Chapter 27

Every vampire in the VIP lounge was on us. I guess Eloise had been a fan favorite here. Padma knocked the vamp off my back, but there were still twenty more between us and the exit.

I swung my blade to clear a path, nicking skin, drawing blood, but the fuckers were too fast to get stabbed properly. This was the difference between a scavenger and a pureblood. The difference between sucker rats and made vampires who hadn’t gone ‘wrong.’

Every muscle in my body was put to work, twisting, diving, and evading, with the exit getting farther away as they pushed us deeper into the room. The fact that this fight could have been avoided if I’d kept my blade up wasn’t lost on me. I’d made a rookie mistake, and we were paying the price.

I spotted Padma to my left, surrounded by three vamps while Edwin fought to my right. But this wasn’t a fight we could win, and if either of them got hurt because of me, I’d never forgive myself.

“Stop!” I slashed with my blade. “Enough. Stop! You’re acting like scavengers.”

Several vampires backed off at that, and it was all it took for the others to reconsider their attack. Tradition and appearance were everything to these fuckers, and although they were dressed in the modern fashions to fit into New Town, most of them were still probably a hundred years old.

Most of them…except the fledglings…

I stood with my back pressed to the bar, chest heaving as the vampires surrounded me, and slowly held up my free hand.

“If you kill me, you’ll bring the vampire king’s wrath on your heads.” Yes, I was totally using Ezekiel, but fuck it, self-preservation was key here, and although my scavenger remark had jolted some of them to their noble senses, they didn’t give a shit about the Order.

Murmurs filled the room, and Tristin stepped forward. “I’m sorry for your loss, Dominic, but we can’t allow you to kill her, not here. Not like this.”

In other words, take your murder elsewhere. Nice.

Dominic’s jaw worked, dark eyes burning across my face. “A blood price, then.”

“No!” Padma stepped forward. “You can’t do that. We’re with the Order.”

Blood price? What was that? Nothing good if Padma’s reaction was anything to go by.

“Fuck the Order!” sandy hair spat. “And fuck all of you.” He moved so fast I barely had time to raise my blade before he was on me, crimson-rimmed eyes brimming with bloodlust and rage, fangs bared.

I sank my blade into his side, sliding between his ribs and straight into his heart.

He let out a soft groan, eyes popping wide before they drifted closed and he slumped against me.

I shoved him off my blade, and he fell to the floor.

Dead.

Heart and head were the two weak spots on a vamp. Decapitation or staking. Both worked on fledglings and younger vampires, but the older ones…You’d be lucky to get close enough.

The thoughts rushed through my mind in the beat of silence that followed my kill, then one of the other fledglings let out a roar and leapt at me.

I was ready, blade arching through the air, when his head popped off his body and flew across the room.

Jets of blood spurted from his neck hole for a couple of seconds before his body dropped to the ground to reveal a disgruntled-looking Ezekiel.

He was dressed in black, his usual color, but not in Old Town clothes. Today he wore black pants and a fitted black turtleneck, sleeves rolled up. His hair was pulled back in a half pony so that his beautifully feral features were on clear display.

His mouth turned down as he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at his bloody hands, the motion causing the muscles up his forearms to ripple enticingly.

“Well, that was distasteful.” He gave me a long-suffering look. “Can’t I trust you to go anywhere alone, Miss Lighthart?”

“What are you doing here?” Fuck, was that all I could come up with?

“I was planning on having a little…what do you young bloods call it…fun? Laudon is showing me how much the world has changed, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s changed at all.” His sharp gaze razored over the gathered vampires. “What were you planning to do, hmmm? Kill her? Feed on her? Watch?” The corner of his mouth lifted wryly. “I blame myself. I obviously haven’t made myself clear.” He blur-moved to one of the three remaining fledglings and punched a hole in his chest. The vampire grunted and looked down at Ezekiel’s arm, buried in his torso, his face contorted in shock.

Ezekiel yanked out the vampire’s heart and held it up. “But I’m not heartless. I’ll give you all a second chance.”

The vampire dropped like a stone.

Dominic stared in shock.

His companion began to hyperventilate. “Please…” He held up his hands. “I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t even like Eloise and?—”

Ezekiel was behind him in an instant. Crack.

The vampire hit the ground with a broken neck.

“To be clear,” Ezekiel continued conversationally, “I do not share my things. And Miss Lighthart is mine!” The last part was a roar that shook my insides.

Dominic curled in on himself, his hands up, body trembling. “Forgive me, my liege. Please.”

Ezekiel sighed, the tension rushing out of him like a parent ready to be done with disciplining his offspring. “Now look what you’ve done. You’ve ruined a perfectly good evening.” He shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to bow out, Laudon.”

I’d been so fixated on Ezekiel’s every move that I hadn’t noticed the other noble standing by the exit. He approached now, his face set in grim lines.

“I’ll clean this up. You go.”

Ezekiel turned to me. “Your companions are now also under my protection. No one will harm them. They are free to leave.” He offered me his arm. “Shall we?”

He’d tried to feed on me last night. Threatened to fuck me. But he’d just saved my life. Again. And he was my charge, so I did the only thing that made sense in the moment. I took his arm and allowed him to lead me from the room.

Crush raiseda brow as I passed on Ezekiel’s arm. He stepped forward as if to intercept, but I shook my head slightly, a warning in my eyes. Ezekiel may have come across all cool and calm in the VIP chamber a moment ago, but his body was a mass of tension, steering me out of the building.

It wasn’t safe to challenge him right now, however innocently.

The door buzzed, and we stepped out under a full moon.

Ezekiel led me to a sleek black car waiting on the curb. A liveried man stepped out to open the door for us.

I climbed in, and Ezekiel joined me, his body too close. Too vital. Too much.

It wasn’t until we were moving that he spoke to me. “What were you thinking going to a place like that? It’s a blood den. A place humans go to be fed on.”

“I was there on official business.”

“And that turned out well, didn’t it?”

I glanced at his hands, pressed to his powerful thighs, the residue of blood staining them. Blood he’d spilled for me.

My stomach flipped slowly, and I took a shuddering breath to get my shit under control. “You didn’t have to kill them.”

“Yes, Miss Lighthart. Yes, I did. Their attack on you was a direct challenge to my authority. Had I let them live, it would have sent the message that I’m weak. I cannot have my subjects believing that I am weak.”

“And what do you think they feel about your attachment to me, a human?”

His jaw flexed. “I am their king. I can have any damn attachment I want.”

But why me?I wanted to ask. He hadn’t given a damn about the other watchers that came before. The words hovered on my lips, but I pressed them back because the tightness around his mouth, the sudden fist he’d made against his thigh told me that he was already wondering the same thing and coming to the same conclusion I was, that attachments meant weaknesses which meant…It meant that the vampire king had a weakness.

Me.

Now all I needed to do was figure out how to use it to keep him in line.