Chapter 27
twenty-seven
Kaiden
I pushed my cousin out so that Eryn could run into the bathroom.
I then grabbed my towel from the floor and cinched it around my waist before letting one very rude, very soon-to-be homeless witch, back inside.
I hadn’t even had time to process what just happened.
One second Eryn was squirming in my arms, an absolute fucking dream, and now I was here, half-naked, trying to calm a panicked Ezra.
He was losing it. Incoherent and ranting about not understanding how it happened. How what happened? I still wasn’t sure what was on that paper he clutched either.
“Ez, Ezra! Calm down, man.” I forced my legs into a pair of pants and tracked him as he paced near the door.
The mirror on my dresser took that moment to also make itself known and began to vibrate. The edges of the black cloth covering it waved but it didn’t fall. Fuck, did no one want me to enjoy my bonding? It finally fucking happened, and we couldn’t even bask. Or do it fifty more times.
“They took her,” he said again, desperate.
“Who?” I asked, ignoring the mirror. Whoever it was could call back. “They took who?”
All of us were right here. Eryn’s head peered out of a cracked bathroom door; another towel wrapped around her body. Her worry mingled with mine as we watched my cousin unravel.
“Rani!” His voice was strained. “Kol has her. It’s all in the letter.”
I snatched the letter in question, tearing a corner.
Thankfully, it didn’t damage the message.
It was a ransom note. Whoever was watching us that night I killed Dalton—or however else Kol got his information—told him that Rani was important.
She wasn’t just an ordinary human. He might not know that she was now aware of our world, but that bit of knowledge wouldn’t really matter in his plans.
He only needed to know that using Rani as bait would lure out the prey he’d been trying so hard to snare.
I slowly turned to look at Eryn. Her face was pale, but fury burned in her eyes. The emerald I so loved to taunt into igniting was already shimmering with tears. She heard.
“We have to go get her, cuz,” Ez pleaded. “She doesn’t stand a chance against them.”
I nodded, already forming a plan. The letter demanded Eryn come alone to retrieve her roommate, but that wasn’t going to happen.
She wasn’t even going to leave this apartment.
I fully anticipated a fight on my hands when I told her she couldn’t join our hunting trip, but I’d be damned if I let her fall into Kol’s grubby hands after all we’d survived to keep her out of them.
“Dress up, Ez. We move out in ten.”
My cousin disappeared to strap on every weapon he could find, and to shove our bag of explosive potions into the truck.
I pretended to ignore Eryn as she swiftly made her way to the closet and then back in the bathroom to change.
Let her get dressed, she wasn’t stepping one fucking foot further than the living room.
The mirror began its rattle again, and I ripped the cloth off with a snarl, “What?”
My mother’s pristinely held-together image took shape, and I knew before she spoke that even more shit was about to be thrown our way. She only sat that still when anger filled every inch of her body until it locked up like a mannequin.
“Mother, I don’t really have the time right now—”
“Did you, or did you not kill the vampire heir?”
Fuuuuuck. Now really wasn’t the moment to get into all that. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Eryn leave the bathroom, but she kept out of sight and silent. Smart girl. My mother would have no qualms of shifting her animosity to her once she finished with me.
“It was self-defense,” I tried to explain. “He attacked us first.”
Colorful curses filled the room from her side of the mirror, and my brows rose. I didn’t think I’d ever heard my mother lose her composure quite like that. She was always a picture of pure poise, even when she was flaying you alive with her scorn.
“I know I didn’t raise you to be that stupid,” she snapped. “You know better. And now Kol Von Bauer is claiming before the tribunal that he was there and witness to your unprompted attack. He’s calling for a trial!”
Things just kept getting better. In fact, this was probably Kol’s plan all along.
Maybe not Dalton’s death, per se, but incriminating me in front of the other factions; definitely.
That Dalton was no longer alive to prove he’d been coerced into attacking was just another nail in my coffin.
Without proof, I was as good as dead, and so was Eryn.
I had to get her to the compound. With our bond complete, my family would protect her. There was still a risk my death would tear her apart from the inside, but with how new it was, I hoped she’d survive.
“What if we can offer the tribunal proof that it was self-defense?” Eryn asked, stepping up beside me.
She met my mother’s glare straight on, and I sent a feeling of pride down our newly forged bond. This was the partnership I dreamed of, and I couldn’t have asked for a better half.
“Short of bringing the vampire back from the dead, which isn’t possible, little girl, I’m not sure what kind of credible proof you could offer,” my mother sneered.
“Would a video work?” Eryn countered, and if I thought my mother wanted to strangle me before, she certainly considered it now.
“You allowed yourself to be filmed?”
I met Eryn’s gaze, sending a little telepathic message along with my jumbled mix of emotions.
What are you up to?
I wasn’t aware of any video from that night. Too focused on the betrayal and keeping her safe, I fucked up. Although, if that video could prove I was innocent, it was an acceptable mistake. This time. But I would have to be more careful in the future.
Eryn raised a brow but didn’t respond to my message. I understood what she wanted anyway. Opening the black cloth I still clutched in my fist, I readied to sever the connection with my mother.
“Don’t you dare,” she warned.
Too late.
“I’ll get you your proof,” I swore.
The fabric fluttered over the mirror and settled in one dark sheet, covering the glass and silencing my mother’s outraged screeches. I let out a breath, releasing the extra stress that call added on my already pressured shoulders, and then spun to look at Eryn.
“Please tell me you weren’t bluffing.”
She shook her head. “Rani was filming that night,” she answered, voice choking on her friend’s name. “I don’t know whether it's the proof we need, but it's the only record of what happened that might counter the lies spun against you.”
This brilliant, genius girl. I swooped down and laid a gentle kiss on her lips.
Maybe she’d see the intelligence in my plan and could be reasoned with.
Doubtful, but a guy could hope. Ezra wasn’t going to like the abrupt change either, but what I had in mind was the best we had to work with.
In the living room, Ezra waited by the front door.
His anxiety was beyond obvious, as was his outrage when I told him my plan.
“I’m going after her, cuz.” He bared his teeth and made to push past me.
I shoulder-checked him and added a little extra buffer with my shadows. They were going to get a lot of use tonight, I was positive.
“You are my second,” I said, carefully controlling my tone. “That means you do as I say. If you can’t follow my orders, Ez, you’re doing more harm than good.”
He was loyal down to his bones; I had no doubt about that.
Rani worked her way under his skin, but he knew what he had to do.
He clenched his jaw and offered me one more pleading glance, but I held firm.
The temperature of the room lowered until I saw my breath.
Still, I wouldn’t bend. With a final dip of his chin, he conceded, and I clasped his shoulder.
“Get the phone safely behind these wards, and then come join me. We’ll destroy them together.”
The plan was for me to go to the exchange point—the spot where Kol thought Eryn would give herself up for her friend.
But my bond wasn’t going to be there. Using my shadows for coverage, I would whisk Rani away, probably back here where it was safe, and then I’d return to reap absolute carnage on those who dared to threaten me and those I cared about.
At the same time, Ezra was to go to the dorms to find the phone so we could secure the proof needed to save my life.
If, by chance, Rani had her phone on her, then I’d kill two birds with one stone and have them both back here behind the wards.
If I was lucky, I’d kill far more than two birds tonight.
There was just one more thing I had to do.
Nowhere in that plan did I hear what I would be doing. Eryn finally spoke down that mental bridge, her voice disarmingly calm.
I recognized the beginning stages of rage building in her, and knew I needed to end this before it became a full argument.
We didn’t have the time. But telling her what to do and expecting obedience wouldn’t work with her.
I didn’t think she had an obedient bone in her body, not even when I had her naked and beneath me. Especially not then.
“You’re going to stay here,” I told her, preparing a thick band of my shadows for what came next. I settled it over the door, sealing her inside. This wasn’t going to go over well, but it couldn’t be helped.
“No, I’m not,” she argued.
“It's a trap,” I tried reasoning with her, but she wouldn't hear it. “A very specific trap. For you.”
“I’m aware, but if this Kol asshole wants to kidnap my friend just to get me to introduce myself, then I’ll fucking go and say hello!”
She tried to fake me out and run around me. It was cute but unsuccessful. My legs and arms were much longer than hers, there was no way she was getting past.
“You’ve actually already met him. He’s the one who stabbed you.”
She froze, and a slow, maniacal glare spread across her face. “Even better.”
We were running out of time, and it was obvious Eryn wasn’t going to back down.
Forced to use more of my shadows, I wound them around her and essentially tied her to a chair.
Her screams of rage echoed in the empty condo and drowned out my apologies.
She’d forgive me. Eventually. When I returned with her best friend.
Until then, I left a kiss on her forehead and stepped through the thick shadows still over the front door. My magick would hold until I traveled too far out of reach, which would be almost to the meeting point on the edge of campus. I hoped that was enough time for her to calm down and see reason.
Miracle. I needed a miracle.