“Good thing you like me,” Alek stated.
I stepped to the side, giving the kings direct line of sight. Xavier was right, there was nothing I could do if he decided to kill Alek, but I would die trying. Alek was powerful, but Xavier was power incarnate.
“What brings you here?” Alek asked, his voice relaxed.
Xavier shrugged. “I got bored, and you mortals make life interesting.”
We weren’t mortal, but I wasn’t going to argue the point. We could be killed, and our lives were finite if we didn’t care for ourselves, but our lifespans looked like gnats compared to Xavier and the other demons of his court.
Pretty sure he’d been around when the world was made.
“Just an internal matter,” Alek stated.
“Are you sure about that?” Xavier leaned against his Conclave seat and crossed one ankle over the other.
“I have it under control.”
Xavier picked at his nails. “Be sure that you do. I’d hate to have to remove Daphne from your guardianship should your protection become…unstable.”
Lachlan bristled. It was his mate’s cousin Xavier had taken an annoying interest in. Her seventeen-year-old cousin.
“She’s fine, Xavier. Go fuck someone your own age.” Alek shook his head. “It will help alleviate the boredom.”
“I’ll let you figure this one out on your own for now.” Xavier flashed a smile that was anything but friendly. The demon was our ally, but only because he deigned to be. “But should it escalate near the human girl, it won’t simply be a vampire matter anymore.”
He tipped two fingers in a salute and then walked away, vanishing into the darkness.
“Fucking Xavier,” Lachlan muttered. “Did you know he sent her the entire library of demonic history last month? This month it was a damned bulletproof Range Rover with a giant black bow. It’s like he’s counting down until she turns eighteen.”
Alek ignored Lachlan’s frustration and turned to me. “You knew Greenbriar was there.”
I nodded. “I sensed his fear.” Some ability I had there. It alerted me to everyone within my vicinity—even Avianna when she was invisible—but it also told me exactly how to torture them to get the results I needed. I was nothing better than a weapon for pain.
“And yet Xavier just walked out like he’d been watching the whole time,” Alek mused, not blaming, but curious.
“He’s impossible to sense.” I shrugged. “Xavier fears nothing.”
Lachlan grunted. “And should our Avianna fear this possible union? Or just despise it?”
I growled low in my chest, already stalking toward our tunnel for my blades. “There will be no fucking union.”
There was only one way I could stop it, and I was about to pull that trigger.
The hunger had become my perpetual enemy over these many months gnawed at my gut, my veins screaming for sustenance as I stalked across the courtyard between the personal residence of our king, the Assassins, and the formal Domum that housed visiting aristocrats and the humans who willingly offered their blood.
The fact that my skin had given way under my nails tonight told me I was walking a fine line with my own body.
And now I knew why.
There wasn’t a moment since I’d met Avianna where I hadn’t wanted her, and not in the polite way pampered princesses were used to. There was no desire for knuckle-brushing kisses or flowery words in a crowded drawing room.
No, I wanted Avianna’s thighs spread, her pussy dripping for me as she took my cock. I wanted her blood sliding down my throat, the sound of her desperate cries in my ears. I wanted to fuck her a thousand different ways—none of which were appealing to a highborn aristocrat who expected candlelight and serenades.
Highborns belonged with other highborns.
I’d come into this world as the disowned bastard of the last generation of assassins, and the only thing he’d ever given me was my power, both in strength and mind. Boys who grew up fending off bloodmad vampires in darkness to keep from being their next meal didn’t grow up to put their hands on the princess.
So what the fuck was I thinking?
She’s your mate.
Fuck that. Some magical tattoo that declared us genetically compatible for powerful offspring wasn’t going to sentence Avianna to an eternity of being chained to me. But it could get her out of this god-awful mess she’d found herself in.
I rounded the hedge into the gardens and the scent of lemongrass and jasmine had my cock hard as the steel of my blades. Avianna.
There she was, wandering the night-blooming roses, selecting one and clipping it to add to her bouquet.
There was no one more beautiful, not in our species, not in the world. Her features were as fine and delicate as her eyes were strong, and her body was curved in every place I’d liked to put my hands. She was the perfect genetic specimen of beauty for vampirekind.
And Samuel wasn’t going to put a fucking finger on her.