12. Jade

Meliah’s friend’s house is cozy.

A small space filled with color and texture.

Too small.

I still have yet to tell anyone that I’m emerging. And I am. Whatever happened in the cell after I freed Dominik from the chain, followed by those blue threads showing up in his hoard, means something is happening.

I’m changing into someone I don’t recognize, with no one I can trust to guide me through it. And this change will be big. Too big to manage on my own.

Too big to happen in a three-bedroom witch’s house that I am now—and for the foreseeable future—sharing with a firedrake, a shifter, starving vampire, and a demon.

And they want Dominik dead.

Patten tried to strangle Dominik.

Dominik curled his lip at Shep when he ordered him to get the bags, clearly unhappy at being forced to leave all those newly purchased clothes behind.

We could only fit one suitcase in the trunk. I said if it mattered so much to him, he could take one of his bags; I didn’t care. And I left before he could argue like he looked like he wanted to.

We took my dad to Meliah’s house first. Once he was comfortable, Meliah brought us to her friend’s house and left soon after, not wanting to leave Dad alone for long. She’d set up a protective spell before she left, but he was still alone.

And I saw the suitcase that Dominik unloaded from Isaiah’s white Audi.

It was a bag he’d told me was one of mine back in New York.

I don’t like Dominik and I don’t trust him, but he keeps doing things that make me question him. He will say something that makes me want to kick him, then he’ll turn around and do something that makes me think I do like him.

Is he a terrible person or isn’t he?

After he kidnapped me, I know he doesn’t have my best interests in mind. He’s made it clear he wants to take me back to New York and that he doesn’t intend to share me.

If I ask him to tell me more about what my emergence would look like or how to prepare for it, he could tell me anything and I wouldn’t know if he was telling me the truth.

I want to go back to Chicago with Patten, Shep, and Isaiah, but I’m pregnant now. That changes things in a massive way.

They said it didn’t matter, and I believed them when they said it, but ever since Meliah drove us to this house, taking the long way around to ensure no one followed, I’ve had plenty of time to think.

And to doubt.

It’s been ten minutes. Not long, but ten minutes is a lot of thinking time when every minute the doubt ramps up a little more.

I told three men who came all this way to save me that I’m pregnant, and I’m terrified they won’t want me anymore.

Then there’s Dad. I agreed it was best for us to separate, and Dad said Meliah was safe. But is she really? Or have I crossed over from being too trusting to overly paranoid?

“Jade?”

I wrench my eyes from the gray granite countertop to focus on what truly matters right now. Helping Isaiah, finding and killing Atticus Chira, and then leaving this town forever. I’ll think about Dominik and this pregnancy another time. Maybe when my brain isn’t ready to explode.

We’re all in the kitchen portion of the open concept living space. The only one sitting is Isaiah. He’s at the kitchen island. I’m on one side with Shep, and Patten is beside Isaiah, watching him carefully. His concern surprises me.

They argued a lot in Chicago, and they still argue a bit here, but Patten got to Isaiah first after he fainted, and, though he seemed eager to slap Isaiah awake again, I think that was pretense.

I wonder if Isaiah knows how much Patten cares about him.

“I’m okay,” I reassure Shep. Before he can ask me why I’m frowning as I gnaw my thumbnail, I lower my hand and focus on the pale-looking vampire on the kitchen island. “Why haven’t you been feeding, Isaiah?”

Isaiah looks at Dominik, narrowing his eyes.

“I don’t think he will tell anyone,” I assure him.

I hope.

“I simply do not care,” Dominik remarks coolly.

Patten’s back stiffens and his eyes narrow. “Then why are you here?”

Dominik turns around and looks at me. “To protect Jade.”

“The way you protected her when?—”

“Enough, Patten,” Shep interrupts, crossing his arms as he leans on a kitchen counter. “Isaiah?”

Isaiah stares at Dominik, brow furrowed, and it’s clear he isn’t happy to be talking about this around Dominik.

I’m trying to think up a way to get Dominik to leave without causing an argument when Isaiah releases a long sigh and says, “I have not fed on a person since Amelie.”

The French harlot and the woman he loved.

“And you,” he continues, not quite meeting my eye, “but that was?—”

“You fed on Jade.” Dominik straightens.

I glare at him. “And you kidnapped me and forced a permanent bond on me that you lied about. Or was that much better?” Patten is smirking at Dominik as I turn back to Isaiah, recalling what he said in Chicago. “You said vampires have preferred tastes and you are partial to OB-Neg.”

His smile is faint. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You were lying.” I stare at him as I process why. The guilt. His inability to look me in the eye. What he said on the short walk down the road after I confronted him about avoiding me. He told me the reason for killing Amelie was not as important as the act. “You said you drained Amelie. Is that why?”

Isaiah gives Dominik a long look of distrust, as if willing him to leave. When Dominik doesn’t go anywhere, he focuses on me. “Amelie belonged to a family of vampire hunters.”

Silence.

Patten laughs. “Are you for real? You fall for a girl and she’s a hunter?”

Isaiah glares. “Amelie was estranged from them, so I didn’t learn of her family until later.”

Shep is frowning. “And did she know you were a vampire?”

Isaiah shakes his head. “Not until my family starved me and locked us in a cellar together. It did not take long for my hunger to overwhelm me.”

I try to read his expression. “Did your family know you loved her?”

His smile is bitter. “Of course they knew. It was the reason they did it.”

Silence.

I’m not sure what compels me to look at Dominik. Maybe some slight movement, or it’s a need to see what he thinks after his accusatory tone earlier. He’s studying Isaiah with something that almost looks like pity. As if he feels my attention, I turn away.

“They don’t sound like they were a good family to you,” I say, trying to be diplomatic.

“They sound like cunts.” Patten doesn’t even try to be tactful.

Shep just looks shocked. “If they didn’t want you to be together, why didn’t they just tell you?”

“That would have required feeling and a willingness to do the right thing. To care. None of those traits I would have used to describe my family,” Isaiah says.

“Used to?” Dominik asks.

“Yes.” Isaiah gives Dominik a passing glance then refocuses on me.

Maybe he thinks I’m the one most likely to run away, given it wasn’t all that long ago he buried his teeth in my throat.

I try not to think about how it would feel to have every drop of blood sucked out of my body. I try not to, but I must not be successful for Isaiah to lean back an inch, as if to reassure me that he intends to keep his distance.

He’s not a monster. He called himself one before in Chicago, and I think this is why. His family made him do something awful, and it wasn’t even his fault.

He doesn’t hide his surprise when I take his hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Isaiah.”

“If there had been a piece of wood in the cellar, I would have saved her from my hunger.” Isaiah gives my hand a gentle squeeze and then releases it. “That doesn’t change what I did.”

“What happened then?” I want to take his hand again, reassure him it wasn’t his fault, but I have a feeling years’ worth of guilt aren’t going to be so easy to shrug off.

“My family soon released me. I killed them, left Paris, and came to Chicago to start over. I had a distant relation there.” He shrugs as if it was nothing.

Killing the love of his life. Then killing his family and leaving his home to start a new life. None of that could have been easy.

“You think one of Amelie’s family shot that stake through the window?” Shep asks.

“Her family’s descendants might have spent years hunting me to get revenge.” Isaiah shrugs again. “No one else would have a reason to kill me.”

“I don’t know about that.” Patten sounds thoughtful as he considers Isaiah through narrowed eyes. “You’re pretty good at pissing people off.”

“Patten,” Shep rumbles warningly.

“It’s true. He is,” Patten says.

We all focus on Isaiah.

“So it could be Amelie’s family wanting you dead,” Shep says. “They could have stolen your cooler.”

I hadn’t understood all this talk of coolers and blood bags before, but everything I’ve overheard comes together in my mind. Isaiah hadn’t trusted himself to feed on a person, so he packed a cooler of blood to sustain himself when they came to rescue me from the collector.

Now someone has stolen the cooler, probably a member of Amelie’s family, leaving Isaiah no choice but to feed on someone to survive.

Isaiah nods. “Perhaps.”

I don’t understand how he can view himself as a monster when he would change his very nature to avoid accidentally killing someone.

“Is there any way we might convince them it wasn’t your fault?” I ask gently.

“But it was,” Dominik says.

I glare at him. “No, it wasn’t. If his family hadn’t locked him in that cellar with?—”

Isaiah’s soft smile as he shakes his head captures my attention. “You don’t need to defend me, Jade.”

“Clearly, I do.” I abandon arguing with Dominik in favor of something more important. Isaiah’s paleness, and the reason he fainted. “So you haven’t been feeding since someone stole that cooler of blood?”

He shakes his head.

“I don’t understand why they didn’t try to take you out before.” Patten sounds thoughtful.

Shep sighs.

“I wasn’t saying they should,” Patten adds. “Just that they could have targeted him instead of stealing his blood.”

“It sounds like they’re playing some kind of sick game,” I suggest.

“Perhaps,” Isaiah concedes.

“So what do we do?” I ask.

“Easy, we keep our eyes wide open for any sign they try again and then we kill them,” Patten says viciously.

“They are Amelie’s family,” Isaiah says, visibly reluctant.

“What they are is a threat,” Patten grumbles.

Shep nods. “Patten is right. If they want to talk, we’ll talk. But if they attack…”

We all fall silent.

As if facing down Atticus and his guards wasn’t enough. Now we have to worry about a family of vampire hunters who want to kill Isaiah.

I study Isaiah some more, then I move around the kitchen island. “Well, until we figure out what to do with Atticus and convince the people hunting you that it wasn’t your fault, you can feed on me.”

Everyone is suddenly speaking at once. The consensus amounts to:

“Not a good idea.” Patten’s voice is the loudest as he grips me by my hips and nudges me back around the kitchen island.

“Why not? He needs to feed, and he’s fed on me before. I trust him to stop.”

“You,” Patten nudges me back again when I move around him, “are pregnant, and you have a crazy collector after you. And also, because he can feed on me.”

We all look at Patten.

“You?” Shep asks.

“Well, it can’t be you, can it?” Patten says to Shep. “You need to claw the dragon’s face off if he has any notions about grabbing Jade again.”

“I’m not a dragon,” Dominik says mildly.

“But you do deserve a clawing.” Patten looks at Isaiah. “And you need to feed. You’re pale. Sit still long enough and someone will try to bury you.”

“You trust me to stop?” Isaiah’s voice is quiet and strangely hesitant.

In Chicago, I’d had the sense he’d been born rich, never been told no, and expected everyone around him to know it too.

Patten claps him on the back so hard it nearly tips him off his stool. I hide my smile when Isaiah glares at him. “I do. And I trust Shep to smack you on the head if it comes to it. Come on. Couch is better than a stool for a wobbly vamp.”

And he grips Isaiah’s arm and strides over to the couch as Isaiah is complaining he is the source of that wobbliness.

The rest of us slowly drift over.

“I don’t know. This doesn’t seem like a good idea.” Isaiah hesitates beside the couch, still uncharacteristically wary.

Who would have thought a vampire would be so reluctant to feed?

“It’s the best idea.” Patten thumps heavily onto the couch, dragging Isaiah beside him. “You can feed, I’ll rest up, maybe have a bit of steak, and then we find this insane collector, end him, and go home. Not the dragon, though. He can piss off.”

None of it is that straightforward.

Dominik’s jaw is stubborn, and the hard stare he’s aimed at Patten is proof of that.

Patten holds his wrist to Isaiah’s mouth. “So, get biting.”

I perch on the very edge of the purple velvet couch, curious.

Isaiah is still reluctant, though his gaze is hungry. He sits, palms flat on his thighs, as his eyes dart from Patten’s wrist to his face. “And you’re sure about this?”

“Go for it,” Patten assures him.

As Isaiah reaches for Patten’s wrist, Patten yanks his arm away. “Hold up.” He looks at me. “It won’t hurt, will it?”

Isaiah’s bite made me orgasm. It was that good.

I try not to think of how good it was in a room full of supernatural men who could probably tell when I’m aroused. Today has been difficult enough to want to add awkwardness to the mix. “No, it won’t hurt,” I assure him.

Isaiah lifts Patten’s wrist to his mouth. His eyes are serious as he looks at Shep standing at the back of the couch. “You’ll stop me if I can’t?”

Shep gives him a reassuring smile. “It won’t be necessary, but if it is, then I will.”

Isaiah turns to Patten.

Patten reclines as he gestures with his other hand as if to say, go ahead.

My breath sticks in my throat as Isaiah lowers his head. I glimpse a hint of sharp, white fang peeking between his lips before he buries them in Patten’s flesh.

Patten groans.

I grip the fabric of the couch.

Is he hurt?

Shep must have had the same thought I had—to move closer to the back of the couch, hands raised as if poised to rip them apart.

Patten’s head falls back and his eyes flutter shut as he groans again.

Not in pain.

This is a different sort of groan. One that arrows between my thighs and makes me… restless.

Isaiah sucks, and a hungry rumble sounds from his chest.

It had felt like Isaiah was lapping between my thighs when he made those same sucking sounds before.

Those sounds are making me breathless. And hot.

I’m breathing harder and faster as I watch them, unable to sit still, until Isaiah suddenly stops. He lifts his mouth from Patten’s wrist and licks twice before he releases Patten’s arm. There’s not so much as a trace of blood on his lips or Patten’s wrist.

For one long second, nothing happens.

Isaiah’s face was pale before, almost bone-white. Now his cheeks have a healthy glow, and I swear he looks like he just woke from a nine-hour sleep.

Patten sits up and, clearing his throat, doesn’t look anyone in the eye. “That was…”

Yeah. I know exactly how it was. My damp panties know it too.

When Patten gets up, it’s impossible not to notice the bulge in the front of his pants. “I’ll be right back.”

We watch him head for the stairs. I wish I could follow. I’m all wound up, needing the same release.

None of us says a word. I’d wanted to avoid awkwardness on an already strange day, but it looks like it’s settled over all of us anyway.

Patten returns minutes later, relaxed, and missing the bulge in the front of his pants.

“So…”

My eyes fly to Shep at his long drawl.

He’s watching me, nostrils flared, and his stare is pure wolf-gold.

He knew when I was aroused in Chicago, and he knows it now.