Chapter 4
four
RAE
There was a knock on my apartment's front door first thing in the morning.
I shoved my hand through my blankets until I found my phone, yanking my tangled hair off my face while I checked the time.
9 AM.
Who the fuck was knocking on my door at 9 AM?
No one knew where I lived. Grayson had my location, but he didn’t even know my apartment number.
The person at my door knocked again.
"Wrong apartment!" I yelled, knowing my voice would carry through the paper-thin walls.
The place was a shithole. No way around that. I didn't feel uncomfortable with luxury, and I could technically afford it, but I preferred to hide.
Who would look for a wealthy assassin or recognize the daughter of a temporary vampire king in a shithole apartment?
"I'm not leaving," a voice called back. It almost sounded like Dare's, but that was probably my obsession talking. "I'll break your door down if I have to, Shadow."
My forehead creased.
Okay, maybe it was Darius.
What the fuck was he doing at my apartment?
I'd told him the bargain was over, and we weren't friends. He wouldn't have shown up just to hang out, or stopped by to see if I wanted to have sex or something.
And at 9 AM? What was he thinking?
He had a job that required him to work mornings, anyway. Why wasn't he at the coffee shop?
"You've got thirty seconds before I break the door down!" Darius called out.
My neighbor banged on the wall that separated my room from hers. "Open the goddamn door!" she yelled at me, though her voice was muffled. "Some of us are trying to sleep!"
“Fuck off, Beatrice!" I yelled back.
But I stumbled to the door anyway.
I ripped it open before Darius had a chance to break it down, and his gaze immediately dipped to my body.
My naked body, unless you counted my fuzzy socks.
I didn't count them.
I'd fallen asleep without showering or getting dressed. Between the orgasms, the blood I drank, and the stupid cheer beer, I'd been wiped out.
"Do you always answer the door like that?" he asked.
"Yes," I lied.
"Good to know," Dare remarked, stepping past me and into the apartment. He closed the door behind himself. "Our mate mark looks really fucking good on your leg."
I blinked.
It took a solid twenty seconds for his words to register.
Our mate mark looks really fucking good on your leg.
Our mate mark?
My chin jerked downward, and I stared at the swirling, gray mark on my leg.
…
Holy fucking shit.
That was a mate mark.
"No," I said, stumbling away from the door. "No way."
Darius plopped down on my couch. It creaked beneath his weight, and I thought it might just snap.
He had a duffel bag on his shoulder, and he dropped it beside the old, shitty piece of furniture he'd just claimed.
"I don't think you could've found a sketchier place to live. Way to stick it to Darke and his buckets of money." Darius lifted his fist, looking over his shoulder at me.
"You and I are not mates," I said, my voice trembling just a little. "There's no world in which we're that compatible."
"The mark disagrees. Your shadows do, too."
I focused on his skin, and saw a light dusting of my shadows there. When I focused on them, I could feel them.
Those were my shadows.
On Darius fucking Scorch.
"No," I said again. "No, no, no."
"Yup. What are our plans for the day? I'm at your beck and call for the rest of our immortal lives."
I couldn't do this.
I gathered my shadows and used them to take myself to the only place other than my crappy apartment that I'd ever really felt safe.
Grayson's place.
Well, his closet. Because I never knew what him and Merrily would be up to.
"Grayson!" I yelled. "I'm in your closet!"
I heard footsteps. "Rae?"
"I, uh, forgot my clothes! Don't come in!"
The footsteps stopped outside the closet. "What the fuck happened? I thought you were with Darius."
My jaw dropped. "You knew?"
"He showed up in our hotel room in the middle of the night and told us. What happened?"
"Hold on. I'm borrowing Merrily's clothes."
I put on a pair of her wildly soft lounge pants and one of her turtlenecks. She was curvier than me, but all her stuff was stretchy, and it wasn't hard to roll up the waistband of her pants a few times.
I stepped out of the closet, already glaring at him. "You knew Darius was my mate before I did?"
"That depends on when you found out."
"Two minutes ago!" I flung my hand in the direction of my apartment. "Maybe even less. He just showed up at my door with a bag of his shit and told me our mate mark looks good. I didn't even know I had a mate mark! I just wanted to experience sex, and we technically didn't even—"
"Breathe, Rae." Grayson moved his hand, trying to emphasize his point or something.
"How the fuck am I supposed to breathe when I just found out I'm fated mates with Darius fucking Scorch?!" I yelled the words. I was shouting. Definitely. Maybe screeching a little too.
"Good question. Here." Grayson grabbed my shoulders and propelled me toward the kitchen. "I'll make food.”
"I've told you a hundred times that food doesn't fix everything!"
"It usually helps, though."
I glared at him, but when he pushed me into a chair, I sat. "Where's your mate?"
"Hiding from you, probably."
I scoffed.
"I'm kidding. She's reading. Probably trying to give us privacy, since we all know she's on Dare's side in this situation."
"Tell me exactly what he told you last night. And what he did. And what you did. And what Merrily said. You were talking about me behind my back, weren't you? What has everyone been saying? Did you know he was going to be my mate? I—"
"I'm serious, Rae. Take a fucking breath."
I resumed glaring at him while he put a pot of water on the stove and added salt to it.
But I did try to take a breath. One breath. It did nothing to help.
My gaze flicked down to my leg. After a beat of uncertainty, then anxiety, I yanked the super loose fabric up my leg and stared down at the mark.
I'd expected a small bargain mark on some part of my body, after our deal. He'd mentioned he would release me from it when he propositioned me the first time, so I thought it would disappear pretty soon after we hooked up.
The mark wasn't small, though. And it wasn't going to disappear. Not unless I mated with someone other than Darius, which sounded even worse than being tied to Dare for the rest of my life.
It was a massive, dark gray mark that covered the outer half of my thigh, swirling down toward my knee and curling to a stop a little above it. It went up the entire side of my thigh and over my hip, too, completely hiding some of my floral tattoos, and shadowing a few others.
I stared at it for a solid minute before dropping the pants back over my leg and deciding I'd be better off pretending it didn't exist.
Then I pulled my knees to my chest, curling up in a ball on the chair, and fighting off my rising fear.
I wasn't trapped. I wasn't a prisoner.
I wasn't back in the cellar.
I had to remind myself of that.
"Merrily and I thought there was a possibility of you being mates," Grayson admitted.
"The situation with Darius has been difficult for their family for a long time.
For him, mostly. If we told you it was possible, we would've been breaking his trust. If we told him, we would've been breaking yours.
We decided we had to stay out of it and just let things happen. "
"You want me to believe that the fae royals thought I belonged to Darius and didn't get involved," I said into my knees. "Callum was the one who told you about Merrily. All of those bastards are pushy and difficult."
"Mer has sway with them, and Dare wasn't letting himself consider it a possibility, so yeah.
They agreed to stay out of it for a few months.
I don't know what they would've done if it went on longer than that.
Probably figured out a way to meddle. Did anything happen that made you think they were getting involved? "
"No," I admitted.
"What did happen?"
"I don't know. I couldn't stop thinking about him. You know I get really obsessed with things."
"TV shows or video games, usually."
"Right. Or takeout food places. But I was just… obsessed with him. I thought if I just saw him and took him up on his offer of a bargain, I could get him out of my head. I thought it was just a sexual awakening or something."
"At twenty-six?"
"I'm aware that it's ridiculous, Grayson. Mistakes were clearly made."
"The obsession part is actually normal. You know I was the same way with Merrily. Liv's mate was so obsessed with her that he refused to accept their breakup and kept sleeping with a blanket that smelled like both of them."
"Really?" I perked up, just a tiny bit.
"Yeah. Niall was way worse than either of us were."
"I guess that's good." I'd never been less obsessive than someone else. "I was even tracking Darius. There's a website. Someone updates it constantly. I'm sure everyone on the internet knows where my apartment is now, because they literally follow him everywhere."
"Seriously?"
I nodded.
"I want to see the site."
"My phone's in my apartment."
Grayson handed his over. I typed his code in and pulled up the website, then handed the phone back over.
He snorted. "? We're going to mock him about this for years." He put his phone back down long enough to open a box and dump pasta into the boiling water.
I sighed heavily. "Just tell me how to make him leave."
Grayson didn't reply right away. He was stirring the pasta.
And stirring.
And stirring.
"Grayson," I warned.
"I don't think you can make him leave."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't think I'm really supposed to say anything about what I know of Dare's plan."
"You can't keep secrets from me. You're supposed to be my adopted family."
"Technically, you'll be safer, wealthier, and probably happier if you're mated to a fae, so from a family perspective…"