Page 15

The small entrance opened to the ample room we hosted company in. My uneven steps echoed on the wooden floors. Right as I crossed the threshold, glass shattered into pieces. Familiar fragments skid across the floor and toward my loafer. Fuck.

Not the cobalt vase.

“That was a limited edition piece from Versailles,” I gritted out between my teeth.

“I know.” Jax sneered and without removing his gaze from mine, he stepped on a large piece that settled next to his foot. The crunch reached through my sluggish heart, shattering it.

“You monster.” I staggered forward, clasping my forehead. “I need to take a seat.” A few more steps had me around the curved sofa in the middle of the rug, with a clear view of Jax where he stood next to the marble column that had hosted my vase.

Jax snorted. Gleeful bastard. I whipped my head toward him.

“Do you know who I had to fuck to get that art?” I’d kill him. I’d kill him this second. I clasped my chest. “I’m going to hyperventilate.” Not really a thing for vampires since we hardly even breathed, but it encapsulated how I thought I’d be reacting.

Jaxon lifted an eyebrow.

“Dramatic fuck. Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy fucking the Rouge Coven leader.”

“He reeked,” I hissed. For vampires, he was disgustingly unhygienic. Imogen knew of his proclivities and taunted me into a bet to take his prized art. She must have known about his fascination with shoving candle sticks up asses. I’d tired the male out so I could steal it, but the event was not an experience I reveled in remembering.

A piece of China settled near my heel. That lovely piece of art that had made the disgusting endeavor worth it was gone.

“And what exactly did this solve?” I hissed.

“It pissed you off.”

I narrowed my eyes at the smirk. There were two of us, but if one of us poofed from existence, then good riddance. I’d be doing the earth a favor ridding it of such a bitter fucker.

I lunged at Jaxon and drove him into the ground. Any harder and his body would have dented the flooring.

Hissing into his face, I wrapped my hands around his throat.

Grinning into his scowling face, I sank my fingers in harder. He slammed his fist into my side. My rib cracked.

Grunting, I squeezed harder, breaking skin with my nails.

“You kill him, then we lose all those he sired,” Ren drawled from somewhere behind me.

“I do not care,” I hissed and dug my claws into his throat. Blood gushed from the punctures. Jaxon’s shape morphed into a cat, slipping from my grip, then just as quickly became a large mountain lion to slice his claws into my thigh, almost hitting my prized cock.

“Watch it!” I shook his blood off my hands. “You’ll tear my shirt.”

“Is this petty squabbling what you two have been up to in my absence? Such a weak minded?—”

“Shut it,” I hissed. “You talk about weakness when you burned her house down?”

Ren threw his head back and laughed.

“So we’re back to this, eh? Since when do you care about humans?” I walked over to my twin, still in his feline form and wiped my bloodied hands on his fur.

Jax slinked away with a snarl and morphed back. “The fuck?” he snapped, glaring at his sides where my hands had left prints. I returned my attention to Ren.

“Just one human. Mine.”

Ren raised his hands. “You’ve made your ownership clear, but since she’s a Pet, you should keep her in the basement.”

Any humans we’d kept stayed locked up down there, so they could not escape while we slumbered. Although the bedrooms on the second floor designated for each of us were properly sealed off from the sunlight, a vampire that could burn to a crisp couldn’t be too careful.

“Bastien is down there now,” I said, simply denying his comment instead of shouting. I also didn’t mention that her wrapped in my bedding pleased me.