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“Yeah. Sorry. I just… I remembered something I had to. I can’t believe I forgot. You guys enjoy brunch without me. Tell the owner to put in on Aleks’s tab if you want, but I… I gotta go. Bye.”
And then, before any of the Trio can try to stop me, I scoot around the table and make my escape.
Thank the Luna we had an outside table.
* * *
If I wantto confront Aleks, there’s only one place to go. The Cadre building. Since taking over for Roman, he spends nearly every hour of each day in his office on the twentieth floor.
Roman used to keep his office on the twenty-first. Because Aleks is still mourning his old friend in his own way, he refuses to go a single floor higher than where Roman used to lord over Cadre building. The secretaries at the front desk have the order that I can visit Aleks there whenever I want, but I’m still grieving, too. I haven’t been back in months.
I don’t go back now.
I’m not ready to confront my vampire just yet. I figure there has to be a reason why he kept the attack from me, and if I ask him about it, he might actually explain why. I don’t think I really want to know. If it’s because he thinks he needs to coddle and protect me, I might lose it on him.
I might not be an alpha female. I’m still a shifter. Protecting me is one thing. But coddling me? I’d rather know why Aleks is up against now, instead of him keeping it from me.
Instead of going to see Aleks while he’s at work, I decide to do something I’ve been putting off for weeks now. Though he tells me repeatedly that, if I want a job, he’s happy to put me on the Cadre’s payroll—and if I don’t, he doesn’t mind if his beloved stays at him… in fact, heprefersthat one—I just can’t bring myself to do it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have another offer.
When I first moved to Muncie and I needed to make some money to survive, Gem set up an interview for me with her old boss. Charlie was a vampire who ran a supe bar named after himself. It catered to vamps and humans in the know, and he was looking for a bartender to replace Gem when she moved permanently to Accalia.
Gem thought I would be perfect for the job. When Charlie passed on me, she was livid. Of course, it all came out in the end that Aleks used his reputation in Muncie to convince Charlie not to hire me. At that time, he hadn’t quite claimed me yet, though he considered me his. He didn’t want me working the bar, so he used his influence to get me rejected.
I understood. Supernatural males get a little reckless when they’re in the mating dance, and Aleks thought that a delta wolf might be meek enough to let him bulldoze right over her. He learned quickly that wasn’t the case, though Gem hammered the message home when she flipped out on him from interfering. And that was nothing compared to how she ripped Charlie a new one for going along with it.
After Gem was done with the two males, I had a job offer from Charlie, and Aleks’s promise that he would support me working at the bar if that’s what I wanted to do. Up until now, I’ve been thinking it over, but after I bolted from the Brunch Queen and purposely heading in the opposite direction of the Cadre building, I realized I could take a trip down to Charlie’s and find out if he still needed help.
It’s something I’ve been meaning to do, and maybe I’m being petty, taking the trip to that part of Muncie without telling Aleks because he conveniently forgot to mention he was attacked by traitors last night, but I figure I might as well.
Besides, it’s not like he won’t know anyway—and I won’t even have to be the one to tell him.
How could I forget? In Muncie, you can’t do a damn thing without the Cadre leader knowing about it. That goes double when you’re his beloved.
The Fang City is full of vampires. I’ve grown used to their overlaying scent, so the tang doesn’t bother my wolf these days as much as it did in the beginning. However, when a familiar aura brushes up against me, it stands out.
Somewhere behind me, within reach of my wolf, is Dominic Le Croix. When it stays at a steady distance for the next six blocks, no matter what direction I take, I have to admit what I suspected from the moment I caught his scent: he’s following me.
Now, there are plenty of reasons why he might be doing that. The biggest one might be that he’s not at all, that it’s a coincidence that we’re going in the same direction. Dominic’s beloved is a human bartender who works at the bar I was heading toward. Though she’s Cadre now, too, Hailey refused to leave her job after she bonded with Dominic. Maybe he’s going to visit his mate.
Right. And maybe I’ll sprout wings and be the first wolf who can fly.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been walking around Muncie and caught one of Aleks’s trusted comrades in the not so far distance. When I called him out on it, my vampire didn’t deny it. The Cadre, he explained, protects the whole Fang City. And Aleks? He protectsme.
If that means he sends some of his patrollers out to watch over me when I leave the apartment? So be it. I wouldn’t be surprised if either Tamera or Leigh—probably Tamera, since she’s higher up in the Cadre’s hierarchy—let him know that I left brunch abruptly. Without their eyes on me, someone else has taken on the job.
For a moment, I pause. Then, glancing over my shoulder, I wave at Dominic so that he knows he’s caught. When he doesn’t wave back, instead nodding his head solemnly in my direction, I figure I’m right.
I let out a huff. Having a vampire tail usually doesn’t rub me the wrong way like this, but I’m still struggling to deal with the idea that Aleks might have died last night and I never would’ve known. Why should he get to monitor my every step while keeping secrets?
I know the answer to that. Because he’s the head vamp, and I’m his beloved.
Supposedly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I peer inside of Charlie’s wide window. I could walk in there, take the bar owner up on his offer of a job, and then… what? Have to deal with Aleks’s people watching me while I learn how to tend a bar?
Forget it. It was a silly idea anyway.
If I really need money? I don’t have to work in a bar.
