Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
bloom
I got in the car outside the elevator after checking to make sure the driver matched Maverick’s description.
Blonde werewolf with a scar on her neck?
Check.
The scar actually wasn’t as bad as I had expected. It wasn’t raised or gnarly. Just looked like two jagged crescents on the side of her neck, a slightly darker shade than the rest of her light skin.
After I took a seat in the back, she pulled away. It was early afternoon, but thanks to the winter chill, felt much later.
I turned my phone on rather than staring out the window at the gothic city around us. Vast was stunning, with its dark architecture that reminded everyone that it had been a vampire stronghold at one point. I was used to it, though.
When the screen lit up, I groaned.
Fifty-three missed calls from my mom.
Forty-eight from my dad.
Thirty-one from my sister.
Twenty-nine from my sister-in-law.
Mom had definitely confiscated all of their phones and was rotating between them, hoping that I’d miraculously pick up after one of the calls. Harper had only tried eight times, so I was sure her and my mom were probably talking or texting frequently.
The device buzzed over and over as my messages finally caught up to me.
Between my family’s group text thread, the Guild’s reminder notifications, and my coworkers’ group chat, there were thousands.
There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to read all of those.
I opened the messages to get rid of the irritating red dots that told me the texts were new, then pulled up my list of calls and hit the button to dial my mom’s number.
I’d be back at the apartment I shared with Harper in ten minutes, so if she was there, I’d talk to her then. Otherwise, I’d call her next. She would handle the extra ten minutes of waiting better than my mom.
Mom answered on the first ring, her voice demanding. “Bloom?”
“Hey, Mom.” I closed my eyes, leaning against the back of my seat and bracing myself for however the hell this conversation was going to go.
Not well, probably.
“What happened after the wolf took you? Did he hurt you? Are you okay? Where are you? Why does the internet say you’re his mate? They’re wrong, right?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
So that was how the conversation was going to go.
“He bit me twice, but that’s it. I’m otherwise fine. They realized pretty quickly that I didn’t kill Steven, and locked me in a guest apartment while they tried to figure out who did. I need to feed, so they let me go.”
“What did she say?” my dad asked, his voice sounding far away.
“Put her on speaker already, mom,” my sister, Whimsy, ordered.
“She’s okay?” my sister-in-law, Mouse, checked.
My eyes stung at their voices.
They were pains in my ass, but there had been a few hours where I honestly wondered if I would ever see or hear from them again.
“Okay, you’re on speaker,” my mom said. “She’s fine.”
“I am,” I agreed.
“The internet is wrong about the mate thing, right?” Whimsy demanded.
“What does it say?”
“Someone claims that the Alpha bit you, and that werewolves bite their mates too,” my mom explained.
I grimaced. “They’re not wrong.”
“What?” Mom’s voice was sharp.
“It doesn’t really mean anything. Fate just kind of tried to play matchmaker. I guess that happens to werewolves sometimes.”
“That’s insane, Bloom,” Mouse protested.
“You can’t be mates with the Alpha,” my mom argued.
“He can’t just bite you and force you to be his,” my dad put in. “He’s a werewolf.”
“We’re not going to be together. The connection isn’t a big deal.” I tried to make myself believe it too.
It didn’t quite work.
“Did he let you leave on your own, or did he go home with you?” Whimsy asked.
“He let me leave.”
“That’s good,” Mouse offered.
“Yeah. I really don’t think he’s interested in me. It’s just some kind of fate-driven connection.”
“Like soulmates?” Whimsy screeched.
“Dear Lord,” my mom muttered. “I knew we should’ve mated you off to Velour Valenti years ago.”
“I have told you a dozen times, I am not interested in Velour. Or any of the other vampires you keep planning those ridiculous dates with, for the record. It’s not sneaky for you to say you’ll meet me for lunch and send one of the eligible bachelors instead.”
“You have four whole options, Bloom! What more do you want? Unmated vampires aren’t safe!” My mom protested.
“All four of them are assholes, and I’m fine.”
“At least they’re not werewolves!”
“I am not trying to mate with a werewolf. We’re just… fated.”
“I don’t think that’s better than trying to marry him,” my dad said.
“Being soulmates with him is probably the only reason the Alpha Pack let me live,” I pointed out.
“Probably. Rhone Longfang killed Pepper Valenti the first time they met, less than six months ago,” Mouse agreed.
“She fed on a human man without the guy’s permission and nearly killed him, so unlike Bloom, she did deserve it,” my mom argued. “And with a name like Pepper, I’m not surprised.”
I was not discussing the ridiculousness of vampire naming traditions with them, or the superstition surrounding it.
“What are you going to do now?” Whimsy asked.
“The Alpha offered me a bunch of money to clean up their company’s paperwork, so I’m staying in Vast for a few more months while I make a plan about where to move and try to find another job.”
“We’ll move cities with you if you have to, of course,” my mom said. “But you should try living on the south side first. No one would expect you to go from a hoity-toity investment firm in the business sector to a small family business out there.”
“I’ll look into it. I’m almost home, so I need to go.”
“Well, we’re glad you’re still alive and kicking,” Whimsy said.
“We are. You’ll be at the gathering tonight, and at dinner tomorrow, right?” Dad checked.
“Unless the Alpha changes his mind about not killing me.”
“Don’t curse yourself, honey. We’ll see you soon,” my mom promised. “Love you!”
“Love you too.” I hung up and dropped my phone on my leg.
At least that was over.
The car stopped, and I looked outside.
Relief lowered my shoulders when I saw the simple apartment building I called home. It was a few streets away from the business sector, far enough to have some space but close enough to avoid a long commute.
“Thanks for the ride,” I told the werewolf woman.
She nodded, and that was that.
I slipped out of the vehicle. It occurred to me on my way up to our third-floor apartment that I was still wearing the messenger bag from Maverick.
What was in it?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
The apartment’s front door flew open before I reached it. Harper’s body collided with mine, and she hugged me fiercely.
I hugged her back, slightly surprised. Neither of us were extremely high-energy.
“I’m so glad they didn’t kill you, Bloom.”
“Me too.”
She laughed tearily. My face was squashed against her shoulder, but neither of us cared.
“So what happened?” she asked, as she pulled away and wiped her eyes. “I was going to follow you to the werewolves’ building, but I overheard the wolves at Darkwood saying you were the Alpha’s mate. The internet seems to agree.”
“Fated mate. Not to be confused with wife,” I corrected.
Her eyebrows lifted, and she pulled me into the apartment, closing and locking the door behind us. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Maverick says it’s nothing, but I kind of got the feeling there’s something he wasn’t telling me. Didn’t stick around long enough to ask.”
“Maverick? You’re on a first name basis with the Alpha of Alphas?”
“Well, he did bite me twice.”
“Is that what those are?” Harper let go of my arm to lean in closer to the wounds on my neck. I tilted so she could see them better. “Holy fuck. Why haven’t they healed yet? At least one of those is a week old.”
“They both are.”
“Did he starve you?”
“A little bit.” I held up two fingers, an inch apart. “It didn’t help that I kind of starved myself before he bit me, though.”
“True. You need to go to the gathering tonight.”
“I was planning on it.” I dropped Maverick’s messenger bag on the kitchen counter. The contents made a suspicious clanking sound, and I eyed it.
“What’s in there?” Harper asked.
“I don’t know. Maverick gave it to me when I was leaving.”
“So it’s some kind of soulmate thing?”
“Or condoms. Maybe he’s trying to send me a message.”
Harper snorted, sitting down in the chair in front of Maverick’s bag. “That didn’t sound like condoms.”
I gave her a quick rundown of everything that had happened. As I finished, I grimaced.
“Shit, I think I left my clothes there.”
Actually, he had been holding them. Where had he put them when we got to his office? I couldn’t remember.
“Are you going to see him again?”
“I don’t think so. He and Rhone will be investigating the murders, but I’ll have my own office, so we won’t need to interact or anything.
And they think the killer is someone on the outside, so they probably won’t be there much.
Are you okay? You seemed weird before everything happened at the office, and you look kind of pale. ”
Harper grimaced. “I have to tell you something.”
“Okay...”
She hesitated.
“Did Velour fuck something up? Do I need to send him a strongly-worded text?”
Harper let out a shaky breath and looked down at the countertop.
“Just tell me, Harper.”
Her hands were in her lap, but I could see them clenched together from where I was. “It’s… bad, Bloom.”
“How bad?”
“Really, really bad.” The blood was draining from her cheeks. She was fidgeting, too. She never fidgeted.
“Then spit it out. You know I’m here for you, whatever it is.” We were the kind of friends who would bury bodies for each other.
“I killed Steven.” Her face was paler than usual, her eyes still focused downward like she couldn’t look at me.
My body went still.
A solid minute passed.
“What?” I finally asked, though I was sure I’d heard correctly.
“Velour bit me while we were fucking. He took too much, and panicked. He fed me some of his blood, and snapped my neck. I turned. The bloodlust was immediate.”
I stared at her, my chest tight with horror. “No.”