Chapter 34
Nyx
Cain placed his dagger on the black marble floor. A soft, almost polite click that struck me like a gong.
He’d disarmed himself.
To protect me.
He’d stripped himself of his weapon, defying his hardwired, gut-level need—to dominate, to battle to the death—to keep me safe.
Something deep inside me broke open, a barrier forged of years of never being enough. Of always falling short.
Then fear detonated in my chest. My heart grew fists and pounded them against my ribcage, wild with terror.
This wasn’t what I’d planned. He wasn’t supposed to do that, wasn’t supposed to trade himself for me.
“Cain, no!” I twisted Nazaire’s grip. “Don’t trust him.”
My father—no, my sire; I refused to think of him as my father any longer—locked his arm tighter my neck. “Quiet,” he spat against my ear.
Cain ignored me and started to rise.
“All of them,” said Nazaire.
Cain gave him a hooded look but produced a switchblade and added it to the pile, before straightening up again.
I couldn’t breathe. Not just from the arm strangling me but from the weight of what Cain had done. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the great room.
The other five Maritime members had gone statue-still. Nazaire looked at Brien and said, “Your weapons, too.”
“No!” I slammed an elbow into my sire’s rib cage, desperately trying to get free. If I could get away—even for thirty seconds—I could fade into the shadows, taking myself out of the equation. If I could dredge up the energy, that is. “Don’t—that’s what he wants!”
“That’s enough.” Nazaire’s grip on my throat constricted until it felt like he was one millimeter away from crushing my windpipe. “Another word and I’ll send your pretty lieutenant to the Dark Gods right now”—a jab of his dagger for emphasis—“in front of your eyes.”
I stilled, chest jerking in and out. It was the only way to buy Cain and his friends time. I only prayed he knew what he was doing.
“The weapons,” Nazaire reminded Brien.
“No,” he returned.
Nazaire dug the blade a little deeper. This time, I managed not to react.
Cain took over, moving forward. A trio of my father’s men closed in on him like wolves coming in for a kill.
He lifted his hands, loose and easy. “I’m unarmed,” he told Nazaire, ignoring the other three vampires. “Now let her go. It’s not her you want. You want a hostage, take me. My friends won’t stop you.”
This was Cain’s plan? I swallowed a moan.
He flicked a glance at me. Somehow I knew he was asking me to trust him, and I managed to form my lips into a confident answering smile. Well, semi-confident anyway.
“Not you,” Nazaire told him. “Your primus.”
He took the dagger from my side long enough to point it at the tall, pony-tailed vampire.
“No,” said Cain. “You want him, you go through me first. But let’s make this interesting.
” His smile was cold enough to frost stone.
“Enforcer Nazaire, I challenge you for your daughter. If I win, she becomes mine. Any tie to the Quebec City Syndicate will be cut. Her loyalty will belong to the Maritime Syndicate—and me.”
“A challenge,” my sire echoed. I didn’t need to see his face to know his expression had turned calculating. “And if I win?”
“You take my place in the Maritime Syndicate hierarchy.”
The QCS vampires exchanged glances. An offer like that was almost unheard of. But if Brien agreed, the challenge could go forward.
It was a brilliant countermove on Cain’s part. Refusing the challenge would make Nazaire appear weak, afraid—and he’d rather bleed out on his own dagger than admit to either.
“A Maritime lieutenant,” Nazaire said. “Does he have your permission, Primus?” His tone put quotes around the word “Primus,” like Brien had somehow tricked his way into ruling one of North America’s most powerful syndicates.
“My lord?” Cain said without taking his gaze from me. “Do I have your permission?”
Brien stepped next to his lieutenant. He didn’t seem surprised, and neither did Talon. I should’ve guessed they’d have a Plan B.
Maxime, a slim French vampire with swept-back dark hair who was my sire’s closest friend, moved to block Brien. The Maritime primus leveled a look at him. Maxime halted and retreated without a word.
Something in the room had shifted, a subtle rebalancing of power. Cain had just tilted the board, and Nazaire was too arrogant, too focused on his own maneuvers to realize he was playing under someone else’s rules.
But other QCS men noticed, except possibly Rodrigo. Several of them eased backward, giving Cain and his friends a little more space.
Beneath the fear, beneath the dagger biting into my side, hope stirred. Not the fragile, flowery kind. The kind that came with teeth and claws.
“Yes,” Brien told his lieutenant. “You have my permission. And you’d better fucking win,” he muttered under his breath.
“I will,” Cain said simply.
Brien raised a brow at Nazaire. “The challenge has been made. Do you accept?”
Nazaire pushed me at the two closest QCS vampires—Maxime and Rodrigo.
They grabbed me. Maxime’s grip was impersonal, but my cousin’s fingers dug painfully into my arm.
“You little idiot,” he hissed in my ear. “What have you done?”
Cain growled and took a threatening step in our direction. Two QCS vampires were instantly in his face, blades to his throat.
He acted like they weren’t even there. “Let her go,” he ordered my cousin.
Rodrigo’s chest puffed like the brainless rooster he was.
Maxime made an irritated sound. “Treat her with respect,” he snapped at my cousin. “The challenge demands that.”
“Blood-rat doesn’t deserve my respect,” he muttered.
I rounded on him, fangs bared. “I am not a blood-rat,” I hissed. “He was the one holding a knife to my liver. That makes him the blood-rat. He has never treated me like his spawn. I’m only a tool to him, and a faulty one at that.”
I meant every word. The scales had fallen from my eyes. I hadn’t betrayed Nazaire. You couldn’t betray someone who’d never deserved your loyalty.
I leaned closer to Rodrigo, fangs an inch from his neck. “And if you call me that again,” I said softly, “you’ll find out exactly how little I have left to lose.”
His eyes widened—a flash, followed by a scowl—but he loosened his grip.
Nazaire was focused on Brien. “If I win,” he said, “I’ll be part of your hierarchy.”
The primus dipped his blond head. “Correct.”
“Ah…” Nazaire drew out the syllable like a hungry snake. “That would allow me to challenge you, wouldn’t it, ‘Primus’?”
Brien’s lips lifted in a smile that should’ve made Nazaire shiver in his polished leather shoes. But he was too drunk on the fantasy of slaying Brien and claiming the title of Maritime Primus.
“I’d welcome it.” Brien paused long enough to be insulting. “Enforcer.”
Nazaire’s eyes narrowed, but he let it pass, turning to Cain. “Then I accept.”
“The challenge has been accepted,” Brien announced. “Name your seconds.”
“I name Lieutenant Talon as my second,” said Cain, “and ask my primus and prima to serve as witnesses.”
Talon stepped up beside Cain, broad-shouldered and formidable.
“We accept,” said Brien.
Meanwhile Twilight inserted herself between me and Rodrigo. She took my arm. “I’ve got her,” she told my cousin.
His mouth thinned, but he released me.
“You, too,” she told Maxime.
He lifted a single, manicured brow. “I don’t take orders from you.”
Twilight exhaled through her nose—sharp, unimpressed. “Look, Nyx has got skin in the game, too. She’s not going anywhere. He’s her mate.”
“Her mate?” Maxime sliced a considering look at me.
Nazaire’s head whipped in my direction. “This is true?”
“No.” I licked my lips. “I haven’t—”
“Yes,” Cain said at the same time. “She’s mine.”
“Not yet,” I returned just as firmly.
Nazaire’s lip curled. “So that’s where you got the money.”
“Money?” I echoed.
“That half-million you have in a Swiss bank account.”
My mouth dropped, and he took that as guilt.
“That’s right, I know everything. You’ve been passing intel to this lover of yours—selling your sire out to gain his favor. I knew the truth when you returned without Pascal and Lemaire.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “I took nothing from Cain, not a single cent. And Pascal and Lemaire were stupid enough to get caught by the Maritime Syndicate. I had nothing to do with that.”
His upper lip curled. “Now you add lying to your sins? I should’ve staked you the night you first took breath.”
At my side, Twilight went rigid. Cain inhaled, the sound loud in the charged silence.
But me? I felt only the faint echo of pain. I thought of telling Nazaire the truth—that the money came from my art, my “little hobby.” But I honestly didn’t care what he thought of me. Let him believe the worst.
“I disown you,” he continued, his voice laced with scorn. “From this day forward, you are nothing to me. Nothing. The bond of sire to spawn is severed.”
I braced for the familiar ache of rejection. But all I felt was a dizzying relief. I almost laughed with the weight lifting off my chest.
I was free. Nazaire had freed me in front of all of them, and he couldn’t take it back. It was a victory I hadn’t dared imagine.
I smiled—triumphant, unmasked. Letting my happiness show. Letting everything show. “So be it.”
“Ass,” Cain added in a low, carrying voice.
Our eyes met, and the room fell away. For a few seconds, there was only him. The man who’d surrendered to a rival enforcer for me. The man standing in the fire of a challenge because of me.
He hadn’t chosen himself. He hadn’t chosen his syndicate or his friends.
He’d chosen me.
How could I not choose him back?
My heart tumbled out of my chest and into his waiting hands.
“And yes,” I said, my gaze locked with his, “I’m Cain’s mate. I accept his mate bond. Whatever happens tonight, I accept that, too. His fate is my fate.”
The words sealed it.
The bond surged so fast and hard, my chest jerked. Energy crackled between us. A thousand colorful threads wove themselves into a single, shimmering rainbow that pulsed from me to him and back again.
Something burst open inside me, brilliant and alive, a blossom made of light.
I brought a hand to my heart. How could I have believed I’d make Cain vulnerable, that I’d be a weakness others could exploit?
The mate bond didn’t make you less. It made you more. Each of us reinforcing the other, our two energies twining into something strong and unbreakable.
Cain’s strong throat worked. “I love you,” my beautiful, dangerous man mouthed, uncaring of the roomful of syndicate vampires watching.
Nazaire turned to Brien, voice slick with contempt. “This lovesick fool is one of your lieutenants?”
I brought my hand down. In that moment, I almost felt sorry for my sire.
Cain had outmaneuvered him, devising the perfect way to severe my ties with both Nazaire and the QCS without igniting a blood feud. No one, even Régis Dussault, could cry foul if Cain won a public challenge witnessed by members of both syndicates.
And if my sire thought Cain would be easy game, he really was an ass.
Brien just lifted a brow. “Your second?” he asked Nazaire.
“Maxime. And my witnesses will be Rodrigo and Théo.” He nodded at my cousin and another soldier.
“When and where?” Brien asked.
“Now. And the place will be the cemetery above.” Nazaire pointed at the ceiling. “One blade only.”
Brien glanced at Cain. “One blade only,” he agreed.
“We accept,” said Brien.
Talon bent to reclaim Cain’s weapons. Nazaire snapped at Théo to collect the blades instead, but Brien cut him off.
“I know you’re not insulting us by suggesting we’d break the challenge terms,” he said coolly. “Because everyone in this room heard me and Cain agree.”
Twin blotches of red colored Nazaire’s sallow cheeks. “Of course not,” he said, tight-lipped.
“That’s what I thought,” Brien replied.