CHAPTER 9 #2
“And that act of defiance had consequences for every person I care about.” Sera adjusted the flowing skirt, then went to a jewelry case and selected an emerald and diamond choker.
“I’ve had to live for the last two years in hiding.
Worse, I’ve had to do so with the knowledge that my actions might have freed me from my father’s abuse, but they placed Alex directly in his crosshairs.
Alex knows that if he were to run away with you, Dante or Isabella would be forced to marry in his place. ”
Dani went over to the settee by the window, suddenly sick.
She traced the mating mark where it lay beneath the decorative lace cuff Sera had given her.
“I got myself into this mess because I was willing to do anything to save my sister, even forfeit my own future happiness. Of course I would expect Alexander to do no less. I can only hope that if we allow the drama to play out and the media grows tired of me as an option as his future queen, they’ll turn their attention back to Lara, and I’ll get Ava’s medicine in return. ”
“I hate this for both of you.” Sera squeezed her shoulder.
“But we will find a way to remove the binding marks and then you can forget that any of this ever happened.” She went back to the rack of dresses.
“Try this one. It was originally made for Isabella, but she hated the color and has never once worn it. You’re almost the same size, so I’m hoping you can wear it tonight without too many alterations. ”
Dani took the bag. Inside, she found a gorgeous, dark aubergine-purple gown. It was strapless and hugged her body all the way to the bottom of her corset before flaring out in tiers of ruched satin.
As soon as she came out, Serafina clapped in excitement.
“That’s the one. But a different necklace, I think.
” She looked through the trays, finally selecting a thin scrap of black lace that matched the cuff at her wrist. A solitary diamond hung at the center of the choker, resting at the hollow of her throat.
“My brother won’t be able to keep his eyes off you. ”
“You think so?” Dani touched the marks at her throat where Alex had fed from her. The two small punctures had nearly healed, now only faintly visible. She felt her cheeks grow warm, picturing his fangs there again, his hands and lips moving over her body—
“Dani, listen to me carefully,” Sera said. “My father must not find out that you and Alex have feelings for one another.”
“Of course.” She looked away, adjusting the skirts of her dress. The room suddenly felt much too warm in her tight corset. “Alex has made it clear nothing will happen on that front.”
“He’s very taken with you. I’ve never seen him like this with any of the girls he’s dated in the past. Anyone can see it from the way you look at him, and from the way he tracks you across any room you’re in together.
It’s possessive. It’s the way a male acts with their mate.
And so now do you understand why you need to be very careful?
As far as my father is concerned, you are here because you were promised medicine for your sister if you stayed at the castle until the ball. That is all you care about.”
“He’ll believe that?”
“He will, because it’s what he wants to believe, that the working class are all ungrateful complaining leeches that are a drain on society.
He won’t see you as a potential match for Alexander because he won’t allow himself to consider that someone from your class could possibly make a prince happy. ”
“But your mother was a sanguine.” Dani knew she had no right to ask, but couldn’t help herself. “Why does he hate us so much? He married a human, raised a family with her. Then he forbade vampire-human matings within the sector.”
“Yes, she was.” Sera’s tone softened. “And that ended very badly. She never recovered from the transformation process. My father tried everything to heal her. As a child, I witnessed the constant transfusions, the visits to the fae for experimental treatments. But every year, she grew weaker and weaker. And my father grew lost in his anger and self-loathing.”
She looked down. “He was abusive to all of us in different ways. I have no way to know if he was different before she got sick, and those early years after the pandemics were chaos. So much fighting for territory. So many deaths. But I wonder if he might have turned out differently, had he not felt such guilt over his decision to change her.”
Dani squeezed her hand, thoughts swirling. Alexander would have watched his mother get sicker and sicker as well, before ultimately losing her. No wonder there was no possibility in his mind that they could be endgame, that they could be mated.
“You should know that the king had a member of my security detail sent to the front lines because he believed he was interfering with the match he wanted with the fae king,” Sera continued.
“You were together?”
“Micah, my bodyguard, was a distraction. Nothing more.” Sera twisted her auburn ponytail, staring absently out the windows at the cold winter day.
“I was so busy finishing up my medical residency, that I didn’t have time for anything serious.
I was secretly meeting with members of the underground resistance, trying to see how we could reform vampire society and stop my father and the oligarchs from amassing more power.
At the same time, my father was meeting with the fae and the wolves, trying to see who would offer the highest price to bed me and have me sit on their throne as a trophy bride. ”
“He really would have sold you to the wolves?” Dani shuddered in revulsion. “Turned you into a breeder?”
“Yes, and the fae are no better.” Sera looked down. “With Micah, it was purely physical. I needed someone to help me escape the cataclysmic trajectory my life was on at the time, if only for a few minutes, and he provided that release.”
“Then your father found out.”
“It was much worse than that. Isabella caught us together. Micah sometimes rotated in on her protection detail, and I had no idea that she’d developed an infatuation with him.
She was barely eighteen at the time, and he was thirty-two.
Even worse, as soon as I saw his reaction, I realized it wasn’t just that she had an unrequited crush and perhaps didn’t realize he was with me.
Micah had not only been sleeping with me, but Isabella, too. ”
“That bastard,” Dani said under her breath. “I hope you slapped him. Evan and I have never shown remotely the same taste in men, but I can’t even imagine.”
Actually, she could very well imagine herself and Evan throwing said bastard out of their apartment, naked and without his clothes in the snow, for daring to take advantage of the both of them. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
“It took me a few minutes to make myself presentable after the state we’d been caught in. I tried to talk to Isabella. I wanted to explain that I truly hadn’t known. But by then, she’d already gone to our father.”
“Oh no.”
Sera nodded grimly. “Isabella has always been his favorite, the golden child, even more so after our mother died. I can only assume she thought that if she simply tattled on my misdeeds, the king would forbid me from seeing Micah again, clearing the way for them to be together. I truly believe she thought he would propose. You have to understand, she was only eighteen and very inexperienced when it came to men. I have to assume he was her first. And of course, that’s not how things worked out. ”
“The king had him killed?” Dani touched her throat. Suddenly, she couldn’t stop shivering.
“Not so directly. But he also couldn’t have a common bodyguard interfering with the royal marriage contract he wanted to sign with the fae king and queen.
I was to marry their son, Finneas, who was taking control of half the fae lands.
Nor, for that matter, did he consider a bodyguard with no prospects to be a suitable partner for his eighteen-year-old daughter. ”
Sera looked away. “Micah was reassigned to the front lines, sent to fight the wolves up in the mountains that very week. We received word within the month that his unit had been ambushed and he’d been killed.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve had to accept that my choices cost someone their life. They also cost me my relationship with my sister.”
“He was seeing you both, lying to you both.” Dani shook her head. “He bears fault in this, a great deal of it, by my estimation.”
“Isabella doesn’t see it that way. In her head, I already had a match arranged to the fae king.
The fact that I had no choice in the matter and didn’t want to marry him was irrelevant.
She believed since I was as good as betrothed on paper to Finneas, I had no valid claim on the bodyguard we’d both been sleeping with. ”
Sera rubbed her temples. “My sister was at a vulnerable age when we lost our mother, and it has led to her being far too sheltered when it comes to men. No matter how many times I tried to reason with her, to point out Micah was a bastard for sleeping with two sisters, and that he was probably bragging about it to every soldier who would listen down at the pubs, she refused to listen. She truly believed Micah would come back for her. She’s thrown herself into her research the past few years and rarely comes out of her lab except at meals. ”
Sera’s phone buzzed. “Ah yes. That reminds me.” She extracted a small vial from her coat pocket. “You need to drink this.”
“What is it?” Dani uncapped the vial and sniffed it.
“It’s a blocking drug, created by a skilled chemist working underground for the resistance.
The king is perhaps the most powerful aberrant alive, and he’s drained countless other aberrants.
It’s why no one has been able to stop him.
If he touches you, he may try to drain your life force.
If he takes too much, he can eventually stop your heart. ”
“How long will this last?”