Page 51 of Grim’s Delight (The New Protectorate Syndicate #1)
Sometimes change sucked. And sometimes it made things a whole lot better.
Becoming a vampire had taken a lot from her, but it’d given her even more in return. A month ago she would’ve gritted her teeth and taken these men steamrolling her, believing she had no other choice, but not now. The Dahlia who lived by the motto head down, tray up was dead.
The new Dahlia wouldn’t just stand up for herself. She’d bite back.
Colin leaned forward, interest splashed across his expression. “Wait, you knew Felix before you were turned?”
“We dated for three years,” she answered, only fudging the truth a little.
Clearly trying to align that with the facts he had at hand, Colin gave her a puzzled look. “How did that work? You were in San Francisco, and Felix has been busy fighting Yvanna over here for years.”
Dahlia gave him a quick and sanitized version of the story, starting with the night Felix’s uncle was murdered in The Lush and ending with Yvanna’s death. If she left out the parts where she wanted to throw her phone in the ocean or throttle him, the story actually sounded a little romantic.
Felix wanted her right away and pursued her, but couldn’t risk her safety, so he’d forced himself to keep his distance until the Amauri civil war ended. It was an honest version, she supposed, even if the story lacked a few critical pieces of context.
But even that didn’t change the fundamental truth that Felix cared. He’d always cared. He’d loved her since day one and showed it the only way he knew how. Always, he’d been trying to do his best by her — even when he planned to let her go.
Her chest tightened painfully as she thought of how worried he must’ve been at that moment. The urgency to get back to him clawed at her.
Turning to Alastair, she said, “I don’t want to be at odds with you.
I don’t want any of the Bowans or the Amauris to be hurt because of me.
But I’m not leaving Felix. So you either need to pull your head out of your ass, or you need to leave me alone — because if you take one more shot at my husband, I’ll kill you myself. ”
Each word landed hard. She spoke them calmly and with the full force of her chest. They came from a deep well of certainty in her, the same place where her feelings for Felix had always lived, even when she didn’t want to acknowledge them.
It was a place of power. One that not even a vampire like Alastair Bowan could rattle.
A taut silence lasted several tense seconds before Colin leaned back with a long exhale. Rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses, he chuckled, “Good gods, she really is your daughter.”
Alastair’s lips pursed beneath his snowy mustache. “I told you.”
Dahlia’s gaze bounced back and forth between them. Colin appeared to relax, and if she wasn’t mistaken, Alastair did, too. It was harder to tell with him, though. Whatever softening he underwent was marginal at best. Like the sheen of water on the outermost edge of an ice sculpture, maybe.
Still, she sensed a shift when he dropped both feet onto the floor and leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. Steepling his fingers, he gave her a keen-eyed look. “What will it take to get you to be part of this family?”
Confused, she narrowed her eyes and sat back in her seat. “I told you I’m not leaving Felix.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Oh. Dahlia blinked, suddenly wrong-footed. She’d expected a lot more resistance, but with her neck being covered in bites, she supposed there was no point in Alastair trying to separate them now. What she couldn’t understand was what he actually wanted from her.
“What do you mean by being part of the family, exactly?” She gestured to herself and Alastair with a finger. “I’m still not totally clear on how this blood-adoption thing works.”
“To them — and us — it’s considered the same as if we discovered Alastair had fathered you and just not known,” Colin explained.
“We never had children. Things always got in the way, and then we felt like we were too old. So having a brilliant, beautiful daughter dropped in our laps…” He smiled, and there was an aching amount of hope in that expression.
Alastair wasn’t nearly as warm or open as his anchor, but when he grabbed Colin’s hand and cast him a long look out of the corner of his eye, it was obvious how much he cared.
“I want to retain my rights as your father,” Alastair announced, as clipped and brusque as a businessman declaring his terms. “You’d keep the Bowan name and be given a share of the family wealth, as well as a say in all major family decisions.
In exchange, you’ll visit us here regularly — monthly at minimum — and stay in regular contact with at least one of us.
Should you choose to procreate with the whelp, we request visitation rights with our grandchild as well. ”
It took her a second to translate what he was saying into what it’d mean coming from a normal, emotionally available person.
Dahlia curled her fingers into the hem of her dress. A gooey sort of warmth took up residence in her chest, even if a part of her still couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.
She’d never known her father. He’d taken off long before she was born, and if she were honest, she was a little iffy on whether the name on her birth certificate was even correct.
To suddenly be given not one but two fathers felt a bit like she’d won the lottery and then used the winnings to hit the jackpot on a slot machine.
“You want to get to know me,” she said, her wonder unhidden. “You actually want me to be your daughter. Like, really be your daughter.”
Alastair sniffed. “Yes, obviously. Now tell me your terms.”
She opened her mouth to say she had none but stopped herself just in time.
The new Dahlia didn’t get to have no demands. She lived in a world of predators who’d happily eat her and the people she loved at the first sign of weakness. That meant she had to take advantage of any and all opportunities that arose.
And she was pretty sure Alastair wanted her to bargain. He probably wouldn’t know what to do with her if she didn’t have demands of her own.
So she took a deep breath and said, “I can agree to monthly visitation and regular contact, but I can’t take decision-making power within the Bowan family.
That’d be a conflict of interest between my loyalty to you and to my husband’s family.
On that score, I’d like your assurances that there will no longer be any hostilities between you. ”
Alastair let out a long sigh. “I can’t promise I won’t want to kill him.”
“I didn’t say you had to. Only that you won’t.”
After a beat of what looked like intense internal debate, he growled, “I want him to replace my yacht.”
Dahlia raised her eyebrows. “Are you going to replace his club?”
“Why would?—”
“Then you’re both going to take it on the chin,” she interrupted. “I’m not going to ask Felix to do something when you won’t meet him halfway.”
“Fine,” Alastair bit out. “But how do you know he’ll agree to set hostilities aside? Amauris are unpredictable and disloyal. They’ll stab their own kin in the back to get ahead.”
“Not my husband and not his cousins,” she firmly answered.
“How do you know?”
Dahlia lifted her chin. “Because he loves me, and I’d bet you anything that he’s on his way here right now — even if showing up at your door means being shot on sight. If that’s not loyalty, I don’t know what is.”
The words came out naturally, utterly unforced.
Maybe it wasn’t the kind of love she expected, and it took her a long time to recognize it for what it was, but that didn’t make it any less real.
Felix would do anything to make her happy.
He’d given her complete power over him from the start. All she had to do was take it.
But with that came a responsibility — not just to him, but to all the Amauris.
What was in their best interest had become hers.
If Alastair and Colin could be believed, that meant fitting them in there somewhere, too.
She wasn’t entirely sure how that was going to work, but she had an idea of where to start.
“Now,” she began, mirroring Alastair’s keen look, “do you remember what we talked about the night we met?”