“What he means, Mother, is that if you can picture an iceberg, you can understand the number of males to females,” Ambrose says, then he suddenly stops pirouetting in front of her. “Do you know the minuet?”
“Fuck.” Matthias groans. “Why does it feel like we’re all sliding into dumbfuckery?”
“Lots of men, very few women,” I grumble. “There are almost thirty-five thousand vampires in the world currently, and fewer than three thousand of them are women.”
“Asher turned all of us himself, except for Raphael and Ambrose,” Andrei says, “You are the first woman in our coven, Mother. The reason we act as if you’re a queen… is because to us? You’re our salvation.”
“Salvation,” Chloe says the word as if she’s afraid of being blasphemous. “I…”
“He means to say,” Matthias interjects. “You’re the hope against the Order. You’re the hope that we all have a soulmarked somewhere in the eternal night. Asher waited almost a thousand years to find you. Will we all have to wait as long? Or longer? What if you had died before he could reach you?”
Chloe looks around, and her eyes stop dead on Ambrose.
“An eternity of true damnation,” Ambrose says softly before he walks over to a chair beside Kian. Slumping down into it, he seems to truly fold into himself.
“The moment we are turned,” I say, “is the moment the ache of the void begins. We can feel it every moment of our existence. Every second of every hour, of every night, of every century, we ache.”
“We envy our sire as much as we cheer for him,” Raphael says. “It’s not like we get to stand in line for our soulmarked. There’s no number board calling off who’s next.”
“That’s why Nikolaos has caused a war between our covens,” I add. “To our knowledge, him forcing a bond upon you should have been impossible, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have worked.”
No one says much after that, the implications far and wide.
What if it had worked?
What could that have possibly meant?
“What of the other girl? The one I heard about when I was in the den?” Chloe suddenly asks, her eyes wide with fear. “She was being held there.”
Kian looks up from where he’s been tapping away at his phone, his fingers a blur of motion. “She’s with Nikolaos.”
“When did you find this out?” I ask in surprise.
“Right before I had to hear about your erection issues,” Kian says then looks down at his phone again. “Really, sire? Can’t you control yourself?”
Tilting my head to the side, I’m about to respond before I decide to shut my mouth. A small growl comes out, but that’s all I let out.
“Fair enough,” I say. “Is this the surprise you mentioned when you came down?”
“Yes, and probably no,” Kian says, and slips his phone into his pocket. “We knew he more than likely had her, but I was able to confirm it from his own camp.”
“Who?” I ask quickly.
“Vaughn. There’s a growing splinter in Nikolaos’s coven now. One that’s been pushed out into the light. All because many have voiced their disapproval of his actions against our mother. That, and it seems Nikolaos hasn’t felt the same… affinity for the one he still holds.”
“Is Vaughn able to give us the location of where Nikolaos has been hiding out?” Raphael asks before I can.
“No.” Kian sighs loudly. “That’s part of my issue right now. I was hoping he’d be able to find out, but it seems he’s been excommunicated from the coven, along with a couple others.”
“You know you use words like the Order,” Chloe says quietly to the room. “Excommunicated, salvation, soulmates, soulmarked…”
I laugh. “Two sides of the same coin.”
“It’s been debated since time immemorial whether we or the Order would exist without the other,” Raphael says.
“We’re getting off topic though. Do you have any more news?” I ask Kian.
“Yes, Dav’s rivals are starting to get antsy. They’ve been putting out calls for nomads to come join them,” Kian says.
“Damn.” I wince. “I had hoped that wouldn’t happen before we made our move.”
“So was he, I bet,” Raphael says. “But with your cock leading the way, we’ve be waylaid.”
Chuckles pop up around the room, and soon Chloe leans over to me.
Whispering quietly, she asks, “Why does everyone keep talking about your penis?”
Fuck.
“Mother, you should remember vampires have really good hearing,” Caden says loudly before he gets the nudge from Maddox. “His cock keeps getting talked about because for the past few days, if our sire wasn’t in the bedroom with you, he was walking around with an erection. It was like he was a teenager again.”
Chloe’s cheeks begin to turn a deep pink as her eyes widen in realization.
“Enough, children,” I growl, and point to Raphael. “I need you to set up a meeting with Dav. We need to meet up as soon as possible.”