Chapter 4

The next day, before going out, Adrian asked me to choose a pair of cufflinks for him.

I froze.

His dressing room had an entire drawer just for cufflinks. Sorted by material. Silver, platinum, black onyx, ruby—every one of them exquisite enough to belong in a museum display.

These hands of mine had turned into claws, held guns, slit throats.

They had never touched anything like this.

“I have no idea which ones to pick,” I admitted.

Adrian smiled. Reaching past me from behind, he selected a dark-etched platinum pair and held them against the cuffs of his shirt.

“I can choose for myself,” he said. “I just wanted to see what you’d look like standing in front of all this, completely lost.”

“…You did that on purpose?”

“Mhm.” He admitted it with smiling eyes and not a trace of guilt. “It was adorable.”

What was wrong with this man? He found helplessness cute?

But I wasn’t angry.

If anything, something inside my chest gave the softest little jump.

Those few days were probably the strangest of my life.

Strange because they were so normal.

When I woke up in the morning, Adrian was already dressed—vampires didn’t need much sleep, so he was always up before me. He would bend down and press a kiss to my forehead before leaving, his lips cool, but I had grown used to that silken chill.

Breakfast was always waiting on the table. Sometimes bacon and eggs, sometimes croissants and hot cocoa. Beside it was a note telling me what time he would be back.

His handwriting was lean and elegant. Even vampire penmanship was beautiful.

At night, he came back, and we ate together. He never ate much himself, but he sat with me and watched me eat. Sometimes he opened a bottle of wine and poured me half a glass, explaining the vintage and region as he swirled it in the light.

Honestly, I didn’t remember any of it. I was too busy watching his face. The light carved a cool line over his brow bone and nose. His silver-gray eyes held the faintest ring of red in the warm glow.

And every time I found myself staring too long, Dominic’s order to kill him came back to me, tightening something in my chest.

Sometimes after dinner he still had work to handle, and I curled up on the sofa to wait. When he came out of the study and found me half-asleep with my head tilted to one side, he would sigh and lift me into his arms.

I wasn’t really asleep.

But I was good at pretending.

Because I had discovered something: every time he thought I was asleep, he lowered his head and pressed the lightest kiss to my hair.

His lips were cool.

But the gesture itself was warm.

It was the kind of small thing Dominic would never be capable of in this lifetime.

But no matter how sweet those days were, one reality wouldn’t go away.

I was running out of antidote.

There were three days left before the full-moon flare.

That morning, after Adrian left, I dug out a black hoodie and slipped out through the back gate of the estate.

I drove all the way to Silver Ridge’s Brooklyn stronghold.

The moment I stepped onto pack territory, the air changed.

Dominic was waiting for me inside.

He sat in a leather chair, turning a glass of whiskey in one hand. His Alpha eyes, glowing amber in the dim room, were dark enough to bleed menace.

The moment he saw me, he demanded, “Why haven’t you made a move on Adrian yet?”

I honestly thought something was increasingly wrong with his brain.

I had only been married into Nightthorn for three days. If the vampire lord died now, and I had been sent there in Vivian’s place, the entire Supernatural Council would immediately suspect Silver Ridge.

Besides, the person I wanted dead more than anyone was him.

I didn’t answer.

His eyes suddenly dropped to my neck, and his pupils contracted.

“What is that?”

His voice changed at once—low, hoarse, packed with rage.

Only then did I realize what he was seeing. Two tiny red marks on the side of my throat. They were the bruised traces Adrian had left the night before when he kissed my neck, right above my carotid artery.

But in Dominic’s eyes, that was a bite mark.

A vampire’s bite mark.

He shot to his feet so fast his chair slammed backward. His amber eyes nearly burned gold—the unmistakable sign of an enraged Alpha.

“He bit you?”

In werewolf culture, being bitten by a vampire was the ultimate humiliation. Worse than being marked. Because it meant your blood had been taken as food by another species.

I didn’t bother explaining.

Didn’t care to.

“So that’s how it is, Ella.” He ground out the words through clenched teeth. “You really think you’re a vampire’s mate now? Or have you sunk so low that even a cold-blooded monster can—”

“He’s better than you in every way,” I said.

Dominic’s expression froze.

Apparently he hadn’t expected such blunt honesty. His face went from iron-gray to flushed to white in the span of seconds.

“Do you have any idea what you’re saying?” His voice dropped, taking on that twisted, injured edge. “Haven’t I been good enough to you?”

Then, after a beat, he exploded. “I knew it. Back then, you never rejected me either. Ella, you shameless slut!”

“You should really see a doctor,” I said. “About your head.”

Back then, he’d climbed into my bed while I was in the middle of a flare-up, writhing in pain and close to blacking out, and told me that if I slept with him once, he’d give me the antidote. After he got a taste for that power, he used the syringe to threaten me every single time.

On his desk. In his bedroom. Anywhere in the stronghold he felt like it.

He’d leave my body covered in bruises, then ask if it felt good.

“I’ll find a chance to deal with Adrian, but first you give me this month’s antidote,” I said. “Otherwise, if the pain gets too bad, I might say something I shouldn’t and hand you over. That wouldn’t be very good for you.”

Dominic stared at me with a cold, skin-crawling gaze.

“Ella, you’ve grown wings.”

But he still ordered someone to bring the antidote.

I took the syringe and turned to leave. He stopped me again.

“Wait. Vivian wants to see you alone.”

A moment later, Vivian and I were standing face to face in a room.

She looked me up and down, then gave me a contemptuous smile.

“You actually let yourself sleep with a cold-blooded monster?” she sneered. “Ella, where’s your wolf pride? Are you even still a wolf?”

“You weren’t exactly able to stop staring at him either,” I said. “If that marriage had happened to you, you’d probably have been even more willing than I was.”

Her face changed instantly.

“Don’t get smug too soon.” She lifted her chin. “I’ll be taking back what belongs to me very soon.”

I gave her a puzzled look. “Are you talking about Adrian or Dominic?”

Her expression stiffened.

I didn’t say anything else. I turned and left the stronghold.

I didn’t want to stay on pack territory one second longer than necessary. On the drive back to Nightthorn, I stopped at a coffee shop and bought two lattes—proof, if I needed it, that I’d merely gone out for coffee.

But when I got back, Adrian wasn’t in the bedroom.

I carried the coffee and went looking for him, walking down the hall toward the receiving room on the west side of the estate.

From the end of the corridor, through the half-open door, I saw him.

He was reclining on the sofa, lazily propping his chin on one hand.

His cold, elegant face was mostly hidden in shadow. The light barely reached him, and from where I stood, I couldn’t make out his expression.

Only his voice.

“Let him go.”

Then came the terrified, desperate pleading of a man.

“My lord, I was wrong. Please, just give me one more chance—”

Adrian coughed twice, then let out a quiet sigh.

“You betrayed me, and you hurt one of my people,” he said. “How exactly am I supposed to give you another chance?”

He turned his head away and stopped looking at the man.

Only then did I notice the traitor kneeling on the floor had two precise cuts across his wrists—his veins had been opened. Blood was dripping out one slow drop at a time onto the dark flooring, nearly soundless.

Bloodletting.

A vampire’s way of dealing with traitors. Not drinking them dry. Letting them bleed, drop by drop, while fully conscious of life leaving them.

Crueler than a gunshot by far.

Adrian’s tone was as casual as if he were ordering someone to change the flowers.

“Take him away.”

Then his voice stopped.

Through the half-open door, his eyes cut through the shadow and landed directly on me.

His entire expression changed in an instant.

All the coldness, weariness, and killing intent vanished as though someone had wiped them clean with one stroke.

What replaced them was something soft. Careful.

“Ella,” he said. “Come here. Come to me.”

I walked over and stood beside him. Out of the corner of my eye, I took in the room. The man had already been removed. The bloodstains on the floor were being cleaned at astonishing speed.

Fast.

Adrian covered his mouth and coughed a few more times, then looked at me with that pale, nearly bloodless face.

“Ella, did I scare you?”

I shook my head.

I had killed more people than he probably knew. What was there to be afraid of?

He shifted slightly and pulled me down onto the sofa beside him.

“Don’t be afraid.” He slipped an arm around my shoulders, his tone warm and gentle. “I was dealing with a bad person.”

I remembered the first time I killed someone.

I was fourteen. I slit a traitor’s throat with a dagger, and his blood sprayed across my face.

I’d shaken so badly afterward that I crouched on the ground, dry heaving.

Dominic had stood over me, frowned once, and said, “Pathetic.”

Later, after enough kills, I went numb.

And then I stopped being afraid.

So now, being held in Adrian’s arms while he soothed me in that soft, careful voice, I felt something strange rise inside me.

A grievance that had arrived years too late.

So this was what it felt like to be treated gently.

I handed him the coffee. “I brought you a latte. It’s still warm.”

He took it and drank, without once asking what I had gone out to do.

Quietly, I let out a breath.

Maybe I should wait a little longer before bringing up the idea of working with him.

The way he had handled that traitor just now made one thing brutally clear.

If he ever found out I was the assassin Silver Ridge had sent into his home—if he learned I had killed several of his men—

My fate would probably be worse than that man’s.