Chapter 23 - Felix
Felix
The intercom in my lair crackled to life.
“Felix to my office, immediately.”
My heart stopped. Completely seized, refused to beat.
It was Seb’s tone—all ice-cold authority. It had only been three hours since we’d tortured Wren, and I still hadn’t recovered from the stress of that. And now, Seb was using that voice. Sharp, unforgiving. I’d heard him use that voice on criminals. Never on me.
My trembling hands saved my work and locked the screens. The familiar hum of my servers felt distant, like I was underwater. Everything moved too slowly and too fast at once.
Priya sat on one of the basement’s sofas, her eyes immediately finding mine. She took one look at my face and set down her mug.
“Seb randomly wants to see me,” I whispered. “In his office. He sounds cross.”
She studied me for a long moment, her expression shifting from curiosity to confusion. Then something else flickered across her features—pity.
“I’ll come with you.”
I nodded, pathetically grateful. I felt like a kid being dragged to the headmaster’s office, needing my mum to hold my hand. But I wanted her. Whatever was waiting upstairs, I couldn’t face it alone.
We climbed up the staircases in silence, with me forcing myself to take regular deep breaths.
Seb’s office door stood ajar. He sat behind his mahogany desk, his laptop positioned directly in front of him. He didn’t look up when we entered.
“Why is Priya here?” Same lethal calm.
“In case I’m helpful to the situation,” Priya said, settling into a chair opposite. I lowered myself slowly into the one beside her.
“Very well.” Seb’s fingers hovered over the laptop keyboard. My chest tightened painfully. What on earth was going on? Had I missed something? Was I about to get fired?
He turned the laptop around.
What I saw made my heart stop.
Our own security feed from the basement, the timestamp clearly visible in the corner. I recognised the angle immediately—the wide shot from the camera mounted near the bookcase.
And I recognised the day too.
There we were on screen: Kit and me on the sofa, that grand feast spread across the coffee table between us. Video-me was laughing at something Video-Kit had said, our legs clearly pressed together with deliberate intent.
I couldn’t look away as Video-Kit suddenly stood, his hand finding Video-me’s back, pushing me urgently towards my lair. The intimate gesture, the obvious intention—it was all there, captured in crystal clarity.
My throat closed completely. Thank the heavens I’d wiped the security footage of what happened inside my cupboard.
So, this could be explainable. Right? Well, not the fact that the wiped footage was miss—
Seb leaned forward and pressed another key.
A different feed filled the screen. The ballroom camera.
Kit pinning me down on the training mat, his mouth trailing up my neck while my eyes closed in absolute bliss.
I hung my head, dying, my heart beating so fast I thought it might explode. I hated seeing pictures or videos of myself at the best of times. This was torture. I would never recover from this.
“Some excellent self-defence training going on right there,” Seb said, his sarcasm so sharp it could draw blood. “I’m so glad I suggested that plan.”
Liquid-quick, Priya’s arm shot out and slammed the laptop shut.
“Enough. If the point of this is to humiliate Felix, it’s working.”
Seb’s dark eyes stayed fixed on me, completely ignoring her. “Did you think I was so technologically inept I wouldn’t bother to go through footage myself, after we found that listening bug?”
I mumbled something pathetic about how, well, yes, sort of, because it was my job to do that.
“After what happened earlier, I was still suspicious of Wren,” Seb continued, his voice cutting through my shame. “So I got Flynn to help me load up the footage and start skimming through it.”
“Flynn saw that too?” Priya asked.
“Yes.”
The floor needed to swallow me whole. Flynn had seen Kit’s mouth on my neck, the desperate way I’d arched beneath him. Heat scorched my face, flames licking up it until I thought I might burst into actual fire.
Yet I forced myself to lift my head, mustering what little courage I had left. “Aside from that one time in the ballroom, all the other times were during our lunch break.”
My brain reminded me snarkily that the time we’d had sex in my lair after that gourmet lunch had definitely exceeded an hour.
“I’m not actually concerned about you slacking, Felix.” Seb snapped. “I’m concerned you didn’t tell us about… this… as soon as Kit went missing!”
“I didn’t think it was relevant.”
“Kit is gone!” The words exploded from him with such force that I flinched. “Everything is relevant!”
“Seb.” Priya’s voice turned razor-sharp. “You need to calm down. You’re only having this reaction because you’re terrified for Kit, but you can’t take it out on Felix.”
Something in Seb’s expression cracked. The fury drained from his face, replaced by something so vulnerable it made him look almost human. His shoulders sagged as if the weight of his own fear had finally caught up with him.
“I am terrified,” he admitted. His hands trembled slightly as he pressed them flat against his desk.
“Kit’s been gone over twenty-four hours and we have next to nothing.
Then I find that listening bug, and I learn our security has been compromised in our most sacred place.
And now I find out the pair of you were having this…
this whole secret relationship behind my back… ”
Priya reached across the desk and squeezed Seb’s hand. He placed his other on top.
I blinked. In all my time at Killigrew Street, I don’t think I’d ever seen Seb touch anyone apart from Flynn. The gesture looked strange, almost foreign.
“You have to understand—I’ve watched too many people I care about disappear from my life.
Over the centuries, I’ve learned not to get attached.
But Kit… Kit’s been my anchor for years.
The thought that he might be…” He let out a shuddering breath.
“And finding out there were things about his life I didn’t know, relationships he was hiding…
it makes me wonder what else I missed. What other signs I failed to see. ”
“We understand, Seb. We’re scared too,” said Priya, and I nodded.
Seb returned his gaze to me. “I apologise for my earlier behaviour, Felix. That was unfair of me. But may I enquire exactly what this is?” He tapped his laptop, voice devoid of its edge.
“Not the… things that obviously happened in your office. Those videos remained wiped, don’t worry.
Though I’m pretty sure that’s serious misconduct, at least.”
“I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out automatically. Guilt twisted in my stomach. The sneaking around had been thrilling at the time—stolen moments and secret glances—but now it just felt selfish. Childish. Stupid.
Though a tiny part of me wanted to remind Seb that he and Flynn did have sex on the roof once, and I’d caught it live through the cameras, causing me great trauma.
I dragged in a shaky breath. “Remember when I thought I was being stalked? It turns out, I was. By Kit.”
Seb’s eyebrows shot up.
“And when I figured it out, he told me I was his mate. That he’d known since the day we met.”
Seb went completely still. His mouth opened slightly, then closed again. He shook his head slowly, like he couldn’t process what I’d just said.
“That’s…” He shook his head again. “No. Kit would have told me something like that.”
“It’s true,” Priya said quietly. “I knew about it. The mate thing, and the stalking. Not the dating afterwards.”
Hurt danced across Seb’s face. Hurt that Priya had known and he hadn’t.
“You knew?”
“I caught him doing something suspicious and forced the truth out of him,” Priya explained.
“But still—”
“This isn’t about you, Seb.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Yes. I know that.”
“We were worried that everyone else knowing about it prematurely would be stressful,” I said, rushing to fill the silence. “Worried about Rory especially teasing us.”
Despite everything, Seb’s lips twitched slightly.
“But you can tell him now,” I continued. “It’s not fair that he’s the only one who doesn’t know, I guess.”
“Do you want to tell him?”
I stared at Seb. “Not really.” I couldn’t think of anything worse than having that conversation with Rory.
“I’ll do it,” Priya interjected. “And I’ll make sure he knows not to tease you, Felix.”
“Well, he’s hardly going to be in the mood for that right now anyway, is he?” I practically spat. “He’s going to be angry at Kit for not telling him, and he’ll take that out on me.”
“No he won’t,” Priya said firmly. “Trust me. If anyone can handle Rory, it’s me. You know that.”
“Fine,” I said, as if there was any choice in the matter. Then hesitantly, I added, “I was just thinking, when you said we don’t have many leads… I know that this could well be Marcus Vale, but surely Greywat—”
“We can’t just presume this is—”
“Just hold on.”
The words came out loud, surprising even me. Seb’s mouth snapped shut, his piercing eyes fixing on me with dangerous intensity. My breath caught in my throat, but I forced myself to continue.
“There’s something you should know. And this I should have told you yesterday, but I think it got lost in my brain in the panic and all the talk of the vampire.
” God, how much trouble was I about to be in?
But there was no way around it. “Kit was contacting wolves he thought might have information on Moira or might have been recruited for Greywatch. After White ordered us to stop investigating, I mean.”
Seb’s eyes bulged so much it looked like they might pop clean out of his skull.
Priya’s jaw dropped open. “Kit… breaking protocol?”
“That’s all he told me, really. I don’t think he was getting very far with it.” My hands fiddled with my hoodie’s drawstrings, twisting them this way and that. “He was frustrated. Said the wolves either didn’t know anything or weren’t talking.”
A horribly long silence fell. Seb schooled his expression back to neutral, but I could see the storm brewing behind his eyes. He nodded once, sharp and controlled.
“Have you told White that Kit’s missing?” I asked.
Seb glared at me. “Of course.”
I grimaced. I was surely one more stupid comment away from being vampire food.
Priya’s phone buzzed against the desk where she’d set it down. She glanced at it, then made a small, strange noise, eyes glued to the screen.
In a very quiet, very un-Priya-like voice, she said, “I think I might know who planted that listening bug.”