Хлоя Нейл: Some Girls Bite

You made it too easy , he said, then announced to the room, “Merit, Sentinel of Cadogan House, I hereby claim the right of courtship. Do you accept?”

I stared down at him. I wasn’t even sure what it meant—not the details, anyway—although the gist of it was bad enough. You cannot be serious, I told him.

Once you go fang, babe, you’ll never go back.

I was about to respond with a few choice maxims of my own, but the landscape shifted, and I was hurling down another tunnel, Ethan whispering at the end of it.

Take his hand. Accept his claim .

My stomach dropped again, this time for an altogether different reason. What?

You heard me. Take his hand. Accept him.

I had to fight back the urge to turn on him and level my sword at the shrunken black nugget of his heart. Tell me why. Explain to me why. “Why you’re pimping me out,” was the unspoken end of that request.

Silence, until: Because it’s a chance for us. For Cadogan. If Morgan courts you, he courts Cadogan by proxy. And he has made this request before representatives of Cadogan, Navarre, Grey, and the Rogues. For Navarre to court a House that drinks, to court Cadogan so openly—it’s unprecedented. This could be the gateway to an alliance between our Houses. Things are . . . unstable, Merit. If your courtship brings Navarre closer . . .

He didn’t finish the thought, the obvious implication being that I was a useful bridge between Cadogan and Navarre, a leather-clad link between the Houses. My feelings, my desires, were irrelevant.

I looked down at Morgan on his knees before me, his smile bright and hopeful even while he’d manipulated his way into a relationship, and wondered which of them was the lesser evil.

The crowd around us shuffled, getting antsy as they waited for a response. There was chatting. I heard snippets, whispered behind cupped hands:

“Do you think she’ll say yes?”

“Morgan dating someone from Cadogan—that’s huge.”

“I didn’t know they knew each other.”

And the real kicker: “I thought Ethan had a thing for her?”

My eyes still on Morgan, I squeezed the handle of my sword, sent Ethan another question: If I accept his claim, what does that mean?

It means you accept his suit . You acknowledge that I am, and that you are, receptive to his courting you.

I locked my knees and forced out the question that needed asking, unpleasantly surprised that the answer mattered so much. And are you? Receptive?

Silence.

Nothing.

Ethan didn’t answer.

I closed my eyes, realizing I’d made the lamentable, and incorrect, assumption that, at the least, we had reached an accord that would have prevented him from using me, from passing me to a rival to meet a political goal. Oh, how wrong I’d been. Wrong to discount the fact that he was first and foremost a strategist, weighing outcomes, considering options, debating the means that would best achieve his ends. Wrong to think that he’d make an exception for me.

While his end might have been laudable—protecting his House, protecting his vampires—he was willing to sacrifice me to meet those goals. I’d just been sent to the sacrificial altar, given to the man who only moments ago, and quite literally, wielded the ceremonial dagger.

I’d imagined myself safe from Ethan’s machinations because I’d thought, naively, that he cared for me, if not as a friend, then because I was a Cadogan vampire.

I squeezed back tears of frustration. Damn it, I was supposed to be one of his vampires, to protect, to shield. Not to offer up.

But there was something worse beneath that sense of House betrayal, some undefined emotion that made my stomach ache. I didn’t want to pick at it, examine it, consider why tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, why his passing me along to another vampire hurt so much.

Not because he’d given me to Morgan.

But because he hadn’t wanted to keep me to himself.

I squeezed my eyes shut, lambasted my own stupidity, wondered how in God’s name I’d managed to form an attachment to a man so obviously determined to push me away. It wasn’t about love, maybe not even about affection, but rather some bone-deep sense that our lives were bound together in some important way. That there was—and would be—something more between us than the awkwardness of unfulfilled sexual attraction.

It would be so easy, so handy, to blame it on the vampire inside, to attribute the connection to the fact that he’d made me, turned me, that I was his to command, that he was mine to serve. But this wasn’t about magic or genetics.

This was about a boy, and a girl . . .

Gently, quietly, Morgan cleared his throat.

... and the other boy still on his knees before me.

I opened my eyes, recalling that I was still standing in the middle of a room of anticipatory vampires, all waiting for me to act on Morgan’s proposal. So I pushed down the pain of the betrayal Ethan likely didn’t known he was committing, and did my job.

I lowered my sword, smiled softly at Morgan, and took his hand. I let my voice go flat—no sense in pretending I was thrilled to play political go-between—and offered, “Morgan, Second of Navarre, I accept your claim on behalf of Cadogan House, on behalf of my Master, on behalf of myself.”

The applause was hesitant at first, but soon thundered through the ballroom. Morgan rose and pressed my hand to his lips, then squeezed it. He smiled quirkily. “Is it so bad?”

I lifted my brows, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of a perky answer. “To be a pawn?”

Shaking his head, he took a step forward, bent his lips to my ear. “Whatever the political ramifications, I’ve told you before—I want you.” When he pulled back, his eyes twinkled with an amusement I appreciated, but didn’t share. “Especially now that I’ve seen the wardrobe change. Kudos to your stylist. When can I see you again?”

I met his eyes, was slightly mollified to see that he was sincere, and slid a glance over my shoulder to the blond who stood behind me. Ethan met my gaze, but his thoughts were unfathomable, typically blank, a tiny crease between his eyebrows the only indication that he’d witnessed anything consequential in the last few minutes.

Without thought to the consequences, I let my eyes fill with the array of emotions he’d forced me to sort through. I let all of it show—anger, betrayal, hurt, and the one I knew I’d regret most of all, the frazzle-edged bit of attachment. And then, with Morgan waiting in front of me, I waited to see what, if anything, Ethan would give back.

For a long moment, he just stared at me, need laid bare in his expression.

But then his mouth tightened, and slowly, excruciatingly, he looked away.

I stiffened, turned around again, and offered Morgan a bright smile that I hoped didn’t look as forced as it was.

“Call me,” I dutifully said.

It took minutes for Ethan to calm down the crowd again. Once he had their attention, I moved back to the edge of the crowd, close enough to defend if necessary, but outside the inner circle. I’d had my fill of attention for the night.

“Now that we’ve enjoyed that . . . romantic interlude,” Ethan said with a smile, capitalizing on the lighter mood, “we should return to the matter of the girls.”

Static buzzed in my ear, and Luc’s voice echoed through the earpiece. “Thanks for the distraction, Sentinel,” he whispered. “That was damn entertaining. But everyone keep eyes and ears open—we may have defused tension, but we still have a shit storm to deal with.”

I bobbed my head in acknowledgment.

“That ‘matter’ has gotten more complicated,” Noah said, arms still folded across his chest. “Navarre House has apparently been infiltrated.”