“Raise your hand if you’ve never killed a Lycan.” Everyone in the room, Arthur included, didn’t raise their hand, except for me. The only one of my kind to never kill our enemies. I was a unicorn amongst horses. “You’ve all slaughtered their kind. They’ve slaughtered ours. I’m not asking you to forget. I’m not even asking you to forgive. I’m asking you to move on. We are not better than them in crimes of war. The only difference is they choose to wear their kills like a badge of honor while we pretend it’s not the same thing when we kill their kind.”
My stomach churned again. I couldn’t believe I’d just said that. They would surely shut me down now. Expunge me from my seat. Kick me out. Worse, feed me to the dogs. Except the Lycans liked me. Maybe they’d show mercy. Or they’d fry me up with potatoes.
Thaddeus leaned heavily on his cane and stood up from the tartan armchair he was sitting in. “As much as it pains me to admit…”
Lisbeth is a psycho and deserves to die? No, that wouldn’t be painful to admit. It’d be super easy to admit. Burn the witch!
“Lisbeth is right.”
Oh. My God. “There have been many deaths on both sides of the Lycan and vampire feud. Perhaps with this alliance, all of that will change. I’m not saying we’ll be friends–” Thaddeus gave me a loaded stare like I’d suggested we get mani-pedis with the Lycans and braid their hair while watching chick flicks. “–but maybe less bloodshed. I’d be honored to volunteer one of my subordinates to be a diplomat.”
Not to be outdone, the rest of the Council members quickly did the same. I left the meeting with a list of names, far more than we needed for the mission, and another success under my belt.
Early on the appointed day, I stood over Kitty’s bed, watching her sleep. She’d grown so much in the past weeks. I could’ve spent hours over her crib, just looking at her pink cheeks and her tiny toes, and I had done so many times when the work was finished for the day. In order for my plan to work, I’d have to leave her side briefly, and it was the hardest thing I’d ever contemplated doing. It needed to be done. In the moments when I missed her, I could go back to this memory of watching her little belly go up and down with each breath.
One last kiss on her cheek, I grabbed the baby monitor and left my room in the quiet of sunrise. The house was empty at this early hour. With the castle as crowded as it was, it was slightly nice to walk down the staircase to an empty foyer. I hadn’t been truly alone in weeks, even in the time before Kitty had been born. Relishing it, I smiled and pushed the swing door of the kitchen open, only to walk in on Knight eating a bowl of cereal.
Fucking Christ, what was he doing here?
He looked as shocked as I was, but he managed to not drop his bowl while the baby monitor slipped from my hands. I caught it before it hit the floor.
“Sorry,” he said, putting his bowl on the counter. “I didn’t know… I got hungry, so I thought…”
“It’s fine,” I told him quickly, staring at anything except his face. Be cool, be cool. Above all, no crying. “All of the Lycans are welcome to use the kitchen whenever they want.”
He sat down on one of the bar stools and ran a nervous hand through his thick, black hair. He’d tied it back, but a few unruly strands had escaped. “Right. I just don’t want to, you know… tick anyone off. Tensions have been pretty high.”
I set the baby monitor onto the counter and glanced at it before walking over to the special fridge in the corner. “I’m the leader of this house now, and I’m the one who said it was okay. You’re free to eat whenever you need to.” The entire room smelled like him and fuck, his scent was close to turning me on. I wanted to bathe in it and rub it all over me like bar of soap.
The special fridge had bags of blood, my new companions. I grabbed two of them and tossed them onto the counter by the baby monitor before rooting in the cabinets for a tumbler. Knight munched on his cereal, watching me unscrew the tumbler lid and pour the blood inside. Avoiding looking at him, I screwed the lid back on and took a long sip through the straw.
Fucking hell. It was so disgusting. I would’ve preferred drinking from a diseased human over drinking another tumbler of bagged blood. After living off the stuff for weeks, I’d hoped to gain a taste for it, like humans with coffee, but alas no. I swallowed and tried not to contort my face too much.
“I heard you were in charge now,” Knight said while he chewed. “Congrats on the promotion.” Taking another sip, I had to turn my face so he wouldn’t see me gagging on it. “What happened to the creepy guy? You know, the one you said was always hitting on you?”
That made me smile, tapping my thermos and turning just a little towards him. “He was kidnapped by the turned. Their parting gift, in fact.”
He chuckled around a mouthful of cereal. “Who’d have thought they could be so thoughtful,” he mused. With anyone else, I would’ve thought they were being disrespectful, or making light of Othello being taken, but I knew Knight well enough to know when he wasn’t taking things seriously. He confirmed that when he met my eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Lis.”
The very essence of my soul had frozen over from all the pain I’d endured in the past year, and just one look from his deep and steady eyes was enough to melt it all away.
I looked back down at the baby monitor before my inner glacier could submit to global warming. Kitty hiccuped in her sleep and went back to her little baby snores. I expected Knight to ask about her. Who was her dad? Who had I replaced him with? Was my new beau as pretty as him? And most importantly, did he also have awesome hair? Instead, Knight just sat there eating his cereal like it was the most important thing he could possibly be doing.
“So,” I said finally with a sip of gross blood to steady me. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but, why are you here exactly? The meeting today is on the reservation.”
He finished his cereal and stood up, coming close to me so he could rinse his bowl off in the sink. “Arthur asked me to help escort you there.” That better have been all he’d said to Knight. “He uhh…” Knight scrubbed at his neck and I wondered what was going through his head. “Are you with him?”
Arthur was dead. D-e-d, dead.
Knight felt the need to continue when I didn’t answer, further sealing the nails in Arthur’s coffin. “The way he looks at you…”
“That’s over,” I said quickly. “We’re not together. Anymore. Never were.”
Knight didn’t look skeptical so much as… hurt? “Does he know that?”
“Decidedly so,” I affirmed with another sip of blood.
He leaned back and tapped his fingers on the counter. “He dumped you.”
“He didn’t…” I stopped and looked away. “You can’t dump someone you weren’t dating in the first place.”
“Do you love him?” The words left Knight’s lips and hung in the air like a slowly swinging noose.
What I’d felt for Arthur couldn’t be love, because it was nothing like what I felt for Knight, but I couldn’t deny the pain I still felt after losing what we’d had.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” I said simply, staring at the countertop.
“It’s a simple yes or no answer, Lis.”
“It’s not a simple yes or no,” I bit back as I looked up at him. “My feelings, or lack of feelings, don’t matter. To him. To me. I said we were over.”
The werewolf nodded, took another bite of cereal, and seemed satisfied with my answer.
Finishing my blood, I fumed inwardly at Arthur’s obvious lack of social awareness, meaning he had no problem lumping me with my ex-whatever-he-is, so long as it meant I was safer, no matter what it did to me internally. Guess who wasn’t ever getting a pay raise?
I checked the clock on my phone and slipped it back into my jacket pocket. “We should get going.” Eyes down, I went to the sink and bumped against Knight when he moved at the same moment. He was so warm, just as I’d remembered. I felt cold all over, as if Arthur’s icy attitude had transferred over to me. I bl
inked several times and stepped far away from the sink, mumbling an apology to him.
I hurriedly left the room, and with Knight right behind me, it almost felt like he was chasing me. My pulse quickened and I felt… turned on? Fuck, what was wrong with me?
We reached the outside doors to my office’s waiting room and Knight’s hand shot out to open the door for me, startling me enough where I bumped into the other door with my back. My cheeks flushed and I ran inside my waiting room, past Marie, and into my office. Arthur had left me a stack of copies he made of the alliance draft so I could pass it out to any Lycan that wanted to read it. Trying hard to stop flushing, I swished over to my desk to grab the papers, and when I turned around, Knight’s gaze went from my ass to something rolling across the carpet in front of him. It was a Roomba, with a little blonde wig, a princess crown, and a big pink label that said, ‘Glenda.’
Knight grinned as it passed him. “Present from Sara?”
It must’ve been, since I’d never ordered it, and it seemed like something she would do, especially with the costume on top of it. Glenda. My Roomba’s name was Glenda.
“Carry on, Glenda,” I said to it before opening the door. It whirred around a chair leg in response.
I recalled the last, and only, time I’d been at the Mohawk reservation. Heavily pregnant, I’d risked life and limb with Arthur to ask the Lycan Alpha if he could find where Knight was, which as it happens had been a pointless venture since he showed up at the summit before Alexander could get word to me. One thing was still the same this time, sadly. It still stunk of dog piss. Knight had his shirt pulled up over his nose in disgust.
“Fucking hell, don’t they have a toilet here?” he complained under his shirt. “Just one toilet? Any toilet. An outhouse. A shithole. Somewhere not here. God, I can’t even smell anything now, my nose is broken.”
“Packs that live near vampires are extra cautious,” Arthur explained evenly. He wasn’t being helpful, he just wanted Knight to shut up.
We stood there for several minutes outside the gate. We weren’t allowed to just walk in like normal visitors, we had to wait for a special escort, and apparently that escort either slept in or didn’t care about being punctual. Arthur started pulling out several knives on his person and running them over a little band he had on his wrist, which I assumed was sharpening them somehow.
God, this was the most awkward moment of my life. Knight on one side, probably staring at me like ‘look at that slutty vampire who fucked other men’ and Arthur like ‘I bet she liked his fingers better than mine.’
Unbidden, the memories of Knight and I together popped up like a tv screen, and I was on that bed again with him, riding up and down his cloth covered cock because we couldn’t actually have sex without James finding out. I’d gotten closer and closer to an orgasm before he rolled me over and rubbed his cock against my clit until we both were breathless and shaking with a climax that rivaled almost all of the others I’d ever had. All without him ever sinking his cock into me.
“Ahem,” Arthur cleared his throat, bringing me out of it with a snap.
I was back at the reservation and oh shit, my panties were soaking wet. Both men had to be smelling like that like a lighthouse beacon coupled with a very loud foghorn.
“Remind me to never make you wait for stuff,” Arthur quipped in his unfeeling tone.
“Shut up,” I ground out to him and risked a look over at Knight. He had a very obvious boner inside his pants, and I felt another surge of arousal rush through me at the sight of it. Breathe. Think of something else. Like… Balthazar on my nipples. Christ. It was impossible to focus.
“Othello’s O face,” Knight whispered, leaning slightly towards me, and I burst out into giggles so hard I had to hold my stomach. I was still laughing when the Lycans arrived. The escort finally arrived, consisting of several Lycans who very clearly had no love for us, or this meeting. The biggest one had a large rifle in his hands, and he pointed it at me.
“Surrender all weapons,” he commanded. Arthur twitched, either ready to defend our right to protect ourselves, or start a pile of knives on the ground, so I put a hand out in front of him.
“We will do no such thing,” I informed the Lycan. “That was not in the contract details your people specified for this meeting.”
He looked a little surprised until it disappeared behind his scowl. “Noted,” the gun-wielding Lycan conceded, pulling his barrel up to rest on his shoulder. “We won’t be making that mistake next time. Follow us.” He turned and the rest of the escort waited for us to pass them before flanking us from the back.
“You read all of the draft,” Arthur commented in mild surprise, making it very clear he thought I hadn’t. Ass.
Knight scowled at him as we walked. “Lisbeth only pretends to be clueless. Don’t tell me you haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Lisbeth is also standing right here,” I mentioned casually. They stopped talking and walked on either side of me until we reached a large building with several guards out front. I could see children playing in a nearby field and tried to pick out Simon among them, the little Lycan boy who had changed my life.
“In,” the Lycan with the rifle demanded. He opened the door to the building and we went inside it. The structure held a large meeting room, very open with plenty of windows, and several tables that the Alphas were seated at. Alexander sat in the middle, his hands folded on the wooden table in front of him.
“Welcome, Lisbeth. Arthur.” He glanced at Knight for a few seconds but didn’t comment. “The Alphas have looked over the draft for the alliance of Lycans and Born vampires. We found it fair and well worded.” I sensed a ‘but’ coming. “You gave us a convincing argument at the peace summit. It has taken us several days to all come to an understanding about it, but I can assure you we are taking this seriously.” Still waiting on the ‘but.’ He cleared his throat and fiddled with some papers on the table in front of him. “But.” There it was. “The packs in other countries will need convincing, and it won’t be as simple for them as it was for us. As much as we might dislike each other here, Lycans and vampires have very little conflict. It’s not like that everywhere in the world. There are some countries where vampires and Lycans actively hunt each other. Convincing those packs will be next to impossible, and no vampire envoy would escape that meeting with their life.”
I cleared my throat to try and dispel the tension that had risen in the room. “We understand the urgency. And we have a proposal.” Arthur stepped forward to hand the papers to Alexander. One of our escorts intercepted before Arthur could get too close and snatched the papers from him like they were an unpinned grenade. He backed away with a glare and handed the papers to Alexander with only a passing glance at what was written on them.
Alexander scanned it, looking up at us with confusion. “You want us to approach the foreign Lycans with a four to one ratio party, with four Lycans and one Born vampire. I literally just said your lives would be in danger with some of the packs.” I swung my finger in a circle to signal he should keep reading. “The vampire will wear an Alpha’s bracelet to protect them temporarily, and will return the bracelet when the meeting is over.”
“That could actually work,” Knight reasoned thoughtfully. Yeah, that’s right. I was totally smart. I never pretended to be stupid.
Alexander glanced around the table at the other Alphas for affirmation, and then he nodded. “We agree to the terms.”
Smiling, I went for the last item of the meeting. “I have one more request.” Arthur bristled beside me in surprise, and I could feel the lecture I’d be given later for this. “I will be one of the diplomats traveling to Europe. I’ll negotiate with one of the packs there, but I don’t want a full party escort. The more groups we have out, the fewer Lycans will be here to protect your families.” I hoped I didn’t have to say out loud that I wanted Knight to come with me. I still had enough pride to pretend I wasn’t desperate. But I was, and I wasn’t only desperate fo
r his help either. I wanted that body like I wanted actual real blood that wasn’t in a fucking bag.
Alexander looked around the table again, and when there were no complaints, he stood up. “You will take Knight with you.”
“Done.” I reached my thumb up to my slowly dropping fang and sliced it quickly, then I stepped forward to press it to the contract before the wound could close.
“She’ll need a bracelet,” Knight pointed out. I glanced at Alexander’s wrist to see he already had a new woven bracelet, but this one didn’t have any teeth on it. Would it still work? More importantly, would he let me have it? Knight answered that for me by grabbing my hand and dropping something into it. I opened my fingers to find Alexander’s bracelet, the one I’d dropped the night we were captured. He smiled at me when I looked up at him in question, warming my heart to bursting. “I went looking for it. I figured… well, it doesn’t matter. You can use it. Right?” He looked up at Alexander, who nodded his approval.
“The alliance is complete,” Alexander announced. He sliced his finger with a knife and pressed it to the paper next to my mark.
5. Visions of red
Our escort showed us back to the entrance of the reservation after the meeting was over. Arthur had been deadly silent the entire time, confirming the lecture I knew would be coming, and he finally spoke when the Lycans disappeared from view.
“It’s too dangerous for you to be a pack envoy,” Arthur chastised. Was he finally showing real concern for me? Was this the Arthur that had eaten me up like a cupcake? “It would be an unnecessary risk and we can’t lose more Council members.” Nope. Same old Arthur. Ass.
“I didn’t ask your opinion,” I informed him frostily.
He looked at Knight, expecting some type of camaraderie involving my safety. “What about you? I’m sure you’re not comfortable with her doing this, being her lover and all.”
The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition) Page 38