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“Do you know her name?”
“I was eight,” she deadpanned, meeting my level gaze. “Who the witch was doesn’t matter. The debt was paid, and I got Nova.”
I hummed, running my fingers down my jaw over the stubble to curve under my chin. “Your mother must have paid her. She sounds admirable. She must love you very much.”
“She does,” Dannika said, getting quiet again. “Me, Adora, and Abbey are all she has left.”
“Abbey. Older sister?”
“Stepmom,” she explained. “She was from a different pack in Fire and Fluorite. She transferred to ours for them to be together.”
“Forgive me if this seems callous, but if you didn’t get on well with your pack, why didn’t your family move to Abbey’s pack?”
She smiled sadly. “Mathis. He never lets anyone leave once they’re in his pack.”
“Until you,” I noted.
“Until me,” she agreed somberly. “And Markus.”
“That’s bullshit.”
She chuckled. “You won’t hear any disagreements from me . . . but I did have something I wanted to ask.”
I stilled. “I’m listening.”
“When you go through with your . . . plans”—she hedged around the word, uncomfortable and stiff in her phrasing—“I want my family back. Here. With me.”
I softened. It was such an earnest request. Something she shouldn’t even have had to ask for. “I could try to get them out now, you know. It would take some planning, but an extraction team could be put together?—”
“No.” She shook her head. “Mathis will be expecting that, and he’ll look for any reason to brand them traitors. I can’t risk their lives that way.” She nibbled on her bottom lip. “It has to be after.”
I regarded her. So delicate, yet strong. Soft in some ways, yet firm and unyielding in others. Dannika was a survivor, but she didn’t let that break her or make herself cold to the world. Somehow, she’d found a way to harmoniously exist in the middle.
Even as I and every other bastard tried to take that peace from her to suit our own ends.
“I swear when this is over, they will have a home at every estate we live in—if that is their choice,” I told her. “Family is very important to me and my kind. I won’t keep you apart from yours.”
Dannika held my gaze for a suspended second, and in that brief moment, her eyes darkened. Her expression sharpened. The expression on her face, it almost looked like . . . hunger.
As fast as it had appeared, it then vanished. She leaned back in her chair and set her fork aside. After draining the remaining wine, the crystal clanked against the wood table when she set it down. “Dinner was lovely,” she started, then she paused as she stood up. The legs of the chair caught on a ripple in the rug, making her twist to maneuver out of it. “You’ll have to give my compliments to the chef.”
I opened my mouth, tempted to ask why the sudden subject change when she flashed me a tight smile and retreated to the bathroom—closing the door firmly behind her, shutting me out.
CHAPTER 13
Dannika
“This is the library,” Bianca said as we rolled to a stop. “It’s part of the larger collection that belongs to our House and also holds pieces from?—”
“The Great Library of Alexandria,” I finished. Bianca lifted her dark brows, purple eyes appraising. “Elias brought me here last week,” I explained. And he’d tried to several times since to bring me back, but I always found a reason to decline. After our dinner the other night, I was keeping my distance. It had become clear to me that while this was a business arrangement, the lines were blurring. We had to show intimacy in public, but in private? Well, I was dangerously close to crossing that line of my own volition. Nova gave me a side glance. She was witness to it, and she felt my emotions and desires leak through.
“Ah.” A small smile played on her lips. “Did he tell you that his family actually removed most of the library and has it spread all over different Blood and Beryl estates? The largest and most valuable section is with his mother in Rome.”
I nodded. “I look forward to seeing it one day.”
“It’s magnificent,” Bianca said. “I can’t imagine you’ll have to wait long. Elias always spends Christmas with his mother at the villa.”
Of course he did, because Elias, for all his dark and broody nature, was also a good son. A family man. He cared about his mother. He mourned the loss of his father and sister.
