Page 200 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

“I had no idea there was an opening. That’s incredible.” I swallowed down my pride. I raised a trembling hand to Aster’s chest to soften my inquiries. “That doesn’t happen very often, does it?”

Aster looked down at my hand on his chest. “No, it doesn’t. The stars have surely aligned.” His eyes were fiery as they moved to my lips. “You’re turned on by a man’s ambition, aren’t you, Evie?”

I released a breath. I was playing with fire. I didn’t want to sacrifice my sanity or my body for subterfuge. But I also had to take advantage of the position I was in. Kylo was probably fighting his way to me as we spoke—he would do anything for me, even after I’d failed miserably.

Kylo might’ve thought I wasdead.

“Maybe,” I said softly. “If it’s the right kind of ambition.”

Aster stroked my cheek. A low moan rumbled through his chest. “You need someone powerful to protect you, don’t you little one?”

Nope.Ew. No, thank you.

Time to steer this ship back on course. “Uh-huh. Is Conrad envious of your new position?”

Aster wagged a finger. “Bad girl,” he admonished, though it was nearly a groan. Hewishedhe could make Conrad jealous. He smiled. “No, Conrad is happy for me. It isn’t yet official, but we will all be heading to Prospyrus within the week.”

Panic was a volatile force. For a moment, I struggled to breathe. Blood bond or not, Kylo would track me to the ends ofthe earth. But would he be able to get to me in King Earle’s city? The strongest vampire-run city in the realm? If I was forced to become the wife of acouncilman?

I couldn’t let Aster take me away before the Serpent Clan arrived. He and Conrad wouldn’t leave this blood-soaked city alive.

Realization slammed into me from all angles. If Conrad wasn’t jealous of Aster, a man of his ambition and authority, that meant Conrad was aiming higher than the council.

Conrad wanted to be king.

They were infiltrating the council and sowing seeds of doubt about Earle’s competency to clear the path for Conrad.

Our suspicions being true was a relief and a shock both at once. Because Conrad believing he could truly take the throne, as a controversial, religious, slavery-endorsing lord from the south, wasinsane.

Whether Earle was truly going mad or that was a part of his detractors’ smear campaign, the man had ruled for nearly one thousand years.

Conrad and Aster were in over their heads. And now that I’d spent this amount of time with them, my intuitive superpowers were painting a clear image of the power dynamics my spirit guides had urged me to pay attention to from the beginning.

Conrad was a raging, malicious narcissist, and Aster was his idealistic, covert narcissistic yes-man. They were two complementary flavors of the same evil—the same desire for control, misogynistic domination, and the subordination of mortals under a façade of religiosity.

I was well-familiar with narcissists after my mother and Jacob, which gave me a unique advantage here.

I knew now what I’d been searching for in Conrad’s office. And it was far more damning than names of possible dissenters.

Conrad and Aster were about to have a councilman killed.

And I was going to find out who.

Aster misread the excitement in my eyes. That was his weakness. With me, with Juliette, with Conrad.

Aster only saw what he wanted to see.

His lips met mine, hungry and urgent. The kiss was too soft, too sloppy, and the scrape of fangs felt like a punishment.

I’d made him wait too long. A poor, hedonistic male vampire deprived of getting exactly what he wanted at all times.

The universe had finally thrown me a bone now that I was at my lowest, which was justtypical.

This had better be my last dark night of the fucking soul, or I was going to start firing my spirit guides.

Aster violated me, and I didn’t crumble. My body burned with heat and strained with pent-up power, but it didn’t fold.

I was going to do what I needed to do.