Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 53212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
I drag a hand down my face. “Our…pairing. You know how it works.”
“Technically, we don’t know how it works,” Kane interjects. “At least, not specifically. You’re the first to fall to this particular fate, brother, so why don’t you enlighten us?”
Fuck me. I shake my head. “I just know, okay?”
Kane’s gaze sharpens. “You’re tracking him.”
“Tracking who?” Calloway asks. “Holland? He’s just a gofer doing gofer things.”
“No, Cal. He’s a gofer who’s circling,” I correct. “And he doesn’t circle unless he’s told to. And right now, he’s circling Kylie. So yes, I’m tracking him.”
It’s an admission steeped in a million brutal consequences. It doesn’t matter if she’s fated to me or that they’re usurping our bond. Our kind isn’t supposed to track their kind. It’s not just illegal; it’s a death sentence.
Kane lets out a low whistle. “Well, shit. I guess our stepping in tonight was a little more complicated than messing with a Fighting Fang, then, wasn’t it?” He groans. “Blood of the fucking three, my dear holiness, we are so fucking far up shit’s creek, it’s not even funny.”
“I didn’t plan to put you in that position,” I say. “I didn’t plan any of it. To be honest, I didn’t even realize I was doing it at first.”
“How?” Calloway asks, defaulting into containment mode. “How are you tracking him? Is it traceable? Phone? GPS?”
I shake my head. “Nothing like that.”
“Then how the hell do you know what he’s saying to her?”
The answer isn’t clean—and saying it out loud makes it worse. But clearly, we’re long past keeping things to myself now. I’ve put us all in the crosshairs.
“I feel it,” I admit sheepishly. “When he pushes. When she hesitates. When something shifts.” I clear my throat. “I can hear her thoughts if I let myself, too. It’s…like we’re one instead of two.”
The silence that follows is thick.
“Fuck me.” Calloway exhales slowly. “You’re…locked in.”
Kane folds his arms. “You do realize what that means.”
“Yes,” I say, resigned to my own body’s decisions.
“And you’re doing it anyway.”
“Yes.”
Calloway steps closer. “We’ve never interfered in the elite’s bullshit, Rook. No one has.”
“I know.”
“It’s bullshit. It’s always been bullshit. We all know that,” Kane adds. “But once you step in, you don’t step back out.”
“I know,” I say.
“Because once you take a woman off their board,” Kane continues, “you’re not just breaking etiquette. You’re declaring war.”
“I didn’t choose this. I wouldn’t have chosen this, and I don’t think Kylie would have either. But it’s happening.”
Calloway’s voice is careful. “She doesn’t know?”
I turn away, staring at the concrete floor—at the dark stains where cars have leaked their insides to the point of extinction and then been brought back to life at my brother’s hands. But all I can truly see—all I can feel—is Kylie being taken without her consent.
It’s one thing when the women know—when they’re excited—but it’s wholly another when they’re born into the distinction without a choice or an option to take another road.
“No, she doesn’t know,” I agree. “She doesn’t know her bloodline is special. She doesn’t know anything. She’s clueless.”
Cal drags a hand through his hair. “How the hell is she clueless? I’ve heard of women not wanting to be a part of it, but they always know—”
“Because someone kept her that way,” Kane answers before I can. “Because she wasn’t raised in it. Her parents died when she was a baby. I looked it up as soon as Rook started making starry eyes at her.”
“Are you fucking sure?” Calloway’s gaze stays on me. “Because if we move on this and she knew and wanted it…”
“She doesn’t want it,” I affirm. I’m not even sure she’ll want me.
“Some of them think it’s a damn status symbol,” Kane says through a sigh. “Like being sold to monsters makes them special.” He shakes his head. “But that’s not Kylie.”
I step away from them, pacing once, then again. The garage feels too small. The lights too bright. The walls too close.
“I heard him mention Friday,” I say, stopping by the open garage door and looking toward the dark night sky. “At the rink. Private thing. He called it networking.”
Kane scoffs. “Networking. Sure.”
Calloway’s face goes sharper. “He said Friday?”
“Yeah,” I confirm. “And he keeps pushing it to her. He won’t let go of that date. Of that timeline. He wants her there badly enough, I think they might be eager to get her in hand.”
Calloway doesn’t hesitate. “They know she’s involuntary.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And she doesn’t fucking know about any of it. Hell, she’s still deciding what she wants for dinner, not whether she wants to disappear to some New York penthouse to be vampire fuel on demand.”
Calloway’s jaw tightens. “And that makes her—”
“Human,” I cut in. “It makes her human.”
The words come out sharper than I mean them to, but I can’t fight the sting enough to hold them back. None of this is even remotely fair to her because it’s not her horse, and it’s sure as hell not her rodeo. Our vampire bullshit isn’t supposed to be her problem. But it is.