24. Ezra #2
“I don’t have time for this today, Alfred,” I muttered, speaking to the butler who’d been in my family’s employ for centuries, before I’d ever existed. As a young boy, he’d sworn his fealty to me.
He’d been more like a father to me than the man who had contributed half my DNA.
“You care about her,” he said. “Our lady.” Gods, that title. I’d been the lord of this manor for as long as I could remember, but I’d never once had a single woman be called the lady of this house. Even before, when I’d thought I’d found a woman I’d cared about, she’d never earned that right.
I looked away, smoothing a hand down my face, wondering when he’d started calling her ours.
Of course, I’d witnessed them all growing closer to Rina over the last few days—it had been impossible to miss.
But how could I have not seen them getting this attached?
As attached as I was. “Of course I do. Fates, I never had a chance.”
“So why haven’t you claimed her?” Alfred asked, as the rest of my circle stepped into the room.
“Because you know what will happen the moment I show up with her at court,” I said, loud enough for all of them to hear. “The moment they find out she’s mine.”
There was a reason that Mikael’s mate had thrown himself off a cliff when presented with those damn stuffy, stuck up vampires.
He’d never wanted to live in that world—mate or not.
He’d never had a chance to fall in love, and he’d still lost everything.
Mikael’s mind had fractured. There was no coming back from that loss, that emptiness of living in a world without your mate.
Normally, if one’s blood mate died, the vampire soon followed.
But because they hadn’t completed the bond, they’d been in the same state of purgatory as us: not quite whole, not quite their own.
I hadn’t brought him up again with Rina because I didn’t want her to see him like that. Not to mention he was dangerous.
The vampires who thought I was on the wrong path, crusading against the other monsters of the world when I should have been focusing on ways to increase our numbers—to cement our supremacy.
That wasn’t me—and it wasn’t how I wanted to rule.
But if they got ahold of Rina, they could force me to do anything.
How could I keep her safe every moment of every day? How could I ever risk leaving her alone, knowing someone could destroy me with one threat to her?
“What is this?” I asked all of them—Aldric, Victoria, Scarlet, Raven, and Julian. “An ambush? An intervention?”
“Do you need an intervention, Ezra?” Raven asked, raising one black eyebrow.
Maybe.
“How long do you really think you’ll be able to keep her hidden away here, Ezra?” Victoria piped up. “And do you think that’s really fair to her?”
I looked away. “I don’t know, okay, Vic? Is that what you want me to say? That I have no fucking clue what I’m doing with her?” That I couldn’t keep my hands off of her, couldn’t keep my mouth shut around her, and it was all my own damn fault?
That we’d agreed the sex meant nothing, and despite us fucking on every surface in the manor, that we’d never brought it up again?
Or how she’d brought a feral, wild baby animal into my manor, and I hadn’t said a single word. How could I, when I’d seen just how happy it had made her, with how quickly the two had bonded?
The concept of familiars always baffled me.
Mainly because vampires couldn’t forge those kind of relationships with beasts, even bats that shared our DNA.
But I understood now. There was a soul deep connection between them, an understanding that came without needing to share words.
Like they recognized each other, and that was it.
Just like my body had recognized she was my mate and had known there would be no other for me. Not in this lifetime.
“She deserves to be included,” Victoria argued. “In this conversation—in all of it. She deserves to know.”
“She deserves to be able to go back to her life in Pleasant Grove, surrounded by the people she loves and cares about,” I insisted. “That’s what she deserves.”
And yet, the thought of her face from earlier, after I’d tried to push her away and she hadn’t let me, came into my mind, unbidden. Her eyes, full of concern, not a hint of hate or disgust.
“Have you asked her?” Scarlet asked me, tilting her head to the side, her dark red hair rippling with the motion. “Have you asked what she wants?”
“I don’t have to. I already know her answer.” What happened before didn’t change that.
“Victoria mentioned that she was still looking for a way to break the bond,” Aldric said. “We’ve all seen her in the library, toiling endlessly over books.”
I bit my tongue to avoid saying something I’d regret. “Yeah.” The feeling of hopelessness settled into my gut. I was a fucking fool.
Julian frowned, his fingers drumming against my desk. “What about the coven?”
I stiffened. “Absolutely not.”
I didn’t want to see her. Hadn’t even told Rina about her, the woman I’d once thought I’d marry. The woman I’d once thought could be my everything, and now meant nothing to me. It had been decades, and that wound—even scabbed over and healed—still felt raw.
It was one I had no desire to pick open—not even if it was my only hope for freeing Rina from me.