Page 4 of Blood and Trouble

“Do you know that woman over there?” I asked, leaning into Lycan.

He furrowed his brows and followed my eyeline, but in the time I’d spared to look away, she’d already gotten lost in the crowd.

“Who?” Lycan stretched his neck and looked to my right.

“Never mind,” I said. “Maybe too much champagne. I’m going to the bathroom to freshen up.”

“You want me to come with you?”

“No,” I said. “It’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

I walked to the washroom, did my business, and washed my hands, fighting the churn in my stomach and the vibration in my nerves. A chill slithered up my spine, resulting in a stabbing pain between my temples. Maybe I was coming down with the flu.

Another toilet flushed, and the stall next to the one I used opened, revealing the haunting woman from earlier. She stepped out, and I met eyes with her in the mirror as she went to the sink on my left.

“Ava Vanderbilt,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met.” I grabbed a towel to dry my hands.

“No, I don’t believe we have,” she said. “I knew your mother. From before.”

“My mother?” The words tripped over my lips. Priscilla Kennedy-Vanderbilt had disappeared twenty years ago when I was six. We’d only ever found a bloody patch in the snow. “How?”

The stranger didn’t answer, just dried her hands and smiled, something sinister and foreboding flashing behind eyes so dark they were almost black. “You look just like her.”

Then she turned and left me there, mouth open and startled, in bewilderment.

What the hell?

My mother had strawberry-blond hair and green eyes. My sisters, Sol and Guin, were spitting images of her. Me? I’d inherited my father’s dark coloring and bright blue eyes. Aside from similar facial structure, I didn’t resemble her at all.

I hesitated for only a moment before I rushed out of the bathroom after the woman, wanting to ask her more, but she was gone. I didn’t find her in the ballroom, either.

“Are you okay?” Lycan asked when I found him near the bar.

“Yeah, just…I met someone in the bathroom who said they knew my mother. That I looked just like her.”

Lycan blinked. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” I said, belatedly realizing one important fact. “She never told me her name.”

“I’ll have Bow pull the guest list,” he said. “But this time of night, everyone’s been drinking. Maybe she was confused.”

The night went on around us, and by midnight, my feet ached, and my eyelids stuck together anytime I blinked. We left before the party ended, escorted back to our hotel suites on the penthouse floor by a team of security. Locust, a member of the Royal Bastards MC and the leader of the squad, unlocked my door and headed inside while Lycan and I waited in the hallway next to Bow.

“Thank you,” I said, sheepishly looking up at Lycan. “For saving me back there…with Scott.”

He scoffed and stuck his hands in his pockets. “You had nothing to worry about.”

“Still. I appreciate you having my back.” I raked my gaze down his disheveled attire. He’d untied the bow around his neck, now hanging unevenly down his chest, and his hair stuck out at odd angles, evidence that he had run his hands through it on the way home. In my tipsy state, my fingers itched with the overwhelming urge to tunnel through it. I clenched them to my side to keep them in place.

“You dodged a bullet with him,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

I breathed out a small laugh, pitying a younger version of me that had wished things could be different. I hadn’t had time for him then, and I didn’t have time for him now. Still, some small part of me wished I had.

“No man should talk to a woman like that, especially not one carrying his fucking child.”

“Such language.” I touched my lips in feigned offense. “Careful not to upset my delicate sensibilities.”