Chapter 62

Adrian

The song Stereo Love reminded me that I hadn't been to a good club in a long time. Of course, the guys and I had been all over Vancouver and occasionally Seattle, but I had to admit that Blairville's Dark Lion Club wasn't bad, even if the place was owned by those shitty mutts.

The dry truth was that we weren't here to party, even if we had reserved a VIP seating area. Bastien had sent us to keep an eye out for members of the Tenebris Order.

We had met them for the first time at the weekend. In the middle of our territory, but not deep in the forest, no . They had been hunting. Tristan had been with them. And the prey had been none other than Larissa and one of her friends.

I felt subtle anger toward her. This girl couldn't manage to stay away from me. Whatever she had been looking for there, she would have done it for the last time. As soon as I saw her again, I would talk to her. In my own way. I would make her realize that she couldn't stick her pretty nose into everything .

"Hello, pretty."

I looked at Miles, who was wearing his sunglasses just like us and hitting on another girl. She was blonde and had red sparkles stuck to her high cheekbones. Without a doubt a pretty young woman. Definitely Miles's type of prey, if you didn't count his ginger haired mistake.

"Miles, we don't have time for this," I admonished him, pushing him by the shoulder in front of me up the stairs where people crowded up and down. A bartender lost his tray, which I pushed straight back into his hand.

"Thanks," he said in surprise, but I ignored him and followed Miles, David behind me.

"Why again didn't we dress up?" Miles asked with a laugh.

This motherfucker had tried to force masks on us. David had even taken them with him and I wondered if I was the only reasonable one here.

"Because we don't want to make a fool of ourselves," I said dryly, and my jaw tightened by itself.

"Besides, we're not here for fun," David sighed behind me.

Miles had once again tied his hair into an undercut man bun, which gave him a more masculine look, especially in combination with the slightly visible curved cross lines of the hair tattoo.

"You can't tell me you don't want to have a bit of fun," Miles laughed, skillfully dodging two drunken men and arriving at the top of the stairs. He paused, which immediately put me on alert. I followed his gaze.

"They didn't think twice about that," I pressed out, pushing past Miles and heading straight for the filthy Copeland pack who had casually plopped themselves down in our VIP area. Ten guys and one girl were sitting around Nash Copeland. Everyone was laughing, and they were raising their tequila glasses before emptying them.

"Don't you think it smells too much like wolf in here, Miles?" I asked loudly and audibly for a Senseque.

Normally I kept my mouth shut and ignored this scum, but when they crossed my boundaries, I saw no reason to spare them.

Nash, the dark blond man with the blue eyes, looked up and his expression darkened. Mine remained steely, as I had learned.

"What are you doing here?" Nash asked grimly and stood up. His sister tugged at his white shirt, but he paid her no attention. Instead, he approached me.

"Didn't you read the contract?" he asked, and his guys laughed out loud.

Extremely amusing.

"I could ask you the same thing. I'll take the liberty of saying that even if you wanted to, you couldn't kick us out of this territory."

The club might belong to the Copelands, but they'd been stupid enough to have it built on the Blairs' land.

Nash looked at me tensely. His heart was beating faster than usual. Even faster than the day he'd gotten into a fight with the other Senseque.

"One more time: What are you doing here?" He looked annoyed, almost as if I had interfered with his plans, which felt like a triumph to me.

"In case you don't know, this is our VIP area," I murmured calmly and held out my hand to Miles, who handed me a VIP card, which I held in front of Nash's face.

He took it from my hand and broke it in half.

"I'd say not anymore."

His dirty grin made my muscles tense. My hands clenched into fists that I would gladly use to crush his skull right now.

"Nash! What are you doing? Let's go downstairs." His sister stepped to his side. "We were going to dance anyway."

"Did you hear that, Adrian?" Miles laughed behind me. "The dogs want to dance ."

Even though I hated those mutts, I understood why the Copeland girl gave Miles a devastating stare.

"You should listen to your sister. She seems to understand how to play by the rules," I said through clenched teeth, directed at Nash.

"Adrian..." David put a hand on my shoulders, but I couldn't just walk away now. Someone didn't understand who they were dealing with.

Normally, I would have left and kept my distance. But they were insulting us, sitting in our VIP area. That was going too far.

"And you better listen to your blond friend." Nash started grinning again.

Then I did something he hadn't expected and leaned over to whisper something in his ear. "If you don't want your little werewolf-witch fight sent to Daddy , you should get the hell out of here now ."

I was sure he had heard me very well, despite Flo Rida 's loud Right Round . Emely Copeland apparently did too, because she looked at me with widened eyes. If only she knew that David had already sent it to the witches.

"You shouldn't be making any demands at all, mutt . You should know your place by now," I said, and I saw exactly how Nash was struggling to suppress his transformation. Good for him that his yellow eyes didn't stand out at a Halloween party.

Suddenly, Nash's fist landed in my stomach and I staggered back. But since I wasn't human, he could wait a long time for something like that to make me sick.

That bastard was fucking dead.

"Nice try," I mouthed, straightening up to my full height only to slam Nash down onto the round table in the VIP corner.

I realized we were gaining too much attention, which wasn't good at all. And yet I'd love to punch that Copeland idiot in the face until he ended up in hospital with his own father.

Nash didn't seem to want to attack back, even though I could clearly sense his anger. He straightened up, pausing to look at us closely. He seemed to be thinking, then he surprised me, pushed his sister aside, who was still looking at us in bewilderment, and made his way through the people who had already pulled out their cell phones. He stormed down the stairs until he disappeared from our sight.

"Nash!" his sister called after him and pushed herself through the crowd to follow her brother.

All the people who had gathered up here began to return to their previous conversation partners or continued dancing.

I looked at David, who had stepped up to the railing and joined him with Miles.

"Dogs," I pressed out, annoyed by Nash fucking Copeland.

"I'm surprised he didn't fight back," Miles remarked, looking intently at the crowd.

Below me, the people were dancing to Sean Paul 's Temperature , but I didn't notice anything unusual. The crowd was very disorganized. The former factory building was too big. These bastards could be anywhere .

I looked toward the bar and paused for a moment.

There she was, again, wearing a damn tight black dress that clung to her feminine curves. Her hair was down, and she was sitting there immersed in conversation.

Suddenly, as if she had noticed me, she looked up at us. Her gaze lingered on me for a second and I couldn't deny that I was attracted to her. Especially since that one time in the art room at university. There was something about her that aroused greed in me.

Laurent was right when he claimed that women were distractions.

I wanted to drink from her, to drain every last drop of her blood. That was probably why she clouded my brain so much. But what kept me occupied until now was her smell. It took an immeasurable amount of my sanity and unleashed my insatiable thirst. I wouldn't be able to stop until she was completely empty. This was exactly why I had to stay away from her.

"What the hell..."

I turned my gaze from Larissa and followed Miles', whose eyes glowed reddish behind his sunglasses. Something seemed to be making him extremely tense.

Then I spotted it. Him .

My inner tension grew as I watched Tristan , who seemed to be approaching two girls. A week ago, I had seen him for the first time in years .

I had known he would come back. I had prepared myself for it.

"Come on," I murmured with a scowl, and we disappeared from the VIP area, down the stairs.

The club had filled up with more people, which dulled our scent somewhat. We still had the advantage for the moment. I feared it wouldn't stay that way.

"You saw things you shouldn't have seen."

"Tristan."

The man turned around to me, the usual devilish smile on his lips.

"I don't think you're here to talk to her ," I said, looking at the girl I immediately identified as Larissa's friend. She had the same smell as Larissa, albeit weaker, which made me a little uneasy. Right now, she was here with one of the Blair daughters.

"She knows," he muttered sternly and came closer to us.

I didn't know what to say, because he could be right.

The girl looked at us, frightened. There was no question that she had seen too much. Actually, I should have reported the attack by Tristan and the other Order member to Bastien, but Tristan had painfully reminded me of our agreement.

That sick bastard.

"You shouldn't even be here," I said, unimpressed, and moved closer, indicating to the two girls to leave.

They stood up and disappeared.

"Am I not even allowed to visit my own son anymore?" Tristan turned his gaze away from me and looked at Miles, whose jaw was visibly tensing.

If there was a weak point for Miles, this was it. He was ashamed of his father, and you couldn't blame him. It was his father's fault that Miles had already crashed several times.

I gave David a look that told him to leave with Miles. He understood immediately and pushed Miles toward the bar, even though Miles didn't seem to like it.

Tristan seemed to tense up for a moment as he looked after the two of them. Then he looked back at me.

"You know I'm not like the Order."

My gaze darkened, and I couldn't help the hostility welling up inside me.

He wasn't one of us anymore, and there were many reasons for that. Good reasons.

"Just because you are part of the family, and Bastien shows you so much leniency, doesn't mean I do."

He didn't seem pleased by my words. Yet he knew he deserved my disapproval more than anything.

"You all kill people for fun," I continued through clenched teeth. "You're doing something our clan won't tolerate."

He laughed and looked at the ground.

I wanted to punch him in the face.

Goddammit , how could he be so arrogant and at the same time so naive to show up here. The Tenebris Order was another league, but no one should mess with Nicolaj. Not even him .

"Let me tell you something, boy." He looked at me insistently. "If you think our clan is as nice and clean as it seems, you're wrong. I'm just a small pawn in a very big game."

I stepped back. That was going too far. He thought he could talk about the clan like that?

Apparently, he hadn't had enough. "Tell me, how many lives have you taken, Adrian?" I clenched my jaw, whereupon he just smiled again and tapped me on the chest. "This is where the problem lies."

Tristan triggered feelings in me that I'd long kept from the surface. Feelings . Something we weren't allowed to have if we didn't want to weaken the clan.

Self-hatred fought its way through my veins.

This was my last chance to end this conversation before it escalated.

"You should leave now," I said with an unchanged expression.

Tristan just smiled.

"As you wish," he said and turned away. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

With those words, he pushed his way through the crowd toward the exit.

If he valued his life, he would disappear. For good and forever.