Page 39 of Vampire Savage

Eloise, to my shock, doesn’t seem too surprised when I look back at her. When she sees my expression, she lifts a shoulder and gives me a wry grin. “You’d be surprised how common kidnapping and seduction are around here.”

I shake my head and Joséphine tuts. I turn back to Landon, crossing my arms and meeting his glare head-on.

“What do you want from my father? A job? Money? A relic?”

Landon blinks slowly, and my stomach plummets at his response.

“No, Little Bird. I want to kill him.”

Chapter Seventeen

LAN

Eloise’s and my mother’s eyes bore into me but they weigh nothing compared to the stare of my little bird’s pale green eyes. When I saw her in the coffee shop, sitting next to Eris, I’d known the chaos demon would reveal my intentions. I also knew the demon’s nature would demand she twist or cloud the information, but I hadn’t been prepared for my own response to the pain and hurt in Wren.

Wren is unraveling me and it’s threatening my entire plan. Yet I cannot allow her to leave me, even if it means getting the revenge I seek against her father.

“Wha—what do you mean?”

I let out a sigh, an usual act for me, and pinch the bridge of my nose as I take a moment to think. Such a task is impossible around this human woman, not when all I want to do is bury my fangs in her neck and my cock in her tight pussy. First the photo she sent, then seeing her in that tight skirt made my mouth water, and I want to bite and scratch her hips and ass until they’re wet with her sweet, delicious blood and she’s coming undone.

“Don’t worry!” Eloise butts in, her voice strained and unnaturally cheerful as she hurries to Wren’s side. “Lan has a good reason for anything he does. Usually.” She hesitates and I give her a cold look. “Okay, sometimes. But I’m sure you’re not in danger.” The future queen of the Nightshades laughs brittle. “He’d have killed you already.”

Wren takes a step back, and Eloise’s eyes widen as she realizes her mistake.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I growl out and step between the two human women, ignoring my mother’s excited look. Wren is the first lover I’ve brought to the clan house since we settled in the Barrows. I’ve had others throughout the centuries, but she’s never looked at me the way she is now with Wren at my side. I tuck Wren against my side before striding up the stairs, giving her no option but to follow.

Wren’s scent distracts me, a delicious combination of anger, arousal, and fear. It’s all I can do to allow her to walk, rather than gather her into my arms and race to my personal suite.

“Should we help her?” I hear Eloise ask my mother, who tuts, and I close my eyes briefly, begging the gods for patience with the human mate of Ambrose. “Is he a danger towards her?”

“Oh, my lady,” Joséphine says with a too-pleased sigh, and I grit my teeth, focusing instead on the feel of Wren’s body against me. “I know my son. He’d never hurt that woman. He may not recognize it yet, but I can. She’s his mate.”

I stumble over my steps in front of my door as my mother’s soft words reach my ears, no doubt as she knew they would.

“Landon?” Wren asks, her palm coming to rest on my stomach, the hostility towards me replaced with concern at my misstep.

“I’m fine,” I get out, and press my thumb to the sharp, barely visible needle point in the door handle. Ambrose isn’t the only one who knows how to ward his quarters with ancient runes. His blood in my veins allows me the power to use such runes, things humans today and even some supernatural creatures would call magic. Unlike Ambrose, I’ve combined it with modern technologies. I see little need to tear into my thumb with a fang and smear blood across a door when a clever mechanism can be built with enough patience and expertise.

Only my mother and I can access my rooms if the wards are in place. And they’re rarely in place.

I usher Wren through the door, closing it hurriedly behind me, as if that will stop my mother’s words from ringing in my ears. Mate. I storm over to my large walk-in closet and yank off my jacket, giving little care that it’s more expensive than what some people pay for rent, and shove it onto a cedar wood hanger.

I cannot have a mate. Her father had stolen my ability to love from that mission, my brain injury too traumatic. I remember what it was like to be happy, to feel affection and care and love for others before that fateful night. I’d survived the explosion when I shouldn’t have. I’d already been dying, yet being injured and trapped is what saved me from death and sentenced me to an existence filled with anger, hatred, and the craving to inflict pain.

Seething, I don’t realize I’m still holding the hanger with my coat until it snaps in my grip. Muttering a curse, I throw it to the floor.

I turn back to my room, stopping in the doorway at the sight of Wren standing near the French doors that lead out onto the wrap-around balcony. The sun is only beginning to set, and its warm rays turn her strawberry blonde hair into flames. Her peridot green blouse flutters loose before being tucked into her skirt, and somehow, the way she holds herself, I’m transported back to when I was human.

My father was a Polish merchant who’d met my mother during his travels through the Mediterranean. They’d fallen in love at first sight, according to Matka. He’d left his employer, wed her, and began to work for Ambrose—who went by the name of Oleksandr at the time. He’d never known Ambrose’s true nature until he’d walked in on Joséphine attending Ambrose as he fed from another.

I was three years old.

Divorce was not legal then, and my mother would not allow Ambrose to kill my father when the abuse first began. My father cherished me and kept me from Ambrose’s estate. I grew to hate Ambrose, because if it weren’t for the vampire, my father and mother would live happily together. I begged her to leave Ambrose’s service, going as far as to threaten to leave with my father if she did not.

It broke me when she chose to stay at Ambrose’s side, her arms covered in bruises, as I sat in the back of my father’s cart when he finally left. Her brown eyes, so familiar and strong, were filled with love even as her pain spilled over in tears.

That night, when the moon was at its height, I left my father at the inn he’d booked. I may have hated Ambrose for tearing my family’s happiness apart, but I loved my mother more.

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