Page 35 of Hot Vampire Next Door: Season Three

They’re all looking at me.

I lick my lips and try not to fidget beneath the overwhelming attention of three alpha men.

“I appreciate your concern, Cal, but I’m good. Really.”

And also…why does he care?

Cal isn’t a man that just does things out of the goodness of his heart. I have heard he is fair and just, but he’s also the Alpha. He’s got better things to worry about.

“Why are you here?” Damien asks. He goes to his desk and leans against the front edge of it. He takes a long pull from his bourbon and then sets the glass aside. He’s still wearing his party clothes but he’s left his jacket off, the sleeves of his white Oxford rolled up to his elbows. There’s an expensive watch on his wrist that glitters in the light.

“I told you already.” Cal sets the bourbon aside without sipping from it. He has on a watch too, but his is chunky black, more rugged than elegant.

That’s the difference between these two men. All you need to know you can know by the timepieces they wear.

“A psychic, yes,” Damien says. “How is it I’m just hearing about this now?”

“You think I play all of my cards at once?” Cal shakes his head, amused. “You clearly don’t know me, Duval.”

Bran crosses the room to stand beside his brother. “How accurate is this psychic?”

I go to one of the club chairs and drop into it. All of the energy has been sapped from my body. Because of that out-of-this-world sex and the immediate panic that came after it.

“Well,” Cal says as he eyes Damien, “the psychic knows you’re fucking a Locke blood bag.”

Damien goes rigid. Bran lashes out and puts his hand on his brother’s arm, anchoring him.

“Cal,” I say. “That’s my sister you’re talking about.”

His face softens. “Of course. Please accept my apology.”

I catch a barely perceptible uptick in Bran’s expression.

Something weird is happening here and we’re both picking up on it.

The Alpha is giving me considerable leeway.

“Why are you here?” Damien repeats.

“I have information about Jessie’s Pledging tomorrow. Specifics about what may go down there.”

“Why give us this?” Bran folds his arms over his chest. “What’s in it for you?”

Cal’s hands are loose fists at his side, but when he looks at me again, his thumb rubs back and forth over the inside of his fingers like he’s thinking hard on what to say and how to say it, like maybe he doesn’t want to say anything at all, but knows he has to.

“Someday I’m going to need a favor from Jessie,” he says.

“Me?”

“What favor?” Bran asks.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Bullshit. You can’t? You mean you won’t.”

Damien’s gaze cuts to me. Immediately my skin tingles. I don’t know how my sister handles his attention. I want to crawl beneath the chair when he looks at me. His dark brow pulls together like he’s trying to cut beneath my layers and figure me out.

“If you can’t tell us,” Bran says, “then we don’t know the cost and if we don’t know the cost, we don’t know if there’s equity in the exchange.”

---