Chapter 12
VALENTIN
By mid-morning, I have dismantled a competitor’s biotech subsidiary with a single redirected investment and approved the quiet absorption of a nightlife chain that will triple Umbra’s influence in Manhattan within the quarter.
These are the arenas in which I am most comfortable. Power, clean and precise, measured in outcomes rather than impulse.
And because the fires of Netheris would not leave me alone, I drained a CEO with a predilection for hurting female employees and dropped his husk-dry body from low banking clouds.
It took care of my satiety and disposed of a persistent problem.
It was still beneath me.
Any one of my Twelve could have handled it. But I needed the violence.
Because of her.
The memory roars back.
Her arm in Malachi’s hand. The scent of her skin shifting under another male’s proximity. The violence that surged through me in response.
If it were not so grotesquely out of character, it would almost be amusing.
Malachi is not merely a subordinate. He is the oldest, most disciplined of my Twelve, his loyalty tested across centuries of bloodshed and diplomacy. There are few beings I trust more implicitly.
And yet I nearly tore out his throat.
Over a human. Over a bounty hunter who smells wrong.
I lean back in my office chair and stare at the skyline through the glass wall.
What in Netheris is happening to me?
I tap into Malachi’s mind, aiming for casual intrusion. He is with her in the lower levels, as instructed, reviewing surveillance feeds.
His thoughts are disciplined. Structured. Entirely professional.
I skim them anyway because apparently I am no longer in control of my baser impulses.
Has he touched her again?
No.
He would not dare after this morning. My blood running through his veins would have healed his wrist within the hour, but the memory will last longer.
Five minutes later, I tap in again.
Any progress?
Nothing yet, my lord.
I sever the connection and rise, pacing the length of the office.
Perhaps the solution is simplicity itself. Take the little bounty hunter to bed and purge this madness from my system.
Sink my cock into her dripping cunt and my fangs into her beautiful throat. Sate myself on her screams until she learns the costs of her defiance.
The thought is raw, visceral and immediate, driving my body to aching response.
Just as swiftly, I crush it with a sneer.
I will not soil myself with the wrong-smelling little fox, no matter how effectively she provokes me.
Lyra is the one I should be imagining beneath me.
Lyra is the one whose throat I should taste with intention. Whose body should offer penance for six years of abstinence and ball-crushing blue balls.
When I find her.
Not if.
I close my eyes and allow the fantasy to unfurl. Controlled. Deliberate. Possessive.
She will stand before me in this room, defiance stripped away and replaced with understanding. I will take my time with her, make her feel the weight of every year she stole from me, bite every inch of her body and save her throat until last.
Break her slowly until pride dissolves into submission.
And when she was adequately pliant, I would mark her properly this time, claim her, teeth sinking deep while my hand disciplines her resistance, forcing her to her knees until she understands what it means to belong.
To be a fated chosen of a Five Blood vampire.
My cock swells to stone, pressing against my fly as the image sharpens. Dark hair against black marble. My hand at her nape. Her thighs spread, arms pinned, the mark burning between us as I drive into her and shatter Morrighan’s curse with blood, seed and inevitability.
My hand closes over my aching shaft, thoughts of impaling her… of breeding her, dragging a muted groan from my throat before I can stop it.
She would be a woman by now, not a trembling girl. Dark rose cunt to go with plump rose lips.
I look down in the vision, expecting Lyra’s wide dark eyes lifted in reluctant surrender.
Instead—
Ash-blonde. Winged brows full of defiance. Plump lips daring me closer.
Eira.
The image snaps like bone. I surge to my feet so abruptly the chair skids back and slams into the wall.
Unacceptable.
I will not allow her to infiltrate thoughts meant for another.
How fucking dare she?
I tap into Malachi’s mind again, this time without subtlety, ignoring his flinch as I growl.
Report.
A pause.
Then: The bounty hunter has found something.
Irritation flares, sharp and welcome. A distraction from the more dangerous impulses threading through me.
I could be in the database room in a single breath. Could stand before her and assess her expression for lies.
Something in me knows that would be unwise.
Instead, I reach for my phone.
My fangs throb as if I haven’t fed in days instead of hours. My cock aches like a motherfucker and my hands itch to correct, dominate, impose clarity through force.
It is better I remain here. I press the call button.
She answers on the third ring. ‘Yes?’ Neutral. Controlled.
‘You have something to report?’
The briefest hesitation. ‘I have a lead,’ she replies. ‘It needs to be chased in person.’
‘That is not your call. I will determine what needs further investigation. Tell me what you’ve found.’
Another pause. Then a sigh I recognise as entirely manufactured.
‘It’s preliminary,’ she says evenly. ‘Umbra funded a municipal redevelopment grant in a rural Louisiana parish six years ago. Three nights’ worth of occupancy records were manually archived instead of digitised. The paper trail fractures at the intake transfer. That fracture is deliberate.’
‘This is not speculation?’
‘I have it right here in black and white. I can get your dude to take a snapshot and you can rifle through his mind for a look-see?’
The confidence in her voice unsettles me more than hesitation would have.
‘And how exactly does that mean Lyra Hannigan was there?’
‘Because her middle name was Eleanor. And one of the names is Ellen R. Hart. The birth date she put down on her intake form is 11 June. Lyra’s birthday is 1 June.’
‘A little on the nose, is it not?’
‘Sure,’ she says briskly. ‘But if it is her and she was on the run, at eighteen and far from home, she’s not exactly thinking like a criminal mastermind. She’s trying to stick to as many facts as she can remember. Chopping up her middle name is genius actually, if you ask me.’
There is a punch of fire in her tone that almost makes my mouth twitch. Then I remember her brazen invasion of my dreams last night.
My imaginings just now. My mood darkens. ‘I still maintain this is far too thin.’
‘Okay. How about I tell you that you already brushed against it six years ago. You just didn’t recognise what you were looking at.’
I stiffen, knowing in my fangs I will not like what comes next. ‘Explain.’
‘Your own private investigator reported a possible sighting within those three days in question.’
I contain the building fury and tap into Malachi.
Is she correct?
‘Uh-oh,’ Eira says. ‘Your dude is giving me the evil eye. Do I need to run?’
I hear papers shuffle.
The phone cracks in my fist.
Malachi.
A moment, please, sire.
The faintest tremor threads his voice. Then furious clicking.
Then – Yes. It seems the hunter is correct.
Where is this investigator? Find him and bring him to me. Now.
A pause.
I’m sorry, sire. The investigator in question died two years ago. Natural causes.
The oversight is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It still stings enough to volcanize my temper, hard enough that every one of my Twelve will feel it.
Several floors below, Malachi’s apprehension spikes, sharpened by the sting of his failure being exposed by a human woman with ice-cold courage in her veins.
It is almost admirable.
‘Umm… everything okay?’ Eira’s husky voice intrudes. ‘Only I’m getting some weird vibes from your man. Like he’s about to hulk out. Or maybe that’s just you—’
‘What do you intend to do with this piece of information?’ I cut across her.
‘I was thinking of heading down to Louisiana. To verify,’ she says. ‘There’s a pawn shop ticket on the intake form that might get us somewhere. I’ll report when I have something concrete.’
‘No.’
Silence hums between us.
‘I don’t require permission to do my job,’ she says at last.
‘You require my patience,’ I correct softly. ‘And it is fast thinning.’
She exhales, almost amused. ‘I’m beginning to think you didn’t just wake up on the wrong side of the coffin, you slept inside the wrong coffin.’
‘Miss Cross—’
‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ she says. ‘With answers.’
The certainty in her tone scratches against something in my chest.
‘Tomorrow,’ I repeat. ‘You have twenty-four hours, little hunter. No more.’
‘Understood.’
‘And Miss Cross?’
‘Yeah?’
‘When we meet again, I will enlighten you on exactly how much I detest being interrupted mid-speech.’ I end the call.
The unease does not dissipate.
Tomorrow.
For a vampire, time is elastic. Decades collapse. Centuries bend.
Yet the thought of her moving out of my city unsupervised ignites a tension that has nothing to do with strategy.
I tap into Malachi’s mind once more with one last secret instruction, instantly obeyed.
With one flick of my hand, I undo two buttons and look down at the faint glow of the mark beneath my shirt. Thin crimson filaments creep farther outward, claiming new territory.
I can almost hear the Crimson Mother’s delight in the slow tightening of inevitability.
But I will not be toyed with. Not by a creator goddess. Not by a feisty little hunter. And certainly not by my own unruly blood.
Yet as I stand here, cataloguing the actions of a being who has never lost control of his domain, one truth presses harder than the rest.
I am not merely searching for Lyra.
I am circling something far more volatile.
And if Eira Cross believes she can chase a lead without consequence, she is about to discover how wrong she is.
Because when she runs—
I will follow.