11. Chapter 11
11
I exchanged a nod with Bastian before turning to retrieve my purse from the floor of my car. I slipped into the passenger seat of the Tesla while Bastian eased into the back. Gavin settled in the driver’s seat, barely waiting until my door was shut to back out of the parking spot.
“What happened?” he asked as we sped down the street, heading in the general direction of downtown Seattle. The vampire eyed the shifter in the rearview mirror while flawlessly navigating the road.
“They knew,” I said, buckling my seatbelt. “Somehow, they knew I wasn’t just heading out for a trip to the vet.”
Gavin continued to stare at Bastian.
“It wasn’t me,” Bastian claimed. “I was in cat form. I didn’t have any way to communicate with them.”
“It wasn’t him,” I echoed. “He jumped between us when one of them—a wolf—attacked me.”
“A house cat fighting off a wolf,” Gavin commented dryly, his focus finally shifting to the street ahead. “Impressive.”
Bastian jutted his jaw forward, looking like he was debating speaking. “I wasn’t a house cat, then.”
“He was a panther,” I added, trying to be helpful.
Gavin’s stare snapped back to the rearview mirror. “You have multiple forms?”
Bastian nodded.
Gavin’s eyebrows rose. “You’re of the original line.” It wasn’t a question.
“Veris is my father,” Bastian admitted reluctantly.
I turned in my seat and gaped at Bastian. “ King Veris is your dad?”
King Veris was the head of the House of the Sun and the asshole who had ordered the global strikes on all vampire queens two decades ago. He was the bastard responsible for the deaths of my mother and sister—and likely for Javier’s as well, though I never let myself think of him as dead. He had disappeared, and I would believe he was still out there, undead, until either I saw his lifeless body, or I died myself. And one day, I would kill King Veris for what he had done.
Bastian nodded once.
“So, what—” I scoffed. “You’re a shifter prince ?”
Snorting a laugh, Bastian shook his head. “I’m a bastard.”
“No arguments there,” I muttered.
Bastian settled a level look on me. “I mean it in the literal sense. My mother was one of Veris’s many mistresses. He has given me nothing and is nothing to me.”
“That’s not entirely true, is it?” Gavin commented. “You’re of his line. He gave you the ability to wear multiple forms and to shift outside of the full-moon window.”
Bastian snorted a laugh. “Which meant I was automatically sent to serve in the Sun Watch after my first shift,” Bastian said, implying he had been a part of Veris’s army since he was a kid. “No choice. Thanks, Dad .”
“You’ve defected now,” Gavin noted. “They’ll kill you on sight.”
“No shit,” Bastian said.
An uncomfortable silence clogged the interior of the car. For minutes, I tried and failed to think of something to say.
Gavin jerked the car over to the shoulder, parking but not turning off the engine. He unbuckled his seatbelt and twisted in his seat, extending an open hand to Bastian. “Give me your wrist. I have to draw the counter-sigil on you so the wards don’t melt you.”
Horror twisted my features, and I looked from Gavin to Bastian. “ Melt you?” I mouthed, my brows rising.
Sighing, Bastian stretched out his arm toward the undead vampire. Gavin grabbed his wrist in one hand and, with his other, quickly nicked the tip of his pointer finger on one of his razor-sharp fangs. I licked my lips, instantly salivating at the sight of immortal blood. Gavin scrawled a complex symbol on the inside of Bastian’s wrist. If I were Bastian, I would not have been at all comfortable with the haste with which Gavin drew the symbol. I mean, this was to prevent melting , after all. But Bastian didn’t seem the least bit bothered.
Gavin let go of his wrist, faced forward once more, and pulled out onto the street, not bothering with his seatbelt. “You’ll remain under guard until Sophie is strong enough to force your confession ,” Gavin told Bastian. “Once she has confirmed your loyalty, you’ll be welcome among us.”
“What if he has nothing to confess to?” I asked, looking from Gavin to Bastian and back, confused by Gavin’s wording.
“He’s referring to your will , a vamp’s mind control ability,” Bastian explained, seeming to pick up on my ignorance before Gavin could.
“I know that ,” I snapped.
Undeterred, Bastian added, “And a confession is when a vamp uses their will to force another to speak the truth.”
I turned my attention back to Gavin. “Why can’t you just do it?” He had clearly used his will on me back at the bar.
“I cannot,” Gavin said. “Only a queen can exert her will over another immortal.”
My eyebrows rose as understanding dawned. “How do I get strong enough to do it?”
I wanted to force his confession and confirm his loyalty ASAP. I may have trusted Gavin more than Bastian based on species alone, but we were still strangers to one another. Wherever I was headed from here, I wanted at least one person by my side who cared more about who I was than what I was.
“Immortal blood,” Gavin said, glancing at me sidelong.
Bastian cleared his throat pointedly. “And . . .”
Gavin inhaled deeply through his nose, then released the breath. “Blood that’s laced with high levels of dopamine. Technically, it’s the magical properties lacing an immortal’s dopamine that fuels a queen’s powers.”
Snippets of my dreams from two nights ago flashed through my mind, first the one with only Gavin in my bed, and then the one with the seven god-like immortals worshipping my body, Gavin and Bastian included among them.
I licked my lips, and when I spoke, my voice was rough. “How do you lace blood with dopamine, exactly?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.
“Sex is the most efficient method,” Gavin said, watching me out of the corner of his eye.
“With—” I flushed, my chest, neck, and cheeks heating as arousal sparked deep within me. Could he tell? Could he sense my body’s reaction to the thought of being with him? “With you ?”
Gavin’s nostrils flared, and his grip on the steering wheel tightened. “It would seem you’re not entirely opposed to the idea.”
My blush burned hotter at his confirmation that he could scent my arousal.
“Not just with him,” Bastian said. “A queen requires a harem to maintain her power. One immortal isn’t enough.”
“A harem ?” I repeated, twisting in my seat to gape at Bastian.
A wicked smile twisted Bastian’s lips. “You like that idea, don’t you, Soph,” he said, leaning forward until his mouth was a few inches from mine. “I can see it in your eyes. You’re imagining what it would be like to have seven immortals at your beck and call, waiting to fulfill your every desire.”
“Seven?” I whispered, again thinking back to the dream. “Is it always seven?”
Bastian’s amusement faded as he searched my eyes. “Why?”
“I had a dream,” I said, too stunned to hold back the truth. “About seven immortals.”
“When?” Gavin asked, luring my attention back to him. “The other night, after you tasted my blood?”
I gulped and nodded. “Why does that matter?”
“ Prophecy is another of a queen’s powers,” he explained. “Was I there, in this dream?”
My cheeks were on fire, but I nodded shakily. “And . . .” I glanced at Bastian.
His eyes widened as understanding dawned. He smirked and settled back in his seat, looking utterly pleased with himself and not doing a damn thing to hide how my revelation of his apparent destiny to join my harem affected him. He was hard as a rock.
“A shifter as a queen’s consort,” Gavin murmured. “That hasn’t happened for centuries.”
“For nearly two millennia,” Bastian corrected. “Not since the curse.”
I didn’t know what they were talking about, and I was growing more confused by the second. “Damn you, Javier,” I grumbled, facing forward once more and crossing my arms over my chest. He should have explained more of our world to me, rather than keeping me in the dark. I silently fumed as I stared out at the towering buildings of downtown Seattle.
“What did you just say?” Gavin asked after a long moment of silence, his voice low and controlled.
“What?” I glanced at him, then shook my head dismissively. “It was nothing.”
“Javier,” Gavin said. “You said his name. Do you know him? Do you know where he is?”
I shook my head. “He raised me after . . .” I blinked several times, annoyed by the sudden sting of tears. Javier had raised me after the House of the Sun revolted and slaughtered all the vampire queens, my mother and sister among them. “But he’s gone now.”
“ The Javier?” Bastian said. “The vamp slated to be the Prime Consort to the next High Queen?”
But Gavin overrode Bastian’s questions with another. “What is your true name, Sophie?”
I sighed, sensing it was finally time to let go of my closest-held secret. I wasn’t just some random living vampire who somehow fell through the cracks. I was the only living daughter of High Queen Diana, making me the rightful heir to the throne of the House of the Moon.
“My name is Luna Sofia Teresi Athanasiou,” I finally admitted aloud. My voice was quiet, but it was as though those hushed words carried with them the weight of the world, and once I had spoken them aloud, I felt a million pounds lighter.
Until the silence within the car became suffocating.
It was Gavin who finally broke the silence. “Did you know?” he said, his voice razor sharp and carefully controlled. I glanced at him, about to ask him what he meant, but he was staring at Bastian in the rearview mirror. The question hadn’t been for me.
“Did I know we’d found the last heir to the throne of the High Queen of the House of the Moon?” Bastian said, releasing a humorless laugh. “No, we didn’t fucking know. We just thought she was one of the lesser vamp queens who escaped.”
Gavin guided the car into an underground parking garage and pulled into a stall near the entrance, then shut off the engine.
I looked out the windshield, staring hard at the concrete wall in front of the car. I could feel both Gavin’s and Bastian’s weighty stares.
Again, it was Gavin who shattered the increasingly tense silence. “Luna—”
“Sophie,” I corrected. “I haven’t used my birth name since Javier . . . well, for decades. It’s not who I am anymore.”
“Sophie,” Gavin amended. “May I bite you?”
I jerked my head to the side to look at him.
“If I bite you, I’ll be able to track you should we ever become separated,” he explained. “It would be quick, just long enough for me to take a bit of your blood and implant some of my saliva into your bloodstream.” When I said nothing, he added, “You’re too important to lose again.”
I searched his face, looking for any hint of duplicity. What did I have to lose, really? Life as a nobody? A slow, painful death from malnutrition? It wasn’t like I could ever return to my apartment or the library. Doing so would be suicide.
I pushed up my sleeve and unsnapped the leather cuff bracelet I wore to protect the extremely sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist—the long-term effects of Javier’s monthly bites. He left no physical scars, thanks to him always healing the bite wounds with his immortal blood, and the sensitivity had faded somewhat. I’d had the leather branded with the phases of the moon in homage to our immortal house.
I extended my arm toward Gavin, offering him my wrist. He traced the unblemished skin with the pad of his thumb, almost like he could sense the invisible scars, then raised his gaze to meet mine. I was surprised by the depth of sorrow shadowing his eyes.
He didn’t look away as he raised my wrist to his lips. My chin trembled when his elongated, razor-sharp canines pierced my skin, not because of the sharp sting of pain, but because of the memories it dredged up to the surface of my mind of Javier doing this same thing time and again.
It was over almost as soon as it started. Gavin bit his own thumb, then smeared the welling blood over the open wounds on my wrist, just as Javier had always done to stop the bleeding and hasten the healing. But then Gavin did something Javier had never done. He bit into his own wrist, far deeper than he had mine, and offered it to me.
The rich, tantalizing scent of Gavin’s blood filled the car, far more so than when he had nicked his thumb to draw the sigil on Bastian, and I immediately started salivating. My heartbeat sped up, my every sense focusing completely on the two curved lines of crimson marring the tan skin of his wrist. Instinct took over. I couldn’t have stopped myself from accepting the offered blood, even if I had wanted to.
I licked my lips and leaned forward, taking hold of his forearm and hand, and sealed my mouth over the open wounds.
The taste of his blood, like chocolate and spice, exploded across my tongue, and I moaned, instantly aroused. I closed my eyes, drawing more of Gavin’s blood into me. My hips rocked, seeking. The flow of blood slowed, the cuts in Gavin’s wrist closing. I bit down, greedily digging my teeth into the wounds to open them back up.
Gavin let out a pained groan in the seat beside me.
The sound was a shock to my senses, and I tore my mouth from his wrist and flung his arm away. “I’m so sorry!” I gasped, covering my mouth with one hand and staring at him in horror. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Except, the heat in Gavin’s eyes making them glow like silver moonlight had nothing to do with pain. “Let’s get upstairs,” he said, his voice deeper and rougher than before. “The loft is guarded and warded. You’ll be safe there until I can arrange transport to the Moon Sanctuary.”
I nodded and swallowed my remaining embarrassment. A quick glance at Bastian’s face revealed nothing but his guarded expression. I averted my attention to my wringing hands, ashamed not only of how I had reacted to Gavin’s blood but that Bastian had seen it.
Gavin exited the car, then pulled the door to the back seat open. “Let’s go, shifter.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again and stepped out of the car.