An image of Qhuinn pacing around the billiards room as she and Blay sat on the sofas came to mind. And then she pictured the three of them down in the training center’s exam room, standing to the side as Selena was assessed and more bad news was given.
“I had a family emergency,” she said. “Well, two, actually.”
“Of what sort?”
“Naught that concerns you.”
“There is little of you that does not concern me.”
Glancing up toward the tree that they usually sat under, Layla shivered. “I—”
“You are cold. We will get in your car.”
In his usual way, Xcor took charge, opening her door and standing aside, a quiet demand. For a moment, she hesitated. In spite of the noble impetus to keep the King and the Brothers safe, she knew in her marrow that no one would ever approve of these meetings, these words, this time spent with the sworn enemy of the Brotherhood.
The one who had plotted Wrath’s demise not once, but twice.
To sit with Xcor in the very car Qhuinn bought for her out of his own good heart was a violation of all the relationships she valued most.
Except she was protecting those she loved, she reminded herself.
“Get in,” Xcor told her.
And she did.
Closing her door, Xcor walked around to the passenger side, and as he knocked on the window and she unlocked his door, she thought of the false human mythology of vampires, where what was supposedly undead had to be invited in before they could cross a threshold.
So far from reality.
Xcor’s soldier-size body took up all the room in the sedan as he sat down in a seat that was overly big for her, even as pregnant as she was. As she inhaled to steady herself, she hated the fact that she liked the way he smelled—but she did. In fact, he always took pains to be clean whenever they met, his skin smelling of a spiced cologne that she desperately wanted to find unattractive.
This was all so much more palatable if she stayed focused on the fact that she was being coerced into the contact, the proximity, this closeness.
Because to be here with him upon freedom of will …
God, why was she so in her head tonight—
“Drive on,” he said. “Please.”
“What?” Her heart began to pound. “Why—”
“It’s no longer safe here. We have to meet in another place.”
“Why?” The reality of how little she knew and trusted him made her realize exactly how isolated they were. “What’s changed?”
He looked over at her. “Please. For your safety. I shall never harm you—you must know that—and thus I say it is not safe for us here anymore.”
She held his eyes for a long moment. “Where shall we go?”
“I have secured another location. Head west. Please.”
When she didn’t move, he put his hand over hers and squeezed. “This is not safe.”
As he released his hold, his eyes never wavered from hers. And a moment later, she watched from a vast distance as she reached forward and hit the ignition button to start the engine. “All right.”
As she put the car in drive, a subtle binging noise started up. “Your seat belt,” she said. “You need to put it on.”
He complied without comment, stretching the belt far, far out to extend over his massive chest, and then clicking it home.
“How far?” she asked, as a renewed spike of fear made her heart speed up again.
“Ten miles.” Xcor put the window down a crack and breathed in as if trying to find a scent upon the air. “It’s a secure location.”
“Are you kidnapping me?”
He recoiled. “No. You are, as always, free to come and go.”
“Okay.”
She hoped he was telling the truth. Prayed he was. And didn’t that shine a bright light on this deadly game she was playing.
This had to stop, she thought. There was a war going on with the lessers. He was a traitor to her King.
She was getting to be very pregnant.
The problem was, she didn’t know how to disentangle the ropes that bound the two of them together.
Rhage was the last of the Brothers to materialize onto the lawn of an estate that was right out of a magazine for one percenters. As he looked up at the great looming house, he heard the narrator from the old Batman TV show: “Meanwhile, back at stately Wayne Manor…”
The Tudor-style mansion was set back on manicured lawns as if it were too good to fraternize with anything less than the White House, and lights were on in the interior, glowing with soft yellow luxury like maybe there were solid-gold shades on all those lamps. With quick efficiency, a butler could be seen crossing in front of a bank of diamond panes, his formal uniform something that Fritz would wear.