Chapter 17
Cassi
"You're his woman now?"
Cassi took a shallow breath. There was so little room in the quarters assigned to Danton and even that was apparently some kind of reward for service.
Wherever she moved to, it was either too close to the new Vampyren she'd been left alone with, or it was on the bed, which was just too uncomfortable.
Whatever pheromones there were, they weren't working here.
Or maybe they were and she was just too pissed off to notice.
"I'm my own woman." It sounded stupid and childish but she wasn't a prize that Danton could just pass off to his brother in arms. That despite the centuries women had been treated as war prizes.
The newcomer was every bit as beautiful as any of the invaders.
He was a little shorter than Danton, she thought, and just as heavily muscled.
But where Danton was dark and angular, this one was broader, his features softer somehow.
His eyes were that same Vampyren gold but paler, closer to amber, and there was something behind them that wasn't hostility.
Pain, maybe. He moved wrong.
And he hadn't tried to touch her, she realized, letting the tiniest bit of her guard down.
She thought he might be injured, the way he moved, favoring one side.
It wasn't easy to spot but her martial arts training had exposed her to an entire school full of people who refused to admit when something had hurt them or some body part continued to hurt.
"The games," he said, catching her looking. His voice was different from Danton's — lower, rougher, like something in his throat hadn't healed right. "Last night. A human with a knife got lucky."
She hadn't asked. He'd offered it.
That was interesting.
"What happened to the human?" She kept her voice flat. Clinical. As if she didn't already know what happened to humans who got lucky with knives at the games.
He looked at her for a long moment. "He died well."
She didn't know what to do with that. It sounded like respect, but that was impossible. The Vampyren didn't respect humans. They consumed them. Used them.
Did they?
The silence stretched. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, one hand pressed to his side. She sat on the chair — the only chair — with her legs tucked under her and her back straight. As far apart as the tiny room allowed.
"He didn't tell me about you," the Vampyren said.
"What's to tell?"
The ghost of something that might have been a smile. "You're human."
"So are the thousands of women in your breeding pools."
"None of them are in his quarters."
She felt that land. It was true. Whatever this was — captivity, protection, something worse — it wasn't normal. Danton had broken protocol for her. She knew it. This one knew it. Probably every Vampyren in the building would know it soon enough.
"What's your name?" she asked, surprising herself.
"Lan."
Just the one syllable. He said it like it meant something and she didn't have the context to understand what.
"Cassi."
He nodded. Then winced, the movement pulling at whatever wound the lucky human had left him with. His hand pressed harder against his ribs and she could see the faintest dark stain spreading through his shirt.
That didn't mean she was safe from him, or that in any way she wanted him there.
She wasn't stupid enough to reach out with any kind of comfort, not just because it almost undoubtedly would be mistaken for something else.
But because even human males snapped when a weakness they were hiding was exposed.
But something tugged at her anyway. The same part of her brain that had looked at Danton and thought, He's different. The part she didn't trust.
Lan's scent reached her then. Not like Danton's — Danton smelled like heat and desert and something dark underneath. Lan smelled sweeter. Spicier. Like cinnamon and something she couldn't name that made her breath catch before she caught herself.
Pheromones. Had to be. There was no other explanation for why a wounded enemy alien was making her feel anything other than terror.
She told herself to stop noticing. She told herself to keep her guard up. She told herself this was just chemicals and captivity and fear doing strange things to her brain.
They'd just have to coexist until Danton came back.
The mics in her wrists throbbed dully. She should be reporting — location, number of Vampyren, layout of the building. Instead she sat six feet from a wounded alien and said nothing useful at all.
She didn't even know if he would.
And she didn't know why that thought scared her more than the wounded alien sitting six feet away, watching her with gold eyes that held something she refused to call kindness.