28. Smokescreen
SMOKESCREEN
NICO
The contract had been bothering me for days. That anxiety had burned itself out somewhere around the third time Draco put his mouth on my throat and I stopped pretending I didn't want him there.
We were in the car and Rowan was driving.
Amara was in the front and Mateo was beside me.
Draco sat across from me with his phone in his hand and his attention on a message from Helena's office confirming our arrival time.
The car smelled like leather and cold air and the faint metallic undertone that Draco carried with him the way other men carried cologne.
“The thirty-days is almost up and I am wondering as to what happens next.” I said out loud, breaking the silence.
His hand stilled on the screen.
“It has been functionally inactive since the third week.” Draco said.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“The terms were constructed to provide a legal framework for your presence in Blackthorne. After I established the scope, the contract became irrelevant. You were not staying in Blackthorne because of a document. You were staying because you chose to.”
“But you never formally released the contract.”
He set the phone down. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because a blood contract, even an inactive one, provides a legal shield against third-party claim attempts.
As long as our contract is technically active, no other house or faction can file a competing claim on your blood.
Sabine's debt architecture was designed to deliver you to Marcellus. My contract was the obstruction that prevented the delivery.” He held my eyes.
“I initially believed Remy would satisfy the debt by providing you as collateral for thirty nights of service. When I understood what you were, everything changed. Keeping you under contract was the only option I had to prevent Vane from filing a competing blood claim, and keeping you close was the only way to ensure the protection held.”
“So the contract was always a shield.”
“The contract was always a framework. What it shielded changed as I understood what I was shielding.” He paused.
“I took you in because of Remy's debt. I kept you because I recognised what your blood was.
I stopped letting you leave because I couldn't stand the thought of anyone else reaching you first, and I did not know how to say that without it sounding like ownership, which is the one thing I promised myself this would never be.”
The car was very quiet.
“You could have told me that before,” I said.
“Now you know what you are. You know what I am. You know what the contract was and what it became and why I held it past its expiration. And you are sitting in this car of your own volition, asking me about it instead of demanding I release it, which tells me you already understood most of this and wanted to hear me say it.”
“You're such an asshole,” I said.
“I'm aware.”
“That's it? That's what you're going with? I'm aware?”
“Would you prefer a longer response.”
“I'd prefer a response that sounds like it came from a person and not a legal filing. You reworked an entire blood contract because you were scared of losing me and you delivered that information like a quarterly earnings report.”
“I do not file quarterly earnings.”
“You absolutely do. Elias has a spreadsheet. I've seen it.”
From the front seat, Amara's reflection in the window was smiling.
“The point,” Draco said, “was transparency.”
“The point was that you have feelings and you'd rather eat silver than admit it out loud. You just told me you restructured my entire legal situation because you couldn't bear the thought of someone else getting to me, and you said it with the same energy you use to order wine.”
“I select wine with great care.”
“Not helping your case.”
Rowan made a sound behind the wheel that he disguised as clearing his throat. Mateo had his fist pressed against his mouth and his shoulders were tight with the effort of keeping quiet.
“You could have said 'I care about you, Nico.' Five words. One syllable each. Even Rowan could manage it.”
“I could manage it,” Rowan confirmed.
“You are all conspiring against me,” Draco said.
“We're not conspiring. Conspiring takes effort. You make this easy.”
“I have ruled the supernatural infrastructure of this city for centuries. I have negotiated with fae courts and wolf packs and beings that predate written language. I do not require instruction on emotional communication from a man who processes his feelings through sarcasm and furniture restoration.”
“And yet here we are.”
Mateo broke. The laugh came out of him was involuntary and he clamped his jaw shut too late. Amara didn't bother hiding hers. Rowan was grinning at the windshield.
“I'm keeping the contract,” I said.
His eyes shifted. “That would be difficult.”
“Why?”
“Because I destroyed it.”
The car went quiet.
“You what?”
“The original contract was burned three weeks ago. I tore it apart and incinerated it in the study fireplace. Helena has a certified copy in her office for legal reference and as a shield against third-party claims, but the binding document no longer exists.” He folded his hands on his knee.
“You have been free to leave Blackthorne since the night I fed from you the first time. I chose not to mention it because I was afraid you would go, and I was not ready to find out whether you would.”
I stared at him.
“And you said nothing because you were scared I'd walk out.”
“Do you want to leave?” he asked.
I looked at him and I could tell that he was afraid of my answer.
“No, I don't want to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because I finally found someone who understands me.
Even though that someone is a vampire who kills people for a living and owns a house that rearranges its own furniture out of spite.
It sounds insane and I know it sounds insane, but Draco, you make me feel whole.
For the first time in my life I'm not holding everything by myself.
I'm not the one carrying and fixing and pretending I'm fine.
You see me. The angry parts and the broken parts and the shit that doesn't make sense yet.
And you don't ask me to be less of any of it.” My voice had gone thick and I didn't try to fix it.
“So no. I don't want to leave. I want to stay in the creepy sentient house with the judgmental cat and the wolves who are absolutely eavesdropping right now.”
“Unashamedly,” Mateo said, and his voice was rough.
Draco crossed the car.
He took my face in both hands and kissed me. I grabbed the front of his coat and pulled him closer and the bloodstone pulsed between us.
When he pulled back his eyes were dark.
I pressed my forehead against his. I opened my eyes and Amara was wiping her face with the back of her hand. Mateo had his jaw locked and his eyes were shining and he was staring out the window like the skyline owed him money. Rowan's cheeks were wet.
“Are you all crying?” I asked.
“Allergies,” Rowan said.
“It's November.”
“Seasonal.”
“Mateo?”
“I'm good.” His voice cracked on good.
“Amara?”
“I have watched this man build walls around himself that would put siege architecture to shame. I have watched him refuse to need a single living soul for decades.” She wiped her face again.
“So yes, Nico. I am crying. And if you tell anyone I will make your life difficult in ways you cannot currently imagine.”
“Noted.”
Draco hadn't moved
“You make me feel whole,” he repeated.
“Don't make it weird.”
“I would never.”
“You're making it weird right now. You're savouring.”
“There is nothing wrong with savouring.”
“There's a car full of crying wolves who would disagree.”
Mateo exhaled through his nose.
“I think that went well,” Amara said from the front seat, looking at her phone.
The bloodstone pulsed against my chest. The stone going hot against my skin in a rhythm that felt like a heartbeat running too fast, and my hand went to it before I understood why.
“Nico?” Draco asked.
I opened my mouth to answer and the explosion hit us three blocks from Helena's office.
The car lifted off the road. The front end went up first, then the back end kicked sideways, and the world outside the windows became a blur of grey sky and spinning concrete.
The sound hit before I could process it, a pressure wave that slammed into my eardrums and my chest at the same time and pushed every thought out of my head except the single primate understanding that I was inside a metal box that was no longer touching the ground.
We landed on the passenger side. The impact drove my shoulder into the door and my head into the window and the glass cracked but didn't break, which meant it wasn't glass, and the seatbelt caught me across the chest hard enough to leave a bruise I'd feel for a week.
Smoke poured in through the vents and the cracked seals around the doors, thick and silver-white. It hit my lungs and tasted like metal and ozone.
Silver. The smoke was laced with silver.
Draco was already moving, and his hand found my arm in the chaos. But I could see it on his face. His pupils had constricted. His skin had gone a shade past its usual pale. His movements had a fraction of delay in them that didn't belong there.
“Cover your mouth. Don't breathe it.”
I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth. Mateo was beside me, and he was fighting his way out of the seatbelt.
“I can't shift,” Mateo said.
“Silver compound in the aerosol.” Amara's voice was strained. She was pressed against the windshield and her hands were shaking. “It's blocking the change. Rowan.”
Rowan was slumped against the steering wheel. His eyes were open but his body wasn't responding the way it should have been. The silver smoke was working on his system the same way it was working on everyone else's.
“Rowan,” Amara said again.
He shook his head slowly.
The car door above us wrenched open.
Daylight flooded in alongside the silver smoke, and a shape stood silhouetted against the sky. I saw the gun before I saw the face. Then I saw a bit clearer and noticed that it was Sabine.