come to you as a concerned Pureblood.”
Her brows drew together in surprise, interest even. A small victory that gave Cruen the minute shot of mental adrenaline he needed to get attention, and action, for this lie he had conjured.
“A Pureblood looking for assistance,” he added.