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  If this is what debs at a ball felt like, being fawned over and pedestalled while the brute squad debated over who got breeding rights … well, it gave me a newfound sympathy for the distaff portion of human society.

  It also made me want to rush to the ladies with a gaggle of gigglers to freshen makeup and rejoice in the…

  Crap. The man in Armani was at it again, messing with my head.

  I am not their bitch.

  It takes one to know one.

  I’ve got serious shit going down, in case you haven’t noticed … Dad.

  He had. Fortunately he seemed down with Jeffy being in my pocket. It might be a pretty good assumption that his assassin would act as the go-between and escort in case things went south with the weres.

  It also occurred that if Elliot and his mob were after me, then they weren’t after the tactical nuke that went missing. If it had been me, I’d have spun resources toward reacquiring the ordnance and other missing assets, in lieu of chasing down a mutt with skills tending more toward porn star caliber than anything useful in the modern world.

  Though alphabetizing tantric positions and mapping the sensual chi ’Verse to enhance sexual pleasure were worthy goals, they did not rank up there with world domination and general mayhem. Elliot apparently still had me pegged as his weapon of mass destruction choice, why I hadn’t a clue.

  As usual, I had managed a university semester’s worth of academic musings and general bullshit while pausing at the door to the room, waiting on Jef and Fane to square off and come to an understanding.

  Fane shoved me into the room, rattled off instructions, in Romanian, to Jef who nodded and went back down the stairs double-time. Then he slammed the door and stalked to the window to pull the shutters and the drapes. It wasn’t light-tight but it would do. When he finally turned around, the look on his face was chilling.

  To my own limited olefactory senses, I knew I reeked of demon. I couldn’t begin to imagine what the stench meant to my wolf.

  Carefully removing and folding the ensemble Dad had thoughtfully provided, I placed it on a small dresser, hoping that baring my nakedness, and my soul, would appeal to his sense of forgiveness.

  The blow was unexpected, driving me across the room to slam against the wall and expelling most of the air in my chest. Age-hardened wood rattled my brain case, creating an aurora of sparks behind my eyelids as I slumped to the floor. Addled, crumpled and spiritually dead to myself … and him.

  I mouthed I love you but he couldn’t see that, refused to see it, the blows raining down with such force I felt ribs and vertebrae splinter, shards of bone piercing inner organs with the elegance and exquisite temperance of a paper cut dipped in lemon juice.

  Thick, heavy steel toes rammed home, electric bolts of agony torturing their way around my groin with a radiance so divine I imagined the final moment, the dark hole of acceptance and the judgment surely awaiting a sinner such as me.

  Slick slimy ooze coated the ancient flooring, the bits of me not leaking held together by sinew and fragments of flesh.

  But my dearest love, my Stefan was not finished with me, his dominance not yet mollified. Like a rag doll, he positioned my limp body on the bed and I braced for the final disgrace. I had violated his trust, his loyalty, his very beliefs. For that I would pay and pay again as he thrust deep, driving my body and soul into a well of despair as I passed beyond pain and embraced the true nature of regret.

  As he drove me to the brink, I silently thanked him for the kindness. He would now abandon me, as well he should, and the thought of living without him was more than I could bear. I embraced the end and gave my soul over to whatever deity would have me. Hel, heaven, purgatory or somewhere in between—none of it mattered, not without my wolf by my side.

  Nearly comatose, aware of only a red haze coating my vision, I surrendered to the soft duvet cocooning what remained of corporeal flesh and ragged-edged bone and the juices of my life leaking away.

  Rough hands jiggered and shoved at my body, the adjustment jarring. I wanted it to stop, to be over. With each touch he forced awareness. I had never thought my boy to be cruel so I didn’t understand this needless torture.

  “Let me go, Fane.” Whispers in the dark. A final plea for mercy. “Please.”

  “Shut up.”

  The bed groaned with the weight of two of us, me in bits and pieces, him a mass of stone and bone cradling me softly, tenderly.

  “Drink.”

  He pressed his wrist, already seeping thick rich life, onto my swollen lips, blood with blood, anger with remorse, love with hate.

  From somewhere deep in my throat, I croaked, “Why?”

  Let me die, please my love. I don’t want to go on without you.

  Words dry-heaved from my gut, coating my throat but never making it to his ears, yet he seemed to understand.

  “Drink, you stupid fuck.”

  Recoiling from the acrid, burnt taste of rage I drew back but he forced my lips open until the crimson life force poured like acid down my throat.

  Later, much later, he stared at me from the bench near the shuttered window. The room entered true darkness and I rued the night, knowing that my life as I knew it was over. His eyes glowed citrine, the wolf in command.

  I asked, “Do you love me?”

  Rising, he stalked to the door and motioned for someone to enter the room. Then the door closed and he was gone.

  Jefrumael stared at my battered form for long minutes before climbing beside me and gathering me into his arms. Kissing my cheek he nestled me into his chest, stroking my hair the way I had once stroked the downy softness of my wolf.

  Embracing his pity like a cloak, I wept.

  For Maman.

  For the emptiness inside me.

  For Stefan.

  Chapter Five

  I wondered … who died.

  The air sat heavy and thick and I held my breath the way you do when evidence of the universe’s folly would not be denied. Not that I needed that infusion of oxygen into atrophied blobs of tissue, but demon me remembered fonder times, when physicality had meaning and purpose.

  The divide between being dead and almost dead might seem insignificant to some. To me it was a pretty big deal.

  Hushed whispers competed with the sound of bones knitting around wavelets of gristle and unmentionable fluids, the pattern following some bizarre DNA sequence. The inner me rejoiced in the frenzy of tiny organic devices scurrying about, busy with unknowable intent. If they restored me … if they could restore me, what would I be? A mutt, half this, half that?

  A specimen. Blistered and scarred beyond recognition.

  An oddity.

  Would he turn away in disgust?

  He already has…

  ****

  “How is he?”

  “Not good.”

  “Then do something.”

  “I can’t. I’ve already tried. He needs more than what I can give him.”

  “Then what…”

  “You. He needs you…”

  You you you you…

  Echoes in stereo, restive and teasing. Then silence. My wolf refused to answer, refused to acknowledge me and the door to my aching heart slammed shut against the waves of pity blanketing my prone form.

  Swaddled against the chill, the assassin had laid me out, limbs extended like a pinwheel, bound tight and true, the bones cast into straightness with tension.

  The pain was excruciating.

  “I don’t like the looks of…”

  What, he doesn’t like the looks of what?

  “Then break it again and reset it.”

  “No, he’s had enough.”

  “Did I sound like I was giving you a choice, demon?”

  I can give you a choice, dearest Stefan. Let me go. End this torture. Even the god of my brothers took pity. Please.

  “You risk madness.”

  Risk?

  “I would have him whole, demon.”

  “No one deserves such
punishment.”

  “Would you rather he be half a man?” The silence pierced the room for a heartbeat, two. “All right, then. Do it.”

  “Hold him down. If I don’t do this right, we’ll have to take it.”

  Take. My leg? No! Not again.

  A great weight pressed me into the mattress, shielding my face from the sight but not the sound—a distant soft snap that crescendoed into a roar of escalating violence, stripping my resistance, my resolve.

  Stasis wrapped me in kindness. I hoped she would keep me forever cocooned in that half-life, that mirage of existence, if only to keep alive that kernel of affection I still nurtured for my wolf.

  The susurrus of deep voices niggled at my consciousness, tapping at the boundary of a dream-like fugue with awareness set to pause.

  “Leave him.”

  Jefrumael muttered something, protesting?

  Fane growled, “Now.”

  The door opened, a poof of fresher air wafted across my body, stinging like thin needles, prick pick prick, droplets oozing then freezing in place. Wood skritching over wood, a creak and a grunt.

  Then nothing.

  I wondered at how so much hate could feel so right, so good.

  It filled the emptiness, gave it purpose, binding us as one.

  I would have him however he wished … with love, revulsion, even pity. Each tiny shred of emotion was a boon to my savaged soul.

  We are all fools in love.

  I was, in the end, my mother’s son, after all.

  With the fever came hallucinations and I wallowed, drunken with despair, imagining his rich baritone…

  Don’t you leave me. Don’t ever…

  ****

  Whatever amount of time passed, it left no footprint in my memory. Consciousness swelled and receded, independent of will or interest.

  Jefrumael often cossetted my battered body, moving this and that bit, working on restoring movement and muscle memory. Offering frequent sips from his wrist, he nourished the part that would heal, leaving the hungering pain for my own special use.

  The flavor, the bouquet, of his demon blood beckoned with an allure that should have shot off warning bells had I been more fully aware, of myself and my surroundings. But like all addicts, I failed to recognize the signs of dependency, instead embracing his generosity with a fervor that grew by the hour.

  Through it all, Stefan glowered, arms crossed in distaste. He spoke little, and never to me.

  He dispatched the assassin on tasks, usually during the day, preferring to keep watch over me while my will and awareness receded into pseudo-slumber.

  And so I healed. Whole or in part had yet to be determined. I failed to comprehend why anyone should care enough to see me functioning.

  In the rollicking big scheme of things, what had I missed?

  Clearly Fane had locked me out of his heart. That left little or no reason for him to stay, even less to tend me. He should have headed west, back to his home, abandoning me. It’s what I would have done were I in his shoes. The old me, the Vampyr with ice in his veins and an overactive libido, wouldn’t have batted an eye.

  Hot and cold, that’s how I swung. Chasing an endless orgasmic high, brain and flesh in masturbatory synergy, always at odds, never content.

  My demon had been tasked with my safety, a bit of a surprise but not unexpected. Pops still had that curiosity factor about how best to make use of this genetic anomaly, namely me.

  While Jef’s loyalties lay with his liege lord, he’d also sampled enough forbidden fruit to facilitate a change of affection when I’d sealed the deal with a little mojo. Hence the how high and how fast, Sire.

  Meanwhile, I worked out details on the blowback to Fane’s reducing me to road kill. That unanticipated anomaly was a rousing hard-on for Jef’s demon blood.

  I was love-struck, lovesick, infatuated, a goner … a loser.

  The man in Armani surely was shaking his head over this turn of affairs, this ménage à d'inadaptés, this comedy of misfits and misanthropes.

  “Looks like he’s feeling better.”

  I had my eyes squinched shut, but the timber of the voice—and the hint of laughter—told me Jef had entered the room.

  “Bărbat curvă.”

  That was easy. Fane. He’d said the words like a curse. I’d been called that before, in several other languages. No offense taken.

  Once a whore, always a whore.

  My cock agreed, enthusiastically. I ached to stroke it, to relieve the pressure that threatened to shatter my resolve.

  Jef murmured in my ear, “I can help you with that,” but I spun away, guilt and embarrassment a crushing weight on my chest.

  I would suckle at the assassin’s wrists; oh yes, I would partake of that sinful lush dessert, engorging on his essence until his blood ran ripe and fulsome through my veins. Bloating me, sating me.

  But that? No, not that.

  I had dishonored my wolf once. I vowed, in the agonized recesses of my soul, that before I would debase myself any further, I would yield to celibacy until the end of my days.

  Turning to Stefan, I begged—silent, pathetic, needy and disgusting even to myself—with shoulders hunched in supplication.

  To hell with dignity and honor. I had none.

  As the assassin hovered in the background, so close his breath wafted over the steel cords in my neck, I rolled to face the thing I now feared most. With one look, one scowl, one twitch of disinterest, the wolf would condemn me to an eternity of suffering.

  Such was his power over me.

  At that moment, I knew the truth of hate.

  And I no longer had to wonder who died…

  “Leave us.” Fane’s voice was devoid of emotion, flat and featureless to my ears.

  “He…” the assassin still contested, still pressed boundaries.

  Stupid. Caring for me would only get him eviscerated.

  The wolf explained, “They approach. Feel them out. We are running out of time.” Reason and sanity. Maturity. The boy and the man were no longer at odds.

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Sire.

  Rolling as the assassin lurched off the bed, I braced against the motion and listened as the door opened and closed. Like Fane, the demon was a large man, dominating the space and commanding attention. When he left the air evacuated, an exhale, inhale pressure on my ears, leaving a pinging sound, like metal cooling after being in the hot sun … tink, tink, tink.

  I felt as if I was wrapped in eiderdown, my edges softened and lax, with my cock finally relaxed, content to rest and await the pleasures of solitude.

  Fane’s eyes burrowed into the metal ball, the piercing turning wickedly chilled under his unrelenting glare.

  How did I justify that, that bit of technology designed to monitor my every move, my every transgression. Better yet, how the hell did I explain Michel du Velours to him? We’d hardly gotten far enough in our relationship to even think about meeting the parental units, with the obligatory dinner and the talking points about prospects and expectations.

  Perhaps Jefrumael had explained…?

  Unlikely. The demon was too disciplined, too much a warrior to talk out of school.

  With Jef, I’d created a monster and a weakness. The demon was bound to me, on a level that even my own cravings barely approached. A casual bystander could be lured into thinking he cared, but the reality was that I lived simply because he needed me for his next fix. His next high. That turn of affairs trumped Dad’s prime directive, whatever its original intentions.

  Jefrumael would serve and protect. Just so long as I serviced.

  Truth be told, I found it hard to find fault with the situation. Demon blood was a whole new standard of excellence, one I embraced without censure and without guilt. It was, after all, part and parcel of my essence.

  I’d said it before, but it bore repeating: Demon is as Demon does.

  All my training, all the righteous religious dogma, the reliance on excuses and papal canon, eve
ry rationalization, every tenet led me unerringly toward this one point of clarity.

  A clarity cast into muddy turmoil when Fane sneered and asked, “Are you quite done?”

  He managed to sound British upper class, very upstairs, very much in control. As usual he’d watched me debate the finer points of my personal philosophy of excess and self-serving dogma. Unlike those other times, this resolution would not end with us tangling tongues and cocks and out-of-control desires.

  I answered simply, “No.” I could never be done with him.

  That elicited what I might describe as the quizzical brow, an unusual, awkward look for the wolf, as if he’d been practicing in front of a mirror. Testing out how the alpha might render judgment: dispassionate, emotionless, soul-less. How he could cut me, make me bleed … make me leave.

  I began awkwardly, “Stefan,” and stopped, his name gagging my throat with such yearning the words refused to squeeze past.

  After so many days abed, I had no strength to stand, so instead I knelt, ever the penitent. I had nothing left to lose. I’d already given him my heart. There was nothing else to offer.

  Silently, I awaited my fate.

  “You fucked him.”

  Not exactly.

  “Yes.”

  No: but I had a good reason, no: I didn’t have a choice, no: they were holding a gun to my head, no: they threatened to destroy everything I loved, no: I love you, Fane, above all…

  The Vampyr liked the taste of noble. The demon chittered about technicalities.

  “Get up.”

  Easier said than done. Demon-me mentally muttered asshole, while Dreu the vamp made a rude gesture. Fortunately the wolf had already turned away, dismissing me.

  I wasn’t sure where surly Dreu came from, but I welcomed him like a breath of fresh air, even if the flip-flopping of my emotional landscape left me ragged and needy.

  Turn around, Fane.

  But of course he didn’t, so I staggered to my feet and minced my way to the dresser to find my clothes. The pants hung off my hips, loose, as if I’d lost weight, a lot of weight. The odds were good I was down a quart or two, but this emaciated frame was reminiscent of those bad old days when I’d indulged in mortification of the flesh, zipping past denial and diving straight to the more gratifying use of the cilice for my daily doses of mea culpas.