Two—Marie and Jennifer—could have killed her a dozen times. They hadn’t. They’d talked to her, instead, and walked away. She kinda felt like she owed them.
“Go find Tucker before I decide you’ll make a tasty snack,” she said. “Wait. First tell me what you meant about Tonya’s aura being black.”
He frowned as he slid back into the booth. “Usually that means the person is going to die. But hers was an old black, kind of faded to a gray. I’ve seen that kind of aura a few times before, but usually on people who had somehow cheated death through magic or been cursed for a long, long time.”
Was that what would happen to Aden’s aura, then? Slowly fade, maybe rot? “So her life was saved through magic? Or she was cursed? Which one?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get a magical vibe off her.” He shrugged. “But that could just mean the curse is so much a part of her, like her lungs or her heart, that no one can sense it. Or it could mean that magic wasn’t used.”
“So what you’re telling me is that you have no freaking clue?”
“Correct. So what you’re telling me is that you don’t want me to stay with you? Because after that tasty snack comment, I want you to—”
“Go, you nympho!”
Laughing, he stood and blew her a kiss, then stalked from the shop. Mary Ann forced her attention to return to her laptop. Her hands were shaking as she typed. And what do you know? She typed without thinking and ended up with a search on Aden’s parents. Again. Maybe her subconscious was trying to tell her something.
Fine. She’d go with it. And another thing. Her next ward, she decided, was going to prevent boys from muddying up her thoughts and ruining her concentration. But somehow, she doubted even that could protect her from Riley’s appeal.
ADEN SURPRISED VICTORIA. Rather than walking into the throne room, where his “guests” awaited him, and demanding answers, rather than feeding himself, he first prepared himself for the possibility of battle. A task that caused several tension-filled hours to tick by, morning giving way to afternoon.
She listened to a one-sided conversation he had with Elijah and knew Aden was upset because the soul hadn’t predicted this, and he hadn’t prepared. She listened as he spoke with the councilmen, then Maddie, learning what he could about the nine warriors awaiting him. She breathed a sigh of relief when he placed guards and lookouts in every room in the house as well as outside. She watched as he armed himself, looked away as he changed into a new T-shirt and jeans, and waited with him for the wolves, already tired from patrolling, to come in from the forest.
There was no time to think about their kiss and his anger over her lack of virginity, which was out of character for both past and present Aden. Did he suspect the boy’s identity? Would he hate her when the suspicion was confirmed?
Okay, there was time to think about all of that, but she couldn’t allow herself the luxury. She needed to focus, to be at her best. Just in case Aden wasn’t. He still hadn’t eaten, and she didn’t know why.
Something else she didn’t know—why he had stopped what he was doing, twice, to announce that he wasn’t going to dance.
Now he marched along the scarlet rug, Victoria just behind him, wolves flanking him, and a handful of his strongest vampire warriors behind them. Vampire citizens lined the walls, watching him, forming a hallway that led straight to the throne room.
Victoria caught whispers like “just appeared,” “trouble” and “war,” and each caused dread to work through her.
Whoever the warriors were, they could obviously teleport, since they had not stormed through the house but had “just appeared” in the throne room. And to appear somewhere, a teleporter had to have been there before. Which meant Vlad had once entertained the warriors.
As Aden approached the throne room, two of his sentries threw open the tall, arched doorways. Without a pause in his stride, the new and as-yet-uncrowned vampire king entered the room. Victoria expected more whispers, something, but the only thing to be heard was the thump of multiple pairs of boots and the scrape of wolf claws. Then Aden stopped, as did everyone behind him, and there wasn’t even that. Just silence.
The newcomers—taller and stronger than Victoria had imagined, and she’d imagined very tall and very strong—formed a backward V. A war formation. Too many times to count, she’d seen her father act as the center of just such a V. It was a pose meant to intimidate, to show unity. A kind of “you mess with one, you mess with all” thing.
The man in front tilted his head to the side. There was no deference to the action, of course, just an I-am-the-scientist-and-you-are-the-lab-rat surety. “At last. You arrive.” He didn’t sneer, but the insult was there, an implication that Aden was a coward for having made him wait.
The old Aden might have ignored the implication. The new Aden raised his chin and said, “At last, I honor you with my presence.”
A fierce scowl. “We are not your subjects, and we are not honored by you.”
“Of course you are.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Why, you little—”
The warrior to the speaker’s right placed a firm hand on his shoulder, and he pressed his lips together in an obvious bid for calm. The second man said, “We are not the ones who wish to speak with you, Aden the Beast Tamer.”
At least they acknowledged his power. Names were important to her kind, identifiers of personality, skill and conquest. Vlad the Impaler. Lauren the Bloodthirsty—which was saying something among a horde of vampires. Stephanie the Exuberant. Victoria the Mediator.
“Who, then?” Aden demanded.
A pause, the eye of the storm, before another male teleported to the head of the V, and every person in the room, save for the newcomers and Aden, gasped in astonishment.
“Me.”
“Sorin,” she breathed. She’d known he would come, yet seeing him live and in person still managed to astonish and amaze her. Her brother was here. Her brother was actually here!
The little girl she used to be wanted to run to him, to throw herself in his arms. They’d never before touched, never spoken, and they’d only met gazes a total of six times. Yet still, the forgotten part of her wanted to do those things and more.
“You know him?” Aden asked her, but didn’t wait for her answer. “I think I know him, too.” His eyes darkened, then lit back up, going from violet to black, black to violet, as he looked through her. “Is there a way to stop him?”
“Stop…Sorin?”
He frowned, shook his head. “I don’t believe you, Elijah.”
Of course. The souls were bothering him, but sadly, they were not helping him.
Victoria reached out and twined their fingers, offering what comfort she could while trying to bring him back to the here and now. He blinked, the black gobbling up his eyes and remaining. He gave her a reassuring squeeze, comforting her.
Sorin snorted. “I heard you were insane, human. I am glad to see the gossips can get things right every now and then.”
Aden’s grip tightened, but he did not reply.
“Has Elijah…has he predicted something terrible?” she whispered.
A muscle ticked under his eye. Again he remained silent.
Was he lost to a prediction even now? Trembling, she returned her attention to her brother. “He is not insane,” she said. Maybe she could convince these boys to get along. “Underestimating him will get you killed.”
Sorin met her gaze. Seven, she thought, keeping score in her head, just as before. His hard expression did not change or soften. Did he even remember her? He’d been gone so very long.