Xander let his fingers caress down my arm as he and Caleb walked away. "Call us when you're ready to leave."
I just nodded and swallowed the lump in my throat. A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye, and I wiped it away and tried to suck it up before I turned to face Lucien, Nikolas, and Sabaan.
"Peter?" Lucien called my name quietly, a hint of sadness in his voice. "If you truly love him and want your connection with him back, you can do it by making him your servant."
That he would tell me at all meant a lot.
But my relationships were complicated enough as it was. "I'll keep that in mind."
Chapter Fifteen
"Would you stop pacing, princess? You're going to put a permanent path in the marble."
"Leave him alone, Nikolas," Sabaan said.
"He has every right to be worried," Lucien said. "Unless you want to fight, I suggest you just watch."
"Fight? Hell, I'm about to fuck him stupid so he'll stop moving. It's like watching a fucking tennis match."
I flipped him off and kept moving. I'd been pacing the floor for a little over an hour, waiting for Daniel to show up. When the door bell finally rang, I ran to answer it. Daniel and a few of his personal guards were at the door, and I stepped back to let them in.
"I'm sorry it took so long," Daniel said as he walked past me. "There were other issues that needed my attention before I could leave." Daniel stopped and turned, looked at the three men sitting around the room, then looked at me. "My, you four have been busy."
"Just a little." I laughed and gestured to the numerous chairs and couches. "Have a seat."
Daniel's guards moved off to stand at opposite walls, and he sat down in one of the two Queen Anne chairs. I sat in the one across from him and Daniel sighed. "I watched the video that was dropped off with my assistant and I have to say, the resemblance between the man on the video and you, Peter, is astounding."
"It wasn't me, Daniel. I fed from the guy in the club and then Nikolas and I went for a run. We got a call a little later, saying that there'd been a bleeder at the club I'd been at."
"After which you proceeded to pilfer the evidence and the body?"
I nodded. "There was too much evidence that pointed to a vampire killing a human, not to mention the fact that I'd fed from the guy only hours earlier."
"You did the right thing," Daniel said. "The last thing we need is for the media to start making headlines with vampires as the main suspects in a series of killings. What of the body?"
"It's been disposed of," Lucien said. "He would have come back as a revenant had we not."
"Good, good." Daniel scratched his head. "Peter, I know you've said that you have no knowledge of your father, but from where I'm standing, I think it's safe to assume that he's alive and he's found you."
"After all of these years, what could he possibly want from me now?"
"You have a pack and a coven," Daniel said. "Those are quite enticing to someone who wants both power and territory."
Nikolas stood and began to pace, traveling the same path he'd tried to get me to stop using only a short time before. "So what do we do?"
"We can call in the Council's team and do a sweep of the entire city."
"And what if that nets us nothing?" Lucien asked. "Do we sit aside, looking for a needle in a haystack while this man tries to paint Peter as a murderer and continues to evade capture?"
As they talked and threw options back and forth, I sat there, feeling a little numb. I remembered Xander saying that he saw me just before the explosion at the club. That I'd caught his eye and walked away from him.
But that hadn't been me, either.
It was as if the pieces of the puzzle were finally beginning to fall into place. It was entirely possible that if this guy was responsible for the explosion at the club, then he was also responsible for the explosion that killed my grandparents. That would explain the picture missing from one of the frames.
Could my father and I really look that much alike? That Xander, while still& No, he wasn't bound to me then. The transition had severed the bond. No wonder Xander followed the man, thinking it was me. If we looked that much alike, there was no way Xander could have known the difference.
The fact that he knew to catch Xander's eye before the explosion meant one thing to me: he'd been watching me . us . and knew the people that I was closest to. That thought sent chills down my spine and I shuddered, shaking my head.
"Peter?" I realized Lucien was kneeling in front of me, my hands in his. I looked at him, at his hands. I hadn't remembered him taking them. "Are you okay?"