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I’d swallowed sickly at the pity on her face. “When?”
She’d thrown a look over her shoulder at the guards. “I don’t know for sure,” she whispered, “but I heard something about August third.”
My stomach knotted. “That’s next Thursday.”
“Yeah.” A guard headed our way, and she moved off with a muttered apology.
The hell with Kuro. I’d decided right then to escape and take my chances with SI, but it had been impossible. The thralls were locked in the coven’s underground lair except for an hour each afternoon when we were allowed outside.
Brien combed his fingers through my hair. “I like it long. It suits you.”
My eyes flew open. I shrugged and gave him a truth. Blame it on my exhaustion and that sense of safety.
“I hate it. I only grew it long as a disguise. I can’t wait to cut it off.”
He stilled. “No. I forbid you to cut it.”
He what?
I pulled back to look him in the eye. “Try and stop me,sir.”
His eyes hooded. “I could, you know. Stop you.” The threat was clear.
“Yeah.” My smile was razor-thin. “You could. But sooner or later, someone will slip. And I can be all kinds of creative with sharp things.”
He drew me back against his chest. I could’ve fought him, but I was drowsy and wallowing in the afterglow, so I let him. But I held myself stiff, my fingers curled into fists so I wouldn’t forget and begin petting him again.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” he said, low-voiced.
“Then don’t threaten me or give me orders.”
“I should’ve known you’d be difficult.”
“Then why buy me?”
“I told you. I couldn’t leave you there—your life would’ve been hell with either of those other two bidders. And it wouldn’t have been a long life.”
I scoffed. “So this was you rescuing me.”
“I thought you needed it,” he said simply.
I lifted my head and made sure he saw my curled lip, but inside, my stomach bottomed out, because Ihadneeded to be rescued—and I hated it. Hated feeling helpless like that. But without Brien, right now I’d belong to a sadistic vampire, a man who apparently would’ve used me until I died a cold, painful death.
Brien didn’t even know the worst of it, that I’d killed Crow and thought I’d gotten away with it…until that night at a Costa Rican bar when someone had tapped my shoulder and I’d turned to see a stranger with prominent, all-seeing eyes. An Asian-American like me, although not of Korean descent. Japanese, maybe, since he’d told me to call him Kuro.
But he’d known me: my slayer code name, Twilight. Known that I’d been born in San Francisco but had grown up in LA. However, it was when he’d let drop that he knew both my mother and grandmother had been slayers, too that all the blood drained from my cheeks. He even knew it had been my mom who’d pushed to get me accepted at an SI training camp when I was twelve, a year earlier than most slayers-in-training.
Only a member of SI’s Board of Directors could’ve known all that.
I was still reeling when Kuro dropped his final bombshell. He knew about Crow. That I’d staked her—the North American alpha—after she’d ordered me to kill my best friend Ridley.
Brien traced a finger down the red dagger on my spine.
I stiffened. The skin had healed, but even after four months, it was sensitive. Maybe because I still hadn’t accepted how drastically my life had changed.
“One thing I’ve been wondering,” he said.
“What?”
