Juno beats me to the answer. “She was about to drink him dry. We all saw it.” She runs a hand over Max’s clammy forehead. He looks briefly adrift, and then stammers out,
“Sh-she was on me. Before I could do anything about it. And . . .” He bends his head, as if lost for words.
Every pair of eyes in the room turns to me. “Oh, come on,” I snort.
“Her fangs were so close,” he whispers feebly, and now I’m getting annoyed. Clearly method acting is his passion, but he did try to assault me.
“Yeah, okay.” I roll my eyes. “Please, leave me out of your erotomaniacal delusions—”
“Have a doctor check Max,” Lowe barks, and then his hand closes around my wrist, at once gentle and unyielding. It happens so fast, I nearly lose my balance. Before I know it, I’m scrambling to keep up with his longer legs as he drags me inside his office.
I immediately look around. I am worried about what he’s going to do with me, but this is a great opportunity. He didn’t use a key, which means that he must have some kind of smart lock—
“What happened?” Lowe asks. He let go of me, but still stands way too close, when there’s plenty of space in the room to not crowd me. It’s giving me flashbacks to our wedding, and this time I’m not even wearing heels, which means that he gets to loom over me in a way almost no one ever does.
The door opens suddenly. Juno enters, but Lowe’s eyes stay on me.
“Misery,” he growls, “how about you fucking answer me, for once?”
“Max came over, saw me, decided to indulge in some light afternoon murder.” I shrug. “That, I’m used to. It’s the subsequent lying that—”
“Bullshit,” Juno says.
I turn to her. “I’m not asking you to believe me. But reason it out—why would I attack a Were, on my first day in your territory, when the consequences would be my death at best, and full-on war between the Weres and the Vampyres at worst?”
“I think you can’t help yourself. I think you saw him, and you wanted to feed, and you—”
“—and I was too lazy to stop by the blood-dedicated fridge fifty feet away?” I step in front of her, forgetting all about Lowe. “That’s not how feeding works. Let’s just acknowledge that we know nothing about each other’s species. Max came in, started telling me about how a bunch of people I share some distant DNA with killed his family, that Lowe’s a traitor for marrying me, and then he . . . what?”
Juno isn’t listening to me anymore. Her eyes meet Lowe’s. A whole conversation passes between them in a split second.
Then she looks back at me. Furious. “If you are trying to imply that Max is working with the Loyals—”
“I’m not. Because I have no idea what the Loyals are.”
“Max is not a Loyal.”
“Sure. He’s not a brook trout, either. I’m not making any ontological claims on him, but he did attack me.”
“You are”—she takes an angry step closer—“a liar.”
“Leave us.” Lowe’s sharp voice reminds us that we’re not alone in the room. We turn at once. And we’re equally shocked to see that he’s addressing Juno.
“She’s lying,” Juno insists. It’s getting a little ridiculous, the way she points at me like I’m a mugger who yanked her purse away. “You should punish her.”
I snort out a laugh. “Yes, Lowe. Spank me and take away my TV privileges.”
“You blade-eared leech.”
“Juno. Out.”
However the hierarchy works among the Weres, it must be strict. Because Juno clearly wants to stay and ground me with her claws, but she dips her head once in something akin to a salute, and then murmurs a soft “Alpha,” before stalking out of the office.
It feels like respite, the door closing behind her, the blessed quiet. Until Lowe moves closer, and I suddenly mourn not having a third person in the room. The bad, as it turns out, is still better than the worse.
“Misery,” he says. There is reproach in his voice, and a bit of a rough edge, and the tone of someone who has lots of problems keeping him busy, and is used to solving most of them with a look and maybe a tiny threat of violence.
We regard each other, just me and him, and yes, I feel it loud in my blood: we’re alone. For the first time—though not of many to come. I doubt Lowe was planning to spend quality time with me ever again after yesterday.
Aside from a layer of stubble, he looks like he did at the ceremony, his harsh face all structure. Clearly, as my makeup artist was painting the Sistine Chapel redux, his found nothing to improve on. I notice his eyes dip to my collarbone, where a faint shadow of the forest-green markings still lingers behind the riot of waves left over from the braids. Once again, that muscle in his jaw jumps, pupils get fat all of a sudden.
This situation is a problem. The Collateral is supposed to be a nonplayable character in a video game. For the next year, I need to be invisible, unobtrusive as I search for Serena. Not the kind of nuisance who gets caught murdering a young Were.
God, I bet they call them pups.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” I ask.
He blinks, like he forgot we were in the middle of a conversation. He clears his throat, but his voice stays gravelly. “Believe what?”
“That I didn’t attack Max.”
He presses his full lips together. “You were showing him your fangs.”
“You jealous?” I bat my eyes at him, not sure where this recklessness comes from. I don’t think I want to provoke him. “Wanna see them?”
His eyes rocket down to my lips and stay for a beat too long. It’s almost funny, how repulsive Weres find our teeth. “What I am is worried that my Vampyre wife will get herself killed. I’d have to bury her corpse in the raised bed under the plumbago, and the next batch will sprout ugly.”
I gasp theatrically. “Not the plumbago.”
“They are my sister’s favorite.”
“And she is very cute.”
He abruptly leans so close, I feel his breath on my lips. “Is this a threat?”
“No.” I frown, bewildered. “No.” I let out a choked laugh. “There was no ‘would be a shame if something happened to her’ implied. Despite the fan fiction Max and Juno have been writing about me, I do not usually plot the demise of children.” I think about my conversation with Alex. Who’s probably off somewhere biting his cuticles to little stumps. “Plus, you’re the one who decided I should be living here.”
His eyebrow lifts. “I’m sure you have some excellent advice on where else I should house the daughter of the most powerful Vampyre in the council, who’s apparently a fearsome fighter in her own right.”
“Fearsome?” I’m . . . flattered?
“For a non-Were,” he adds, a tad begrudgingly, like he regrets the compliment. I bet this man thrives on grudges. He has a questionable temperament, stern and autocratic, and I’ve always thought of myself as too much of a survivor to be in any way mouthy, but here I am. Nettlesome.
“Still. It feels like committing to the bit a little too much, giving me the bedroom next to yours.”
“I’ll decide what’s too much.” He’s condescending. And inflexible. A dick, probably.
“By all means, then, let’s embrace tradition. Should we slice my palm and drip some blood on the sheets? Hang them from the public square?”
His eyes close briefly and he grits out, “I doubt there are any expectations of virginity on your part.”
“Fantastic. I love surprising people.”
I see the confusion in his parted lips, before he subdues it and shifts back to his default austere expression.