CHAPTER FORTY THREE
Leon
THIS WAY, SWEETHEART,” I said, trying to sound like nothing was wrong when every instinct in my veins told me something was very wrong.
I led her towards the seats in the centre front row we’d been assigned.
Not that I had the faintest idea what for.
That dinner, if it could even be called that, was strange as fuck.
It was quite clear that a good ninety percent of the humans in attendance had been compelled.
I didn’t like it. I rarely used compulsion, and when I did, I did so for good reason.
I didn’t like the thought of toying with humans the way so many of my kind did. It made me uneasy. They weren’t toys.
Ailsa looked over her shoulders, like a lost fawn. I watched as her curious eyes took everything in. I saw them scanning over every detail. And curiously I watched as she clearly made note of all exits.
The question had been gnawing at me since I first set eyes on her in the Ninth. “How did you come to be here?”
She turned her head to look at me and fuck me, she was so goddamn beautiful, but that spark that had first drawn me to her wasn’t there.
She’d been dulled, and the mere thought of what could have done that saddened me.
She was so free, so careless that night.
She took what she wanted with no regrets, she was life itself.
And now, I didn’t know, it wasn’t as though I actually knew her, but the difference was simply too startling to ignore.
“That doesn’t matter,” she shook her head. “He took my sister, Claire, and I need to get her out of here,” she continued, looking around us, as though scared someone might overhear.
She kept mentioning her sister like I was supposed to know anything about her.
Wait.
Realisation dawned on me.
Oh fuck.
“Your sister doesn’t happen to have mid length curly brown hair and brown eyes, does she?”
Her eyes widened at the description, telling me everything I needed to know. The human woman I’d seen earlier must have been Claire.
“Yes,” she said, her tone more hopeful than I’d heard it all night. She gripped my forearm as she turned her whole body toward me. “Please tell me she’s okay. Did you see her? Where is she?”
I swallowed away the dryness in my mouth. “I saw her earlier, just briefly, she was okay. But I don't know where she is now.”
It wouldn’t do any good to tell her about the bruises or glassy eyed look I’d seen on her face. She was alive and that at least something. But I worried for how long. Valerius wasn’t above killing for shock.
She chewed her lip and I could tell she had a million things running through her mind. I recognised that helpless feeling. Knew it all too well.
I looked behind us to see Davien staring daggers at me from the seat where they’d placed him, practically at the other end of the space and the weirdest part about that was that I got it. I understood. I think I’d have reacted the same.
We had a strange relationship, him and I.
If you could even call it that. I respected him, he was old for a turned one.
Much older than me. He’d seen and been through a lot.
I’d always been curious about his presence in the Ninth, it didn’t add up.
He liked to act like an ass and a bully, but the more I studied him, the more I grew to the conclusion that it was an act.
And the way he’d been acting with Ailsa all but confirmed it.
He had hidden her from us, for good reason I suspected.
That took guts. He knew walking in here tonight would not end well for him and he did it anyway.
Part of me envied his ability to do that.
Part of me wondered if push came to shove would I side with him?
My ending up at the Ninth hadn’t been planned, hadn’t really been a choice either. I’d tried to make the best of it, but maybe that time was coming to an end. Maybe I’d be forced to choose sooner rather than later where I stood. And maybe for once, my morals would win.