Chapter 2 Connor
CHAPTER TWO
connor
Iflick the ornate lighter open, the glow of the flame brightening the pitch-black room. It cuts off a second later when I snap the lid closed.
“I told you she’d be back,” I say when he slams the door shut, his booted feet loud as he stomps across the creaky wooden floorboards. He comes to stand at my side, the both of us peering out the circular tower window, watching as she struggles to drag her luggage along the rocky ground.
She’s been smart enough to walk through the main castle of the university, cutting her walk in half—but she still has a way to go, and the ground is uneven and gravelly, as well as mostly uphill. The heels and clothes she has on are horrendous choices, but I’m guessing that was all her mother.
I haven’t had the pleasure of spending a lot of time in Elizabeth Hamilton’s company, but the time I have spent with her was more than enough.
“You didn’t want to help her?” I ask, annoyance coating my voice. I flick my lighter open once more before tucking it away in my pocket. “We need her to like us.”
He gives a rough scoff. “I don’t give a shit if she likes me.” I look up, catching his dark smile. “Makes it more fun if she fights a little bit.”
“Jesus, Vaelor.” I grunt, wolf bristling against my skin. “We don’t want to drive her away.”
He shoves his hood off, revealing patrician features, pale skin interrupted only by the dark runes decorating one side of his face. His eyes, golden and luminous, swirl with flecks of silver as they lock on mine.
“She deserves to be punished,” he sneers, his lip curling.
There’s a whisper of dissent, but both my wolf and I agree.
Felicity should never have touched that other female.
Not when she belongs to us.
It doesn’t matter that Felicity didn’t know, or that, as a human, she doesn’t feel the pull as we do. She’s ours. My wolf rumbles out an agreement, claws pricking underneath my skin. I focus on the small pinch of pain, using it to center myself and leash the beast.
“When do we move on her?” I ask, eyes flicking back out the window.
Felicity is a good distance away now, but my shifter vision means I see it clearly when she stumbles, almost face-planting the gravel.
She has left her long black hair loose, The wind whips it wildly around her face as she grapples with her bags, yanking them behind her.
Vaelor rests a hand on my shoulder, fingers drumming against my skin thoughtfully. “We already have,” he murmurs, his voice a dark rasp. “I made contact, and now she’s intrigued. She’ll be looking for me.” He slides me a devious look. “And you…”
“Me,” I echo. “What about me?”
“She’s furious with you.”
A growl rumbles through my chest, and I stand up, shaking off his touch.
I can feel his magic reaching for me, cold fingers stroking inside my chest. It took years for my wolf to accept the touch as normal.
But now I just glare at him, annoyed at his attempt to soothe me, like I’m an errant child on the verge of a meltdown.
“I didn’t do anything fuckin’ wrong,” I grind out. “She is the one who did something wrong!”
“I know.” Vaelor’s still looking out the window, watching her, that icy touch still moving through my body. I try to shove him out, but he knows all my tricks, that strange energy dodging every mental push I level in his direction.
We’re an odd pair—a warlock and a wolf shifter. But Vaelor and I met when I was six years old. A feral pack of hyena shifters had attacked me when I ventured too far from home. They tore me apart and left me for dead, but Vaelor, then eight, stumbled across me.
Literally.
The magic he used that day was dark—forbidden—but he’d entwined our souls permanently, sealing me to him and to this earth. We’ve been together ever since, branded as outcasts by Vaelor’s choice.
Warlocks didn’t accept me; shifters didn’t accept him.
It wasn’t something we could hide, the soul-bind. The golden swirls in Vaelor’s eyes were a distinctive giveaway of what he’d done to save my life.
For me, the only sign of what had happened was a rune seared into my skin over my heart—right where Vaelor had laid his hand when the deed was done.
“We’ve been here, waiting, for two years.
She was with someone else, Vaelor! She gave away pieces of herself that weren’t hers to give away.
” Residual anger builds inside me at the memory of that human girl lying between my mate’s legs.
She’d touched Felicity, tasted her, heard the sounds of pleasure she’d made as she came.
“We should’ve claimed her the first day she arrived.” I hiss now, turning a snarl on Vaelor.
“You know why we couldn’t,” he counters calmly. “Our chess pieces weren’t yet in play. If her grandfather didn’t agree, we would never have stood a chance without her family—and yours—interfering.”
“My family understands the importance of fated mates,” I say stiffly. His brow wings up, making me wince. It’s the dream of every shifter to find their fated mate, but to the Thornton family—to my father—the value still comes a close second to his ambition.
He hated the connection Vaelor had cemented between us, especially knowing it meant there was no way that I’d ever be accepted within my family’s political circles.
I could never follow in his footsteps, taking the shifter seat on the Paranormal Council, and fighting for our family’s legacy—not if I had a warlock attached to my side.
Still, he kept me close, reluctantly accepting that there was no separating me and Vaelor.
The only reason we were even at Bartholomew together, despite Vaelor being two years older, was because I’d refused to attend if he weren’t at my side.
My family had been forced to pay his tuition on top of mine, and my father had been furious about it.
I’d compounded on that, fucking with every single plan he’d had for me when I blackmailed him into signing a deal with Frederick Hamilton—one where the Thorntons backed Frederick’s campaign for the human seat on the council.
I told my father that unless it happened, I’d go public with every dirty deed he’d ever done in the shadows of the political world.
My father sat on the Paranormal Council, but there was no way he’d keep his seat if I let loose every piece of evidence I had collected throughout the years.
Hamilton hadn’t had any problem throwing his granddaughter away like a prized cow at an auction, but it had taken two long years before he and my father had agreed on any terms. It left me wondering if maybe my father had been fucking with me on purpose, knowing how much it hurt to have my mate right there, and be unable to claim her.
“You need to go for a run,” Vaelor observes, his eyes gleaming with amusement. I clench my hands into fists, fighting the urge to send one sailing straight into his smug face.
“Did her grandfather agree to the match?” I ask instead, pacing the length of the tower, fighting the urge to shift.
“He knows he won’t get the votes for the human seat on the council if he doesn’t give up Felicity,” Vaelor murmurs back. “Your family has some use after all.”
I huff out a sound of amusement through my nose. “They might despise you, but their ambition and greed far outweigh their hatred.”
Vaelor tips his chin in agreement, returning his focus back out the window. “She made it to her dorm,” he announces. “Some girl helped her in the end. Ann something.”
“Annette,” I mumble back, too keyed up to really care as I do another loop of the room. “When do we claim her?” My wolf adds his growl to the question, the sound rumbling loudly throughout the room.
Vaelor doesn’t turn from the window. “Halloween. There’s a party that night out in the woods.”
“You sound like you have a plan.”
There’s a still pause, his eyes firmly fixed outside, before he exhales heavily, and I know she’s finally disappeared from sight.
Warlocks don’t have fated mates, not like shifters do, but the soul-bind has affected Vaelor in ways we never could’ve predicted. And the bastard might pretend to be unaffected, like he’s made of stone, but Vaelor isn’t a gargoyle, and we both know it.
He is just as obsessed as I am.
“I do,” he says, turning to face me. “At the party, she’ll be distracted, unaware. You’ll approach her, and I’ll slip this in her drink.” He pulls a vial out of his pocket, the liquid shimmering a violet purple.
My eyes narrow, danger rising like a bubbling pool of lava in my blood. “What’s the last option?”
Vaelor’s eyes are glinting with sinister intent as he lifts a hand, rubbing an inked finger over his bottom lip. “Half the fun is the surprise, Connor.” He tucks the vial away again, sending me a devilish smirk. “You’ll have to wait and see.”