Cade fled from his nest, distraught enough by the situation with Lya not only to leave her hanging from his bedroom ceiling but also to go out in broad daylight without sunscreen or sunglasses. He had to get out of that room, away from the irresistible woman strung up with all her pulse points exposed. He still had his emergency stash of bagged blood in his closet to tide him over, fortunately, or even his iron grip on his instincts wouldn’t save her from him.
She smelled too good. He wanted her too much. He cared about her too much, even if he had to pretend not to, as much to himself as to her, to leave her suspended in a way that he could tell was already paining her. She was tough though, and determined, which meant he was truly in danger if he showed enough mercy to let her down.
He fucking hated it.
Lya didn’t just practice martial arts for exercise or self-defense. She was a fucking bounty hunter. Not only that but from the way she reacted to his proposal to kill whoever had the contract on him, she was in hock to Callista or to someone who owed Callista.
This had to be Morris’s play. Lya probably didn’t even know anything beyond the details of the bounty, which rarely included a reason. If this one did, she’d think him a monster. Which would be fair, he had been for a time, but wasn’t now. Or he tried not to be, not anymore.
Of all the fucking luck. Cade was confident he could’ve killed just about anyone in the Triangle, short of one of the faction heads or Callista herself. That hag hadn’t given a damn about him the entire time he’d been here. There weren’t many people who gave enough of a shit about Cade or knew enough about him to want him captured or dead. He was beneath Torsten’s notice, unless someone had told the master vampire about Cade trying to burn his own master to death. Maria seemed to like him, and he had an understanding with Aron. The only other moroi he’d interacted with were Maria’s people, and they’d all seemed to like him well enough too.
Morris was the only answer that made sense.
He’d known Morris was rich but rich enough to tempt Callista? He must have had treasure caches that even Cade hadn’t known about, or had offered her something worth even more to her than gold from one of the remaining ones. He must have bought off Torsten as well, unless he either didn’t know or the power-sharing agreement in the area was so solid that the Viking bastard would let a fellow moroi be hunted to maintain it. Vagabond guest rights should have at least gotten him a warning in that case.
But no. It had been just his luck that he’d fallen asleep on the couch rather than torture himself with Lya’s scent in his bed, which was the only reason he’d heard the lock click open and been able to get the drop on her.
What a fucking mess.
Keeping to the shade thrown by the buildings, Cade made his way to a pop-up stand that sold quick food—burgers, sandwiches, fries—and ordered a double burger and fries. He had no idea what he was going to do with Lya yet, but she’d need something to keep her strength up. Either to fight him or be drained by him.
Cade shuddered at the idea of taking her last blood, fighting down the instinctive desires that whispered to him. He was more than that. At least, that’s what he told himself the whole way home, eyes darting for the backup she’d have brought if she was smart and spotting no one. They were either good enough not to be seen, or Lya was that good—or that isolated.
A pained, halting, gasping sound caught his ear as he stormed back into his apartment and slammed the door.
Lya, struggling to breathe. He dropped the bag of food on the table and dashed to the bedroom, afraid of what he’d find.
The woman had somehow managed to wrench the eyebolt free from the ceiling and had knocked the wind out of herself when she landed on the floor, dislocating one of her shoulders for good measure.
Downed, struggling prey should have sent Cade over the edge, but something fluttered in his chest. Not his heart—it was barely beating—but something emotional.
Something he definitely didn’t have time for right now but which called almost as seductively as her blood did. Shoving it aside, he stalked toward her, catching her easily when she tried to wriggle away.
“I don’t know where the fuck you imagined you’d go. You have to know I can track your scent.” Annoyance with himself and this whole Hekate-damned situation made his voice harsher than he’d meant it to be as he hoisted her upright, mindful of her arm, and marched her into the dining room. At the table, he pushed her to drop into a chair and straightened her as she finally caught her breath. “Don’t move.”
Before she could protest, he gripped her left shoulder with one hand and her arm with another, carefully pulled with a slight twist, and pretended it didn’t wrench something inside him to hear her bite back a cry of pain as her shoulder popped back into joint.
They stared at each other while she steadied her breathing. She carefully avoided meeting his gaze directly, but she didn’t so much as glance at the food. Cade tilted his head back, inhaled slowly, and let it out even slower as he brought himself down from a surge of hunger that twisted his stomach and made him salivate.
Lya didn’t move, a snake watching an eagle.
Her small flinch when he looked at her again irritated him. He’d done nothing—
Well, he’d taken her by the throat the other night and accused her of preparing to do exactly this then choked her out and hung her from the ceiling just now. Which just irritated him further because they’d both been right.
Neither of them was technically in the wrong with Otherside’s labyrinthine system of rules and obligations, so it’d have to be worked out between them.
“Eat,” he snapped as he fetched one of her knives from the kitchen counter. She held stock-still as he cut the ropes binding her wrists together. “Or don’t. But don’t go anywhere. We need to talk.”
When Lya cautiously reached for a fry, he headed for his blood stash in the bedroom closet. Hell of a second date.
He half expected her to be gone when he came back with a chilled bag of A-positive, but she was chewing the burger with the mechanical motions and blank stare of someone who’d either resigned themselves to death or was actively hating themselves.
In her case, maybe both. She didn’t react as he heated some water on the stove and dropped the bag in.
“I tried to kill my master,” Cade said softly.
She jumped and started coughing when a bite went down the wrong way.
He waited for her to recover before he continued. “Thought I had, rather. Morris was a bastard. The worst sort. Vampires shouldn’t survive long at sea—there’s too much sun and not enough food. But he captained my ship. You can imagine how vicious he was with captives.”
Lya put down her food and shifted to face him, blank-faced and still not speaking. Somehow, it was harder to talk with her full attention on him, and he turned back to the warming blood, using the tubes sticking out of the bag to lift it enough to see if it was ready. Not quite.
“Did you know we live longer and can tolerate sun better when we feed on Othersiders?” he asked. “Other vampires included.”
“No.” It was the first word she’d said since he’d gotten back. He took it as progress, especially when she continued in a halting voice. “I thought you just liked the power in the blood. Like…like it made you drunk or something.”
“Oh, it does. Even gives us a hangover if it’s strong enough. But it’s the regenerative properties that make us covet it.” He’d be killed for telling her this. These were secrets long and closely held among the moroi. He couldn’t make himself care. “Morris turned me at the end of my first tour on his ship. Said I was too pretty to pass up and he needed someone to keep him youthful with all the damn Caribbean sun.”
Cade checked the blood again. It was ready. He clicked off the stove, dumped the water, and slid into the chair across from Lya.
When she stared at the bag, brows lifted, he said, “Would you rather be the donor this fine afternoon?”
He’d expected a quick, repulsed no.
She just swallowed hard and went sallow, as though she was seriously considering it.
“Eat your food,” he prompted before he could be distracted by the idea of sinking fang. When she returned to her wooden bite-chew-swallow, he picked up the thread of his story. “Some master vampires treat their fledglings reasonably well or even love them. From what I’ve seen, Maria treats hers exceptionally well, and Torsten’s abuse seems restrained to gaslighting and denial of opportunity. Morris…he liked to hurt people. Physically and otherwise. Especially his fledglings. I’m the only one who survived him, assuming he was telling the truth when he described how he tortured all the ones before me to death.”
Lya put the burger down again, looking like she was going to be sick. “How long?”
“Two hundred years. Until I staked him and burned him alive.”
She swayed and bent over her knees, breathing in fast, shallow gulps like she was about to be sick, and Cade took a minute to drink some of the blood. It flooded into his system like a balm, nowhere near as soothing as drinking from Lya would have been but far more tolerable for his psyche.
“Problem is, I didn’t kill him. I thought I had. He was burned beyond any recognition. Humans were coming though, so I ran.”
“He recovered?” she asked the floor.
“Yes and has apparently been following me from city to city for some part of the last two hundred and ninety-six years, keeping tabs on me as he regained strength and sought an opportunity. One he found here in Raleigh, where the local vampires are hobbled by a power-sharing agreement with the elves and the weres and all of them are headed by a ruthless bitch of an Arbiter with a thirst for more power and a bone to pick with parties unknown.”
He finished the bag of blood while Lya processed that and got herself under control, squeezing the bottom and rolling his fingers up to push every last drop up to the tube he was using as a straw.
She looked haunted when she straightened. “There was no reason given on the bounty. I figured it had to be bad, but I didn’t know anything.”
That sparked something darkly furious in him. “And you took it anyway? Without asking me?”
His tone must have pinched her guilt, because she glared at him. “You’re a five-hundred-year-old predator with a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bounty on your fucking head! You think I’m gonna roll over in post-coital bliss and say, ‘Hey babe, you want to tell me about this dark past you must have since someone’s just hired me to bring you in incapacitated?’ Goddess save me.”
The blood in Cade’s belly curdled, and everything else she’d said flew in one ear and out the other. “He wants me alive?”
“Assuming it’s this Morris who contracted the bounty, yes.”
“What the hell kind of debt are you carrying that you’d do this?” He hadn’t realized he’d voiced the thought aloud until Lya wilted, her jaw still clenched in what smelled like a blend of stubbornness and shame. “Love, who’s holding your freedom?”
She jerked then shoved the rest of the burger in her mouth, followed by a few fries, looking less like she had an appetite and more like she was buying herself time. “House Monteague, on behalf of my mother’s House. Over them, Callista. I’d already promised her I’d do the job before I knew you were the target or that it was even a vampire hunt she was hiring for. Blank check in exchange for getting me free of my exile and a fat payday to start my new life. Like I said, it wasn’t personal. And I…I’m sorry. I should have said something. But I couldn’t find a way, and for a bounty that big, I figured you had to have done something pretty fucking bad and that maybe you were just toying with me. For blood.”
Cade sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face and through his hair as though it could dislodge the exhausted frustration. “That’s fair.”
“It is?”
He shrugged. “I am what I am. You are what you are. We’re both trying to get by in a system that has fucked us. But I meant what I said before.”
“That you’d be a fool not to hunt me?”
“No. Well, yes, but not that. That whatever you need, I can give you. Or I’ll find a way.”
“Why?” she whispered. Tears filled her eyes and threatened to fall as she blinked them away. “I just came after you. I would have—”
“Doesn’t matter. You didn’t, and if you had…well, I’m a vampire who tried to kill his master. I had it coming.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. He’d been so close to having everything, and now Lya would probably—
No, he wouldn’t let himself assume what she’d do. They’d both done that, and look where it’d gotten them.
Silence stretched until she broke it. “My family and my lover stood by and watched as the Conclave of Lyon sentenced me to exile.”
Cade looked at her sharply enough that she jumped.
After a quick swallow and a sip of water, she continued, her tone dead and her words stilted. “Henri is a prince. A lesser branch of the House, but still elven fucking royalty. I’m half-human. No matter how royal my own mum is, I’m not. I had no business loving him. Or him me. But we did. Love each other. Only, his mother, the new bloody House queen, didn’t think I was good enough. They needed to set an example.” When she looked at him, defiance sparked as she met his gaze for the first time all day. “Nobody spoke for me. Nobody wanted me enough. Nobody loved me enough. They were supposed to care about me. But I’m trash, and now I’m in exile. So why the fuck would you do anything for me if it’s not for blood?”
The tears that had glistened broke free as sudden fury twisted her face, twin trails racing down her face before she scrubbed them away.
“What do you want with me, Cade?” Her tone was heated.
All he could do was stare. This brilliant, capable, fierce, beautiful woman thought herself unlovable? Undesirable? Unworthy? His mind realigned as he processed what she’d said. This wasn’t about him or anything he’d done.
It was her. As broken and afraid to care about someone as he was.
“What?” She stood so quickly the heavy chair toppled backward.
When he still didn’t respond, she started clawing at the rope still knotted around her wrists, growing increasingly agitated as the knots refused to give.
Cade ghosted from his seat to stand in front of her.
Lya watched him warily, panting and sweating as he slowly reached first for her right hand then for the knife still on the table.
He cut through each binding with the utmost care. If he slipped and broke her skin, he didn’t think he’d be able to rein himself in. Not with her scent spiking through his apartment, making the blood he’d just drunk pulse in him, throbbing with twin needs.
She darted away when the last rope slipped free, rubbing her wrists and glaring at him with bone-deep suspicion. “What is this?”
“I told you. Anything I can give you.”
The part of him that had driven him to survive for nearly five hundred years raged against this. The part of him that still clung to hope and decency shut it down as the part that was just so tired of it all washed over him.
He held his arms out, wrists together for her to bind him as he’d bound her. “Apparently that’s me.”
The fury drained from her in a wash of shock. She flinched away. “No. I’m not taking you back to your abuser. I’m sure as shit not killing you to do it.”
“Lya—”
“No!” She buried her face in her hands and shuddered. “No. Thank you. But I can’t be that person. I can’t be this person. Not anymore. I…I’m sorry. I don’t deserve this. Or you.”
She stepped closer, her brown eyes searching his face as she hesitantly pushed his hands down. It took everything in him to stay still when she clasped his jaw in both hands, leaned forward, and kissed him.
Cade reveled in it. The taste of her mouth and the salt of her tears, their dampness as her face pressed to his.
He fisted his hands, not wanting to scare her or tip the scales either way in whatever decision or declaration she was making with this kiss. He just wanted more. More her. More this. Even with the pain this afternoon had brought. After years of running from connection, the voice of survival in the back of his mind was quietly screaming at what he was doing.
When Lya pulled away, she looked even more vulnerable and confused than she had the other night. “I’ll make this right.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said. When she pressed her lips together and looked equal parts stubborn and regretful, he sighed and slumped. “If you’re not going to take your bounty…”
“Yeah. I’ll get out. Thank you. For everything. It’s not enough, but it’s all I have for now.” She picked up her knife, and when he didn’t protest, gathered everything else. Put her hat, shoes, and belt back on, tucked everything away, and slipped out with a last scared look.
Cade would have been frightened too if he had to face Callista emptyhanded. Which meant he was going to have to find a way to make sure Lya didn’t have to.