Chapter Eight
“YOU DON’T LOOK HAPPY to see me,” Brandy said with a frown.
“Would you look happy if you were forced to deal with an unwanted guest?”
“No, not at all. Good thing I’m not that.”
“Actually—”
He stopped speaking when he saw her start sniffing.
Shit.
Brandy was sniffing everywhere now, and then she was turning to him with her eyes full of...shock.
“I can’t believe it,” she gasped. “Who is she?”
He simply stared at her, his expression stony.
He had forgotten how Brandy’s sense of smell had gotten a lot better, ever since That Day.
It was a phenomenon that was still neither fully explored nor explained, how the vampires’ emergence as a worldwide threat had certain preters either discovering or losing certain skills or—in Brandy’s case—experiencing heightened senses.
“She has to be someone who matters to you. Otherwise, you’d never let her come here.” She looked at him challengingly. “Tell me I’m wrong—”
“If you insist on taking my time, let’s talk about the reason you’ve come barging—”
Brandy dismissed his words away as if shooing a fly. “Don’t change the subject. This can only mean one thing. You’ve found your ma—”
“Quiet.” A command, issued sharply in a dangerously soft tone, and even someone as Brandy had to accede, as any pack member would to their alpha.
Brandy lowered her head in silent apology.
Hexius nodded. Forgiven. But the glint in his golden eyes was a warning that such recklessness moving forward would not go unpunished.
“Do I know her?” Brandy asked after a moment.
“You know of her.”
Her brows furrowed. “So...a celebrity? I never thought—”
Hexius shot her a look, and Brandy grimaced.
“So...not someone famous then? But you said I know of her...”
Hexius simply waited. Hexius and Alphonse had grown up with Brandy since childhood, and even then it was obvious to all that it was Brandy who was the smartest, the one destined to change lives through science. She was the quickest to put one and one together, and so—
Brandy was now looking at him like he had confessed to asking for the Jinn to turn him into a Fae.
“The human?”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment, saying broodingly, “I may have misjudged Alphonse again.” He had thought that his older brother had chosen a human bride for him in a petty bid for vengeance. But with the Concord Agency affirming Samira’s compatibility as his mate?
The only question he had this time was how.
How had Alphonse known Samira was his ideal mate years before the Concord Agency or even Hirsche Laboratories had come out with their mating technologies?
“Does she know about me?” Brandy wanted to know.
“I told her that I rejected her that time because of another woman. But it was Alphonse who supplied the details.”
“Idiot.”
He would not argue with that. However—-
“Don’t you think that’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black,” he drawled, “considering how you’ve just as idiotically accepted—”
The fact that Brandy only winced at this spoke volumes.
“—the marriage proposal of Alphonse’s former second-in-command?”
“It’s Alphonse’s fault!”
Hexius had a feeling he was about to want to start throttling Brandy again.
This, too, was another change resulting from That Day, but it was one he liked the least. Before That Day, Brandy had always been the voice of reason, and was the least emotional of the three of them.
It was why he had originally seen her as a challenge, his pride wanting her like she was but a trophy, and whose submission would be another notch in his bedpost.
Now, however?
“Alphonse cannot be blamed for your actions,” he reminded her. “And no one certainly pointed a gun to your head to make you say ‘yes’ to being Vaughn’s wife.”
“I just wanted to make your brother jealous,” Brandy defended herself.
“But instead, all you achieved was to cause further trouble—”
“I get it, I get it! I’m wrong, I’m sorry!” Brandy threw her hands up in surrender. “I miscalculated, okay?”
“You didn’t just miscalculate. You’ve caused Vaughn to think he needs to get rid of my brother and me in order to win you back—”
“Why do you think I’m here?” Brandy burst out.
“I know I made a mistake. I admit it. But when I started dating him, I really wanted to make it work. I really believed he could make me forget Alphonse. But it just...it just didn’t work out the way I thought it would.
So...here I am, just a girl standing in front of the boy who once loved her—”
The idiot actually dared to lay her hand on his cheek and start batting her lashes at him.
“Stop that!”
Brandy only laughed at the way he had flung her hand off. “It’s gross, isn’t it?”
“Extremely.”
“Oh, Hexius.” She was smiling still, but her eyes were also full of tears.
It was another side of her that didn’t exist before That Day.
And somehow, even with the scarring on her cheek, this side of her made Brandy seem more.
..beautiful. And she was that, but he only saw this in a way a brother would see his own kin beautiful.
“You can’t believe how happy you’ve made me right now!”
“You’re happy because I want to get rid of you?”
“You could have phrased it a little better, but yes, I am happy about that because I know it can only mean one thing, and that’s—”
“I’ve found a mate whose compatibility score would be an asset to our pack.”
“We really need to work on your choice of words,” Brandy said with a wince. “Will it kill you to say that you’re in love with your mate?”
“I’m not.”
“You and Alphonse are more alike than you think.” Brandy looked at him soberly. “It’s only a matter of time before Vaughn also finds out Samira. He’s not thinking clear lately, and I’m worried he might think of harming her, to keep you from becoming more powerful.”
“I’ll have someone tail Vaughn.” While Hexius would never let anything or anyone harm Samira, only an idiot would fail to appreciate being forewarned.
“How...how did Alphonse react to the news?”
“He told Samira to turn me down.”
“He what?”
“He’s still convinced I’m in love with you, and the only reason we’re not married is out of misplaced loyalty to him.”
“That idiot!” Brandy threw her hands up and started pacing the length of his living room. “I’ve tried everything to make him listen to me, but he’s just so stubborn.”
Hexius was starting to get impatient. Not once in his life had he desired to be a therapist to idiots, not even to the two people he had grown up with. But before he could tell Brandy to stop wasting his time—
“I think I’ve got it,” Brandy suddenly exclaimed. “Since trying to talk sensibly to him all this time hasn’t worked, I think I’m going to pretend I’ve lost my memories, and then I’ll act all vulnerable and make it hard for him to resist me.”
What the—
Brandy blew him a kiss. “I knew I could count on you. Thank you!”
Hexius pinched the bridge of his nose once Brandy was out of his home.
That woman, dammit...
That woman was proof that God existed, and he now knew he had escaped a fate worse than death, not to be married to the kind of idiot Brandy turned out to be. The sooner she and Alphonse sorted out their mess, the better.
His chest felt noticeably lighter as he headed down the hallway, and all he wanted to do was lose himself in his future wife’s body. Tomorrow, Hexius decided. Tomorrow, they would go to L’Alliance and—
What the hell?
Samira was not in his office, and the broken bottle of professional scent remover automatically made her untraceable for the next few hours.
Even worse was when he accessed his home’s security system, saw her accidentally discovering the messages on his phone, which was then compounded by seeing Brandy in his living room, touching his cheek like a returning lover—
Merde.
He accessed the vicinity cameras outdoors next, and that was when he saw...
Alphonse.
His fingers shook as he made the call, his chest gripped by emotions he could not name. All he could think of at that moment was how vengeful his brother had been lately, and how desperate straits could lead to desperate measures.
If anything happened to Samira...
If anyone were to hurt his future wife...
Even if that someone was his own brother...
“That took longer than expected,” were Alphonse’s first words upon answering his call.
“Where is she, damn you?”
“Tell me, brother.”
A note of taunting now underscored Alphonse’s voice.
“Will you still want her back if she’s no longer a virgin?”
“Don’t be an ass,” Hexius bit out. “I know you still think you have reason to hate me, but I also know your honor would never allow for that.”
“You can’t say it wasn’t worth a try,” Alphonse said finally.
Relief rocked his powerful body even though a part of Hexius was tempted to drive his fist into his brother’s face the next time they met.
“You’re right, I can’t.” Hexius clenched and unclenched his fist. “But if you try making another joke like that about my future wife, I’ll kill you.”
“You sound like you really care for her.”
Hexius stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse, watching the city lights blur into streaks of gold and white. “She’s what’s good for the pack.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask one.”
“Then allow me to correct—”
“Enough with the games, Alphonse,” Hexius snapped. “Where is Samira?”
“Where she asked to be taken.”
The phone creaked under Hexius’s grip. “Just tell me, dammit!”
“Take a guess, brother. Samira’s a smart girl, and if she understands what she’s up against, where do you think she’ll go?”
There could only be one answer to that, and only one place where even a billionaire alpha like him had no power.