Page 118 of Blood and Trouble

Sure, she reeked of decay and rot like the rest of them, but her skin had grown paler since the royal reception, black veins protruding beneath her flesh like snakes or worms. Either would be appropriate.

“She’ll come,” Evelyn said. “The pack will come. We have three of their brothers. They won’t be able to resist.”

“This one’s awake,” said a bloodsucker from somewhere behind me.

Evelyn turned in my direction, and I almost laughed at the haunted glimmer in her eyes. They’d once been crimson and furious, the mark of a powerful vampire. Now she looked like someone had snuffed out her soul.

“Lycan, good of you to join us again,” she said, taking a step forward. “I take it your little silver nap was refreshing?”

“I’d say it’s good to see you, Evelyn,” I groaned. “But you look like shit.”

She hummed and stared down at me like a bug she yearned to squash.

“Too much time spent stalking me and not enough being a murderous monster?” I choked out a laugh, spitting up blood that dribbled down my chin.

The vampire closest to me slammed his fist against my cheek, whipping my head to the side. I bit my cheek and spat on the floor, smothering another laugh.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I taunted. “Did you want that? I know how you demons like guzzling the shit. Like fucking ticks.”

“That’s the thing about you shifters.” Evelyn tilted her head to the side. “Such arrogance. Such hypocrisy. I know how you transition, with all the rutting and the blood sharing. I know how you mate, how you savagely tear into your lover’s neck and combine your magic. You call me the monster?”

“And yet, you’re the one taking hostages,” I sputtered, blinking back another wave of nausea.

She winced, not from my words but from something invisible inside her, something that seemed to twist in her gut and writhe beneath her veins.

“So what’s the plan? Hmm? Draw my pack here? Kill my mate in front of me?” I scoffed. “Predictable.”

“Mate?” She straightened with an indignant twist of her lips. “I don’t see a mating mark.”

“You checked my entire body? You pervert. At least ask before you skeeve on my private bits.” I couldn’t resist the urge to needle her, to drag this out until the pack came. She’d been right. Of course, they’d come for me. I’d do the same for them. As much as I wanted them to tuck tail back to Montana to save themselves, they wouldn’t leave us behind. I didn’t see Moose or Locust, but I sensed them close. Both still alive…but barely.

The beefy vampire hit me again, but I’d expected it this time, giving in to the force to make it hurt less.

“I am curious,” she said, tapping her lip with one finger. “How does it work between the three of you? Ava and Poe marked each other. You marked Poe. But neither of them marked you. And now…what? An incomplete bond? Will Poe’s wolf reject one in place of the other?”

How did she know so much about shifter mating bonds? How did she know so much about my bonds to my mate and my wife?

She must have read the surprise in my eyes, even though I tried to keep my expression neutral.

“Oh, I’ve been watching you for a very long time,” she said. “Well, not you. You’re hardly interesting enough. But that beautiful wife of yours.” Evelyn clicked her tongue and grinned. “My, my, my. What I wouldn’t give for twenty minutes alone with her.”

The visual churned the inferno in my gut, boiling my blood, seizing my lungs. I pulled in a breath and let it out slowly, telling myself to calm down. My wolf wanted to break these silver chains, tear her throat open, and rip out her heart. He’d never had much patience. But I sat as still as I could, willing her to keep going, to reveal her hand.

“But alas, the best-laid plans and all that,” she said. “That was something my brother was always good at, taking what I wanted and smashing it to pieces.”

“Marx,” I said.

She hummed with a shrug. “Twins. Both in life and in death. Our maker turned us together. She liked the symmetry of two souls brought into the world together and leaving it together.”

I couldn’t help the sardonic chuckle that echoed up my throat. “Well, that’s shot to shit now, isn’t it? Marx went down screaming like a fucking bitch⁠—”

Evelyn hit me this time, another hard thwack across the cheek. Maybe I deserved that one.

“I know what your kind did to him,” she snarled. “How that bitch tore out his heart and ripped off his head. Fucking savages.”

I focused on regrouping, on not being too snarky lest she decide to be more lethal. I could handle a few smacks. I did not want her sinking her fangs into my carotid.

“You think I want to spend my time with your kind? You think I like tracking useless shifters across half of Europe?” The black veins under her skin squirmed, and she grimaced like she was fighting off another wave of anguish. “That Kennedy bitch did something to us. She cursed us. And now look at me.”