I suddenly feel terrible for them. My heart actually hurts. I keep fearing the monsters I’ve met, never thinking about the ones who live in fear of the very same threats.
It makes sense. After all, I’m a scaredy cat monster too.
Maybe that’s why Mom brought me here. It was never about keeping me safe after she was gone. It was about ensuring I was a monster among other monsters.
She just didn’t know there are innocent monsters too.
Chapter 10
EMIT
Now that I don’t feel like I’m trying to come out of my skin, I manage to stop growling.
Vance finishes up a call with Damien, putting his phone away.
“Dorian is most certainly in town, but he didn’t sire the two succubae I had to deal with. It’s his mark because he has a rogue one with the ability to turn others. Damien agrees with me on the matter that the pictures of the mark are just different enough to—”
“I’m not finished discussing Arion,” I grind out. “I couldn’t give two fucks about some rogue incubus Dorian should be held responsible for. If they can turn things, they get exterminated.”
“Like when you have wolves who can infect humans even without the full moon? Do you exterminate all those?” he’s quick to volley.
His gaze narrows when I start growling all over again.
“Arion did exterminate them, and then we put him underground for it. Dorian will play that card from now until forever,” he adds.
“It was much more complicated than that, and you fucking know it,” I remind him.
“Of course it was. But that’s because it’s personal for us. Just like it always is. It’s personal to you every single time a wolf dies. Too fucking personal. Arion is a time bomb right now after being conscious for who knows how long.”
“He’s planning his revenge as we speak. So why are you staying on the phone with Damien about such insignificant—”
“He could have killed me,” he interrupts.
I stop speaking abruptly, and a prickle goes up my spine.
“Sure, we both know if you really wanted to, you might could kick my ass. You don’t have the ability to care quite that much to exert the real effort it would take,” he goes on, looking away. “But Arion let me know real damn fast how easy it would be for him. Had Damien not shown up with Violet tonight, he might have offered you the same warning.”
I scrub a hand over my jaw.
“Putting him underground won’t do a bit of damn good. You’ll have to kill him if he gives you no option,” I say quietly.
He levels me with a cold look. “And when he comes back?”
“If you kill him the right way, he won’t come back. I know your secrets, Van Helsing.”
His voice lowers as he leans over. “Even if I was willing to go through with that, I can’t truly kill him. No Van Helsing can kill—”
“Loraine. Damien’s cousin—”
“Has spent the last century living under the radar with the young beta vampire she fell in love with. She wanted out of the alpha circle, and I needed something to give Damien hope before he went dark and stayed there. When I killed her the second time, she was still reborn, just as we knew she would be. We’re immortal, Emit. Get the fuck over it. By now, you all should have accepted your fate.”
I blow out a frustrated breath, sinking back as my fight leaves me in a painful, defeating fit.
“I was really hoping that would one day be an option for me too,” I state quietly.
“I’m sure you all were, to hell with me and what happens to me when I’m on my own with the monsters you’ve all left rampant,” he states sourly, looking back toward the way Violet went. “I should check on her. She tends to slip out when we argue or fight.”
“What do we do about her date with Arion? He’ll come for the wolves who attacked with me if she backs out. We can trap him and put him in that other coffin—”
“All of my coffins were stolen months ago,” he interrupts, causing me to groan.
“Why wouldn’t you have mentioned that sooner?”
“Because it’s my shit that was stolen, not yours,” he says with that thick condescension that has me growling again.
“Now is really not the time to talk to me like I’m an imbecile.”
“Now is really not the time to attack Arion in his home, which is precisely why I didn’t tell you he’d risen. I expected him to keep a lower profile, given the clear tension there’d be between him and all your people.”
“What am I supposed to do? My betas—”
“Are your fucking betas!” he shouts as he jumps to his feet, glaring at me. “Deal with them accordingly. They work for you. Not the other way around.”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“To collect Violet,” he snaps.
“She’s staying here until I’ve had a chance to talk to her about her date—”
“She’s going. He certainly won’t hurt her. If anything, she’s his favorite person right now because she represents freedom,” he says, his eyes bouncing to mine as he lowers his voice again. “And she can hopefully find out what he plans to do to your mutts before we have a repeat of ancient history so soon.”
“I’m not sure I trust something like this in the hands of a very young Portocale gypsy who has no idea what’s going on—”
The loud laughter has us pausing, and he frowns over at me.
“What makes your omegas laugh like that?”
I get a little worried… “Never anything good.”
We stop just at the beginning of the next hallway, because at the very end is the double doors that open up to the Omega wing. The large room where the small pack sleeps is where they all are, including Ingrid, who always disappears around new people.
Vance looks over at me, and I shrug, since two omegas are braiding Violet’s hairs with little flowers, and Violet is talking animatedly, and vaguely, about her journey to tonight’s excursion, apparently.
Vance struggles with restraining a grin beside me when she talks a little too loudly about how she ended up wearing his sheet. I roll my eyes.
“I expected her to be curled in a corner and crying or something,” he muses. “Very impressive rebound from tonight.”
“They think she’s going to be my damn girlfriend or some shit, because they’re being way too nice to her.”
His grin falls away. “She’s wearing my scent all over her, and they think she’s going to be yours?”
This time, I’m the one to battle a grin. “They have faith in their alpha, unlike some people I know.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Violet saw them pawing at you, and she’s made friends. Which clearly means she doesn’t feel threatened, since she has no interest in you whatsoever. I think their faith is misplaced.”
“I’m getting ready to bruise up the other side of your face.”
“Violet enjoyed herself, despite the bruising,” he chirps.
I snort derisively. “Only because my size intimidates her. I heard what that ghost said. Something about me crushing her, though I had no idea why she was talking about it at the time. I bet it took you like two seconds to embarrass yourself. Clearly she wasn’t overly enchanted, since she came to Arion’s with Damien’s jacket on.”
“Damien stalked her home. And that ghost’s name is Anna. Quite charming…when not suffering the side effects of the final decay.” His lips thin on that. “She’s notably missing.”
“If she possessed Violet to ride around on you—which, by the way, is the only reason you got her in bed before me—then of course she’s missing. She’s a pile of salt. She was too close to the end.”
He runs a hand over the back of his neck, and his look softens, as Violet continues to make friends with all the omegas who made camp in my house a few years ago.
“She paused her grieving and followed Damien there tonight. Willingly. She interceded on your behalf without even remembering why Arion is such a threat. Somehow, she managed to remember it all, and still stepped in between the two of you when she thought he’d kill you, and trusted he would spare her. And all you likely did was growl at her after all that,” he says, making me feel like I really am an imbecile, as I exhale harshly.
Without another word, he walks to the end of the hallway. Ingrid practically scurries into the side panel, never wanting to be out when a Van Helsing is close.
All the women snarl at him when he bends to Violet. He doesn’t react, but Violet startles at their sounds.
One by one, they all hug her like she’s going to war or some shit, and Ingrid even scuttles back out, hugs her quickly, and launches herself back into the walls.
Still, that action alone means they’ve really taken to her much too fast. Violet’s like one of those tempting damn traps that somehow sneaks up on you, and we’re all getting sucked in. At least that’s how it feels.
She lets Vance guide her down the hallway, and she gives me a quick, tight smile, before practically hurrying by me in clothes that really don’t fit her at all.
She even pulls Damien’s jacket tighter around her as she goes, like it’s giving her a dose of security. Damien. Damien fucking Morpheous is ranking higher than me to her?
Unbelievable.
Vance slows as Violet walks on ahead, and he’s smirking for some reason. “They really do act like she’s going to be yours,” he says as though now he finds this amusing rather than insulting.
“She may very well be,” I say just to fuck with him, and also because I hate the fact she really did step in tonight, even though I could see the fear in her eyes.
That took guts or stupidity. I’m not sure which.
It renews the interest I keep trying to snuff out.
“She could barely meet your eyes,” he goes on, still amused. “The funny thing is, now that they like her and want her to be your girlfriend, you won’t be getting laid anymore.”
He claps me hard on my aching, gnarled shoulder, and I inwardly groan.
“All their attention will move to her. Clever girls, those,” he says as parting words, as he walks on out.
My head drops back as I stare up at the ceiling. Even Arion has a fucking date with her tomorrow. She’s coming over in Vance’s sheet and Damien’s jacket. I actually feel fucking left out.
“Great. Now I’m also the immature one,” I mutter to myself as I turn and head away from the omega wing.
This day is complete shit.
I head back to bleeding room and lie back on the tile, staring up at the ceiling once again. There, I watch the wolves who would have never put me in this situation, as they dance around the poisoned tree that led me down this regretful road.
Sometimes I need to remember.
Before I do things I’ll torture myself for later.