“I asked him why he was doing what he did to me,” I said. “He answered by saying because our father lacked the willpower.”
My father froze in place. The only sign of his genuine surprise was the quickening beat of his heart hammering against his chest. If I wasn’t a lycan, I never would have heard it. His face was like a statue.
“What did he mean?” I prodded, knowing I was on the right track and he had the answer to my question. “For God’s sake, just tell me! I need answers. You’ve put me at more risk by hiding things and you know it.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “It was supposed to be me.”
“What was supposed to be you?” I asked.
“The new grandmaster.”
I winced, realizing I might have prodded one inch too far.
“Come again?”
“I knew the Dolch Erbe had me in their sights as their new grandmaster. My dreams were haunted from the first night I became a werewolf and was taken to L.I.T. to endure the trials. They shielded me. Then the vixra trained me in how to remain hidden. It was Ellinor Prescott that recommended I marry a human to hide my bloodline and my future lineage. If I played the part of a human and suppressed my lycan side as much as possible, I stood a chance of them not being able to find me.”
I was speechless. All this time he had this pressing on his shoulders. That was where the sorrow came from. He felt guilty. If he had succumbed to the Dolch Erbe they never would have targeted Dirk. Or worse, they might have killed both Dirk and me when we were infants.
“Why do you think I hid in the countryside and took a job as an MP?” he asked. “To create a perfect little country life for my children to have a happy childhood while I toiled away with a bunch of low IQ politicians? Hardly. It gave the appearance that Ellinor recommended. A working family man with high enough ambitions to be daring and a modest enough private life to appear normal. It was the perfect cover. Only the Dolch Erbe passed by me and went directly for your brother.”
“How are you so sure about this?” I asked.
“You’ve had the visions, Riley. You know how real they are. They’re the reason why I sought the help of a man named Thomas Chambers. I believe you met him. Well, you weren’t formally introduced but the two of you certainly met.”
“When?”
“When he placed a spell on you and your brother linking your lives together. I told him the Dolch Erbe would find him if he wasn’t careful. Ellinor long suspected he was on the grandmaster’s radar for acquisition to the Dolch Erbe. He ignored me.”
“Why was he a target?” I asked.
“Because he helped to cast a spell over our property in Derbyshire to keep us all hidden from the Dolch Erbe.”
The pieces came together like a puzzle I never even knew was laying before me until that moment. My father’s constant insistence that I stay home and never leave to play with my bandmates. His urgency to get me home and train me himself. He had a luxra witchling cast a spell over our home to keep us safe. Suddenly his overprotective zeal didn’t feel quite so smothering. It was his way of making sure he didn’t lose his children after our mother was viciously murdered.
“So now you understand?” he declared as though he had won a challenge. “The best choice is for you to come home, Riley. Let me finish your training. You’re by no means required to stay at the academy.”
“I swore an oath,” I countered. “That might not mean much to you but it does to me.”
He groaned. His classic way of letting me know how childish I was being. Not a good thing granted I was sick and tired of being made to feel like a kid who didn’t know right from left.
I stood up from the chair and took the silver box into my hand, placing it safely inside the large inner lining pocket of my trench coat.
“Are you sure it has nothing to do with Rodrick Blackbane?” He pressed his lips together as he waited for an answer. One I wasn’t ready to give him.
I tried walking away but his hand gripped onto my wrist. He stood from the chair and refused to let me leave.
“I thought you understood but clearly you don’t,” he snarled. “There was once a time when the Dolch Erbe controlled most of Europe. They nearly conquered the whole of France all the way to Russia. The only reason they were stopped was because many lycan and vixra were willing to give their lives to prevent them from controlling the continent. They’re left with possessing the living to do their deeds. If you don’t come home with me, you will give into that man’s advances. Then there won’t be anything in the world you can do to stop the Dolch Erbe from finding your children. That’s a fate you won’t be able to live with. Trust me. I know. I’ve had to for years.”
“You think me that weak, do you?” I yanked my wrist out of his hand and backed away from him. “I’m stronger than you give me credit for. I’ve already lived through my mother’s death, my brother’s betrayal, and my father’s overbearing control over everything I do. I survived the trials and fought back against the grandmaster of the Dolch Erbe possessing Dirk. I even go with the Vontex on their missions and I killed a lycan with my own two hands. I’m capable of far more than you ever imagined. And I won’t be spoken down to anymore. Not by you or anyone else. I’m going back to the academy with Rodrick and I won’t be talked out of it.”
I turned to walk away from him, wanting nothing more than for him to see my backside as I disappeared down the street.
“Keep the box safe, Riley,” he hollered after me. “Many would love to get their hands on it. I’m entrusting it to you. Don’t make me regret it.”
I didn’t look back at him. That didn’t stop his words from sinking through me. The box would reveal more truths to the Vontex if I could get back to the ritual site. Truths the Dolch Erbe desperately wanted to keep hidden.
4
The gentle sound of pans clinking together greeted my ears as I climbed up the spiral staircase back to Margaux’s flat. The front door was unlocked when I pushed it.
‘Great. My secret is out, I guess.’
I walked through the living room and upstairs to the kitchen where I found Rodrick frying up some rare meat and making coffee. He silently took the glass coffee pot and poured me a cup in one of Margaux’s delicate china cups and handed it to me. I took a seat at the bar and reached for it without a word, making sure our fingers didn’t touch. I was heated enough with red hot anger without the same old fire returning to my belly and taunting me with unwelcome memories.
“Where were you?” he asked as he turned his back away from me to stir the meat in the skillet.
“Licking my wounds,” I chided him.
He set down the wooden spatula and gripped the black granite countertop with both hands, refusing to face me. “Would you rather I had you right then and there?” He turned around just as I swallowed a sip of the scorching hot coffee. His bluntness made me swallow a little too much. The boiling hot liquid burned the back of my throat. I did my best to hide it. His eyes locked on mine just as they had when Devon took his form at the pub, refusing to let my gaze veer away from his. “I could have,” he went on. “I could have ravaged you. You would have been left a mess on the bed with every pent up desire you’ve had since the second Devon ensnared you finally attained and filling you with more pleasure than you ever thought possible.”
I set down the coffee cup. I was blushing this time around. And I was stunned. Maybe I wasn’t an angel, but I was still English. His sudden change toward the explicit made me think he must have had a point hidden behind his risqué words. I expected such of Alexei after a few minutes of meeting him. Rodrick, however, was always the proper one. Even to the point of being annoying.
“And do you want to know what would have happened next?” he asked me.
‘I’m guessing it wouldn’t have ended in fuzzy handcuffs being tied to the bed frame.’
“You would have spent all of a few days feeling satisfied,” he continued. “Then the same desire would fill you up again and make you
come knocking at my study door. And not just for lessons. Again, and again, and again. Until we both became reckless and others would start to talk. If you ever left the academy, I would follow you. If I left, you would follow me. On and on it would go until we couldn’t be without one another and every last hint of propriety we had was cast aside. It’s not the sort of love affair people want, Riley. It’s consuming. Our magic would be in a constant frenzy that neither of us could control. And it would be painful to even try. Does that sound like a healthy relationship to you? Or does it sound like the workings of a curse?”
I licked my lips, tasting the bitterness of the black coffee. “Point taken,” I said firmly, sipping my coffee so I didn’t have to speak anymore but making sure I blew on it this time.
He turned around to serve up the meat and placed a plate before me.
I twirled my fork in my hands, not ready to down the food he placed before me.
“I knew when you arrived that the temptation would be overwhelming. So I was cold toward you, hoping to discourage you from getting too close or even seeing me in a positive light. But all that changed when we discovered the truth about your brother. I’m the Dean of L.I.T. and I knew it was my duty to ensure your safety by any means necessary. Including training you personally.” He took a fork for himself from the drawer and dug into his meat chunks. “Well,” he grumbled. “You can see how well that worked out.”
“Is that what happened with you and Clara?” I asked.
‘You were blunt with me. Expect the same treatment in return.’
He downed a couple of bites of his meat before answering, buying his time to think of the right words.
“My courtship with her proved to me the existence of the curse and its power,” he explained. “There was nothing rational about our pursuits. Clara eventually decided to live among the vixra in Budapest and I took the position at the academy. We forced ourselves to part ways as a means of protecting ourselves and preventing anything permanent from happening from our…well, I don’t think calling it courtship would be appropriate.”
I nearly laughed.
‘Permanent? You mean before Clara could get pregnant?’
His way of slipping back into such a formal way of speaking almost made me sympathize with him. Because deep down I knew what it was he was hiding. I couldn’t place it initially but now I knew. The pain I felt when he pulled away from me in the bed was something he was very familiar with. He felt that same pain when he parted from Clara. And she from him. The ache might have only been healed when I arrived at the academy.
“You saved my life on that rooftop, Rodrick,” I said, looking up from my food through my lashes. “Don’t try telling me that was just you doing your duty as Dean of L.I.T. or the curse. You didn’t know it was my father disguised as Margaux. You picked me up when I was struck down and you carried me. You shielded me. You went above and beyond what you had to do.”
“Perhaps I feared your father’s wrath should anything bad happen to you,” he countered. “He’s quite a brooding sort behind that veneer of cruelty.”
“He has his reasons. He’s lost a lot. We both have.”
He was about to speak up in his defense when we both shut our mouths. Not because I wasn’t left with even more questions but because the sound of footsteps walked up the stairs and entered the kitchen.
Alexei dug through the refrigerator until he found an untampered blood bag to rip his fangs into. I looked away as he drank. The smell of old blood made my nose curl and I didn’t want to be rude by not eating the meat Rodrick prepared.
“Enjoy your break away from me?” Alexei taunted us through his thick Russian accent. A single droplet of blood dripped over his chin as he bit back down onto the blood and watched me with piercing eyes.
“What?” I asked, trying to sound ignorant. He wasn’t buying it.
“Next time use the guest bedroom. Margaux hates stains on the sheets.”
I scowled at him.
“You would do well to get your mind out of the gutter, Alexei,” Rodrick said as he took both our empty plates and set them in the sink. “I would hate to bruise my knuckles by breaking your jaw again.”
“You claim to come all this way to protect me and here you are threatening me.”
“A broken jaw won’t kill you. Being on the Dolch Erbe’s hit list for trying to help break the curse certainly will.”
“Not with Daniella forbidding me to leave the area. Her charm is the only thing shielding any of us right now until we find Margaux or destroy the Dolch Erbe.”
“Why would you need Margaux for that?”
“Because she designed the charm,” he answered me. “It was her way of making sure the coven is safe if anything were to happen. She was warned that she might be on the Dolch Erbe’s hit list.”
“You would do well to listen to Daniella then and stay here until we can figure out a way to stop Dirk.”
I leaned back in my chair, hoping him saying ‘stop Dirk’ didn’t translate into killing him.
“We should get to work then,” I said with a slap of my hands on the granite countertop. I scooted the chair out from under me and headed out of the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Rodrick asked, shoving the pan he used for the meat aside and reaching my side in a matter of seconds.
‘You’re not honestly going to stop me now!’
“We’re returning to the academy,” he said as if it was a fact and I didn’t have a single say in it.
“You didn’t seriously drag me all the way to Paris just to tell me the road stops here,” I badgered him. “I want to know where the curse was cast. We won’t get anywhere new unless we find the site. There’s a chance Dirk found it here in Paris. This is where he faked his death. So this is where it has to be. I’m going to continue his work, Rodrick.”
“How exactly do you plan on doing that?” he leaned down like he was going to give me a lecture. I could feel the warmth of his breath and smell his scent as it struck down at the only exposed skin on my neck.
“By searching the city. How else am I supposed to find it?”
“You’re not doing that alone.”
“Not if you come with me. Otherwise, I’ll ask Lothar.”
That must have been the wrong thing to say because his eyes flared at the sound of Lothar’s name. “Your way of getting what you want is to merely go around me?” he accused.
“You continue denying me what I want and I’ll have no other choice.”
Alexei snickered from behind the kitchen counter. “There’s a double meaning in that, friend. I’d make sure her needs are satisfied before you find her wandering.”
Rodrick backed away from me, unsure if he should keep trying to exert his authority over me or give Alexei another broken jaw for his disrespect.
“If you don’t help me, I’ll find someone who will,” I stated. “I’m going to find my brother. I have to. If I don’t, he’ll find me when I’m unprepared. I want to be ready. And to be ready, I need answers. Now help me find them!”
He stood up straight like someone had stuck a pole down his back, making sure he was looking down at me with his towering height.
I didn’t back down. I didn’t care how much stronger he was. Nor did I care about his position as the Dean of L.I.T. or the fact that his alpha scent was projecting so strongly that I was fighting to keep my knees from shaking. He made sure I knew where the line was the previous night in the most seductive of ways. Ways that he knew would be painful for me and send me right back into a sea of unwanted memories reminding me of the night I became a werewolf. That didn’t stop him. I wouldn’t stop either.
“How do you plan on doing this?” he asked gruffly.
“You taught me how to use my magic without projecting it during our lessons. And you said my magic was trying to warn me of danger right before the vixra attacked us. What if I can use my magic as a warning from inside my body so no one will see? You can shift into someone else’s form before
we leave here and follow close behind to keep me safe. I’ll scan areas around the city with my magic to see if anything nefarious is lurking in some dark alleyway.”
“In other words, your woman wants to go looking for trouble. She sounds like your kind of girl, Rodrick.” His eyes fell on me. “He likes a woman who engages in the chase.”
‘Yeah, then he ends it abruptly and then acts like nothing happened.’
“You want to protect me, Rodrick?” I chastised him. “Then follow me. Because I’m not going back. Not yet.”
I pulled the hood of my trench coat over my head and headed down the hall, refusing to look back even when I heard Alexei’s voice.
“Go,” Alexei said to him. “You and I both know you didn’t come here for me. At least not entirely.”
I was halfway down the stairs of Margaux’s flat when I heard Rodrick exhale in frustration. I assumed he was caving to my demands when his footsteps came thundering down the hall and he met me at the front door. Only when he appeared in the living room and walked toward me, he wasn’t Rodrick. He had taken on my father’s form.
‘That’s one way to kill the tension. Well done.’
I stood up straight, refusing to say anything as I reached for the doorknob and headed down the abandoned street.
“Only tonight,” he complained as I held my hand before me and let my magic tickle the lines on my skin just under my palm. “We’re heading back to the academy by dawn whether you’ve found anything or not.”
“Whether I’ve found anything?” I countered. “You know you want to find the site where the curse was cast just as much as I do. Work some magic of your own back there and search with me. If you’re right about our magic warning us, we’ll know if we come across something that’s not right.”
Rescind Page 4