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“Wrong,” I said. “It was theonlychoice to make.”
“You’re a vampire. You had obligations.”
“To who? I don’t have any obligations to the clan, and even if I did, I kept the clan from killing a human tonight. I don’t owe you anything.”
“You are in my territory.” Ronan’s voice was low and dangerous. His eyes silvered, and his fangs descended, and magic rose in the air, peppery and hot. I braced myself against the coming blow—and prepared to meet it.
I liked and appreciated rules. I liked order. But even I knew that rules sometimes had to be bent or even broken. Exceptions had to be made, or else the rules would swallow their purpose, their intention.
“I’d have thought better of your parents,” he said, “that they hadn’t raised you to break the faith with other vampires.”
“How did I break the faith?”
“She is a friend of the clan, and you didn’t have their consent. Once again, you’re in my territory and didn’t have my consent. Maybe your parents’ wealth, their status, has poisoned you. Spoiled you. But you aren’t in Chicago, and things work differently in the real world.”
Now I was pissed on behalf of myself and my parents. “I was raised to do the right thing, and that’s what I did. Politics is second—will always be second—to saving lives.”
“She is one life. You’ve potentially put all of us in danger. Which is more important?”
I just stared at him. “You can’t be serious. You can’t tell me you’d have left her there, refused to help her, let her die.”
Ronan just looked back at me. “I don’t have the luxury of worrying about one human. I have a coven to consider.”
“Fine,” I said. “You can feel free to squander your immortality if you’d like—to not use the gifts you’ve been given. I don’t plan to.” And that included making sure she was safe from his single-mindedness. “Are you going to take care of Carlie, or do I need to find other arrangements?”
“I care for my vampires,” he said. “That’s precisely my point.” He stepped closer. “You will not endanger my people further. You will not touch another human.”
There was glamour in the words, magic in the push. And insult in both. Maybe he thought I’d changed her as a lark, as an opportunity to set up my own kingdom in northern Minnesota.
“I saved her,” I said again, and it took effort to say those three words, to swim through the glamour that demanded I concede. “And I’m not going to waste any more time arguing with you. We have bigger problems to deal with.”
“You will not endanger my people further,” he said again, a demand for obedience that was growing stronger, more insistent. But while it may have affected me, it didn’t affect the monster. It rose through my weakness, through the magical subjugation of my will, and stepped forward through me, and turned my eyes crimson.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” I said to him, my voice low and hoarse and as full of anger as his had been of command. The monster was eager to back up the words with action, and moved forward.
Connor put a hand on my arm, searched my face. And the monster looked back at him.
“Shit,”he said, and held my arm tight so I couldn’t lunge after him. “Drop the magic,” he told Ronan. “You’re not helping her or yourself.”
“She will—”
“Drop the fucking magic,”Connor ordered again. And this time, Ronan didn’t argue.
The glamour slipped away like the outgoing tide, and I breathed again, gained control again... and found Ronan staring at me, eyes wide, with absolute horror.
Even the monster was shamed.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ronan asked.
Connor turned on him so quickly, I barely saw him move. He had Ronan by the shirt, shoved him back against the wall. “There is nothing wrong with her. And if you ever use glamour on us again, you won’t live long enough to regret it.”
“I suggest,” Ronan said, his eyes like quicksilver, “that you take your hands off me.”
Connor’s chest was heaving, his eyes cold as ice, but he lifted his hands, stepped back. “How long until we know if she survives?”
“Not until the transformation is complete. Or it isn’t.”
“I’ll need to see her,” I said.
