Page 20 of Halfblood Deceived

“Er…” said Lex again.

“Are you alright?” Zeydan asked Lex. “Did you inhale any of that cursed poison?”

Lex was a werewolf, and as such, not affected at all by UV light, but he was just as susceptible to the gargoyle’s cursed silver.

Lex gladly jumped into the new topic of conversation. “No. It had mostly cleared, and I held my breath even though I wanted to scream at you for trying to fight me while I dragged your arse to the car.”

“Why would you do that?” Gabby asked, brow furrowing.

“Aside from being a fucking reckless idiot?” Andreas inquired.

Zeydan glared at him and told them all a summary of his encounter with Aella and the disaster that had ensued later.

Luce gasped and held on tighter to him, cute face tight with worry. She had been aware of most of the horrible reality they lived in since she was five years old. Ignorance was deadly, and Andreas would never leave his daughter in a disadvantageous position, so they were all openly honest with Luce. Not to mention that the little gremlin loved to sneak around and listen in on private conversations since she learned to walk.

Lex crossed his arms, lips pursed in a thoughtful gesture. “I can’t deny it’s weird that the bastards sent one of their precious females as bait. It would have been suicidal had she fallen into the hands of basically any other vampire. But you should have just knocked her unconscious and thrown her into the trunk.”

And perhaps Zeydan should have, but it felt wrong. Especially after the genuine, paralyzing fear Aella had felt with his close proximity. A fear he had seen many times before in the eyes of females who had been abused.

He hadn’t shared that detail with his family.

“Isn’t that the gargoyles’ MO?” Evan commented, leaning against the wall and running a hand through his artistically cut silky waves of thick blond hair. “They keep their females in the dark about everything, including the truth about our species. They like them ignorant and easy to manipulate.”

“True,” Gabby agreed. “But the few gargoyle female warriors I’ve killed were fully aware.”

“Aella is not a warrior, is she?” Lex asked. “I saw her fight you, and while she didn’t do half bad, she obviously has no combat training.”

“Which makes it plainly bizarre that they sent her to try to lure me,” Zeydan agreed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Andreas said, arching a brow. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Zeydan couldn’t deny it had somewhat worked, yes. Perhaps not in the way the gargoyles expected, but he had been very close to dying.

He suppressed a shiver, looking around the room at his people, his family. He would do better for them.

And the path to being a more responsible leader started with calling Kamilla and Kerian Davashkov.

CHAPTER 6

Awareness slammed into Aella, dragging her out of a fuzzy dream about a mesmerizing jade gaze and the beating of a powerful heart against her own.

She tried to open her eyes, catching a flash of white light, but her eyelids fell closed again. Her head was spinning, and there wasn’t an inch of her body that didn’t hurt.

For a second, she wondered why she was this sore, but then the memories exploded in her head in a swirling kaleidoscope.

Zeydan.

How she had jumped out of a moving car and stabbed a vampire royal.

The bomb the gargoyles had dropped on her and the vampire.

A vampire who had a beating heart, and was warm, and alive, and for some mysterious reason hadn’t killed her when he had the chance.

A rough hand shook her shoulder.

Aella recoiled from the touch automatically, every muscle protesting. A bizarre sound left her throat. It sent her into a coughing fit and made her open her eyes in surprise. Had she just growled?

Micah’s still fuzzy but disapproving visage told her he’d heard the weird sound, too.

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