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“She enjoyed submitting and serving,” Leonardo told Alaric. “On her own, without the need for me to make her want to.”
“For a while, she loved the experience of being something of a pet,” Bran told the ancient vampire. “She didn’t understand the language, and Lazlo trained her to specific commands, so she felt a little like a dog who knows sit and heel, but doesn’t understand general conversation. It was the situation she was in love with, not the people. She’s ready to be a human again, treasured and valued for her mind. It took me a while to transition her back to an autonomous woman again, and it’s still a work in progress. She’ll begin classes at our local college next semester. When her indentured term with me ends in three years, my agreement was that she’d be able to move out and function on her own. She wanted me to take her deep into the experience, but then she wanted me to pull her out and force her to be a woman who can live on her own. I’m quite enjoying the experience.”
“She’ll be quite wealthy,” Holly said as she entered the room. “She hired someone to help her negotiate another term after her first four years with Bran. She’ll only have to work if she wishes to, once her time with him is up, but that isn’t what you most need to know about this being you see as less than merely because she’s human.”
“She is less than us.”
“She isn’t as strong as you, or me, for that matter, but there’s something about her you’ve missed. Something very important.”
Leonardo frowned, Madeline moaned, and I assumed he was frantically rifling through her mind, looking for whatever he’d missed.
I saw the instant he figured it out.
“The Swan Queen values her?”
“Greatly,” I told him.
Leonardo looked to Alaric. “Did you know this?”
“I didn’t know who valued her, but I understood she wasn’t to be harmed beyond what we could heal. You knew this as well.”
“I did, but I thought it was because of the contracts with Bran.”
He still hadn’t let go of her, and I was beyond pissed that Cora had brought the rest of our people into the courtyard. They were on a raised dais at the edge, and I admit it was nice knowing they had my back, but I’d ordered them back to our suite. That would have to be dealt with later, though.
With Bran present, the negotiations were now his to lead, so I remained silent.
But it was Alaric who spoke next. “The girl belongs to another, and is beloved by the Swan Queen, who is married to the Dragon King, and shares powers with him over both demesnes. We do not need to be creating powerful enemies while we’re working towards a goal that is already creating more enemies than we might be able to handle.”
Madeline swooned, Leonardo caught her and lifted her into his arms like an infant, and her head lolled back. He’d taken a lot of blood, but her heart still beat. Bran could heal her, still.
Without so much of a glance at the woman in his arms, Leonardo told Alaric, “I will trade her for the wolf bitch who stabbed me in the back.”
“No deal,” I said before someone else could accept.
“The wolf bitch is an alpha werewolf,” Alaric told Leonardo. “I know you’ve heard of the wolf who is bound to the Harlequin?”
Leonardo handed Madeline off to one of his people as if she was no longer important, and he focused on Cora.
“The Harlequin? Indeed.” He looked at me. “And have you picked up any of the powers of the being your wolf is bound to?” I felt him poking at my aura, attempting to get into my mind, and I locked everything down as tightly as possible.
“No, because you haven’t fully bound your wolf to you, have you?”
“We’re a work in progress, but that doesn’t make her any less mine.”
“It absolutely does, and you know this to be so.”
Bran accepted Madeline from the jaguar shapeshifter and said, “We’ll be taking our leave back to our suite at this time.”
I wasn’t certain whether we should leave the premises, or retreat to our suite, but since we weren’t far from the suite, I didn’t override Bran’s edict, and the entire group left together. We walked rather than running, but we kept to a fast pace.
Once we were behind closed doors, Furio went to the safe with our electronics in it and began pulling everything out.
We hadn’t been able to bring anything with us because electronics are often fried when Kirsten takes you from place to place, so we’d had phones, tablets, and a laptop shipped so they were waiting for us. All we’d had to do was log into them, and we were good to go. Now, I watched Furio and Cora put the tablets and laptop into the bathtub and then drop a hairdryer into the water to fry them. This doesn’t work in newer buildings, but thankfully, the wiring in this part of the palace hadn’t been upgraded since GFCI circuits became the norm in bathrooms. Cora had explained that the hair dryer we shipped was an old one, because modern-day dryers also have a safety trip-switch that may or may not shut off when the dryer is immersed — depending upon whether the bathtub itself is grounded.
I’d put Cora in charge of security, so I checked in with her to make sure we were on the same page. I’m assuming we only came back to wipe the electronics and possibly pick up a few of our belongings.
We could carry our cellphones through — if they were wiped, that was the safest way to make sure no one could recover data from them. If they survived the trip, we’d all have a spare phone.
