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The price of safety from Victorine.
Logic told me things had changed. I was Rafe’s mate now, not just Victorine Tremblay’s spawn. But sometimes logic doesn’t cut it. Karoly Kral was the bogeyman, the monster who’d haunted my childhood. The man who’d staked my father and tried to kill me, more than once.
“Hey.” Rafe tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. “It will be okay. I’ll be there, remember? Nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to. But I think you should defect to us.”
I heaved a breath. I’d come to the same conclusion myself. I was too valuable to be unaffiliated with a vampire syndicate.
“Your father will accept me?”
“Of course. You’re my mate. And besides, you’re a strong, smart vampire in your own right. You’ll have to prove yourself to him, but you’ll see. He’ll be happy to have you.”
I nodded.
“So we’ll start by negotiating,” he said. “But if negotiating doesn’t work,” he added in a steely voice I’d never heard before, “I’ll protect you. My father’s accepted the mating, which means you’re one of the family now even if you don’t defect. If Victorine wants to take this to the mat, she’ll lose. We’re stronger than her. That’s why she signed the truce, and that’s why when she decided to break it, she went about this underhanded way of doing it.”
Something about the way he said he’d protect me made me look at him.
His handsome face was stern, his mouth in a harsh line. When he saidprotection, he meant he’d go after Victorine himself.
I couldn’t let that happen. Rafe was tough for a dhampir, stronger even than some vampires I knew, but Victorine was a vampire in her prime.
In fact, that might be her next tactic. If she could somehow get Rafe to attack her, she could stake him and call it self-defense.
I’d set this off myself by mating with Rafe, but things were happening so fast. There were so many unknowns.
We were hurtling toward a showdown with Victorine, and I was terrified that somehow, someway, she’d find a way to tear us apart.
I couldn’t lose Rafe.
Not the man who’d brought color into my black-and-white life.
Not the man who’d shown me love isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength.
That’s when I seriously started to consider staking my mother.
* * *
AKral limo met us at JFK. A dark-skinned female soldier took the bag from Rafe and opened the door for us. Rafe greeted the woman, then straightened back up without getting inside.
Karoly Kral himself looked at us from the interior.
I went rigid.
“Father.” Rafe took my hand in a firm grip.
I’d seen photos of the Kral Primus, of course, but we’d never met. He was slim, black-haired, handsome…and all vampire. A powerful presence that emanated a cool control.
The man who wanted me dead.
But things had changed. I was mated to his son now, and if I wanted to keep Rafe, I had to stand my ground. I lifted my chin and waited for him to acknowledge me.
His dark gaze settled on his son. “Rafe,” he said. Just that one word, but there was a world of love infused in it.
Envy shafted through me. I couldn’t recall anyone ever looking at me like that.
“You’ve lost weight,” Karoly added gruffly.
Rafe shrugged and grinned like it was no big deal. That was one of the things I loved about him—nothing kept him down for long.
