Crimson Covenant (Onyx Assassins 1)

“Dance for me,” he said again, this time with more command.

I laughed, and he jolted as if I’d hit him.

“You really need to learn how to ask,” I said through my laughter.

“Lyric,” he chided, but I stepped into his space, boldly taking one of his hands in mine. I positioned that hand on my waist, then grabbed his other hand, laying my other one on his shoulder.

“This is the part where we dance,” I whispered, raising my brows at the stance I’d positioned us in. His body was warm against mine, the folds of my dress brushing his muscular legs. I swayed, but he was a statue. “Move,” I said, mimicking his tone from earlier.

And he did.

Gently, he swayed back and forth, spinning us around that stone courtyard with all the grace of a practiced dancer. His eyes never left mine, never stopped with their puzzled gaze. “You can’t be glamoured,” he said, almost more to himself. “Aren’t subject to my mind control powers.”

I shrugged. “I saw the demon you said I wasn’t supposed to see.”

Something like pain and worry flashed in his eyes as we continued to dance.

“Maybe I have mind control powers,” I said, smiling up at him. He tilted his head, and I squeezed his hand in mine. “I told you to move, and you did.”

“There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for you, Lyric,” he said.

Warmth flared in the center of my chest. “Even let me go?” I dared to ask, and something deep inside me feared he’d say yes.

“You’re testing me,” he growled. “This dress, your scent, the way you seem to have no sense whatsoever about staying away from me.” His hand snaked around my waist and hauled me closer to him.

I gasped, electricity crackling along my skin and sinking deeper.

“I can’t let you go, Lyric,” he finally admitted.

“Why?” I breathed the question.

“Beyond…my own reasoning, it’s not safe.”

I laughed and shook my head. “Keeping me in a mansion full of bloodthirsty vampires is safe?”

He growled again, spinning us faster and faster. I flung my arms around his neck, holding tight as we whirled at an inhuman speed. “You’re safe here. You’re safe with me.”

“As opposed to?”

We spun, but Alek’s eyes were my anchor point, and I clung to him, my body reacting to every hard inch of his pressed against mine. And soon I felt weightless in his arms, gasping as I realized we hovered above that stone courtyard. I clung tighter to him, and he hissed, running his nose along the seam of my neck.

“The demon sought you out because you’re…something else. Something old. Something that by our Covenant claims you as the demon’s.”

“What?” Cold reality crashed every writhing flame inside me.

“They’ve demanded you. To kill you. As is law.”

I stilled in his arms, and we stopped spinning. Alek brought us back to the ground gently, but he made no move to let me go.

Neither did I.

He tipped my chin up to meet his eyes. “You are safe here,” he assured me. “I would never let anyone touch you.”

And yet, he was touching me. In more places than where our bodies connected now.

“What am I?” I asked, my heart again in my throat.

His mind control didn’t work on me.

The supernatural glamours didn’t work on me.

Alek stared down at me, that blue-gray gaze igniting a fire inside me that I never wanted to die out.

“Alek,” I said with more power in my voice than I thought possible. “What. Am. I?”

“I’m not certain,” he admitted, and I shook my head. He tucked me closer against him, and I trembled. “But I promise you, I’m going to find out.”

His words sounded like a promise and a threat and even though my feet were on the ground, I felt like I was spinning farther out of control.

And I was terrified of what would happen when I stopped.

5

Alek

“I don’t give a fuck what Xavier wants!” I shouted, slamming my hands on the table. “He can’t have her!” We’d had the same fight for the last week.

Four frustrated faces stared back at me.

“And is that what you’d like me to send as our official response?” Lachlan asked, adding a tone of pure sarcasm that sent my temper skyrocketing.

“This isn’t funny. I don’t give a shit what the Covenant says.” I lifted my fingers to my throbbing temples. The hunger had shifted from insistent to demanding to whatever hell this was.

“Says the male who is in charge of enforcing it,” Ransom quipped. “His offer is clear. He’ll give you intel on the group that went after Avianna when you hand over the human.”

I leveled him with a glare, and he sat back in his chair slightly.

“Don’t take the lad’s head off, Alek. It’s not his fault your temper is sour because you won’t feed.” He muttered a curse. “We have to respond to Xavier, or it gives him reason to take you to Conclave. If you’d just tell him what the rest of us already know—”