11. Poe
Poe
The hair on the back of my neck rose the minute we walked into the Royal Residence. Because Vanderbilt Holdings had such a huge presence globally, Ava had been invited to every charitable event during her stay in Europe, and she’d been obliged to accept most of them.
Tonight, we’d been invited to the king’s annual reception.
Everyone here had been hand-selected by the royal family, chosen because of who they were or what they represented.
The Vanderbilts were one of the richest families in America, the closest thing we had to royalty aside from the Washingtons.
I was surprised Ivy and Miriam Stuart-Washington weren’t in attendance tonight, but what did I know about the lifestyles of the rich and famous?
I’d been dressed up like the rest of them: one of Lycan’s suits, a pair of his fancy shoes, a watch more expensive than everything I owned.
But I wasn’t here to play pretend with Ava and Lycan.
I was made to blend into the background, present but not seen.
An accessory. A decoration. Not needed unless something terrible happened.
Which was a metaphor for my entire life, to be honest.
Despite the security detail and the presence of four Bastards, we were too exposed, too out in the open. That shit rankled my wolf in the worst way. But now that we were inside, a looming threat hung on the periphery, hiding in the shadows. My wolf picked up on it, even if I couldn’t see it yet.
“You sense that?” Lycan asked, leaning in close to my ear.
I nodded and looked around. When we arrived, we were escorted to the reception area, a massive room painted red, with detailed portraits of dead Danish royals hanging every few feet.
“We’ll get in line to meet the family,” Ava said.
“I’ll check out the surroundings,” I said before disappearing into the crowd.
Lycan whispered something to Ava that made her laugh, and I seethed with a hot, rancid envy that burned from my chest down to my gut. But I didn’t know who I was jealous of. Did I want to be Ava, the object of Lycan’s attention? Or did I want to be Lycan, pouring adoration on a beautiful female?
After our little breakfast fruit fight a few days ago, we’d kept our distance from each other.
I didn’t understand the compulsion to be near her, the yearning for freedom to touch her as much as I wanted.
My wolf practically purred anytime she got close, and that didn’t make any fucking sense.
Of course I understood the aroma that oozed from my pores whenever she got close.
It was marking scent. Bonding scent. The first signs of a shifter claiming its mate.
But that was the fucked-up thing. She wasn’t my mate. She couldn’t be. Not when she was already claimed by someone else.
Lycan hasn’t marked her. His wolf hasn’t claimed her.
Even if I’d gotten a hint of his bonding scent when he’d caught me on top of her in the kitchen, it hadn’t been more than a whiff.
There were a few mornings when she’d stumbled out of his room, reeking like Lycan’s sweat and sin and pheromones, but that confused me more.
For as much as it should have warned me away, told me she belonged to him and no one else, it had the opposite effect.
It made me want to lick it off her. It lassoed my heart like a fucking rogue bull and yanked me into despair.
I pushed all of those reckless thoughts into a box labeled “Fucked-up-things-Poe-wants-and-can’t-have” and searched for the source of my unease. It had to be here somewhere.
“Find anything yet?” Locust asked through the tiny earpiece.
I held my wrist up to speak into the mic near my sleeve. “No, but something’s off.”
“I feel it, too,” Locust said. “I haven’t transitioned yet, but if I had, my wolf would be pacing.”
Exactly. My inner beast hadn’t stopped since we got here.
Vampires had a certain stench to them. They were undead beings, reanimated using old magic.
It was why they needed to drink blood to survive, and Gods, they fucking smelled like it.
Sulfur and methane and decomposing corpse.
My wolf could pick it up miles away. Even though the reception area had been decorated with flowers and pumped full of something fragrant enough to hide the centuries’ worth of patina on these ancient paintings, a hint of death hung underneath it like a snake in the grass, waiting to strike.
Channing had passed along a more detailed picture of Evelyn Vane, along with a biography, as best she could manage.
The vampire had been secretive, preferring to hire people to run her businesses rather than do it herself.
But even before Marx died, she’d come out of retirement, which told me something else was at play and had been for a while.
She’d been active for at least fifty years, though she was probably older.
Marx had been turned in the seventies, and if Evelyn was his biological sister, I had to assume she’d been turned around that time, too.
What would I do if I were her?
I’d be pissed about my brother dying. I’d want Ava as revenge.
But I’d be smarter about it than Marx, who’d laid siege to the pack lands and waited for an opportunity to strike with the bludgeoning grace of a battering ram.
Evelyn didn’t have a powerful nest of MC vampires at her disposal, at least not that we knew of.
She was a survivor. A ghost who hired out her dirty work and hid in the shadows.
Hard to do in the one-percenters club where everyone knew everyone.
She’d schmooze and flatter and coerce, and when no one suspected her, she’d deal a quick blow. Fatal. Powerful.
The part about Ava’s mother didn’t make any sense. What did Priscilla Vanderbilt have to do with anything? She’d been gone for two decades. And why bring her up when she met Ava in the bathroom? In fact, why not take her when she had the chance? Why all the cloak and dagger?
It wasn’t time yet. She’s waiting for something.
But for what?
Lycan and Ava took their turns meeting the Danish royal family with polite handshakes and gentle smiles. The king said something that made both Lycan and Ava laugh before the queen rolled her eyes at her husband’s joke. I kept searching.
“Rotten luck, isn’t it?” came a soft, silky voice from beside me.
I turned to face a thin brunette with pale skin and bright hazel eyes, wearing a floor-length black dress and shimmering ruby jewels. I didn’t know her, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know me.
“They get to meet the royal family, and you’re stuck playing bodyguard.” She frowned in mocking disapproval. “Did you draw the short straw?”
She had a heavy British accent, but I couldn’t place the region. Perhaps London or Brighton, but I didn’t have an ear for it. Something about her intrigued my wolf. He sat up at attention and yipped, urging caution. He wanted to get closer, if only to figure out what her game was.
“I’m not playing anything,” I said, returning my attention to Lycan and Ava, who were now shaking hands with a long line of dukes and dames and whoever else the royals deemed worthy enough to stand next to them.
“Oh, come now,” she said, setting her glass down so she could stand next to me. “I can see messy relationship dynamics a mile away.”
I ignored her and cleared my throat, continuing to scan the crowd for any potential threat.
“Let’s see.” She hummed and narrowed her eyes. “There’s heartache. Sorrow. Yearning.”
At my scowl, she chuckled low and quiet. “But desire, too. And longing. Passion.” Ava turned, making the ring on her third finger visible, and the stranger gasped. “Oh, a marriage. How dreadfully captivating. That must sting.”
“Excuse me.” I moved to walk away from her, but at the sudden shift, the scent of something decayed hit my nose. I froze and glanced down at her. Was it coming from her? Or was it someone else nearby?
She didn’t look like a vampire. Usually, they had sunken cheekbones and soulless, evil eyes. She almost looked normal. So where was the stench coming from?
“You ignore it.” She sighed. “You shove it down. You pretend it’s nothing when it’s everything. You think no one wants you, and you’re right.”
What the hell? How was she doing this? I let my instincts take over, allowing my wolf to surface if only so he could get the measure of her. He didn’t like what he saw. She wasn’t human, that was certain, but he couldn’t decide if she was a vampire. Maybe a witch? A siren? A fairy?
“You don’t need to worry about who I am,” she said, reaching out to take my arm. I gasped, the contact rattling through me, a crushing wave of energy coating my skin, holding me in place. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. Only stare at her.
My wolf bucked against my skull, slamming his body into my mental fortress until it cracked. The reception faded away. My agency dissolved into nothing. I was enthralled by the creature touching me, hers to do with what she would.
“Oh,” the woman said. “Oh, that’s terribly inconvenient. A half-formed bond. You knew it the first time you saw her.”
I tried to speak, but my lips wouldn’t move.
“You must know she’ll never want you like she wants him. He had you and left you all the same,” she said. “It would be better if you left them now, before you’re in too deep. Safer, too. Going down this road will only lead to blood and destruction.”
I gritted my teeth and pushed with every ounce of my magic, trying to rip her talons out of my brain.
“No one has ever been able to run from her,” the witch continued. “She always gets what she wants.”
Who? Evelyn?
“Leave the girl, and you can have the wolf.”
I forced myself to focus on breaking whatever hold she had on me. My body wasn’t my own, and my wolf growled as he tore his claws into her power.
“Stay, and she’ll make you watch.” Sweat beaded on the woman’s forehead, her voice now straining.