Page 59 of Call of the Blood

Every night. I was ending up in Alexius’s bed every single night. He left really early this night. He’d been frustrated with his work the night before, getting home earlier than expected and clearly distracting himself with me. I heard him talking to Maria about a place where these unknown vampires were resting, but he didn’t explain anything to me, and I didn’t ask. He also didn’t ask me what I was doing tonight.

Which I was glad for because I was meeting Henry and didn’t want to lie to Alexius or suddenly explain that I had found my uncle and was trying to figure that out. Alexius didn’t need anything else to worry about. He was running out of time to find these vampires, and now there were human bodies being found. I had witnessed a kill. This wasn’t good.

I did feel guilty and somewhat lonely. A week of hiding Henry was one thing. A couple of weeks while nothing was happening, fine. But now, it just made me begin to feel guilty and lonely with the information.

Henry had invited me to his place, but I convinced him back from that once again. Instead, we settled on a park close to his home. It gave me a chance to decide if I wanted to cross the threshold of neutral third-party places to somewhere more familiar. I also took note of how it was only a thirty-minute drive to get there. We had been closer than we thought.

I parked and found a park bench to sit on. Henry had said he would walk over tonight, so I waited, keeping my eyes out for him.

He walked up with a smile, sitting next to me.

“You know, I heard something insane at Wren’s last night,” he said instead of a proper greeting.

“I can only imagine. What is it?” I put my hands in my pockets, stretching my legs.

“You and Alexius went to a werewolf party last night.” Henry chuckled as he shook his head. “And that wasn’t the craziest part. You were there and so was your brother. Declan was at this party? Tell me Wren was lying.”

Fuck.

“Yeah… No, Wren wasn’t lying to you.” I sighed and had to quickly decide how caught up I thought Henry needed to be. The easiest thing would be the next thing Wren probably knew and kept to himself so far or would know soon. “Declan is dating a werewolf. We’ve needed to discuss some safety things for him and her and me. She didn’t know about me. I didn’t know about her. It’s been tense. Alexius and Callahan are being the mature adults. She makes me want to strangle her sometimes.” I chuckled sardonically. “Though so does Declan. I worked so fucking hard to keep him out of the troubles of the nest when Mom died and I was alone, only for him to accidentally fall in love with a fucking werewolf.”

“So, you knew Declan was in Los Angeles,” Henry said softly. “I thought you didn’t know and figured I wouldn’t bother you with your brother if you weren’t interested in attempting to have a relationship with him.”

“Why do you think I would take a vacation to Los Angeles? He’s my brother. We still game together.” And I hated how I wasn’t surprised Henry had always known and just not said anything. We had both been dancing around the Declan conversation, but now I could.

“You never approached him, did you? He’s never mentioned it.”

“No, I’ve never bothered him. He doesn’t know I’m here. I looked into it after what happened with Jacob’s nest. I heard news that I knew was you but didn’t want to admit. Made me wonder what happened to Declan, only to find out that he was here in the same city as me. I was glad to know he was safe on this side of the country after everything I heard come out of the situation there.”

“Has anyone ever asked you about it? People must know you used to be part of the nest?”

“No, actually. I never really invited that sort of conversation, preferring to live in the present, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely.” I nodded. “You know, I was worried about telling you about Declan. Just… old wounds, angry with you still about never coming back.”

“I understand. And I wasn’t sure what path you were going to take as a vampire.”

“You know, Declan and I have joked about me being the new you to his future kids, if he has them,” I said, smiling, feeling a huge weight off my chest now that Henry and I were past one more barrier.

“You know, I wasn’t going to bring up the werewolf party tonight. Or Declan. I wanted to ask something more personal tonight after… you know I’m in Maria’s nest, right?”

“I do.”

“So… I heard what happened at the club,” he said, clearly dancing around the conversation even as he opened the topic up for discussion. “Alexius being a bit controlling… domineering from the looks of it to people around you two.”

“Ah…” I nodded slowly, going back to that moment, that event. It happened over a week ago now. I had seen Henry since then, but he was now bringing it up.

“Do you need to get out of that? I know you said that you like the job and stuff, but… I’ve never seen you with him. The few public appearances have either been official or don’t look good for him. I want to make sure you’re sure you don’t want out.”

“Oh…” I was trying to find words. Henry was a couple of centuries old, at least. He’d probably understand. Maybe he wouldn’t be grossed out hearing about Alexius and me.

“You know there are rumors about Alexius and me, right? That night… things kind of boiled over between him and me. We finally made the rumors true… He was jealous of seeing me flirt a bit with someone else, and I was pissed off that he kept sending me mixed signals about whether he was interested or not.” I trailed off, opening and closing my mouth several times as I tried to think of a way to tell Henry it was okay. “I like that he can be that way. The domineering… dominant sort of man. It’s hot. It pissed me off in the moment, but it’s hot. And if I had shut him down entirely that night, it would have stopped, but I didn’t… Because I’ve wanted to sleep with him since the day I met him.”

Henry’s nostrils flared, either in disgust or anger. I wasn’t able to pinpoint what emotions he was dealing with on his face.

“He’s ancient. He’s so much more powerful than you. He shouldn’t be…”

“He and I had that talk,” I said quickly. “And I don’t care. I don’t care how old he is or how powerful he is or who he knows. If I say no, he’ll stop. That I do know. Because he thought the same thing. He probably still does somewhere in the back of his mind, but yesterday he was practically parading in front of the werewolves that we’re sleeping together.” I smiled. “And I quite enjoyed that.”