12
Cal
Romy is the first thing on my mind when I wake up.
She was the last thing there when I fell asleep too—memories of the kiss we shared front and center in my mind.
And that memory hasn’t loosened its grip on me for a second since.
Being separated from her in a place like this—where danger lurks behind every polished door and smiling face—has my nerves pulled tighter than I’d like to admit.
The bond is growing by the minute. I can feel it. A steady pull in my chest that deepens with every hour we’re kept apart. My body is already seeking her out, already craving the closeness that watching my brothers find their mates taught me to recognize for what it is.
I rinse the last of the shaving cream from my face, beads of water clinging to my skin, just as a knock sounds at the door, interrupting the process of getting ready for breakfast.
The schedule for Selection members isn’t as detailed as the one they’ve built for the ladies, but it’s enough to keep us busy most hours of the day. I recognize it for what it is—control—but dread it for another reason entirely.
At this point, every moment spent away from Romy burns a deeper pit into my stomach.
I wipe my face with the towel by the sink, grab the dress shirt draped over the foot of the bed, and sling it over my shoulders as I move toward the door. My fingers work through the buttons automatically while I cross the room at a speed that would blur for human eyes.
Lucian’s smirk is pointed and assessing as I open the door.
Keeping me off-kilter and unable to plan is a strategy I recognize all too well from several of the foster homes my brothers and I found ourselves in growing up. It’s weakness assessment in its most innocent form, but unfortunately for my uncle, I’m even better at the game.
I’ve had to be.
“Good morning, Lucian,” I greet, my words echoing the confidence of my posture. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“You have?” A grin tilts the corner of his mouth, but the sinister nature of the curvature is far from a smile.
“Of course.”
He assesses me for a long moment before gesturing for me to join him outside, and I pull the door closed behind me as I do just that, tucking my freshly buttoned shirt into my dress pants.
It’s been a long night of wandering thoughts and incomplete plans, but I find myself more energized than ever at the small victory of catching him off guard.
As a mechanically inclined guy, I know it’s the small things like that that can dismantle a whole system’s existence. The rubber grommets that hold pressure. The pressure points that support giant spans. I’m one tiny thing away from burning this whole thing to the ground.
And the place to start is at the beginning— my beginning.
With my mother.
The woman who gave all three Slater brothers life.
As we stroll the gravel path through the villas, I overturn the first stone. It doesn’t matter what his purpose for this morning visit was—now, its purpose is my own. And I want to bleed every ounce of information from him that I can.
“How old was my mother when she came to Selection?”
His pause is minute but noticeable all the same. I log it for later introspection. “She was twenty-two.”
“And the vampire who selected her?”
“Nathanial.”
I hum. “What made him decide to share her? Pardon my newness to the process and reasoning of the elites, but if I’m to understand it correctly, the whole point of the auction is for the highest bidder to win, is it not?”
“It is,” Lucian confirms hesitantly. “But you have to understand that some of the priorities were different back then. The blood of the four was, of course, sacred in a way, but there was an assumption of plenty. No worries of replacements and certainly no sense of long-term thinking. It took her being sold off to another group in Rome, dying, and killing off the fourth line for reality to hit home.”
Every painful revelation in my poor mother’s mistreatment makes me burn hotter. Shared. Sold. Abused.
“And…what did it change?” I grit, fighting to maintain control.
He sighs. “For some, nothing. But for the majority, it provided a steadiness to the process. A certain level of decorum and a proprietary level of ownership was born. There is no sharing once bonded anymore, and as a result, we’ve created a much more…maintainable environment for the women.”
I scoff, losing my cool for just a moment. “Maintainable.” The word is much more than a sneer. It’s an embodiment of disgust and betrayal and a life built on the back of the mistreatment of my mother.
“Yes, Calloway. I know our traditions don’t find favorability with you.
You’ve made that clear in a myriad of ways over the last two weeks.
But I’m afraid they are the way they are for a reason.
” He folds his hands together at the small of his back before continuing.
“Our culture is born of necessity. As you know, a vampire’s needs vary greatly from those of a human.
We don’t need air or food or sleep. We need power.
Precision. Drive. Without these things, survival becomes boring. Basic. Pointless.”
I shake my head but bite my tongue.
His description of pointless and my description of it are two ends of a very long stick.
The meaning of a vampire’s life isn’t power—but connection.
His precision the actual antithesis of the universe’s call to comply with it.
His drive a slap in the face to the mates the fates created for us.
Everything he claims we need are the very parts of the puzzle that don’t fit.
In fact, it makes us worse and brought us to the brink of ruthlessness.
I want to tell him he’s wrong. That every thought he has is an assault on the conscience of a real man. That his point , as it were, is my nemesis. But the argument will go nowhere, so I harness the rage this conversation has built for later use instead.
The time will come.
For him. For Rook and Kane and our fathers. For all these so-called elites.
“Don’t discount it until you’ve tried it,” he says then, stopping in front of a villa at the far end of the property—what must be a mile in the other direction, past the mansion and tucked away in a bed of low shrubbery and woods—and gesturing toward the door.
I won’t deny that I’ve done a piss-poor job of focusing on my surroundings until now, assuming the walk was more of a wander than one to reach a destination, but all engines are firing now. I don’t know where he’s brought me, and I don’t like the possibilities.
That he might know I went to Romy last night. That he knows my connection to her at all.
“Where are we?” I ask, skeptical but collected.
Instead of answering, he raises his cane to the door and knocks before taking a key from the fancy chain at his belt and unlocking the dead bolt.
“See for yourself.”
As he walks away, I steel myself for a fight.
An ambush, perhaps. A torture scenario with Romy or my brothers at the center. The Council heads, seated behind a table of entitlement and ready to distribute a judgment of my death.
But when the door opens, it’s Kane on the other side. Lucian has delivered me directly to my brothers, going so far as to unlock the damn door.
“Cal?” Kane asks, his excitement overwhelming him enough to send him flying into me in a hug.
I return the gesture and spin us to look for Lucian, but he’s gone, leaving behind nothing but the wind. I search the woods and the leaves and the piercing light of the sun from just beyond, my uneasiness growing.
This has to be a trap. Or a mind game at the very least.
I don’t trust it at all, but beyond that, I don’t understand it. Why he would allow me this contact, this boon, this help—I cannot, for the life of me, figure it out. It’s manipulation. I wish I knew the goal.
“Rook!” Kane shouts back into the house, the sound of his voice echoing off the walls. “Come here. Now!”
Rook, Kylie, and Blair appear after a few seconds, Rook standing guard in front of the women as though he’s explicitly told them not to follow him. It’s not a surprise to him that they didn’t listen, but it’s damn near world-rocking to see me.
So much so, he hits me at a run, challenging Kane’s hug for supremacy in every way. It’s the most emotion I’ve seen out of our eldest brother, ever, and I should be overjoyed. Ready to razz him. Basking in the warmth of his emotional maturation.
Instead, I’m on guard. Because I know why he’s acting this way—and the reasoning behind it rocks me to my core.
His fear for me—for us and our chances at making it out of this alive—has been far, far greater than he’s let on. He wasn’t hopeful that we’d make it out of this. Hell, he may have thought he’d never even get to see me again.
“How the fuck did you find us?” Kane asks, pulling Blair under his arm and tucking her close as she rushes forward to join him.
I shrug. “Lucian.” The gesture and the name are a dramatic oversimplification of my feelings on the matter, but the last thing I want to do is alarm Kylie and Blair unnecessarily. They didn’t ask for this—these women didn’t ask for any of this.
“Lucian?” Rook’s question is immediately defensive, and I can’t blame him.
It’s not like our long-lost uncle has been anything short of threatening since we met him in the cabin two days ago, but as Kylie peers over his shoulder, I raise a subtle eyebrow to suggest we really get into it at another time.
“I know,” I agree, adding a small detail to hold some of his curiosity at bay. “He showed up at my door this morning and walked me here.”
“Who the fuck cares how you got here?” Kane cuts in. “Get your ass inside.”
While I do think it’s important to work through Lucian bringing me here at a later time, I agree it’s a conversation for later. I take the out and step inside.
Rook shuts the door behind me, and we exchange a look at the open dead bolt. They couldn’t control it from this side before—but it’s unlocked now.