Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
CAELAN
Love. The missing piece was love. Not missing on my part. But how was I to tell Evie I loved her when I wasn’t sure what love was? For a Lord, love meant power. Loyalty. Dominance.
Not the kind of soft, tender thing I knew Evie craved.
I swore under my breath and rubbed a hand through my hair. Every time she walked away, I itched to run after her, capture her, and force her to stay.
That couldn’t be love. This intense feeling of need, of want. I wanted her to stay and wanted her to wake up next to me every single day. I wanted her face to be the first thing I saw each morning and the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes each night.
“Fuck.” I sank onto the couch in my study and buried my face in my hands.
A sharp knock on the door before Soren poked his head in.
“What?” I snapped.
The bastard laughed and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He’d taken his suit jacket and tie off and untucked his shirt, lending a rumpled, befuddled air about him.
Soren collapsed into the chair opposite me. “Those two women are harridans.”
A surprised laugh burst from me. “That they are.”
“Evie seems worse.”
I took no umbrage. Soren didn’t sound angry or hateful, more like he was making a hedging observation. “She has reason to be more volatile than Moira. The Lords are sniffing at her door. Anyone would lash out.”
“But she doesn’t,” he observed. “Only when you poke at her.”
Seymour, my carnivorous bespelled and bloodthirsty Red Dragon flytrap, thumped down from the windowsill and made his way over to the couch.
Soren sucked in a breath as he watched Seymour make his way over. “Goddamn. Evie is everywhere in this Keep, Caelan. Don’t your people wonder about her?”
I grinned and rubbed the top of Seymour’s main trap. “Let them wonder.”
Soren made a noise deep in his throat. “You’ve changed.”
I looked up. “So have you.” Soren and I had never had an antagonistic relationship, but we’d never been friends. Nor had we always seen eye to eye. But Soren was a good leader in his territory, and he’d never made a move against me. Maybe things could change in the future between us.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and closed his eyes, letting out a heavy breath. “Yeah. I’m tired, Caelan. When does it stop being so difficult?”
Seymour thumped his pot again, sailing from the arm of the couch right into my lap. I caught him before he could do himself harm and settled him onto my lap.
Soren choked. “That thing is poisonous, isn’t it?”
“If it bites you, yes.”
Soren huffed a laugh. “I never thought the day would come when I’d see you cuddle a carnivorous plant.”
“Cats and dogs…” I murmured.
“Living together,” Soren added.
“Complete anarchy.”
Soren crossed an ankle over his knee and cleared his throat. “Other Lords will make their move soon.”
I stilled. “Are you one of them?”
Soren’s dark chuckle echoed through the room. “I’m afraid I have my eye on another unattainable woman.”
“The vampire, Soren?” I’d seen the way he looked at her during the planning dinner when Gianna was here. “I took you for a purist.”
“The heart wants what the heart wants.” Soren looked around the room. “You got any whiskey?”
“By the back wall.”
Soren groaned as he rose. A moment later he was back with two glasses, amber liquid swirling in their depths. He handed me one and settled onto the loveseat, stretching out his length on the couch.
“I’ve begun to wonder about the other Lords before us. Do you know if there are written histories?”
“Perhaps to see if other Lords have taken non-shifter brides?”
Soren gave me a dark look. “She doesn’t want me anyhow, so the point is probably moot.”
“Oh? What happened?”
Soren looked away, his gaze focused on a spot outside the window. “I fucked up.”
“I already assumed so. Most problems are fixable.”
A sharp shake of his head. “Not this one. She is polite but cold and refuses to return my texts or phone calls.”
“Have you tried breaking into her house or destroying her shop?” I asked dryly.
A crack of laughter. “I’m afraid I’m much less physically destructive than you are. If I were more like you, perhaps Moira would still look at me like she once did.”
“Is there another woman?” The Lords were not without constant company.
Some took advantage of it and had revolving doors of female companionship in and out of their Keeps.
I’d never wanted for a woman, but my tastes had always been much more discerning than some of the other Lords.
And Soren was known to have a different woman on his arm every week.
When he didn’t answer, I knew. “Ouch.”
“I don’t know why,” Soren murmured. “Every woman pales in comparison to her, but I thought this was part of being Lord.”
“The revolving door of women?” I probed before shaking my head.
“The good people we have in our territories would much rather have a Lord who cares for and protects them. Women serve only to inflate our egos, and many of them are traps, designed to weaken our resolve and soften our reign, so another Lord can swoop in and steal our territory.”
Soren snorted. “Paranoid much?”
I stared at him. “Have you learned nothing from the past year? The other Lords refuse to sanction a relationship between Evie and me because they are afraid of us holding too much power.”
Soren drained his glass, rose, and brought the decanter back with him, stopping to fill my glass again before his own. “I’m surprised Rowan isn’t here.”
Soren looked far too tired and beat down to betray me, and the male had changed, so I took a chance and told the truth. “Donovan is sniffing around his territory looking for weaknesses. Leaving might be detrimental.”
“Fucking asshole,” the other Lord snarled. “Wonder where I’m at on Donovan’s list.”
“He’ll go for Ben next. Him approving Ben’s ascension was a move to take our attention off his recent antics. Give it a few months and he’ll start sniffing around.”
“You believe Ben will prove successful?”
“I have no doubts.” Ben would more than prove worthy and he deserved his own territory, but my reasons for sending him were less my unshakable confidence in his abilities and more of a personal nature. Evie liked Ben, and I suspected he more than liked her.
A huge dick move on my part, but I didn’t regret the decision.
“If you marry the Floromancer, your hold on this region would be unshakeable.” Soren put his glass on the side table and rose.
I studied him with curiosity, never having seen this side of him. “You’d support the union?”
Soren flashed a grin as he headed toward the door. “I’m not interested in getting my head torn off, so you’d get a yes vote from me.”
I tipped my glass to him. “Good to know.”
Soren gave a little salute and headed out the door.
I picked Seymour up and headed down to the gardens at the back of the property, stopping at the stone bench I’d placed a few months back. Once I sat, the pot hopped off my lap and thumped away, no doubt in search of delicious bugs or maybe a dinosaur. Who the hell knew with Seymour.
Every time I sat out here, I felt like Evie sat right next to me.
Her power had soaked into the land, mingling with mine, claiming a piece of the Keep even without her physical presence.
My shifters adored this part of the Keep, and I’d stumbled on young lovers hidden among the flowers more than once.
A heady fragrance floated through the air, the deep scent of moonflowers and night blooming tobacco tantalizing my nose.
I let out a heavy breath and basked in Evie’s flowers.
Everything weighed on me these days. Evie’s constant rejection and the ever-growing danger of the Lords’ attention on her, as well as the Chimera threat that had gone suspiciously quiet.
An overwhelming sense of doom had settled over me, and I knew the writing was on the wall. If I didn’t press Evie to accept my advances, she’d find herself in a much worse situation.
As soon as the thought occurred, I laughed at myself. Evie would allow no one to push her around or force her to do something she did not want to do. Not even me.
I’d have to go about this in a different way.
My normal mode of running headfirst at an issue was not going to help me with Evie.
Nor would it help me with the Chimera threat.
A Chimera could appear as anyone, even my own people, and there was little I could do to prevent someone from infiltrating my Keep, other than paying rapt attention.
None of the Lords realized Halvar was overtaken until it was far too late.
And with the Chimera’s rapt attention on Evie, I couldn’t afford to relax around anyone.
My magic strained against the leash I’d kept it on.
If anyone had the slightest hint of a changing scent, I’d know immediately.
Scent was a shifter’s most powerful weapon, and the only reason I hadn’t noticed the Halvard deception was because I’d never met the Lord alone.
We’d always been in a room with several others, where a change in scent wouldn’t always be noticed when several others intermingled.
I drained the rest of the whiskey and set the glass on the bench. “Seymour.”
The dull thump of his pot made me grin. Of all the gifts I’d received during my years as a Lord, this was my favorite.
Even if Evie had enchanted it to constantly bite me.
I rose when I spotted Seymour thumping his way back over, scooping him up on my way back into the Keep.
Those problems would hold for another day.
Figuring a way to win Evie’s heart would take a lot longer.