I hadn’t seen her move. Perhaps because I hadn’t expected it. My mother hadn’t been so riled up since her days as a suffragette. I blinked, straining to see the silver glinting at my Adam’s apple. My eyes flickered back to her. In the dimness of morning, her dilated pupils were boundless black. Yeah, I’d pissed her off alright.
If someone walked into the room, they might mistake the scene. Sabine, though much taller than most women from antiquity thanks to her vampire genes, stood a good foot below my massive frame. If she were a human woman, I could simply overpower her and confiscate the sword. But she was a vampire, and an angry vampire mother could decimate an entire city within the blink of an eye. Physically, she was as strong as I was, and she’d seen even more battlefields than me. More than one vampire female had brought me to my knees in my lifetime, but it had been centuries since my own mother brought me to them.
A slit throat wouldn’t kill me, and no doubt, she would love to put me out of commission long enough to see to Thea herself. That I couldn’t allow. I opened my mouth carefully so as not to jostle the blade, which despite its years, was still quite sharp.
Sabine hissed in warning.
“You will listen to me now. If you are past the point where reason will suffice, I will physically persuade you,” she said. Despite the anger seething from her, the sword didn’t move a fraction of an inch.
“Never spare the rod, my darling,” an amused but familiar voice boomed from the doorway.
I didn’t dare crane my neck to see who had entered, but there was no need. I knew the voice. I hoped the unexpected entrance of my father would distract her.
But her gaze, and her weapon, remained resolutely on her wayward son. “Nothing a mother cannot handle. Welcome home, my love. I wasn’t expecting you.”
It could have been two weeks or two years since he’d been here. I never asked about such private matters. My parents’ marriage was best described as volcanic. One always seemed to know when the other was on the verge of eruption and left until the ashes settled. As vampire marriage lasted longer than mortal unions, it was a matter of survival. Lesser unions had ended in bloodshed and beheadings. But as the sires of one of the oldest and wealthiest vampire bloodlines, they were committed to making it work. So far, they’d only gone to war with each other once, a couple hundred years ago. Most of the family survived. A lot of humans didn’t.
“Do I smell breakfast?” Dominic Rousseaux moved into view, tossing a worn leather jacket on the settee. I had a vivid memory of him doing the same with a battle-worn cloak and getting blood on the upholstery. Mom’s eyes narrowed as if she were sharing the same recollection.
I wasn’t quite sure what year my father was born. He’d never been particularly open about his life before he became a vampire. It was an unspoken rule amongst the original vampires, not to speak of their lives before they changed. Some people believed they didn’t remember their human lives or how they came to be the first of our kind. I just assumed it was probably a lot to keep track of. I’d only been around for nine hundred years, and I didn’t remember half of that time.
But Dominic looked like the warriors depicted in Hollywood films about Barbarians and Spartans. No one would ever mistake his towering, brutal figure for human. He looked as if he’d been hewn from marble–a larger-than-life statue, cut to mythic proportions.
“Hey, Dad,” I said stiffly. “A little help?”
But he knew better than to take anyone’s side–even his own son’s–over his wife’s.
“Your son brought home a woman,” she told him.
“That was thoughtful,” he said, looking between us. “I’m starving.”
A growl rumbled through my chest and tore free of my throat before I could stop it. The vibration from it bumped the blade, nicking my skin, but I didn’t care. Something snapped inside me, and I knew. Mother or not–vampire or not–I would kill the woman holding me before anyone laid so much as their eyes on Thea.
“He’s also in thrall,” she added.
“So I see.” Dominic joined us, flanking my other side as he took measure of the situation.
“I am not in thrall,” I bit out, wondering if it would be easier to fight them both than continue this insane conversation.
“I could hear her blood-song from the front drive,” my father said softly. “Even I wouldn’t be able to free myself from that cantatio. There’s no shame in it. It happens to all of us from time to time. Some humans are just more tempting than others. Perhaps, your mother should see to this problem of yours.”
It was as if the words had sucked all the air from my lungs and replaced it with molten rage. Instinct took hold of me. Blood pounded inside me and I stopped hearing anything they said. Something primitive drove me: the urge to fight.
To protect.
I swung my hand up, catching the blade, and wrenched it from Sabine. I flipped it into my uninjured right hand and brandished the now rust-stained sword. The choice–the movement–was lightning fast even for me. It was as though some new, deeper instinct had overtaken me.
“If you please.” I took a step toward the door that led to the stairs, positioning myself between my parents and the bedroom where Thea slept. I felt better instantly. Neither of them could get past me without testing just how far I would take this. I hoped neither of them would try their luck. “I can explain.”
“This should be interesting,” Sabine said dryly, glaring at her empty hands.
I motioned for them to sit. It didn’t escape my notice that they took seats on opposite sides of the room. They had been married for thousands of years and shared the unspoken language of lovers, so I had to tread carefully. The sky outside began to lighten ominously. A crack of neon orange spilled daylight on the horizon. Thea would wake soon, and I needed them to be on their best behavior. Or the time to get her the fuck out of here. But it would be a lot easier to see her home safely if my parents didn’t take up arms.
“Just listen.” I didn’t hide the exhaustion I felt. The throbbing of my wounded hand now mirrored that of my head, making it even more difficult to ignore the urge I felt to return to where I’d left Thea. “I’m not in thrall. It is so much worse than that.”
Before I could continue, Sebastian walked into the room, scratching his head and blinking blearily. “What the hell is going on? You scared off my friends.”
“The party ended hours ago,” Sabine snapped. Clearly, she was out of patience with all her children this morning, and it was only dawn.
“Sorry!” He held his hands up in surrender as he dropped into a chair by the fire. He nodded to our father. “Continue with the family meeting.”
“This isn’t a meeting.” I was getting more irritated by the minute. I hadn’t expected to leave Thea alone this long. I’d kept her up late enough that she was probably still sleeping, but each second that passed increased the uneasy feeling in my chest.
“Your brother is about to explain why he’s ignoring the Rites and bedding a mortal instead.” Sabine’s smile could kill a man.
Sebastian looked from her to our dad and then to me. “Well, don’t let me interrupt.”
I shot him a look. So much for taking my side.
“It’s blood-lust,” I explained. I recounted what had happened with Bellamy during the party. “I nearly lost control. I can’t even remember the last time I had blood-lust that badly.”
Sebastian chuckled as if the idea of his older brother failing to control his sexual appetite amused him. Considering he slept with half the warm bodies he met, I imagined it was a foreign concept to him.
“I thought she was your girlfriend,” Sabine said wanly.
“She is,” I confirmed. That was the arrangement. “We hadn’t gone to bed yet.”
“And now that is taken care of,” she said, “so it’s time for you to think about marriage.”
I’d expected her to say that. “I am thinking about marriage.”
Sabine got within an inch of me–a new sword produced out of seemingly nowhere–before my father caught her around the waist and held her back.
“You are a full-blooded Rousseaux–the heir to this family!” She continued to brandish her sword. “If you think that you can marry some random human just because she’s pretty–”
“Darling,” Dominic interrupted her in a soothing voice. “Perhaps, we should discuss this when we’re all calmer.”
“I am calm!” She shrieked, kicking him in the shin.
“You’re holding a sword,” Sebastian offered in a helpful tone.
She glared at him and turned the sword in his direction. “It’s your turn next.”
“Fine.” He shrugged. “It hardly matters. And then it will be Benedict’s and on down the line.”
There was a resignation in his voice that I’d never heard before, but now wasn’t the time to discuss it.
“Why don’t you check in on your girlfriend?” my father suggested. “Sebastian, make sure there are no lingering guests.”
We’d been given our marching orders. No one could calm Sabine down better than our father. It was a skill he’d perfected over the centuries, after usually being the one to piss her off. He kept his hold on her until we were out the door.
“You aren’t seriously thinking about marriage,” Sebastian said as we made our way down the corridor. “You can’t have known her more than a few days.”
“Two,” I told him. “And no, I’m not thinking about marrying her. I just don’t want to spend the next year parading around like a peacock to secure some new family alliance. I haven’t been married in nine hundred years. Why would I agree to take a wife to please the Council?”
“Maybe it’s time,” Sebastian said to my surprise. “I mean, nine hundred years is a long time to not get married.”
“I’ll remind you of that on your birthday in seventy-five years,” I said dryly.
“I’ve been married. That one time in Vegas.”
“I don’t think a twenty-four-hour fling with someone you just met counts.”
“The Council has admittedly higher expectations,” he said with a grin, but it quickly fell from his face. “Not that it matters.”
It was the second time he’d said it. It wasn’t like my brother to be gloomy, especially after an orgy. “Not looking forward to your turn?”
“I don’t care.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Honestly. It’s just as easy for me to find someone with similar sensibilities–”
“Meaning, someone who also wants to screw other people?” I guessed.
He nodded. “It’s just a political arrangement. Why do you care?”
There were things he didn’t know about Camila and her arranged marriage. Things I’d promised never to tell him. Even now, decades after her death, my blood-vow prevented me from telling him the truth. “I like Thea.”
“That I understand. She smells sweet, but how does she taste?” he asked.
I went rigid, and darkness crept along the edges of my vision. Sebastian stepped away quickly. “Forget I asked, brother. I didn’t realize…”
“It’s just blood-lust,” I said through gritted teeth, forcing myself to push it down. My plan to take Thea home immediately just got delayed by half an hour because of his careless remark. Now I needed to satisfy myself again. It would be easier if Thea wasn’t a virgin. As it was, it seemed my blood-lust would continue until I figured out how to disentangle myself from her.
Sebastian laughed, already heading down the corridor. “Keep telling yourself that, brother.”
