CHAPTER TWO
ALEXIUS
Alexius watched her enter her room, wishing she would look back one more time, then hating himself for the urge.
I need more space from her.
He scoffed at himself as he heard her door lock. He wasn’t troubled by the door locking. He was frustrated with his own thoughts.
More space? He could have given that to her tonight, yet he couldn’t resist the urge to follow her to River Street to stalk her and watch her as she watched people and enjoyed the fresh air.
Ten months without anyone but the human staff, and even they weren’t enough of a distraction. He had never felt truly boxed in while in his own home. He could spend years living alone and only have a close human companion like Rupert.
He couldn’t last a year with her.
And it wasn’t her fault. It was all his.
Alexius went to his garden. Perhaps that needed his tending.
He looked up at the gorgeous moon, full and bright.
Some of his flowers only bloomed on good nights like this.
He checked on them, but nothing seemed to need him.
Not a single errant weed that somehow got tracked in as a seed on a shoe or the tiniest sign of wilting on any leaves or petals.
Grumbling, he left his garden and went to his office.
The admin was all accounted for. Rupert and the others were efficient.
There were no emails or other items for him to deal with.
Everly was equally efficient at getting rid of anything there.
Not that anything was coming. She barely had work to do because he had nothing for her now.
They trained four nights a week. She fiddled with the electronics.
He poked around in his garden. They watched shows, movies, and illegal videos of Broadway productions and concerts they couldn’t visit.
He would always give a generous donation to whatever organization he could after the illegal videos, but he didn’t stop consuming them. He was under house arrest when he had done nothing wrong, and he was slowly losing his mind being stuck in his house.
With her and her fiery hair, those waves looking soft and silky, begging for his fingers to run through them.
He growled at himself and locked himself in his office. He started pacing, a predator trapped in a cage that was much too small.
I have faced hunger before. I have overcome it.
But something had changed in him in New York, and this hunger was unlike any he had ever fought with.
When he woke up in a rage, it had been because of her blood.
He’d been enraged that someone had hurt her.
It took him a few weeks to piece that together while they both healed from what happened at Isaiah’s estate.
Every time he went back to the thought that Kallias was going to kill her, had already hurt her, he felt it boiling up once again, the dark rage, unfathomable and endless.
He took a deep breath, pulling himself back from the thought and feeling since he knew she was currently safe in her room, talking to her brother probably. He thought instead of what happened after the rage.
He remembered her brave expression in the face of his rage as he had turned toward her. Even in the deep end of his berserker nature, he had no intention of hurting her. He had been looking at her for more injuries. Looking for where the smell of her blood had come from to begin with.
His chest had hurt when he found the injury and knew it was worse than she was letting on, but she would live through it. That had been enough for his body to go back to the healing sleep he would never have been pulled from in any other circumstance.
All he had wanted was to pull her close and make sure nothing hurt her again. He collapsed on top of her instead.
I’m possibly the oldest vampire alive and the most efficient warrior of any of the ancients that are around or still alive… and a little redhead has gotten me soft enough to fall on the ground on top of her.
It wasn’t the way he had ever wanted to fall on her. He growled and hit a hand against the wall in frustration as a thousand thoughts entered his mind about how he really wanted her to be underneath him on the ground. To see all that blazing hair spread out over the floor.
Or his sheets.
Since New York, the attraction was stronger, as if his blood had decided to tell his heart and head they had no more power. He wanted. He craved. He was fucking hungry for a woman he couldn’t have, not if he had a scrap of honor in him.
He was on fire, and she was the source of the flame. His control was sketchier than it had been in centuries, harkening back to a time when he would have run to Jacob for help. But Jacob wasn’t there to help him anymore. He had to find his own ways to deal with the burning lust and hunger.
His fangs ached as he considered how blissful it would be to sink them into her soft skin again. A memory he tried to lock away—her in her bed, his fangs in the delicate flesh of her thigh, the sounds she made.
Stop thinking about it. Think of anything else. Isaiah and Jacob. Rupert.
I fucking hate being a vampire sometimes.
“I need to get us out of this house,” he said as he finally sat down at his desk once again. “Perhaps if I feed one appetite tonight, the other will leave me be…”
He prepared himself some blood and fed, nursing the glass until dawn, when he knew Rupert would check in with him.
Alexius finally decided to test out Everly’s newest addition to his security.
He could now see all the security cameras from any screen in the house.
He just needed to use a remote or keyboard to punch in the right code for the right app, and that pulled up every single one.
He hadn’t been paying attention to the time and was a little surprised to see it was already dawn, the sun out on the property of his home.
And there was someone at the door. He frowned as Rupert took the visitor, who handed off a message with a wax seal.
“That’s going to be for me. And it won’t be Isaiah.” Alexius had a guess and figured out the zoom feature as Rupert stood there, holding the envelope while discussing something with the deliverer.
“Ah, the witches. They must have seen Everly and me out last night and decided it was time for me to introduce her.” He sighed and turned off the app, losing his view. He needed to start writing a response so Rupert could take it back up to the messenger.
A moment later, Rupert entered his office, unsurprised to see him.
“This is from—“
“The coven, yes?” Alexius held out his left hand without looking up from the preliminary draft of his response.
“That’s right.” Rupert chuckled and handed it over. “You were playing around with the nice app for the cameras Everly set up, weren’t you?”
“I was. Bored.”
“You and Everly have been bored for a couple of months now,” Rupert said diplomatically.
He was putting it lightly. Every day, it was a little worse.
He and Everly were quietly going crazy near each other, but without anyone else to regularly engage with, they suffered through it just for contact.
Vampires weren’t magically required to be social, but there was something about spending even a modicum of time with one’s own kind. Less holding back than around humans.
And while he had the perfect humans who he genuinely cared for…
they were older, and they needed sleep. He and Everly couldn’t keep them up on a vampire’s schedule and expect them to also get their tasks done and remain healthy.
It was too much. He was protective of them in his own way, and keeping them in his life as long as they possibly could be was important to him.
He would guard their health even if they didn’t want to look after their own.
Alexius stopped writing his first draft and cracked the wax seal to read the message.
It was as he thought. Since he had started allowing Everly to roam, they watched her and made sure she seemed under control, letting her find her feet.
But since it had been a few months now, that implied there was intent for her to stay long term.
They just wanted to meet her and understand a bit more about her presence and where she came from.
There was, however, no reassurance that they weren’t planning on asking her to leave.
He trusted the coven. They’d had this deal for a long time, and no one outside of himself and Isaiah knew the real details of it now.
His humans knew there was a deal, and it had always been honored.
That was all they needed to know, though Rupert knew more details than he’d ever told anyone.
Jacob had known, but Jacob was gone. His son had been his second when he had diplomatically met the coven back when Savannah was a young place but had the water he needed.
He had never lived in a place that was landlocked, but it was hard finding a nice place that didn’t have too many other vampires.
He’d liked the warm air and knew it was the place for him.
So, he had come to Savannah very early, and the coven was also just settling into the place.
They came together. He would keep out all other vampires or keep them in his home and warn off the moon-cursed.
An errant werecat on the outskirts wasn’t a problem for them, but they didn’t want a werewolf pack, so there wasn’t one.
The witches would shroud the city and keep out enemy witches and most of the fae.
Some slipped in but could never settle long enough to cause problems. Only a few were allowed to really stay and do business, under the understanding that the witches could and would throw them out.
Every other supernatural being was forced to answer to the coven, and if the coven was attacked, he was more than willing to help deal with that threat as well, since they were his allies.
The Shroud, though, was an impressive piece of magic and the only reason he wasn’t attacked at any point over the last few centuries.
It obscured the location of certain supernaturals in the city.
Even the fine noses of the werewolves couldn’t properly track a protected supernatural’s scent in Savannah.
No spell would pinpoint a protected supernatural, either.
And his home was completely obscured, no matter who was in it.
His home wasn’t the only place so obscured.
So was the coven’s main home, where they could retreat if enemies found their other homes in the city and its outskirts.
He knew, in the grand scheme of things, he came out better in the deal in many ways, but when things got bloody, the witches were basically human.
They needed his power in Savannah. The first hundred years were rough when it came to other supernaturals trying to come in and claim the city for their own or to defeat those who lived there.
Now, everyone knew to drive right through and not stop.
He pondered all of this as he rewrote his message back to the coven.
He would take Everly to them two hours after full sunset, with her well-fed before being in their presence.
He also added a simple line about how he was sorry for putting off them meeting a member of his household for as long as he had.
“Household…” Rupert hummed. “They’re going to notice that choice of words, Alexius.”
“They will. It will tell them before we’re even in the same room that her presence in Savannah is nonnegotiable. A member of my household can’t be sent away.”
“But they can force you to restrict her to the property, and that won’t be healthy for her, not now, after she’s gotten herself to the place of being able to rejoin the world. She’ll go mad.”
We are already going mad.
“I want her added to the spell,” Alexius said, sighing. Rupert’s eyes went wide. He’d surprised the old man with that. It was a surprising thing for Alexius to say. He hadn’t really known he was going to say it until he did. But it felt right.
“We’ll see if I can pull that off. She’ll be the first vampire ever added to the spell.
” He sealed the letter back with his own wax, a little kit he rarely brought out.
Only for the witches did he think it was mandatory.
Savannah was ruled by him on one side and the witches on the other.
Day and night. They did certain things on principle.
“Good luck,” Rupert said, taking the envelope. “Get some sleep, please. Clearly, you’ll need it.” He quietly shut the office door without waiting for a reply.
Alexius only grunted and turned on the app to watch Rupert pass off the reply to the witch at the door.
There was so much he needed to tell Everly in the first hour of the night. He made a list so he wouldn’t forget anything before heading to bed himself.