by Keary Taylor
“No,” I lie. “I can’t say I’ve run into any Bitten since I killed my own Bitten mother six years ago.”
He smiles again at that.
“Interesting,” he states, stepping around me. He observes the shelves that line the walls. “Because I’ve heard some very curious stories from some mysterious, anonymous sources that you might have a few leads.” He looks over at me, pausing outside the door to my lab. “And connections.”
He steps inside the lab, the three of us quickly following him. And my heart nearly explodes, knowing what lies through a door, down a tunnel, and underneath the building next door to mine.
“The Bitten are prone to poor self-control and reckless behavior,” I say. Killian walks around my lab, opening every cupboard, smelling different plants and chemicals. “Don’t you think it would be a little dangerous for me to associate myself with their kind?”
“Yes, I would think it dangerous,” he says, continuing his investigation. “But those scars on your arms make me think you aren’t the most fearful person.”
I look down, easily picking out the multitude of circular scars that line them. It was far too warm today to wear long sleeves. I have a built-in heater these days, and it is the first of July. I’m no longer always frozen.
“Not all of us walked out of the Battle of the Bitten unscathed,” I lie again.
He looks back at me, giving an unconvinced little smile. He walks back out of the lab, and continues studying every other wall in my shop.
“My anonymous source had tales of hidden rooms and secret cures,” Killian says. He hovers dangerously close to the tapestry that covers the keypad and hidden door. “Are you sure you don’t know what he was talking about?”
“It sounds to me like you need to be less concerned about crazy stories, and more worried about a Royal on the run who isn’t doing his job.” I cross my arms over my chest, faking calm, despite the struggle with my pounding heart.
“From what I’ve seen, the Court doesn’t need to be worried about him,” Killian says, stopping right in front of the tapestry. “The House of Conrath is doing a beautiful job of searching for him.”
He suddenly reaches out, flinging back the tapestry, revealing the hidden doorway and the keypad.
“Interesting,” he says with a smile, looking back at me when Duncan and Lexington leap forward, closing in around me. And I’m sure he can smell the sweat that breaks out onto my palms, and the way my heart just stops for a second. “If you’d be so kind, I’d like you to open this intriguing door.”
I swallow once and step forward. All I can hope is that Lexington and Duncan plan to kill this man on our way down the stairs before he can discover the clinic hidden below and rip my heart from my chest for going against the orders of King Cyrus.
I enter the pin code and the door unlocks. I pull it open and immediately step through so that Killian will have to walk behind me, and Lexington and Duncan bring up the rear with a stake.
The air is damp and cool as I descend the stairs. The scent of age and secrets is at once familiar and overwhelming, bringing on a wave of regret for all those I haven’t been able to help in the past six months.
But with every step taken down, my heart thumps faster. My attention is focused behind me, waiting for the sound of a stake embedding itself into a back. To hear a body collapse.
But it doesn’t come.
Panic begins setting in when we reach the hallway and set out on level ground. I glance back over my shoulder, careful to compose my expression.
“Are you alright my dear?” Killian asks, blocking my view of Lexington. “You seem nervous.”
“Dark, creepy places set me on edge,” I say calmly. “I don’t like coming down here.”
Finally, we reach the door, and I unlock it.
Killian steps in closer to me, his fingers curling around my arm as we step inside. The breath catches in my throat and all my limbs go numb, preparing for the end.
But when I process what I’m seeing inside the small room, I look around in confusion.
The room is absolutely empty.
No locked ceiling-to-floor shelf containing the refrigerators holding the cure. No needles or sharps container. No cot. No stack of notes with instructions for the cured Bitten to run and not look back at this place.
Nothing.
“See?” I squeak out. “I don’t know what you thought you were going to find.”
Killian releases my arm, Lexington pulling me into his side, glaring death. He walks the perimeter of the room, walking through the door that leads to the other tunnel, before coming back in and searching the room once more.
Duncan is trying very hard, and failing, in keeping his poker face.
“It seems I was misinformed,” Killian finally says, coming to a stop in the room and looking at me with his cold eyes. He takes three steps forward, stopping just two feet in front of me. “But should you hear anything that might be useful, anything at all, I hope you will contact me.”
He actually produces a business card, and places it in my hand.
“Have a good day, Miss Ward,” he says before turning and walking back down the hall and up the stairs.
None of us dare even breathe until we hear the bell from the shop ring and the door swing closed.
“Holy shit,” Duncan says in a breath, exhaling. “I thought… I thought he’d find everything and we’d all be dead.”
“Yeah, we would have been,” Lexington says, turning me so he can look me straight in the eye. I stare at him in confusion and wonder, unsure how I’m still standing and breathing when a member of the King’s court came here with the intent to kill me for treason.
“I moved everything just a few weeks after you went missing,” Lexington says in a whisper, just in case Killian didn’t actually leave. “I was worried something might happen, considering Charles was involved. Everything is hidden, stored away under a fake name.”
A little laugh bubbles up from my chest, still in shock. I pull myself into his chest, shaking my head.
“Well, that was about the biggest bullet ever dodged,” Duncan says as he braces his hands on his knees.
“Hey,” Julie says brightly as she steps into the shop. Despite the brightness of the day outside, she’s walking around without any pain. The House of Conrath has given the solar-triggered contacts to the House of Martials. “How are you today?”
I look up from my list of custom orders coming up, beyond surprised to see Julie here. The members of the House of Martials never visit the shop.
“I’m fine,” I say emptily as I try to mask my confusion at her presence. “Yourself?”
“Good,” she says, and it’s too forced, too awkward.
Something is up.
“Hey, Julie,” Lexington says, stepping out of the lab. “Hey, uh, I have a few errands to run. Do you mind hanging around here until I get back?”
And the way his eyes briefly flit to mine, I know there is something going on.
“Of course not,” she says, her pitch just a little too high. “You go.”
“Thanks,” Lexington says, and his tone almost sounds relieved. He darts over, pressing a brief kiss to my temple. “I’ll be back in a while.”
I give him a little forced smile, watching as he leaves. When he’s out of sight, Julie finishes her walk to the counter, leaning on it.
“Well, that wasn’t planned at all,” I say as I duck down, pulling out the only custom order planned for pickup today.
“Don’t be mad,” Julie says. She braces her forearms against the counter, leaning over, watching me. “With all the heaviness going on lately, I think he just needed an hour or two to breathe. And I thought maybe you could use another female to talk to.”
“You don’t know me very well, do you?” I say. I head into the lab, where my toxins are ready to finish up. It’s the biggest batch I’ve ever made.
“No, not really,” Julie says as she follows me. “You’re kind of a closed mystery. But I think everyone
needs to let out some steam sometimes.”
“I’m fine,” I manage to keep my cool.
Julie places herself right next to me, her butt resting against the counter so she’s facing me. “Elle, what happened to you, what’s still happening to you, is awful. Sure, it wasn’t rape, but he still put another living thing in you, playing incubator while he plans to execute revenge on you. All while you only tried to help him get his crap together.”
“Bad things just happen in this world,” I say as I strain out the crushed snakeroot. “It’s been the story of my life, over and over. This case might be a little bigger, but really, it’s no different than seventy percent of the rest of my life.”
Julie grabs my arm, stopping what I’m doing. “No, Elle, that’s not the way it should be. You should have had a real childhood, with friends and sleepovers, and nights filled with chick-flicks and painting fingernails. You should have gotten to choose when or if you wanted children.”
I stare at the countertop, refusing to look over at her. “But I didn’t.”
Julie is quiet for a long minute, and finally she releases my arm. I go back to the task at hand.
“I always wanted children,” she says quietly. “A few kids to call my own, to spoil rotten. Pretty much the opposite of everything my mother was.”
And I recall how Julie once told me that her mother had been obsessed with the supernatural, how she tracked down a vampire, got herself pregnant on purpose, and then convinced Julie to take her own life at the age of twenty-seven.
“But I was always afraid of what she told me was coming,” Julie says quietly. “I was afraid that I would hurt any children I might have someday. That I’d kill them. And I probably would have. That first year was difficult for me.”
I realize now that I’ve stopped what I’m doing and my hands just rest still on the counter.
“We all run from our problems sometimes,” she says quietly. “We all know that we can’t understand what you’re going through. But Elle, you’ve got everyone worried sick about you. We’re here to help if you need or want.”
She touches my arm supportively, reaffirming what she just said. And then she walks out of the lab to give me some space.
“Elle?” my brother’s voice echoes through the phone.
“Yeah?” I reply as I pour the mixture into a bottle, careful not to drop any on the countertop.
“Just wanted to let you know that Danny caught Charles’ remaining House members. Angel, Murphy, and Russell?”
“Did they give him any info?” I ask as my heart jumps into my throat.
“Nothing,” he replies in frustration. “They said Charles took off as soon as you escaped and they haven’t seen him since. He just abandoned ship.”
I let out a breath of frustration. “Well, I don’t think anyone is surprised.”
“Yeah,” he says, pausing for a long moment. I feel for him. He’s been a hunter his entire life, and now the one he wants dead the most is always just out of reach.
“Well find him.” It’s a promise, a reiteration. As much to himself as it is to me.
Lexington really needed a break from me. Which hurts. There’s that cold, simple truth that the man who says he loves me needed a break from me.
But when I really think about it, of course he needed some time to himself. We’re together twenty-four-seven, and I haven’t been the most pleasant company.
Julie ends up hanging out at the shop with me the entire day. Just before closing time, Lexington walks back through the door. And the look in his eyes is guilty, but there’s also some clarity there to them that I think has been missing for a while.
“Thanks, Julie,” he says as he helps me close things up. He does the motions without even really thinking, he’s done it so many times. “I hope that wasn’t asking too much.”
“Not at all,” she says. “It was a nice break from Aleah’s constant barrage of dictates and demands. She’s taking this regent thing very seriously.”
“That’s good,” he says. I step outside the shop and I lock it behind me. “We all need to be prepared. This is going to be a long haul.”
“Yeah,” she says with a little laugh. “Thankfully we’ve all got plenty of time to practice. I’ll see you both later.”
I wave a simple goodbye, looking over my shoulder at her as she climbs into her car. She offers a sad little smile.
“How was it hanging out with Julie today?” Lexington asks, and he’s acting like he’s walking on eggshells.
“Fine,” I say. “She likes to talk. About nothing and everything. I don’t think she really cared if I was even listening or not.”
He laughs, though I can tell it’s a little forced. Everything going on today has been forced. “She’s certainly not your typical Born. She’s got this…motherly joyfulness about her, I guess.”
I nod, but my brain is already wandering away from the conversation.
Neither of us says much else for the rest of the walk home. But I feel myself floating further and further back into the recesses of my mind, pulling into that dark cave that leaves me protected and numb.
By the time we reach my apartment, I realize I haven’t said a word in the past ten minutes. And when we step through my front door, Lexington is tense and breathing harder than usual. He slips his shoes off and goes to the kitchen, pulling a blood bag from the fridge.
He bites into it with vigor, a few drops of it leaking out onto his lip. He goes to stand over the kitchen sink as he drinks it down and when he’s done, he throws it into the sink with force, bracing his hands on the counter.
I stand in the living room, watching him, tension growing in my shoulders. A knot forming in my stomach.
I feel the storm building.
Feel the tide being drawn out to sea, before it comes crashing back in to pound the shore.
“Just say what you have to say,” I tell him.
“I’m not sure I can do that without sounding like an asshole,” he says with his back still turned to me.
“It’s not like I haven’t ever heard you sound like one before,” I say, feeling the springs in my body tighten, coiling. “I’ve known you for six years, Lexington. Give me the honest rawness. Please.”
He takes three deep breaths, his shoulders rising and falling, his head hanging low. I see the defined lines of muscles in his arms, tight and taut. Like he’s two seconds away from snapping and unleashing that storm.
“I miss my old Elle,” he confesses finally, pulling his head up to look back out the window. “I miss how I could make her smile and laugh and how she’d get embarrassed whenever she saw me without a shirt. I miss how badass she was and she wasn’t afraid of anything. I miss how she just up and left her hometown because she was determined to become her own person, and rocked being that person.”
His voice grows tight, pulled thin and hard.
“But she’s lost right now, and I get it,” he says, his head sagging once more. “She was taken away, trying to protect me, being that brave woman she was. And I looked for her for a long time, but when I found her again, she wasn’t the same.”
He finally turns, and the look in his eyes, it’s agony. It’s conflict.
It fractures my heart a little.
“I am trying so hard, Elle,” he says. His face is slowly turning red. His voice is rough. “I’m trying to be supportive, and patient. And I know what you’ve been through and are going through is so absolutely unfair and sick and twisted. But…”
He looks away and shakes his head.
I know this is hard for him.
“But you’re not going to get any better, Elle, not until you deal with this.” He looks back up at me, raising his chin, forcing himself to say the harsh and honest words. And I see him rising back up, the Lexington I knew when I was sixteen. “You aren’t facing this. You aren’t even dealing with the fact that you have a kid on the way. You’re just ducking your head and numbing it all out. And you’re shutting everything and everyone
out of your life. Especially me.”
“No, I haven’t,” I say, instantly defensive.
“You barely say ten words to me throughout the day!” he suddenly erupts. “I’m doing everything I can to be there. I’m covering up all the potholes in front of you, trying to make this as smooth as possible for you, and you barely look me in the eye most days. I want you back, Elle. I need you back on this planet, both feet touching the ground, because right now this house just feels empty and lonely and sad.”
Everything in me bristles. Inflates, rising spikes around me, warning everyone away.
“I guess I’m just waiting for you to realize the reality of what is growing inside of me,” I say quietly, my voice low and dangerous.
“What the hell is that supposed to even mean?” he asks, his eyes squinting narrow. “Elle, I’m the one who hunted down the best OBGYN in Boston for you. The one who knows that baby inside of you is the size of a banana right now. I’m fully aware that you’re pregnant, Elle.”
A quick breath catches in my throat, and I have to look away. I place my hands on my back, because suddenly it hurts and I’m tired, and feel emotions trying to fight their way up my throat.
“How can you be so okay with this, Lexington?” I breathe, my voice threatening to crack. “You’ve been acting so evenhanded and calm. Why aren’t you angry?”
And there, I’ve finally said it.
What I’ve been holding against him.
“Elle,” he breathes out in disbelief. “You don’t think this has been hard on me?”
I hear him take a step forward, but the fractured tone of his voice, I can’t stand to look at him.
“Maybe you just don’t get how much this, you and I, has been to me,” he takes two more steps forward. “I told you once, and I guess I need to say it again. Us? This is so galaxy-sized, monstrously different from anything else I’ve ever had before. I tell you I love you, Elle, and I mean that from the ends of my hair down to the tips of my toes, and down to the swirling, hot earth’s core. So seeing you, getting bigger every day, hearing a heart beating inside of you that is another man’s child? That has been killing me.”