Chapter 16 Lazriel #2
“No worries. I actually liked it a whole lot.” I grinned. “Showed just how much you truly care about me. You thought I was gonna spiral after The Fade thing, and the aftermath of that vampire attack had you worried I’d take it further.”
“It might have crossed my mind. But you didn’t.” Her eyes shone. “And that says a lot.”
Shit. I wanted to lean into what she was saying, to revel in it.
But I couldn’t—not with these stalkers in our midst.
I led her toward her bike and moved as though I was going to mount mine alongside her.
The second she threw her leg over hers, I took off, darting down the backroad and then through the trees with the full rapid-fire propulsion of my vampire speed.
The wind whipped harshly around me, twigs snapped, my feet scorched the dirt and grass, I dodged low-hanging branches, the world around me almost completely stilling with the speed I was traveling.
My senses carried me forward right toward my targets.
Predators mistakenly believing we were prey.
How wrong they were about to be proven.
Cocksucking fools.
I locked in on them visually, the moment I felt myself passing through an invisible magical barrier, the air around me reverberating with brief disturbance before I made it to the other side.
Three shadows hidden in the dark of night in the middle of the surrounding forest—or so they believed.
Vampires.
All wearing dark hooded cloaks and metal masks that only left their eyes visible.
A brief scenting and study of their energy told me they were near Ancient status—perhaps six centuries old each.
I slammed into them, causing a domino effect that ripped all three of them off their feet in moments and had their hoods blowing back in the process.
As one reacted faster than the others, flipping back to his feet, I snagged him around the throat and drove him into the nearest tree.
I called my claws to my free hand as I felt the other two recovering all too quickly as near-Ancients were want to do.
They approached from my left side and I held my wolf claws at the ready.
Hold up.
The guy wasn’t resisting.
He didn’t even make a move to fight back at all.
He just stared at me… curiously?
What was—
I took him in, while not taking my eyes off the other two in my peripheral vision.
My hand around his throat had his three thick, gold chains digging into his skin. His fingers were also covered with more gold—so many chunky rings. And even his ears had hoops and dangling earrings.
“Do you really want to risk my wrath for Derek? The first three he put up to coming at me already faced a takedown and then arrest by the Guardian Movement. All because that little shit couldn’t shake off the humiliation of a well-deserved beatdown.”
“We’re not here on behalf of that purist,” one of the guys to my left spoke.
I looked from Gilded Guy to see the one with a very severe buzzcut had spoken.
“We mean you no harm. Your companion neither,” he went on.
“In fact, harm is the opposite of our intent,” the one with the long, peroxide-blond hair spoke.
“Perhaps you could allow cooler heads to prevail,” Gilded Guy strained to speak against my constricting hold.
“And advise your companion to do the same,” Buzzcut added.
I felt it then—something I would have noticed sooner if I hadn’t been focused on the three of them. When there was a threat in my midst, all my focus went right here, my instincts highly attuned to just that.
But now as he mentioned it, Velra’s magic nearing us rolled over me.
Peroxide swung his head just as her shadows began to spread through the area, essentially surrounding the two of them.
In the next moment, she materialized from the shadows and a puff of her purple Dark Fae magic.
Wow. I loved it when she pulled from two different magical power sets at the same time.
It was really fucking impressive. Sylas had told me that it was also hard to achieve so seamlessly, especially for somebody with only a few years’ worth of practice from having both abilities.
She was much more powerful and capable than she knew.
The shadows closed in around them as she stood off to the side of her creation and gave me a chin lift—I’ve got your back.
I turned my attention to Gilded Guy, driving my claws into the bark right beside his head, taking out a massive chunk of it. “If you’re not with Derek, who the fuck are you?”
As he stared at me, I didn’t pick up on anger, or even actual ill intent.
Neither he nor the others were in a predatory state of mind.
They hadn’t even dropped their fangs.
Their vampiric features hadn’t been called either—they were still in their fully human visual state.
“Creswyn,” he spoke.
I started.
That word.
No.
It couldn’t—how?
“What?” I demanded, my voice coming out rougher than I’d intended due to the shock and the emotional punch that came along with that word.
“Creswyn,” he repeated.
I released him and took a couple of steps back.
“Lazriel?” Velra queried.
It wasn’t exactly like me to stand down.
“They’re good,” I told her, gesturing at Buzzcut and Peroxide trapped within her shadows.
“How do you know?”
I sucked in a breath. “My mom sent them.”
Creswyn was the name of the refuge that she’d hidden me away in shortly after my vampiric abilities had surfaced and my true hybrid nature had come out.
It was something that had caused a whole lot of havoc among our pack—and beyond, to be honest. War had broken out within and other packs had even used it as an opportunity to attack a pack in the midst of a civil war.
And many had been hunting me then, until my mom had formed an alliance with some key vampire clans in exchange for a stake in her power as Alpha, and a way to hold peace and stop the wolf attacks of smaller vampire clans that had been happening at the time.
And, yeah, they’d also liked the idea of her having a son who was kind of like a supercharged vampire with my wolf abilities along for the ride as well.
Over the years, long after I’d no longer needed to be secluded at Creswyn, the name of that place had become a codeword of safety between us.
“Why?” I asked. “Why does she have you watching me?”
Velra dropped her shadows and Gilded Guy walked to the other two, joining them. Velra moved beside me, eyeing them with a whole lot of scrutiny, still tensed and at the ready.
Peroxide answered, folding his big arms across his chest and informing me, “Rhyza is unreachable for the next several days, so in that time she wanted to ensure you were protected.”
“Unreachable how?” I asked.
“She’s in closed-door meetings with the Shifter Stabilization Unit.”
What? She hadn’t told me that. For years now she hadn’t left her home that was located in the middle of nowhere. She’d basically been a hermit ever since she’d retired and left pack life behind.
And now she was suddenly at a political and high-level supernatural governance summit?
The Shifter Stabilization Unit had been the Lupan Stabilization Unit until recently, when the Dracoryn Realm had gone to war and new leadership had been installed to force out the tyrannical rulers of House Titanus.
Those who’d suffered under their control had left the Realm—dozens of them.
So the leader of the Unit, Jaxon Silver—and now Vorzyr Titanus as well—had needed to update their mandate to include other shifters, not only wolves.
What the fuck was going on?
“About what? She’s not part of the political landscape anymore. She’s removed herself from it all.”
“Things alter, evolve,” Buzzcut said.
Rather evasively.
She’d sent them, and I knew my mother, I wouldn’t get anything out of them—at least not freely. And the fact they were here at her request and her allies meant I wasn’t going to try to extract information using harsher methods.
But, shit, she could be incredibly cryptic, especially when it came to protecting me.
It either meant that she was in transition with whatever had drawn her back to wolf politics, that she was still gathering information regarding what had led to her sending protection my way, or she already had the full picture and didn’t want me to be made aware in case I went off the deep end.
In all fairness, I had responded that way in the past whenever a threat had come our way.
Not only was it in my nature, but it was my fucking right to protect her and myself, and anyone I cared about, from an act of aggression or a threat against us.
“All right,” I said. I reached out to Velra and laid my hand on her shoulder. She’d been incredibly quiet during all of this. “We’ll head back to the Academy now. Guess I’ll be seeing you around.”
“She wishes you to continue operating as normal, focusing on Wraeven and your studies,” Gilded Guy told me. “Don’t concern yourself with this. It’s being handled.”
“Of course,” I forced myself to respond. “I have no doubt with my mother’s involvement.”
They each gave me a chin lift, then nodded politely at Velra.
“Let’s go,” I told her.
She didn’t protest or resist, just turning with me as we headed away.
But as soon as we were through that magical barrier wherein they could no longer hear us and vice-versa, she eyed me as we trudged through the forest. “What are you up to?”
“Me? Up to something?”
“You don’t back down. That’s well-documented.”