Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Eli Colten
I can feel Cyrus’s disapproval as he watches me watching her.
The phone in my pocket feels like it is burning holes in it; I am livid that she even tries to keep in contact with him.
I know she doesn’t feel the bond as strong as us, but it still feels like a betrayal to me.
It’s lucky Cyrus heard her hiding something, or we may never have known.
A phone is one of the easiest things to track our whereabouts.
Even a burner phone—harder to trace but not impossible.
And the hunters’ organization is well-equipped and advanced with technology.
I walk out of the kitchen, leaving her with Cyrus. I can feel his eyes on me as I walk out of the room going to the shed. I grab the hammer, about to smash the phone, when Cyrus walks in.
“You sure that is wise?” he asks.
“You should be with Addie,” I tell him before smashing the phone and grabbing a bucket.
I fill it with water from the sink in the corner of the shed before dropping the phone in it.
“You trying to control her will only push her away. You need to trust her. How do you expect her to trust us when you don’t trust her?”
“Well, if you marked her, it wouldn’t be a problem. And I wasn’t hiding a phone to contact an old lover,” I retort, annoyed.
“I want her to want me on her own terms. I won’t force her. But you cutting her off from everyone will make her want to run,” Cyrus snaps at me.
“And if he tells her, then what? I won’t have her running around with the likes of a fucking hunter, Cyrus. Not one she is in love with.”
“She doesn’t love him, just thinks she does,” Cyrus says, pinching the skin between his eyes in frustration.
“Through the bond, it sure feels like she is in love with him to me.”
“Did you ever think maybe she wants him because you told her she can’t have him?” he says, making me look at him. “Let her figure it out herself.”
“So, you are happy for her to be with him? Just give her up?”
“I’m not giving her up, but I won’t force her. We forced her here already. The bond will kick in with or without me marking her. We fucked up by making a big deal out of Sam, and it has made her curious.”
“And if he tells her, she finds out what we did. Do you really think she will be so forgiving to accept us?”
“The bond won’t allow her to leave. Why can’t you understand that?” Cyrus argues.
“That’s not a risk I am willing to take. Mark her, Cyrus, or let me do things my way,” I tell him.
“Is everything alright?” Adeline asks, coming in.
She must have heard us arguing. I look over at her, trying to keep my anger at bay. It mustn’t have worked because she takes a step back.
“Everything is fine, Addie. Go back inside. We will be in soon,” I tell her.
I watch her leave, waiting for her to be out of earshot.
“Just let it be, Cyrus. She handed it over. She wouldn’t be thinking we would let her keep it,” I tell him, and he glares at me before walking out after her.
Cyrus has always been willing to bend over backward for her, even if it means her leaving us.
It irritates me; if he would just mark her, we could be done with this hunter business and change her.
That is the ultimate goal, but for her to agree, she needs to be bonded fully to us.
Without that, she will never agree to give up her family for good.
Newborn vampires are unpredictable, and we are going to have enough trouble getting the council to agree.
So if she doesn’t choose it when they speak with her, they won’t agree to us keeping her.
They will kill her with no regard for us and the fact that she is our mate.
I know Sam has pull with our council, too.
He could convince them to force us to hand her over to rival organizations working together to keep the order, and unfortunately, Addie is linked in more ways than one to both sides.
If Sam tells her of our intentions, she may just run. Not that she will be able to hide from us, nor will I stop looking for her. Then there is our other issue. Sam knows what happened. If he tells her, she will hate us, making everything more difficult.
Walking out of the shed and into the foyer, I look for them, finding Addie in the living room. She is sitting on the couch looking bored, Cyrus nowhere to be seen.
“Where is Cyrus?” she asks, looking over at me.
“You didn’t see him?” I ask her, confused.
I thought he had come back in with her. Hearing footsteps behind me, I see Cyrus walking toward me and out of the kitchen, keys in his hand.
“I am here,” he says, and I can feel his burning anger through the bond, his need to feed as he tries to shove it away.
I press my lips together. He is mad, and I can see this isn’t going to be the last argument over this topic. He either marks her, or I lock her away; he knows this. That is why we came here, to keep her away from Sam. I won’t have her gallivanting around with him.
“We should head to work,” I tell her, and she hops up, sweeping her hair over her shoulder.
Cyrus walks outside, going to the car.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asks, stopping and looking at me.
“Nothing. Come, we should go,” I tell her, placing my hand on her lower back and escorting her outside.
Cyrus hops in the driver’s seat, starting the ignition. Addie climbs in the back, and instead of getting in beside Cyrus, I hop in the back with her, needing her to calm the raging beast within me.
* * *
Adeline
We drive into the city. Whatever their argument was about makes the entire car drive tense. You can feel the tension sizzling in the air, their anger radiating out of them like a dark cloud. It is suffocating. After driving for ten minutes, the atmosphere becomes too much.
“What’s going on? You two have been glaring out the windshield the entire way.”
“Nothing you need to worry about, Addie. Everything is fine,” Eli says, and I hear Cyrus curse under his breath before glaring at Eli through the rearview mirror.
“Obviously, something is going on. I would have stayed home if you two were just going to glare and grumble at each other.”
“Where we go, you go,” Eli says, and I roll my eyes.
“Whatever,” I tell him, looking out the window.
Eli growls at me.
“Don’t take out your grievances on her, Eli, or you and I will have problems,” Cyrus tells him, pulling over to a parking spot in the underground car park.
“We already have problems, Cyrus. Until you do as I ask, that won’t change,” Eli snaps back.
“Not happening, Eli, so deal with it.”
“Deal with what?” I ask, confused over their lovers’ quarrel.
Cyrus goes to speak when Eli grips his shoulder. Cyrus ignores him, instead turning in his seat to look back at us.
“Eli wants to complete the bond. He wants me to mark you with or without your permission because he is paranoid about you running off with your ex,” Cyrus says.
“I gave you the phone, didn’t I?” I ask, looking at Eli.
He shrugs, not caring.
“Doesn’t change the fact that you need to be marked, and the sooner, the better. I am sick of waiting,” Eli snaps at me before opening his door and getting out. He slams the door, stomping off.
“I won’t do it, Addie. You don’t have to worry,” Cyrus tells me.
“What if he forces you?”
“He can’t. I wouldn’t, even if he tried. I want you to want me to mark you. Until then, I will wait.”
“But it’s causing problems with you and Eli,” I tell him, and he looks at Eli’s retreating figure out the window.
“We have been together for a long time. Addie, you don’t have to worry about Eli and me. We aren’t going anywhere even if we do disagree,” he says before opening his door.
We walk through the parking lot before walking through some sliding doors that lead to a small foyer. This building is only three levels, a lot smaller than the building back home.
“This is the head office. Mainly we work from here, but we don’t need to be here daily. The manager is doing just fine, so we probably won’t stay long. We just wanted to show you around. We mainly only come in for big meetings,” Cyrus tells me.
One thing I do find weird, though, is that there are no females here. Even the secretary at the foyer counter is a man. Curiosity getting the better of me, I end up asking as we walk down the gray hall toward their office.
“Why are there no women?” I ask, noticing yet again that their personal secretary is also a man.
“We don’t like working with women. They become an unnecessary distraction.”
“A distraction?”
“Yes, all the ones we have hired tend to continuously throw themselves at Eli,” he answers with an annoyed expression.
“They don’t do that to you?”
“I tend to be less approachable,” he answers.
“Why?” I ask, just as Eli steps out.
“He isn’t as polite,” Eli chuckles, overhearing us.
“I don’t like humans,” Cyrus says simply as we walk inside, shutting the door.
“You say that, but yet you appear to like me.”
“That’s different. You’re mine, my little human,” Cyrus says, like him hating humans and being mates with one is simple because I am his.
The office consists of one huge desk that is clearly used by both of them, a lounge, and a coffee table; it looks more like a home office than a business, one with bookshelves and lamps.
Eli walks over to his desk, turning on his laptop. He busies himself doing work while I spin around in the office chair, bored out of my mind. Cyrus sits reading a book from the bookshelf.
“Will you stop spinning? You are making me dizzy watching you,” Eli mutters.
“Well, can you give me something to do? I thought the whole reasoning I was here was to work?”
Eli says nothing, but I see his shoulders bunch up.
“You don’t want me here to work, do you?” I ask.
Cyrus looks over the top of his book at him before looking back down.
“No. Honestly, we have enough employees. You just sit there and look pretty,” Eli grumbles while I glare at him.
“Then why did we have to come back here? Cyrus said you barely even come in, so why couldn’t we have stayed back home?”
Eli growls, but I know I am onto something. They have other motives to bring me here that aren’t work-related.
“Is this because of Sam?” I ask him, and I see Eli glare at me over the top of his laptop.
“Part of the reason,” he says, looking back down.
“So, what I am supposed to do is just follow you around and do nothing? Or be some weird version of a housewife?”
“Well, you know what they say…” he mutters.
“No, what do they say?” I bite back, folding my arms across my chest, annoyed.
“That women have small feet so they can fit in all corners of a kitchen,” Eli says.
“That is the most sexist shit I have ever heard,” I tell him, reaching over and chucking a stapler at him.
It hits him in the head before falling on his laptop. He glares, his teeth pulling back over his top lip as his canines protrude. Even while looking scary and angry, I can’t help but chuckle when I realize he has a staple stuck in his head.
He pulls it out and goes to get up, his knuckles turning white as he grips his desk.
“You deserved it,” Cyrus says to him, looking over his book.
“Personally, I would have thrown the letter opener. Would have hurt more if it stuck,” Cyrus tells me.
Eli sits down and reaches over, grabbing the things closest to me and dumping them in the top drawer.
“So, are you going to tell me why I am here then?”
“You don’t need to know just yet.”
“And why is that?”
“Because Cyrus hasn’t marked you, and until he has, we won’t be having this conversation,” Eli says, leaving no room for argument.
Cyrus sighs loudly, placing the book in his lap and looking at him.