Chapter Ten
Of all the places Jonathan wanted to be on a cool Friday evening, sitting in the stuffy drawing room of his rented townhouse listening to his siblings loudly argue was not high on the list. Unfortunately, that was exactly where he found himself, dryly recounting the events of the evening, starting from the moment he had joined Felicity on her patrol, ending right after she’d killed the fledgling but before he had made the monumental mistake of kissing her.
“There was no maker?” Lucina asked. She was sitting on an upholstered divan with her golden curls loose around her shoulders and her knees tucked beneath her voluminous sky-blue skirt. She furrowed her brow. “I see why you are concerned.”
Helena laid a hand on Lucina’s shoulder. “The Wild Hunt must be informed.”
Unlike Lucina’s shorter stature, Helena’s towering height cut an imposing figure, an impression reinforced by her preference for masculine attire, such as her current choice of dark-brown trousers and a white silk shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal impressive forearms.
“Well, this is quite the predicament.” Lucina tilted her head back and forth and continued in a singsong voice.
“Our brother is smitten with a hunter.” Her soft smile was at odds with the intense blue of her irises.
She was younger than he was but had spent most of her existence untethered to a maker.
That lack of discipline had made her dangerously unstable.
“Marcus told me to watch her,” Jonathan said. “I was only following orders.”
Orders that were now in jeopardy because of his intentional avoidance of the Sloan House. The cure to his illness was within his grasp, but retrieving it meant confronting Felicity and the way he desperately wanted to kiss her again.
Lucina bared her teeth in what might have looked like a smile to a human but was an unquestionable display of dominance between vampires. “Orders. Is that all you are good for, brother?”
He held back a retort by sheer force of will and instead bowed his head. “I thought Marcus would want to know the hunter was patrolling, despite our reports suggesting she was only a scribe.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he was drawn to Felicity.
He pressed his knees together to keep from tapping his heels on the floor.
She was out there somewhere on patrol again.
He was certain of it. She would return to the scene of the attack and attempt to track down the maker of the fledgling.
The damned woman was going to get herself killed.
Not that he cared. Her death would only accelerate his plans. He simply did not want her to die before he could make her suffer properly. Yes, that was all.
Lucina slid off the divan lap and approached him, as graceful as a ballerina but as deadly as a tiger. “You have taken an unacceptable risk, Jonathan.” With each word, the temperature in the room seemed to drop.
He’d once read about a species of sloth with a fuzzy coat, enormous eyes, and a lethally venomous bite.
Lucina was much the same. Her diminutive stature and preference for voluminous, ruffled dresses that concealed her adult proportions combined to put her victims at ease long enough for her to strike.
“You’ve had your fun,” she said. “It is time to retrieve the codex and end your association with the hunter.”
He extended his fangs. “I am sick of being told what to do.”
She levitated a foot off the floor. “Is that a challenge?”
Behind her, Helena crossed her arms and scowled.
He withdrew his fangs. “No.” His lips were suddenly dry. He licked them. “I need more time. The hunter believes a maker is creating fledglings and letting them roam the city unfettered.”
“Interesting,” Lucina said. “What do you think, Helena?”
“It’s possible.” Their older sister ran a hand through her short hair. “But our brother isn’t telling us something.” Her eyes narrowed. “Have your symptoms worsened, Jonathan?”
He bit back a groan. Of course she would ask that. She was as bad as Marcus and Cordon, even though she was unmated.
Lucina scowled. “Jonathan has been too busy with his precious hunter to notice symptoms.”
“There’s nothing going on between Felicity and me,” he said.
Helena narrowed her eyes. “Do not avoid the question.”
He would be forever grateful to Helena for the patience and care she’d shown him when he’d been an unruly fledgling, but her concern felt like a cage descending around him. “I’m fine.”
Lucina tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Let him be, sister. We cannot expect him to admit to that which he has not yet accepted.” She yawned. “I’ve had enough for one night.”
Helena crouched down and allowed Lucina to climb onto her shoulders.
After they left, he leaned back and stared at the fire.
Watching Felicity fight had been quite revealing.
He had assumed, based on his observation and investigation of her family, that she had received only minimal training, but after witnessing her exceptional reflexes, he knew that was not true.
The fire cracked and popped. The sound reminded him of the snapping of the fledgling’s jaws as the man had attacked Felicity.
The vampire’s pale skin had been mottled with bruises, which meant he had likely been left alone for quite some time.
Like Jonathan, the creature had been abandoned by his maker.
Marguerite.
He was sure he’d caught her scent during the battle, although he’d left that detail out of his report.
One whiff of incense and beeswax was not proof.
The possibility remained that she was the maker of the fledgling, but given how tightly she’d controlled her nest, he could not imagine her creating more vampires, only to allow them to roam the city without her guidance.
He pushed to his feet and returned to the room where he spent his daylight hours.
Despite what he’d told his sisters, he felt like there were hundreds of knives cutting him apart from the inside, and there was a stickiness in his chest that no amount of coughing had dislodged.
He removed his coat and shirt, then inspected his flesh in the moonlight.
There were several angry wounds covering the upper part of his chest and his hip.
Injuries that should have healed hours ago.
He probed a section of purple-yellow skin and winced at the shooting pain.
According to his brothers, the third phase of mate atrophy included unexplained bruises.
Impossible. It was much too soon. Cordon and Marcus had been decades older when they’d reached the third phase.
Jonathan had gone too long without drinking human blood, that was all.
He would change his clothes and visit the Grand Cirque.
There was a flirtatious acrobat, Amelia the Aerialist, who’d previously suggested she would be amenable to his patronage.
But as he imagined lowering his mouth to the neck of the muscular beauty, her shape twisted and warped until it was Felicity in his arms, and he was suddenly certain that only the hunter’s blood would ease his thirst.
The damned woman was ruining his life. It didn’t matter how delicious she smelled, or how entertaining she was to tease, or how her determination reminded him of himself before he’d allowed apathy and bitterness to bloom in his heart.
He shook his head. His sisters were right; he’d become too involved with the hunter. It was time to end their association. He would find a victim to restore his strength, then break into the museum and steal the codex before his symptoms worsened.