“Explain it to me,” Nate said through gritted teeth.
Zane shrugged. “I wish I could. I’m finding out more as I go along.”
“So, you’re not a werewolf, anymore?”
“Oh, I am. Just...more.”
Nate shook his head. “And Vivianne? What the hell?”
“Hey, you and I both know mating bonds can sneak up on you. Remember Matthias and Trinity?” Their friends had been members of warring packs, and it had taken everyone by surprise, including Matthias and Trinity. “If I could, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” His gaze dropped. “Maybe.” If you’d asked him a few months ago whether he’d mate with a vampire—any vampire—his reaction would have been either a big belly laugh or a fist to the face for even suggesting it. Now, though, after spending time with Vivianne, getting to know her...it was so damn wrong, but the longer he thought about it, the more right it began to feel.
“Nobody here will accept that bond, you realize that, don’t you? A werewolf and a vampire? You need to nix it.”
Zane’s blood ran cold at the suggestion. The only way for a mating bond to be severed was through death or rejection. With rejection, both parties suffered, slowly withering—which is why if Vivianne said she needed time, he’d damn well give it to her if it meant she’d ultimately accept the bond—and he wanted her to want to be his mate, not feel like she had no choice.
But if Vivianne was dead, he’d no longer be mated to a vampire, and his pack would accept him—if they could get past the partial vampirism...
“You’re asking me to kill my mate?” Zane was incredulous. “I can’t. I won’t.” He wasn’t even going to consider it, so repugnant was the idea to him.
Nate drew his hands over his face. “Holy hell.” He put his hands on his hips. “You know what she’s doing, don’t you?”
Zane arched an eyebrow. He knew what she was doing. She was getting her inner werewolf on, but that was her secret, and he didn’t intend to reveal that to anyone. But that wasn’t what Nate was talking about. “No,” he said slowly.
“More werewolves went missing. One of them was the scion for River Pack, and she’s not yet twenty.”
Zane swore under his breath. Old enough to be classed as an adult, but still too young to be on her own in whatever dangerous situation she might find herself, unless she’d trained as a guardian, and as a scion, that was doubtful.
“What’s that got to do with Vivianne?”
“Oh, haven’t you heard? We know the Marchetta family purchased a huge chunk of real estate. That’s one of the things Samantha is trying to find out—where the location is. It appears the deed has been sealed.”
Zane didn’t know what to react to first. That Vivianne and her father had gone ahead with their psychotic plan, or that Vivianne hadn’t given him a heads-up, that the missing werewolves were in significant danger, or that the Marchettas had engaged the private seal on a land grab. As part of the tribal sovereignty of lands, a clan, colony, pack or coven could mask their interests—if they paid for it. That shroud of secrecy didn’t come cheap.
“Vivianne’s not involved,” he said quietly. She couldn’t be. There was no way she’d sign off on this, not when she was now part-werewolf.
“How do you know that? Do you trust her?” Nate asked.
Zane thought about it. Vivianne was a shrewd strategist. She was guarded. She put the colony’s needs before her own. But she was also a lot more vulnerable than people knew, and with everything they’d shared so far, he couldn’t see her keeping this from him, not even after his pack managed to steal away that real estate purchase from beneath her father’s nose.
“I do,” he said, surprised. He. Trusted. Vivianne. “This isn’t something she’d sign off on.”
“Then go to her. Talk to her. Get her to kill it.”
“He’s a Reform senator,” Zane pointed out mildly. “From what I’ve seen, Vivianne might control Nightwing colony, but nobody controls Vincent Marchetta.”
“She kills the program, or we kill him. It’s that simple,” Nate said matter-of-factly.
Zane nodded. If this was truly happening, and Vincent Marchetta was abducting werewolves in a sealed zone, then werewolves, by tribal law, could exact retribution. “He hasn’t taken any Alpine, though, has he? Action will have to be taken by River Pack.”
Nate nodded. “Unless you talk to your mate and get her to stop him.” Nate indicated toward his vehicle, and the road. “Go. Talk. But you need to leave, because I can’t let you inside.”
Zane tilted his head to the side. “Nate.” His voice came out in a whisper coated with soft urging, but it hid his devastation at his friend’s words.
Nate shook his head, his lips drawn tight, his features grim, but tinged with sadness. “I can’t,” Nate whispered. “And it hurts to do this, Zane. But I can’t have you going vamp in there. Not for your safety, not for the pack’s.”
Zane turned and looked at the car, more so to hide the pain of his pack’s rejection. He’d known this would happen if he was found out. He should have expected it, but he thought he could hide it long enough to get a handle on it. And at the very first test, he’d failed.
Which was why Nate was right. He couldn’t go in the den. He nodded, then started walking toward Nate’s care. He unlocked the car and got in, then sat there for a moment, staring at the steering wheel.
Where could he go? Alpine was his family. Vivianne had made it clear she needed space, and time. He blinked. Most everyone he knew was inside that snow-covered mountain. Anywhere else he could think of, he’d run into the same issue. He was turning part-vamp, and that wasn’t welcome in any pack. The realization hit him like an axe to the chest. He was as good as a stray. No pack, no family...and a mate who didn’t want to be his mate.
Zane jolted when Nate knocked on the window, and Zane depressed the lever to lower the glass.
“You’re not a stray, Zane,” Nate said roughly. “You’re still family. We just need to sort this,” he said, gesturing toward Zane’s form, “out. I can’t let you in now, but I’m not casting you out, okay?”
Zane nodded grimly. It just felt like it.
Nate sighed. “I’ll go down and talk with Samantha—we’ll figure something out.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ll contact Matthias, too. He might have an option for you.”
Zane nodded again. Matthias Marshall—no, Woodland, now, was his former guardian prime, and close friend.
“Head back down the mountain, and I’ll contact you when I’ve spoken with Matt.”
Zane started the car, and turned the vehicle in the direction that would lead him away from the only home he’d ever known. Momentarily, his attention was caught when he looked in the rearview mirror. His friend stood, framed by the dark entrance to the private tunnel, staring after him with an inscrutable expression. As the physical distance grew between them, Zane sensed the same happening with their friendship, and his beast howled inside him at the loss of pack.
Zane’s lips tightened. Every alpha aspired to lead their own pack, one day. Being shunned by your pack, regardless of the length of the shunning, didn’t normally result in a loyal following. He could feel the reality of leading his own family, of having his own pack, drift away with each revolution of the tire as he drove away from Alpine.
Who would follow a monster?
* * *
“You son of a bitch.” Vivianne entered her father’s office, cold anger coursing through her veins.
Her father’s aide tried to stop her, his hand on her arm. “Your father’s not taking any visi—” His words were cut off when she snapped his neck. She turned to the support staff in her father’s outer office. She was seriously not in the mood for any annoying obstacles. She was fighting off a fever—and vampires never had fevers—and any distraction from her thoughts of Zane—sad Zane, happy Zane, mischievous Zane,
sexy Zane... Oh, sexy Zane.
Argh. She felt wired, energized and just a little cranky, and if this was a way to work off some steam, she was sure as hell up for it.
“Does anyone else want to try to stop your prime from conducting colony business?” she asked coolly. Each vampire averted their eyes from her gaze, all except one. She heated her eyes at him in warning and slammed the door in his face. She made a mental note of his identity. Handy to know which of the Nightwing vampires she could trust—and which she couldn’t. She flipped the lock and faced her father over his large desk.
“You shouldn’t speak of your grandmother like that,” Vincent Marchetta said mildly as he closed the folder he was working on and slipped his pen in the ornately carved iron pen caddy.
“You stole from Nightwing,” she said, ignoring his comment.
His eyebrow rose. “It’s hardly stealing if it’s my money.”
She smiled, but it was brittle and forced. “Wrong, Dad. You have your money, remember? We lost a fortune when we had to separate you from Nightwing for your political pursuits. Every cent that’s in the coffers now is money that Lucien and I have brought in—and we’ve been very careful to keep that income separate from yours. You stole from us. From your family, from your colony.” She loosened the silk scarf that she’d tied ever so elegantly around her neck earlier in the evening, but that now felt like a stifling, choking band around her throat.
“No, I’ve invested the money—for my family, for my colony,” her father corrected, his voice hard as steel.
“I had those funds set aside for the Kingfisher Dam project,” she told him. She slid her jacket off. Damn, it was warm in here.
He shrugged, and she knew it was a move to purposely inflame her—but she was a master at control, and this was too important to lose her cool with her father. She couldn’t afford to let emotion provide a weapon for her father to use against her. Although she had to fight the instinct to jump across the desk and thump his head against the surface—an instinct that shocked her. She could look after herself, but she preferred words to violence.
Normally.
“So we have different views on how colony funds should be spent,” her father said noncommittally.
“What have you done?” She knew what he’d done—sort of. She could draw the dotted line.
“Nothing to concern yourself about.”
Her lips firmed. “You made it my concern when you spent twenty million dollars’ worth of colony funds.”
Her father made a dismissive shrug. “Well, I’m sure you and your brother will do very well to refill those coffers. Besides, as I said, this is an investment. I’ll repay that deficit, with interest, in good time.”
She stared at her father for a moment. Sometimes, like now, she could barely believe they were related. She tried to give him some leeway—he was her father, after all, and former Nightwing Vampire Prime—but it was getting harder and harder to accept some of the things he did, particularly when it showed a distinct lack of respect for her own position as Nightwing Vampire Prime.
“Did you really think you could buy land under a privacy seal and I wouldn’t know about it?” she asked quietly.
Her father’s brown gaze met hers, and for a moment his surprise was evident, before he quickly schooled his features. “I don’t know whether to be offended my own daughter is spying on me, or proud that you can be so Machiavellian.”
She kept her expression remote. “You’re doing it, aren’t you? Rebuilding the clinic.”
Her father smiled, and for once, the happiness seemed genuine—chillingly so. “This is to protect us, Vivianne. You’ll see. We’ll find the cure for lycanthropulism—we were so close, with that woman—”
“Dad, she’s your daughter-in-law. And she has a name. Natalie. She’s family...”
Her father’s lips twisted. “She’s not one of us.”
Her jaw dropped, but she quickly composed herself. “We disagree.”
“Vivianne, you know better than that. We’re vampires. We’re pure. She’s not. We should be using her for our cause. She can’t be anything more than...” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “A means to an end.”
Vivianne quickly blinked away her reaction. Pure. God, what would her father say to her, about her, if he learned she was no longer a “pure” vampire...?
“Tell me, Dad, exactly what is our ‘end’?” she inquired.
His eyebrows rose. “Why, to annihilate the werewolves.”
Of course. It seemed so obvious. Yet she’d hoped her father had let go of his objective...his hatred.
“That won’t bring Mom back,” she said softly.
For a moment the mask slipped and she saw the pain, the heartbreak, her father hid from everyone. “They stole her from us,” he whispered.
“She died in a fire, Dad. We suspect the werewolves, but no evidence was ever fou—”
“They did it!” His fist punched the desk, and the timber cracked.
She sighed. She didn’t know what to think. For so long, she’d believed as her father did, that the werewolves were responsible for the Ballroom Blaze, all those years ago. Now, though, after spending time with Zane, with Samantha and Nate, she wasn’t sure. There was an innate sense of honor, of balance and fairness—especially with Zane—and locking people up in a building and setting it ablaze didn’t fit in with that philosophy.
“But this, Dad. This is wrong. You want to propose the abduction of werewolves—”
“The incarceration of trespassers,” her father corrected.
“You want to conduct experiments on them. Think about it, Dad. What if Lucien or I were abducted by werewolves, and experimented on? Tortured?”
Her father gave her an incredulous look. “That’s different. These are pests, Vivianne. Dogs who seem to think they are our equal. We are their superiors, but for that one pesky advantage they have over us.”
The “pesky advantage” was that a lycan’s bite could kill a vampire.
“Once we can neutralize that, we won’t need to worry about the mutt’s bite. We’ll be able to inoculate all vampires—surely you can’t argue against providing that defense against the dogs? You, of all people?”
Vivianne hesitated. When she’d come so close to dying, she’d been afraid. Vulnerable. Alone. And in such pain that her reality was blurred by horrific images, memories that were twisted so that even now, she had trouble distinguishing fact from fear.
And she’d been the lucky one. The only vampire in known history to have survived a lycan attack.
They’d lost so many friends and relatives to the bite of a werewolf. She could understand the want, the desire to research for a cure, just as humans researched for that still-elusive cure for cancer.
But that wasn’t what her father was proposing.
“You’re doing this to immunize yourself against a werewolf, so that you can kill them without fear of consequences,” she said. “This is not some altruistic endeavor to help your fellow vampire, Father, and you know it. I saw some of the old clinic’s reports...”
Her father’s eyes narrowed, and she nodded. “Yes, I went looking for them. I wanted to know how there could be a high-tech medical facility underneath my family’s home without me knowing about it. I wanted to know how you could siphon the funds out of our central depository without any of us noticing. I wanted to know how you could do this, without a word to any of your family, and I wanted to know what you were doing there.”
She folded her arms. “Werewolves are a breed, Dad. If anyone saw those records, you would put all of Nightwing at risk of penalty, if not punishment. Do you understand that?”
Her father rose from his chair. “How dare you lecture me, Vivianne,” he hissed. “You are Vampire Prime only because I allow it.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m Vampire Prime because I car
e for my colony and our collective interests. I’m not so committed to my own quest for revenge that I will take those funds—funds that could be put to good use for all of the colony—and use them to pursue my own selfish, hateful interests.”
He shook his head slowly. “If only your mother could hear you now,” he said sadly. “She’d be so disappointed.”
The remark hurt, her father bruising her heart so effortlessly once again, but she hid it, straightening her shoulders. Marchettas didn’t show weakness, especially to each other. “Really, Dad? Do you think she’d still love this hate-filled, heartless man you’ve become?”
“She is the very reason I am as I am,” he thundered. “She would want her death avenged. She would want those responsible brought to justice and punished for their crimes.” He sagged back in his chair. “I want her death avenged.” His gaze lifted to meet hers, and she had to hold herself back from walking over to him and hugging him at the sight of the desolation in his eyes.
“You’ve never felt real love, Vivianne. You don’t know how it feels, having that one person who knows you so well that they know how you think...how you feel.”
“I think I have an idea,” she said quietly. She thought of Zane. Constantly. It went beyond the physical—although just thinking about him made her heart pound, her breasts swell, and her body temperature rise. Zane had this uncanny ability to know what she was thinking, and although there was distance between them, she could still feel echoes of his pain at her words, and an ongoing heartache that made her own heart sore. More than that, though, she’d learned that Zane was a man of honor, and one so committed to protecting his pack, even from himself, that he was determined to struggle with the changes forced upon him on his own, and had sought guidance that must have come at great cost to his pride. She’d learned that his personal strength went beyond the physical, that he had a great heart. He also respected her, despite their differences, despite their arguments, he showed a willingness to listen—even if he didn’t agree with what she said.
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