“First tell me what happened here?” he asks rudely, glaring at my Wolf friend.
“Oh, sorry. Devon, this is Lincoln. He is a Werewolf. Cursed by Lance and kept here for fifty-seven years until I just somehow broke the curse. Lincoln, this is Devon, my older Vampire charge, business partner, best friend and lover.” Quite a thorough introduction, but now that everyone is up to speed, I say again, “What happened?”
Still glaring at Lincoln, who returns it, Devon says to me, “He was about a second away from ripping Lance’s head off after you bolted, when Tatiana threw some magick at him and knocked him unconscious.”
“Is he okay? What about Lance?” I ask, worried.
“We don’t know. Lance is in the dungeons behind the wards. Tatiana has some serious boot. She had him down there and chained up before we even knew what was happening.”
“Seriously? She turned on him? But why did she knock Constantine out?”
“We don’t know. She doesn’t speak English, only Romanian and Russian, I think. All she said was your name.”
Having reached the foyer by this time, Devon leads us to the sitting room, where my sire is laid out on the sofa. Polly is sitting next to him, her head on his chest, holding his hand, her eyes closed with a content look on her face. I feel the bile rise up in my throat again as I turn to find Cole pacing by the windows.
“Liv,” he says as he sees me and comes over to give me a tight hug. “Did Devon tell you what happened?”
I nod. I turn to Tatiana. She asks me in Russian if I speak the language.
“Yes,” I reply, and she looks relieved, apologizing for not speaking English.
“Tell me what happened here?”
“I couldn’t let your sire kill Vladimir.”
“He is an evil man, Tatiana. You should have let him.”
She shakes her head. “No, you don’t understand. He is a monster. I hate him and I want to see him dead for all the pain and anguish he has caused. My family has worked for him for generations, forced into slavery for him through an unbreakable curse.”
I roll my eyes, again with the curses. What is wrong with these people?
“But if your sire had killed him, he would have also killed the young woman,” she continues.
I look at her in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“Vladimir linked them together so that if he was killed, she would be as well. He used Blood Magick, it is unbreakable. I am not able to unlink them.”
“So, one sacrifice to free all of his captives, to free your family from him? I don’t see the problem,” Lincoln says, also in Russian, to my utter surprise.
I turn to him and say, “No. I won’t sacrifice her. We will find another way.”
“There isn’t another way. You are Queen, it is your responsibility to make him pay for his crimes.”
“How do you know what I am?” I ask him with surprise.
“It seems the longer I’m around you, the more information I get from you,” he says, somewhat embarrassed, tapping his head.
Brushing that nugget of information aside to deal with later, I say, “She is my sibling, an innocent. I will not sacrifice her, and I will not show my boys that it is okay to turn on an innocent, no matter what the circumstances.”
“Your boys?” he asks as he flicks his glance to a very furious looking Devon and Cole, who are not privy to the content of this conversation, coupled with the fact that Cole doesn’t even know who this guy is yet.
I turn back to Tatiana. “Wake Constantine up, please. The longer you keep him out, the more furious he will be.”
“I can’t wake him. Only you can,” she replies.
“What? I don’t know how?”