Every emotion beat the shit out of me from the inside out, and yet I stood, my gaze unseeing, my heartbeat garbled and struggling.
You coward.
For once, I agreed with Chad. Then again, our instincts had been imbedded in our DNA, the product of millennia of evolution. We were designed to hunt our prey with lethal efficiency, and to claim our mates whether or not they even wanted us. That was how the bloodlines had survived this long. That was why the warrior class still existed.
And yet I’d never force Avi, and if that made me a coward, so fucking be it.
“You have to be kidding me,” Alek interrupted my thoughts—guess I’d tuned them out. He looked every bit the king in his Armani tux, relaxed, comfortable even, but I knew he felt the same unease I did because Lyric, his queen, wasn’t here.
He didn’t trust Samuel with his mate.
And yet I’d been forced to leave mine behind those fucking wards. I couldn't even get to her if I wanted to…well, I could hold a Greenbriar at knifepoint until he unwove the magic. Yeah, that sounded like a good plan.
“Jocelyn is already on her way,” Lachlan answered, pocketing his phone. Alek’s second in command was also rocking a tux, but he’d paired it with a kilt of his family’s tartan.
“Of fucking course she is,” Benedict muttered, already yanking at his bowtie.
They were dressed to the nines and yet here I stood in leathers, a black Henley, and my sheathes…minus one dagger. I glanced down at the empty pocket of leather and made the decision in that moment never to replace it. It would be my own scar.
“We need to send assassins.” Lachlan was already looking around our group.
“I’m going,” Benedict shrugged out of his jacket, revealing he’d been strapped under all that formal wear.
“I need you in there.” Alek shook his head as other assassins took off their own jackets. Everyone had come to this party armed to the teeth.
“Do not make me choose between you and my mate,” Benedict stated. It wasn’t a question.
Was that what I had done? Chosen the security of Alek’s throne over Avi? Fuck, chosen to indulge my own inferiority complex over fighting for my mate? Maybe I would have embarrassed her. Maybe the aristocrats would have gossiped that she’d been mated to the son of a lowborn mistress and a disgraced Assassin. But there was no one on this earth who could love Avi the way I did and maybe, just maybe, that would have been enough for her if I’d just spoken up.
“Fuck. Fine, go with them,” Alek sighed, ripping his hand over his hair and staring down the road toward Deveraux Hall. “There’s still no sign of them.”
“Then the papers haven’t been signed yet,” Dagon answered.
“We have to go,” Benedict snapped. “Jocelyn is already there, and the witches are under attack.”
“Ajax, Dagon, Benedict, you go,” Lachlan ordered. “Zachariah, we need you here since you know Samuel the best, and Talon, we’ll need you to turn into a mouse or something to listen in places we can’t get to if we won’t have Benedict.” Lachlan turned toward me, his brow furrowing in…concern. “And take Hawke with you. He looks like he needs to kill a few things.”
“Hawke?” Ajax asked, that same worry etched into his face.
“I would love to kill some vampire slayers right about now,” I answered, pushing of the car.
“He’s not lying,” Benedict muttered. “Vests.”
Lachlan opened the back of the rover and threw Kevlar at us. I hesitated for a second. What the fuck did it matter if a bullet ripped through me anymore?
“She will not survive if something happens to you,” Benedict whispered, quiet enough so only I could hear. “Put the fucking thing on.”
I did.
“I have Jocelyn’s position. Let’s go.” We grabbed onto Benedict’s forearms and night ripped into us, biting at our skin as we wended, the distance robbing my lungs of air as we cut through space.
And then we were there.
“Fuck,” Ajax muttered, shaking his head. Crystals of ice fell from his hair.
“There!” Benedict pointed to a stone-walled house that sat at the edge of a creek. It had one of those old ass water mills and everything. The place was massive, and yet the attack seemed to only come from one wing of the house.
Bolts of energy flew from the windows of the house toward a knoll where witches had put up a good defense. Jocelyn was in the middle of them.
Another quick wend and we were in the middle of them.
Dagon threw up his hands and the water in the creek flew upward, blocking the blasts of green…whatever…that came from the house.
Ajax did his thing, expanding his bubble so it covered all dozen witches who had engaged on this side of the battle.
“What the hell?” One of the witches turned, looking at us with huge, confused eyes.