I lowered the binoculars and glanced at Laurel, who nodded.
It was them.
Wow. Suspecting there was a spy and knowing there was a spy were different things. Someone had endangered my life, Kyros’s life, and killed twelve people. And they hadn’t stopped reporting to the triplets since.
Kelsea stopped circling the bar in the black SUV. She’d be heading back to the tower. Moments later, Josie did the same in the white car.
The moment of truth.
I ran my finger down the list of suspects, stopping on the second to last name. One I’d only jotted down to dot my i’s and cross my t’s.
Fernando.
The male Indebted who I’d tucked into bed and given a fucking pinecone.
Raising my head, I stared at Laurel. Her throat was working, blue eyes riveted on the name and the note next to it.
Heart plummeting into my heeled boots, I picked up the notebook, flipping to an empty page.
I wrote:
We need to go to garage
If Fernando was keeping tabs on the cars, we had to complete the subterfuge or he’d know something was up. He was probably shitting bricks because I hadn’t gone down the alley.
Packing my stuff, I let Laurel swing me into her arms.
She almost flew us down the stairs—though noticeably slower than Kyros—and set me upright just inside the garage as the others parked.
I groaned loudly as they joined us at the lift. “I thought the ache would go away. The sushi I ate at lunch must’ve been bad.”
“It’s okay,” Laurel said. “We can go another time when you’re feeling better.”
What was passing through her head now she knew one of her brethren was the culprit?
Beforehand, I’d envisioned taking the evidence to Kyros without delay. Mainly to smoosh my success in his one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old face. Then again, I’d really hoped the spy wasn’t an Indebted, even though they had the biggest motives here.
Ding!
“A rain check for sure.” I stepped onto the lift. “How about you guys keep the clothes in the meantime?”
Kelsea and Josie glanced at their leader. A tension rested upon their shoulders, and I was certain Laurel would fill them in if she felt they were worthy of the information.
“We’ll do that,” Laurel replied, her eyes glittering.
I pressed the button for Level 61, leaving them to take the rickety lift down to Lower Level 4, but Laurel whipped out a hand, stopping the lift doors just before they closed.
I didn’t say a word as she beckoned for the notepad and pen, handing both over.
The Vissimo’s blue eyes blazed, and she took an audible breath, her hand blurring as she wrote.
She handed the pad back and stepped clear without meeting my gaze.
The elevator slid closed, and I lowered my gaze to her message.
Look in his fridge
5
Beast blared to life as the doors opened on Level 61.
“Yello,” I said.
“Miss Tetley,” Kyros said.
I ignored the ugly emotion that accompanied the two words. “Yeah?”
“You’re not feeling well. Please come to my quarters.”
His quarters? Such a vampire prince thing to say.
“Uh, I’d prefer to be alone.” I didn’t want to see Kyros until I decided how to handle Fernando.
“I will care for you, true mate.”
That was a crock of shit! Though his emotions didn’t negate the comment… However, the rod of steel beneath the warmth made it clear he’d issued an order.
Fucknuts.
“That’d be nice,” I said flatly, spinning on my heel to return to the elevator. Damn it all, part of me meant the words.
Kyros knowing my location forevermore may cramp my long-term style, but this emotional bullshit was twice as bad. Yes, I got to listen in on his feelings, but to have someone to have the means of deciphering what I meant all the time? Humans didn’t do that. I spoke a quarter of what I thought—or less. I’d be more comfortable with my legs wide open, and Kyros in the front row sketching a likeness than this bullshit.
I jabbed Level 65 and waited for the inevitable ding that I love-hated.
My brain raced as I considered my next move.
Four floors were barely long enough to scrape a plan together.
Turning right out of the elevator, I dragged my feet to the very end of the hall, scowling at the double doors to Kyros’s private office.
I barged in—he could both hear and feel me coming.
Shoot. Just knowing I’d be in his company made my fingers tingle. My breath came fast, my body betraying me, and betraying my dignity at the same time. I couldn’t even remember all the times Kyros had lied or hurt me at this stage.
Saved and protected me.
Shouted.
Held me in his arms.
Intimidated.
Held himself back.
He sat in his office chair. “Basilia. How are you faring?”
“Mr Sundulus,” I replied in a grave voice. “Thank you. I’ve been better.”
Kyros cut off his focus on the three screens before him and shifted his gaze to me. “That’s not my last name.”
Oh. “It’s not?”
“My last name is Smith.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding—”
He flashed his teeth.
“—you are kidding.” I couldn’t stop the surprised laughter from breaking free. “That would be hilarious though.”
“Atagio,” Kyros said, switching off the monitors.
Kyros Atagio.
I hummed, unsure what to make of what sounded very like a get to know each other conversation.
He stretched to his full height, and my mouth dried as I took in his suit-clad specimen of a body. Someone needed to freeze that shit so the future could enjoy the view. I wanted his body hovering over me. Lying beneath me. Crushing me against a wall.
His voice jolted me to the present. “Congratulations on securing 9C Joker. That house has eluded us for a long time. Unsure why. It’s barely remaining upright.”
The house hadn’t eluded them. The people owning the house had.
The vampire prince flipped back the password panel and jabbed in his long-ass code.
I ambled to the entrance of his lair, my thoughts on the avalanche of other issues between us. “Memories.”
Kyros cut me a look. “What?”
“Memories are why people can’t let go. Money can’t buy everything.”
He studied my face, pressing a warm hand against the small of my back to direct me up the stairs. I let it stay there, desperate for the contact and hating myself for it.
“Money can buy most things,” he answered.
For a Vissimo, perhaps. Vampires existed on the brink of death. Their priorities—surviving, winning, protecting, and ensuring their bloodline grew, those things weren’t always important to humans because we weren’t constantly primed for a battle. Ours was a slower, less intense existence. Things that Vissimo accepted without batting an eyelash, I struggled to come to terms with or accept without a moral fight. I wouldn’t have said their values were unethical or even immoral per se. Just that their values were streamlined and gave the appearance of ruthlessness. If humans were a tree branch teeming with leaves, Vissimo were that same branch whittled to a spear.
“Lower door,” Kyros murmured.
As soon as the door clicked shut at our backs, he halted me on the stairs. “Who is it?”
Dang it.
“Inconclusive. I laid a pretty good trap, but the results were too vague to be sure. I won’t give you a name without being certain.”
His green eyes flared. “You’re lying.”
Yep.
I climbed the last few steps and pushed the top door open. “That’s all I’ve got for you right now.”
“You said you’d have the name for me in a week,” he spoke at my back.
Th
e hairs on my neck lifted. Ugh, I hated walking in front of him. Gave me the heebie-jeebies. “I still have a couple of days.”
“One.”
As soon as I passed the bed, I pivoted to face him. The extra tension dissipated.
Thank fuck. We didn’t need any help in that department.
Kyros strode straight to the kitchenette and opened the fridge, and I jolted, staring.
Laurel’s note in my pack was like a leaden weight. I thought she meant check Fernando’s fridge. Which hadn’t made any sense because he didn’t have one—then I’d decided she was referring to a communal Indebted fridge.
She wasn’t.
Laurel meant Kyros’s fridge.
He poured blood into a glass and chucked the bag in the bin.
“This bothers you?” he asked, meeting my gaze.
Blinking, I diverted my attention to the sofa. “No. I just pretend it’s shiraz and you enjoy wine out of bags.”
“I see.” His amusement tickled me through the bond.
I perched on his bed, pushing up my glasses. “Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?”
Meadow-green eyes riveted on my face as Kyros ran his tongue over his teeth. “We’re still on the same subject. Tell me who the spy is. You were nearly killed.”
“Forget me, Kyros, five Indebted died,” I reprimanded him. “Twelve if you include those from Clan Fyrlia.”
“This person needs to answer for their crimes, Basilia.”
I set my jaw. “They will. Once I confirm their guilt.”
“You’re protecting the Indebted,” he said over the rim of his glass. He took a sip, and I watched his throat work as he swallowed.
A man drinking blood shouldn’t turn me on, but it did. To the point of pain. I clenched my thighs together, my voice breathless. “That’s an assumption.”
“A correct assumption. An educated assumption. Indebted are often the culprits being that their motive is strongest.”
My brows slammed together. “No wonder with how they’re treated.”
“Or are they treated that way because they’re often the spies?” he challenged.
He took another sip, savouring it like I savoured a strawberry mojito.
I needed a strawberry mojito to get through this. Or five.
“You’re thirsty?” Kyros’s eyes glinted. “What for?”
“Not your blood, I can tell you that.”
A growl filled the space between us.
I sighed. “I didn’t mean it as an insult, fang man. I’ll just grab a wat—”
“I’ll get it,” he interrupted, at the fridge before I’d budged at all.
… Shit.
Laurel was onto something huge.
Kyros placed the water on the bedside table beside me and retreated to the circle sofa, kicking off his shoes and loosening his tie.
“I called you because we need to talk,” he said. “No, not talk. You deserve an explanation for how things have been between us since the third thrall. I wasn’t in a position to give it to you until now.”
He was going to what?
My ears pricked up. “You’re going to offer information to me out of the goodness of your heart?”
Is hell freezing over?
“You’re my true mate. That is why I’m offering an explanation.” He knocked back the rest of his liquid meal and set the glass on the armrest.
I scoffed. “You can’t seriously believe that true mate garbage.”
Sadness. Fear. Anger.
Look at me picking out his emotions like a pro.
His face hardened. “I do, Basilia. Absolutely.”
… Unexpected.
The fierce burning in his green eyes was too intense. I shifted my gaze, rubbing my chest. He was drawn to me—but part of him had never wanted to accept that. It was the same for me. And that was true from the very first moment we met before the first blood exchange.
“My father heard of our third exchange after Fyrlia’s attack. He’d approved the second—believing, like me, that my fascination with you would end after the second thrall. The third exchange was an accident, of course, but now it’s clear we are true mates.”
“You keep saying true mates instead of mates. What does it mean?”
His breath deepened. It was his turn to fidget. “Any pair who complete all of the blood exchanges are considered mates. When certain symptoms appear, there’s a potential the couple are true mates. If these symptoms continue beyond the third exchange, their true compatibility is confirmed.”
For starters, we weren’t a couple.
“You gave me the extremely diluted version of what the exchanges meant,” I said. Then shook my head wearily. More omissions. Why am I surprised?
Kyros’s eyes narrowed. “Working off very old statistics, three in one thousand experience symptoms such as ours after the first exchange. In 76 percent of those cases, reports of singing blood disappeared completely after the second exchange. Of the remainder, 80 percent disappeared after the third. The odds were just over one in a thousand that we were true mates. I didn’t expect it would come to this.”
“Dare I ask what the symptoms of singing blood are?”
He arched a brow. “Mounting lust. A mindless thrall. Unexplainable calm and happiness in each other’s presence. The appearance of mating gifts. The urge to fuck and reproduce.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said anything about brats?
“A clan in the Middle East believes that Vissimo can have multiple true mates, but it would be impossible to discover more than one. Once true mates find each other and complete the exchanges, they will never long for another.”
This conversation was making me genuinely sick. Exhaling slowly, I grunted. “You’ve done your research.”
“With my father, yes.”
King Julius. “Right. You were saying he approved the second. I can assume that isn’t the case for the third. But it’s not like we intend to take it further, so he’s okay with that”—me—“right?”
Kyros’s expression was grave as he tapped a finger on the armrest. “My father wanted to compel you afterward. I spent the week after our third thrall convincing him not to place your mind in a cage.”
My heart rate tripled. “He did?”
“You’re afraid,” he said in a low voice. “You should be. My father is the most powerful Vissimo in the world. Six hundred years old and from the most prestigious bloodline in the world.”
The bloodline that Kyros was assumedly meant to propagate, even if he wasn’t sure whether he belonged to it.
And now his supposed true mate was human. That must gripe extra hard. “This isn’t just a shitshow for me.”
“I have found my true mate,” Kyros said softly. “Something I never anticipated, and something I haven’t treated with the proper respect thus far. My absence after the thrall and after your grandmother’s passing hurt you. My past lies have hurt you. I wish you to understand that I did want to see you and comfort you—it was my constant thought. I separated myself due to my father’s surveillance over my actions after the third thrall. I had to convince him that my urges were under control to prevent him compelling you.”
His disappearing act had hurt me.
Before the second blood exchange, things seemed to deepen between us, almost as though we’d come to a certain level of understanding despite everything.
This explanation was the closest thing to an apology that I’d get from the vampire—the word sorry probably wasn’t in Kyros’s vocabulary.
I thought of the needless fury I’d gone through, frustration filling me. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I would have played along.”
“If he compelled you, my father would have gleaned the truth from your mind.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Is that what happens when you guys drink my blood? You just know everything in my head?”
He tensed, his gaze settling on my throat for a beat. “We have to actively search for what we want. The success of th
at depends on the age and power of the Vissimo.”
Like reading a book? Weird.
“If I’m truthful, fear of what my father may do was not the only reason for distancing myself,” Kyros said, capturing my gaze. “I was unsettled by the development between us too.”
I leaned forward. “Unsettled how?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Furious that my enemies forced us into the third exchange and treated you like chattel. My true mate forced to crawl across the ground. I wasn’t able to protect you from their wrath. For a male Vissimo, whether they have a mate or a harem, their duty is to protect. The force of that failure hit me harder than I cared to admit.”
Lalitta had said as much—that Kyros couldn’t figure out how to be free of his bindings. King Julius had placed bindings on him, too, but Kyros locked another set into position all by himself.
“It’s not your job to protect me.” I frowned. Outdated.
He blurred to kneel before me. “It is my job, Basilia. As surely as it is yours to protect me.”
What was he saying? His emotions were all over the place. I held a hand to my head. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
Kyros took one of my hands in his. My hands were tiny in comparison. “It means that I have absolute belief in what our blood is showing us. Our blood sings. We are true mates.”
I stared at our hands and then his face. Shit just got real. “W-What?”
“My beauty,” he said, stroking my cheek with the back of his free hand. “None shall harm you again.”
My breath came fast. “I’m not sure we’re on the same page.”
Kyros leaned in.
A whine slipped between my teeth at his proximity.
“Can you fight this agony for the rest of your life?” he asked simply.
Gasping for air, I shuffled back on the bed.
He followed me on to the mattress.
I rested a hand on his chest. “Kyros, please stop. I’m overwhelmed and can’t think with you so close.”
A slow grin spread across his face. “I know.”
“You lied to trap me,” I stammered, shuffling back farther.
Kyros stalked closer, running his fingers up the inside of my ankle. “I did. You would have never agreed to the second exchange otherwise.”
Vampire Debt: Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers Book 2) Page 7