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Ajax and Benedict might have some shielding techniques, but if anything, the farmhouse had taught me just how vulnerable we were.
Benedict shot me a look. “You can’t tell me you’re enjoying this crap? Walking aimlessly, hoping we stumble onto something because our intel is nonexistent.”
“Conclave will have its shit together by next month,” I said absentmindedly, but I felt every ounce of the same frustration he did. There were machinations in our own Domum, aristocrats blatantly favoring the Deveraux family, while one of its members ran around slaughtering humans and forging alliances with slayers, and yet here we were, pounding the pavement like beat cops.
“Only if the lycans elect a new alpha, or one beats the shit out of the rest of them—however that happens over there,” Benedict muttered. “Alek said they failed to declare a clear winner this month, so they have to hold their ceremony again at the next full moon.”
Fuck, that meant it would be another three weeks until we had a full Conclave again. And in one week…
Don’t fucking think about it.
Benedict glanced down at his phone, a devious smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Damn, she’s hot.” He typed out a response and pocketed his phone. “Did Avi go out with Jocelyn tonight?”
My head snapped to look at him. “What?”
Benedict’s brows rose. “Jocelyn and Valor were feeling stir crazy, so they went out tonight. I was just wondering if Avi was with them.”
I blinked. “She better fucking not be.” The last time she’d gone out with the girls and no guard, she’d spent a month in captivity and came out…promised.
Protect. Claim.
“Fucking relax, Chad.” I mumbled.
“What?” Benedict’s brow furrowed.
“Nothing.” I shook my head, but one look in my brother’s direction told me he wasn’t going to let it go. I gritted my teeth. “I have these…urges. Really insistent, annoying fucking thoughts that I can’t shut down. Stop looking at me like I’ve lost it.”
Benedict put up both his hands and didn’t break his stride.
“And since I can’t make the caveman shit go quiet in my head, I named him Chad, you know, like one of those fraternity fuckboys.” I shrugged.
“You named your primal, predatory, God-given vampire instincts…Chad?” Pure amusement shone in his eyes.
“Shut the fuck up and keep patrolling.”
Benedict pressed his lips together and nodded, clearly biting back a smile.
Ajax paused briefly up ahead, where he was easily a head taller than anyone else on the sidewalk, then kept walking.
“You know, you could just…give in to the urges,” Benedict suggested.
I scoffed. “The first thing we’re taught, and that we teach the trainees, is control. We don’t give in. That’s why we’re hunting the bloodmad vampire and not being hunted.”
Protect. Claim. I resisted the urge to take out my cell phone and call Avi just to make sure she’d kept her ass home tonight. I wasn’t her keeper. She had every right to do whatever she wanted…for the next seven days. As long as she took a guard.
Then again, what was the worst thing that could happen to her? It was hard to threaten Avi with the chance of being kidnapped when she was willingly walking into a prison of her own choosing next week.
Chad roared inside me, and red flooded my field of vision. Fucking stop it. We don’t have time for this. We made a deal and we’re sticking by it.
“Some urges…” He scratched the back of his neck. “Some are gifts, and fighting them only fucks us over.” He looked over at me. “Some of those urges save us, brother.”
“And some condemn us to hell.” I blatantly looked away from him. “Drop it.”
You’re still holding back. That’s what Avi had said to me last week, and what she’d repeated every evening since.
Was I holding back? Absolutely. I kept myself in check emotionally because I had a fucking fantastic sense of self-preservation, and sexually…I gave her ninety percent. Beautiful, delicate, blushing princesses weren’t built for the other ten. And the oddest part? I didn’t really miss the other ten percent. Sex with Avianna was fucking mind-blowing.
Did I ever fantasize about taking her to my little condo on Twenty-Second Street? Fine, I could admit to that, but it wasn’t because I needed to control her—she gave me that in her own bedroom. And it wasn’t because I got off on my partner’s complete surrender—which I did. I fantasized about taking her there because there was a part of Avianna that craved submission, whether or not she’d admit. My ma—don’t call her that—held more political power in her little finger than anyone I knew besides Alek and Lyric, and she absolutely came undone when I took the weight of that power from her. But one step into that condo and my little princess would run crying into the night.
Maybe she should.
Chad voiced his displeasure so loudly I almost cupped my ears in an illogical attempt to block him out. I only have her for one more week. And I was already a fucking addict. I woke up hard for her and then I took her every evening without fail. She had moved into my thoughts and set up residence there. Here I was on a patrol, thinking about her. Again. And it wasn’t getting any better. If anything, I only needed her more.
