by R. E. Butler
The front door slammed open with a loud crack. Merrix pressed Aeryn against the wall to shield her as he bared his fangs to whoever was crashing their party.
He recognized the tiger king, Midas, as well as Gavin and another male he didn’t know.
Midas didn’t pause as he strode down the hall, but he did give him a chin jut.
“You’re squishing me,” Aeryn whispered.
“Sorry, love,” Merrix said as he eased away from her but kept her behind him for safety’s sake.
“What’s going on?” Merrix asked Gavin.
He stopped next to them and whispered, “Midas is pissed.”
“Good,” Aeryn said.
Gavin snorted out a chuckle.
Midas stopped at the table and faced the other tiger king. “I don’t know how you run things in West Virginia, but in Whisper Creek, a king doesn’t show up in another’s territory without an invitation or a courtesy check-in.”
“Midas,” Theo said, rising to his feet.
“Quiet!” Midas barked.
Theo sank back into the chair, his face going white.
“What is your business here?” Midas demanded.
“Aeryn was promised to Rocco,” Sully said.
“This isn’t the dark ages,” Midas said. “We don’t trade females without their permission. I told Aeryn’s parents on more than one occasion that they were unable to force her to mate Rocco or anyone else for that matter. You wasted your time by coming here, and you made an enemy of the Whisper Creek ambush. Leave now or face the consequences.”
Sully stood, his face red. He sputtered a few times, seemingly unable to find the words he wanted to say. He finally ground out, “This isn’t over.”
“The hell it’s not,” Midas said. “I could kill you where you stand right now and claim your ambush as spoils of war. You came into my territory without permission, and you threatened two people under my protection.”
“You can’t protect a vampire,” Rocco said.
“Watch me.”
The male with Midas cracked his knuckles and let out a deep growl that made the hairs on the back of Merrix’s neck rise. “The king has spoken. Leave now and never return or face his wrath.”
Sully glared at Midas, but it was clear to Merrix that he wasn’t half the alpha male that Midas was.
“Our alliance is dead,” Sully said to Theo. “The contract is null, and we’ll be seeking the return of our compensation immediately.”
The two walked out the sliding glass door. “Jorah, make sure they leave town,” Midas said.
“On it,” Jorah said as he departed, speaking quickly to someone on his phone.
“Now,” Midas said, “what’s this nonsense about a contract?”
Aeryn leaned against Merrix and hugged her arms around him as they listened to her father reluctantly explain that he wanted to start up his own construction company again. He’d hated being bought out by Midas’s company and absorbed into their ranks.
“I met Sully at an ambush gathering a few years ago. He has a lumber supply company, so I reached out to him to see if we could strike a deal. He said he’d give me a break on cost if I arranged a mating between Aeryn and Rocco. Rocco is his nephew and next in line for the kingship but doesn’t have a mate.”
“You bartered me for lumber?” Aeryn asked.
Merrix could feel the prickle of her fur as her rage intensified and she neared shifting. “Calm down, sweetheart,” he murmured into her ear. “No one is taking you anywhere, period. You’re all mine.”
She huffed but calmed a little.
“It wasn’t like that,” Lucille said, her eyes luminous with unshed tears. “Rocco’s a good male. He could’ve made you happy, and you would’ve been able to have cubs like you always wanted.”
Merrix opened his mouth to tell them that she still could have cubs, with him of course, but Aeryn elbowed him and shook her head sharply. He hummed quietly, wondering why she wanted to keep that point to themselves.
Aeryn let out a deep, frustrated sigh. “Midas? Can I speak to my parents for a minute alone?”
“Of course,” he said. He leveled a long look at them. “This isn’t over, trust me.”
“Gav?” she said.
“I just came along for moral support. I’ll see you at the house.”
When they were alone with her parents, Aeryn and Merrix sat across the table from them. It was easy to see how shaken up they were by Midas’s appearance as well as by the turn of events.
“I can’t believe you did this,” Aeryn said.
“It wasn’t just about the business,” Lucille said. “We thought he would be good for you.”
“Merrix is good for me, Mom. He’s the love of my life, and I wouldn’t part with him for a hundred tiger males and a boatload of cubs. You shouldn’t have brought Rocco here, and you definitely shouldn’t have tried to use me as a way to start a new business. I mean, for goodness’ sake, I’m not a building you can rent out!”
Theo made a face and then scrubbed a hand through his thinning hair. “I thought you’d like him.”
“I would’ve found out about this eventually,” Aeryn said. “Even if I had gone out with him or even mated him, the truth would’ve surfaced, and I would’ve known that you tried to barter me for wood. Do you have any idea how much this hurts me? How much you hurt me?”
“I was desperate,” Theo said.
“You said you liked working for Midas.”
“I didn’t have a choice in being bought out. It was just assumed that we’d go along with it, and even though the payout was generous, I’ve hated it.”
“You could’ve done a hundred different things to start a new business. Why did you have to loop me into it?”
“It’s what Sully wanted.”
“Maybe there’s a reason he’s unmated,” Aeryn said. “If his uncle had to leverage his business to get him a mate, that seems to be a pretty big warning flag. Which you ignored in favor of a discount.” She slapped her hands on the table and shoved the chair back so it scraped loudly on the tile. “I need to leave. I’m stressed out and pissed, and my cat wants to shift and tear a few holes in the walls.”
“Aeryn,” her mother said.
“I haven’t even heard an apology,” Aeryn said.
Merrix rose next to her. He waited for them to apologize, but they didn’t seem intent on doing so.
“It’s a damn shame that you’re acting like this. Aeryn’s amazing, and I love her. I hope you realize what you’ve done.”
He angled her away from her parents, and they strode out, heads held high. It wasn’t until she was in the SUV and the doors were shut that she broke down in tears. Merrix held her tightly and whispered words of comfort and encouragement, but he knew it wouldn’t erase the damage her parents had done. Her phone rang, and she handed it to him, burying her face in his neck.
“It’s your mom.”
“I don’t want to talk to either of them.”
He swiped his thumb and put the phone to his ear. “Aeryn doesn’t want to talk to you or your mate. When she’s ready, if that happens, she’ll call you.”
Ending the call, he put the phone in the cup holder and said, “Ven, can you take us to her place so we can pack?”
“You bet.”
In minutes they were inside the house she shared with Gavin. Ven and Temple helped them pack up her belongings, including all the baking items in the kitchen. She spoke to Gavin for a bit but mostly seemed like a zombie—hardly talking, slowly moving, face carved in grief. By the time they returned to the apartment and brought her things inside, he was exhausted to the core. While they’d talked about feeding each other, he put it off until they were both in the right frame of mind, and instead of making love until dawn and feeding, he held her while she cried herself to sleep and fell into an uneasy rest himself.
Family could be so damned devastating.
Chapter Thirteen
Jude Devoe picked at her cuticles while she w
aited in the secure bubble of protection Lahn had cast around them. They were invisible to anyone who wasn’t a wizard, a group of people who were few and far between in Ohio for some reason. Across the street and down two blocks was a vampire club called Fang, owned and operated by the master of the coven—Mishka. The Cleveland coven was the largest in the Midwest, and the male appeared to be not only brutally hot but a fierce leader capable of drawing strong and equally fierce people into his ranks. Like the thousand-year-old assassin or the fallen angel.
“Wonder what’s going on there?” Jude asked as a trio of black SUVs, which were known to be used by the coven to transport their people, drove to the apartment complex across from the club, turned sharply, and headed back to what she assumed an underground parking garage.
Lahn watched the SUVs and then said, “Maybe they’ve got a new mate in the coven.”
“Bad time to join Mishka’s people,” she mused. It would be hell on earth to be the focus of Jason Finnegan’s wrath. The male was as unbalanced as they came. She didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, and she hated that her brother had aligned himself to him.
And her as well.
Of course, she could’ve told Lahn he was on his own this time. She’d taken one look at Sean—Jason’s equally crazy brother—and wanted to run far, far away. She wasn’t one to back down from a battle, and she’d gotten into plenty of scuffles in her time because of her inability to shift, but Sean and Jason together made her feel like she was standing at death’s door and about to push the buzzer.
She realized Lahn was typing on his cell.
“What are you doing?”
“Texting Jason that he can get new intel for some more cash.”
“You don’t need any more money.”
“I could always use more, Jay. There’s an artifact called the Witch’s Eye that’s supposed to grant the holder the ability to read people’s minds. I have a lead on someone who’s seen it in a museum. The dumb humans who have it don’t even know what it is or what it’s worth. I need a crap-ton of cash to hire a crew to steal it for me.”
That was the problem with her brother. He was always on the lookout for more power. He’d tapped into dark magic ages ago, and it had infected his soul, skewing his mind so that he craved more like a drug addict. That was the problem with dark magic. There were no helpful warning labels.
Careful! Too much dark magic can make you buckass crazy.
“Score!” Lahn gave a little fist pump. “He just wired me ten grand for the information.”
“What information?”
“That there’s a new mate in the coven.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “That’s for him to suss out. I’m ten grand closer to my goal. Unless, of course, you want to help me break into the museum. I could use your skills.”
“Hard pass, bro. I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.” Too many close calls had made her hypervigilant in the jobs she went on. She’d still go on the job, but she wouldn’t break into the place. She’d just be keeping an eye out for her idiot brother.
“Fine, fine. I don’t like you being all moral, you know. Makes my skin crawl.”
“That’s probably your conscience,” she quipped.
“Nah, I beat that into submission decades ago. I’ve received my ten grand, and whoever those SUVs were hauling is in a lot of trouble. Hope whoever they’re mated to can keep them safe.”
Jude’s heart panged, and she rubbed the space over it with her fingertips. Lahn had potentially just sentenced an innocent to become cannon fodder in a war between crackpot humans and vampires. But it wasn’t her fight, and she had a firm rule against getting involved in other people’s squabbles.
Hope he’s right, and your mate is a badass. Whoever you are.
“How much longer until the damn club closes?” Jude asked irritably.
“Another hour, at least. Then the daytime patrol should start up, and we can log their movements.”
She shifted from one foot to the other, cursing her cute but toe-pinching boots. “We should’ve asked for more money.”
* * *
Sunday afternoon, Aeryn heard from Gavin that Midas had handed down a sentence for her parents—they weren’t allowed to shift for sixty days, including during the full moon. On the scale of punishments for tigers, it was a medium one—not as bad as being imprisoned, but not as good as a simple stay-at-home order. Not being able to shift meant their cats would be going crazy. When Aeryn was in her first year of culinary school, the full moon had fallen during finals and she’d decided not to take the time to shift until the following week. But even just a few days after the full moon, she’d felt like her cat was trying to claw through her skin to get out. It had been hell, and she’d nearly flunked an important final because she couldn’t concentrate. That had taught her not to skip shifting, and she’d taken to shifting ahead of the full moon if she was going to be busy. Cats could shift whenever they wanted, but most saved their shifting for the full moon when they could hunt with the ambush as a group.
While it would be terrible for her parents, she was equally irritated that she’d been put into the situation in the first place. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get over feeling betrayed by them—for a business, no less—but she knew that time would ease her hurt, and she’d eventually be okay with letting them back into her life. For now, they were persona non grata, and that was how they were going to stay.
Merrix had asked her why she hadn’t wanted her parents to know she could still have a cub with him, and she’d simply said that they didn’t deserve to know. And at any rate, her mom’s assertion that Rocco was a better choice for a mate simply because he could give Aeryn cubs was dumb. As if Aeryn would choose to have a child with someone she didn’t know over eternity with her sexy beloved.
She took Merrix’s hand as they left the theater. His parents had gotten them tickets to an off-Broadway show, which had been just the distraction she needed, and a great way to close out their honeymoon week. They both were going back to work on Monday night, so the special date night had been a wonderful way to celebrate their last night before reality intruded on their bliss.
“I have an idea,” she said as she scooted into the center of the bench seat of the SUV.
“Do tell,” Merrix said as he climbed in next to her and shut the door. “Lake, we’re heading back to the complex.”
“You got it.”
As the vehicle pulled away from the curb and entered traffic, Aeryn leaned against Merrix and pulled him close so she could whisper in his ear. “Feeding. And stuff.”
He let out a soft growl, his eyes darkening. “That sounds like the best idea ever.”
She grinned.
They’d planned to feed from each other after coming home from seeing her parents on Saturday night, but neither of them had been in the mood. It was their first official time feeding each other for what would become their new normal of weekly feedings. She’d wanted to tend to his needs, but he promised he could go another night or two until she was in a better frame of mind, and she appreciated the reprieve. The business with her parents had been hell on her psyche.
With the lovely distraction of the play and her sexy beloved next to her, she put aside the unhappy thoughts and focused on the future.
Merrix was hers, and nothing was going to change that.
He spent the drive home nibbling on her neck and inflaming her senses. She knew that their escorts, Lake and Merino, would be able to smell her arousal, but she couldn’t stop herself from enjoying Merrix’s attentions.
By the time they got inside the apartment, she thought she was going to combust. Everything about Merrix seemed tailor-made for her, and they fit together perfectly. They stripped each other swiftly, clothes getting tossed in every direction and shoes flying, and then they were tumbling into bed to rock each other’s world.
If someone had told her a year earlier that she’d be feeding
from a vampire once a week to sustain her immortality, she would’ve called them crazy. But here she was, sinking her fangs into his wrist and drinking down the sweet, rich nectar of his blood. It rounded into her stomach, and she could feel it infusing her cells.
He disengaged his fangs from her neck and licked the wound tenderly, his saliva healing the wound nearly instantly. Letting out a deep, satisfied groan, Merrix slipped to the side and snuggled her close.
“Your blood tastes a little different.”
“Oh?” she asked.
He nuzzled her cheek. “It’s a little richer. Sweeter. I could just be imagining it since I’ve been starved for your blood all week and going crazy thinking about feeding from you again.”
“I was looking forward to it too.”
“Did you ever think you’d be feeding from your mate?”
“It never crossed my mind. I like it though.” She turned on her side and brushed her fingers through his hair. “Makes me feel close to you.”
He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “How’d I get so lucky?”
“No idea, but I’m pretty lucky too.”
They talked in that dreamy way that lovers did, about the future and their hopes and dreams, making love a second time before the sun rose, and then once more as the sun set and their first night apart in a week was ready to start.
Aeryn had just tugged her white tank top on when there was a knock at the front door.
“That’s the guys who are remodeling the kitchen,” Merrix said. “They said they’ll be finished by the time we get home. Then you’ll have a real kitchen.”
“I can’t wait to see what it looks like.” She put on her shoes and pulled her hair into a ponytail.
There were three males she recognized from Merrix’s construction crew, all vampires. She greeted them.
“They want you to double-check the appliances before we leave,” Merrix said.
“Sure.” She stepped out into the hall and looked at the matching stainless-steel stove, refrigerator, and microwave. “They look great.”