Page 133 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

“She is,” Mason said. “You may speak to the blood witch yourself. She didn’t know anything about who the blood came from when she performed the spell. I even obtained a second opinion. You can speak to that witch too.”

I shook my head, my fangs aching, my stomach turning over. Scarlett’s blood powered the shadows that poured into the room. And my blood was inside of her, letting me know exactly where she was. Still in the apartment, gathering her things to move in with me, to announce to the whole world I’d claimed her as mine.

“No,” I said. I repeated a few more times that she wasn’t, that she couldn’t be.

Something shifted in Mason’s face. Pity.

I hadn’t seen pity on someone’s face—directed toward me—for hundreds of years. The weakness it insinuated triggered something dark in my depths. A wrath I had no words for.

And it was that uncontrollable rage that shook the room, an ear-splitting crack sounding as the music bowl exploded into thousands of shards. Mason ducked, but I used a wall of my gathered shadows to protect us from the sharp debris.

Mason stepped forward as wave after wave of intensity rocked through my system.

“You must collect yourself,” she said harshly. “We are lucky to have discovered her now than during war, but you know better than any that not an ounce of weakness can be shown. I trust that now that you’re aware, you will clean up this mess. Even if that means handing over the task to me and Uriah, or someone else with no stake in the game, if you truly must.”

There was a cutting implication in her words—that I couldn’t be trusted to do what needed to be done with a succubus who’d infiltrated our ranks. That I wasn’t capable of doing myself what I’d so brutally taught all vampires under me to execute with their eyes closed. I’d commanded a rising clan member to torture and kill her own lover, a spy, only weeks ago.

Mason’s words were also a threat. She was promising to take care of Scarlett if I did not.

A split fissured inside of my mind. The man I was for Scarlett stood stock still, shocked and defensive, working overtime to find an explanation that protected what belonged to me. The ruler I was for Valentin did the opposite, running through the last twenty years and picking them apart for clues of subterfuge and betrayal.

The two sides clashed, weapons raised. In Mason’s assessing stare, I saw my duty to my clan. In the last remaining flickering stars, I saw Scarlett’s piercing blue eyes.

“The signs were always there,” Mason said. “The way she captured your attention so easily, before you even knew who she was. The way the whole club had fallen under her spell, either by uncontrollable lust or envy, two sides of the same obsession. Last night, when you two were playing some jealousy game with each other, the entire club was playing it alongside you. Her manipulative magick was driving everyone into fits of madness. She’s been influencing everyone around her ever since she arrived. We just couldn’t see any of it through her glamour.”

Mason frowned again as she watched me, her anger slipping again into condescending concern.

“She fooled us all. It’s what succubi do, and this one is remarkably good at it. Playing into her faux humanity, her innocence. She attached herself to the most powerful being in Valentin, feeding off you to strengthen her own magick. Now we need to know why.”

It didn’t sound like Mason was describing Scarlett, and yet I knew that was exactly the problem. Everything unexplainable about our connection, about Scarlett’s allure, and her patterns of behavior flitted through my mind. She’d encouraged a construction of reality ruled by fate and soulmates, when her succubus nature offered the simplest explanation of all.

A pain I hadn’t felt in centuries, since I was pitifully weak and human, pierced through me in a violent storm. The room went dark.

I held Mason’s gaze, my lip curling. “I will find out, and then I will take care of it.”

61

SCARLETT

Isang softly to myself as I packed up my belongings, an attempt to calm my racing nerves. I wondered when Rune was going to collect on my end of our bargain. He’d given me his beautiful chapter of a novel, so it was only a matter of time before he commanded that I sing for him. It was kind of hilarious how much that thought terrified me when I’d allowed him to drain my blood and treat me like his human pet hours ago without complaint.

Every once in a while, I’d catch a glimpse of some bruise or bite mark on my skin when I passed a mirror, and warmth spread through me that momentarily quieted all fears, all shame.

And there was plenty of shame. Especially without Rune around to squeeze and smack it out of me. Isabella’s voice had become nastier, as if she realized she’d been fading away from my mental real estate, replaced by the true embodiment of what she hated most. Besides women like me.

Now that I was surrounded by all this love—from Rune, from Snow, Penn, and the other witches, and even from the source I was building inside of myself—I was starting to get angry. I’d spent so much time trying to make Isabella love me again. To use the parts of myself she’d taught me to hate to keep a roof over our heads. The parts that Rune and my friends adored and celebrated.

The love I received now proved that Isabella’s scorn wasn’t inevitable. There was nothing inherently wrong with me. I was not a parasite. I was just wounded, the same as Isabella had been wounded from our horrific upbringing. I was enraged, yet so worried for her, still reaching and hoping one day it would all be right again.

I still toggled back and forth, this way and that, between anger and shame and grief and love. Snow had told me this was normal, that these things take time.

This time when I stared at Isabella’s diary in my palms, the itch to read her words was stronger than ever. I was a ball of impulses ever since I’d decided to let Rune claim me. Everything was changing, and I was so damn tired of the same overworked story and nagging inner monologue.

I undid the leather straps.

Why did I owe Isabella privacy? After everything she’d allowed to happen to me? I was already saving her life—wouldn’t that act of devotion make up for the violation of reading her innermost thoughts about me?

I was exhausted from my years of guessing, ruminating. I wanted to know the truth. I needed to know the truth. Because everything was changing, and I was done lugging around this much dead weight. Maybe this would be my closure, the final nail in the coffin of her intrusive, cruel voice in my ear.

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