9. Voss

9

VOSS

I snarled as I stormed back down the stairs. “I’m gonna drag him out of that bedroom by his fucking neck.”

Ronyn chuckled as he poured all of us mugs of coffee. “Ah, leave him be. He’s probably fucking the attitude out of her.”

“Shut up,” I snarled.

Ronyn slowly looked over at me. “You’re my Alpha, but I’m your commander general. Let’s put just a little more respect on those words next time.”

I was ready to pounce on the fucking man before Dom came bounding down the steps in nothing but a pair of his suit pants and a cheeky fucking smile.

“So,” he said as he jumped down the last few steps and landed at the bottom, “what’d I miss?”

Ronyn handed me a mug of coffee. “You smell like infatuation, Dom.”

He leaned against the wall as Ronyn handed him a mug of coffee, too. “You’re just jealous because she likes me more than she likes you.”

A low rumble rattled my ribcage. “Why don’t you come say that to my face?”

Then, Ronyn interjected. “She’s building an army.”

Dom’s head whipped toward the man. “What?”

I sipped my coffee. “An army, Dominic. She’s building one.”

His gaze crawled back to mine. “And you’re sure about that?”

“Sure as anything I’ve ever been sure of,” Ronyn said.

I made my way into Dom’s kitchen and leaned against the marble countertops. Dom always had expensive taste with the most useless shit. I mean, who the hell cared about what a kitchen countertop looked like?

Dom, that’s who.

I took a long drag from my hot coffee. “While you were here relaxing and throwing yourself around the house, apparently, Ronyn and I were interrogating that vampire?—”

“We fought,” Dom said.

“What?” Ronyn and I asked in unison.

Dom took a sip of his coffee. “We fought. That’s why the house looks the way it does. Damn near fought her off for half an hour before I managed to tie her down to the bed.”

Ronyn tilted his head. “How long did you spar with her?”

Dom shook his head. “Not spar. Fight. And she got me good in a couple of areas.”

It took me a second to respond. “But, she’s good now?”

Dom shrugged and sipped his coffee again. “As good as can be expected. She’s sleeping it off now.”

Ronyn cleared his throat. “We finally pulled out of that vamp that Delilah’s building an army to take over the human realm.”

“To what end?” Dom asked.

I downed the rest of my coffee, allowing the burn to scrape my throat before I spoke. “The working theory is that if they feel they can get a hold on the human community, it’ll be easier for them to come after other magical communities.”

“Namely, shifter communities,” Ronyn added.

Dom furrowed his brow. “I don’t know if I buy that.”

Ronyn looked over at me. “Told you he wouldn’t.”

I set my mug down in Dom’s kitchen sink. “All right, then. What do you think is going on? You know, since you were there?”

Dom’s gaze slowly crawled toward me. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Voss, but whatever the hell crawled up your asshole and died, dig it out.”

Ronyn barked with laughter as I turned to fully face Dom. “Come say that to my face.”

He sipped his coffee, keeping his stare on me. “I just did.”

“All right, all right, enough, you two,” Ronyn said as his laughter died down. “I swear, you two are wound tighter than me.”

Dom shook his head. “Look, it doesn’t shock me one bit that Delilah wants to build a personal army or whatever the fuck out of humans. But, turning humans into an army just to get to us? It seems very… long way ‘round, to me. And vampires are nothing, if not efficient.”

I felt Ronyn’s teasing stare on the profile of my face. Yes, that was exactly what the fuck he chirped my ear off about all the way back from the cave. Yes, I knew that Ronyn was already siding with Dom.

That didn’t mean I had to like it.

“Ronyn,” Dom said as he finished his coffee, “what’s your gut telling you?”

And without hesitation, he shrugged. “I think she’s building an army just because she can.”

Dom pointed at Ronyn before he looked over at me. “ That sounds more like a vampire. Efficient, and selfish.”

I shook my head softly, though. “You guys aren’t taking all of the information into consideration.”

Ronyn rolled his eyes. “He kept saying that on the entire fucking way back.”

Dom walked into the kitchen and placed his empty mug into the sink. “Then why don’t we give him a chance to explain why?”

When they both faced me, I drew in a deep breath. While Dom and Ronyn were good with executing same-day affairs, I was the long-term thinker. The theorizer of the group. I didn’t just take current findings into account, I took everything into account.

So, I folded my arms over my chest. “Remember where her place of work is?”

Dom and Ronyn looked at one another before they turned their stares back to me. Then, Dom spoke.

“You mean, the CIA blacksite?” he asked.

I nodded. “That’s the one.”

Ronyn shrugged. “What about it?”

My eyebrows slowly rose. “It’s not in the woods, is it?”

Both of them stayed silent, so I continued.

“It’s not shadowed away from the sun in any way? Actually, according to the pictures, that blacksite sits on water. And that’s a lot of sun reflection.”

“Holy shit,” Dom whispered.

Ronyn’s face contorted into shock. “Holy fuck, I didn’t even think about that.”

A grin crawled across my face. “You want to talk about how we deal with normal vampires, but did you ever stop to think that Delilah is no ordinary vampire?”

Ronyn raked his hands down his face. “Fuuuuuck.”

“Shit,” Dom hissed.

That’s when I drove my point home. “Efficient and selfish are most vampires. But we’re dealing with a vampire that still walks around in the daylight with a job that requires her to be, at least in some respects, part of the human world. I think if we can figure out how in the fuck she’s doing that, we’re going to have a lot of context for this army she’s building.”

While both of my best friends stared at me with wide eyes, a familiar voice piped up from the top of the steps.

“I’m actually with Voss on this one,” Bexley said as she came traipsing slowly down the steps. I noticed that she had Dom’s button-front shirt covering her body, and even I had to admit that she looked fucking delicious in it. “An army makes sense for someone like Delilah. But we don’t have enough information to even begin to theorize why she’s doing what she’s doing, or what the end outcome of it will be if she gets her way. Which is why I’ll always be a believer of the fact that advanced interrogation techniques don’t get you any closer to your end goal when you don’t know exactly what you’re searching for.”

“Bexley,” Dom said with a twinge of warning to his voice. “You should be sleeping.”

Ronyn nodded his head toward me. “Good to see you.”

She tossed him a soft smile. “You, too, Ronyn.”

And when she turned to face me, she drew in a deep breath. “Voss.”

I tilted my head. “Bexley.”

Then, all was silent in Dom’s place as she walked over to the coffee pot, poured herself a mug, and made her way to the kitchen table in the middle of all three of us.