Page 30 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Silver

“Put me down!” My fists beat Lowell’s back, and I know he feels them, even if he’s immune. The woods look familiar, meaning we’re likely close to either my aunt’s house or the manor, but I can’t stand to go back to either right now. Not as defeated as I feel.

I thought he’d let me go once I stood my ground. At the very least, I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with Lowell until I returned from the trip.

But their very vampiric way of doing shit had shot my plans to bits before it was even off the ground—metaphorically speaking.

“Lowell, I swear to God!” I screech, and finally, he slows and drops me onto the cold, wet ground. I grumble as I stand and brush myself off.

“You’re a maddening woman! Do you know that? I told you no; you went against my order. I thought we understood one another. I thought we turned a page last night. That you finally understood who you are to me.”

“Yours,” I echo his sentiments from last night.

“Exactly.”

“But not yours to fuck or feed from, right? Only to pass me around your coven and refuse to try anything with yourself.” It’s a low blow, and it hits his mark.

He steps into me and growls.

It’s preternatural; I swear, even the surrounding forest life goes silent.

“You know why I can’t feed from you.”

“And fucking? You can cock block everyone else and claim the right for yourself, but you don’t act on it.”

He steps closer. This time, it has me unsteady, and I back into a tree. “Because fucking leads to feeding, and feeding leads to draining, and then you’ll be nothing more than ashes on the wind as you travel to the underworld, little lamb.”

His nickname for me burns my nerves, and an itch takes up residence beneath my skin that only he can scratch.

“I can’t lose control. I can’t be?—"

“The Slayer?” I whisper.

His eyes flare back to black. “Who told you that name?”

I swallow, unwilling to give up my source to him, as I shrug.

He turns and kicks his boot through a pile of leaves, tugging his hair as he mutters.

I feel awful for putting him in this state, but he also needed to know that I wouldn’t be controlled.

Jasper is likely pissed at me, too, now that Lowell told him he can’t leave either.

I’ll have to deal with that later.

Ugh.

“This won’t work. I should’ve known you weren’t the one.”

His ramblings bring me back to the present, and my stomach knots.

There’s a small part of me that wants to return to life as I know it and forget the insane world I’ve tumbled into, but the other part, the larger portion, intends to remain here.

That part urges me forward as I grab his arm and turn him around, culling his murmuring.

“Don’t do that. I fucked up, but don’t make this bigger than it is. I just needed you to see that I won’t be controlled. I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t realize?—"

My words cut off as Lowell presses me into the tree behind me, my head not jostling from the way he sped towards me because his hand wrapped around my throat. “I will not be controlled. You are mine; therefore, you will listen.”

Just like earlier, the odd sensation of arousal washes through me like someone’s turned on the tap in a shower. I don’t understand it.

He’s being so rough; I should be afraid.

Yet, I’m not.

I’m left wondering if there’s part of my ancient body that knows him. Loves him already.

But that’s nonsense.

His grin turns calculating as he breathes in the surrounding air, and a light breeze carries my scent to his nose. “Silver, it seems you’re not afraid of me. Even though I’ve lost my temper with you a few times, you’re unworried about how I’ll punish you. That won’t suit.”

“Why?” I manage, clawing at his hand to get the word out as I elongate my neck to breathe.

He tightens his grip until my breathing stops altogether. “Because every creature has to have something to fear, little lamb. Or the hierarchy falls apart. Respect demands fear.”

He finally lets me go, and I fall to my knees at his feet, choking as I gasp for air.

Holding my throat, I look up at him. “And you? What are you afraid of?”

He doesn’t skip a beat. “You.”

He crouches in front of me as my breathing finally steadies. Brushing my hair back over my ear, he searches my face before sighing. “You’re the most dangerous thing to me.”

“Why?”

“Because you promise to be the best thing that ever happened to me. To break my curse, to become the one thing I’ll crave over all else, even freedom. But what if you aren’t? What if you’re chaos, destruction, or worse?”

“What’s worse than destruction?” I ask, scared to know what he’ll say next.

“Distraction.”

I quirk a brow. He’s got a grim outlook on things, and I don’t quite know how to respond to him. He’s seen so much, played out so many scenarios over lifetimes, and it’s made him paranoid, manic even.

“There are many who’d love to see us burn, little lamb. What if you’re a distraction sent to lead us to the fire?”

I swallow thickly. How can I deny any of this to him when I don’t know who I am?

I can’t.

So, I remain silent.

My chest is burning, as are my eyes. I won’t show fear or weakness, though. I don’t know why, but I know Lowell won’t respond well to it.

He stands, reaching a hand down for me to take. The same hand that choked me to the brink of existence moments ago. “Come, little lamb. Let’s get home.”

Home.

It’s a confusing concept for me right now.

Even so, I take his hand and lift off the ground.

Lowell takes a moment to brush the leaves and dirt off my body, and I try to ignore the ache building the more his hands run over it, and then he leads me toward Thorngray, the manor that’s quickly becoming my prison alongside theirs.

I’m sipping coffee on the back porch that overlooks the forest beyond the sprawling lawns of Thorngray when Asher walks out, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.

“There’s the bandit now. In all her glory,” he jokes, and I think it’s the most lax I’ve witnessed his face so far.

It’s like they’re getting used to me being here—some of them.

“Yeah, dragged back to prison and on lockdown once more.”

He sits beside me, turning on his chair to face me. “Tell me that’s not how you truly feel.”

“Why? What will you do, reinforce the bars so I can’t escape again? I don’t think any of you considered how I felt when you snatched me off the street.”

“No, we didn’t. But we consider how you feel now. Well, at least Corvin and I do.”

“Why? What’s it matter now?”

He swallows, and it looks like it takes tremendous effort. The words he swallows over are thick, and it appears they’re hard to get his throat to slip past. “Because we’re already growing fond of you.”

I snort, and he eyes me narrowly. “Sorry, it’s just how you speak. Sometimes, it is like you’re straight out of another time.”

“Well, that assumption isn’t too far off.”

“Have you not lived in the modern world around us?”

He shakes his head. “The world surrounding us, while modernized in some ways, differs from your world, I suspect.”

“You suspect right. What year were you cursed again?”

“1974. Even then, we lived here in the manor and kept to ourselves. In that era, the people of that time believed in many things that modern people don’t. We had to keep more to ourselves to remain out of the spotlight.”

I find it hard to believe anyone would believe in vampires easily, but I could be wrong. The generations before us had a whimsical way of looking at things; he’s not wrong there.

“So, will you stay?” Asher asks me, and I have to contain a laugh that tries to erupt.

“I was just dragged back, yet you act like I have a choice.”

“You do. If you tell Lowell you do not wish to remain, he will let you go.”

“Will he? Or will he be in my yard, staring through my blinds every moment of the day?”

Asher grins. “I didn’t say he’d be happy about letting you go. Nor did I say he’d give up easily. He’s been obsessed with you since he saw you, Silver. Rightfully so.”

Now, it’s my turn to swallow over a growing lump. “Where’s Corvin?”

“Where else?” He rolls his eyes, sitting back in the iron chair, crossing his arms over his chest.

“The lab?”

He nods. “I swear he spends more time there year after year. He finds any reason to have his eyeball pressed against a microscope.”

“It’s what he loves to do.”

“I know it is, but I wish sometimes he’d do this.” He wafts his hands in front of him. “Sit with me on the porch and have coffee. Smell the flowers. Take in the day.”

I sit up straighter and turn toward him. “Well, that’s what you have me for.”

My words seem to settle through him, and then I see the tension leave his body like a storm lifting. “You’re right. I do.”

He abruptly stands and walks inside, returning with the coffee pot to refill mine. When he returns from taking the pot inside, he has a cup of his own. Leaning over after he sits, he lightly clinks his mug to mine and inclines his head before sitting back.

“Let us take in the day,” he says, and the sun chooses that moment to lift over the tree line as it rises.

I grin into my mug and feel some of the tension I brought out here subside.

After our coffee is gone and the conversation dried up, Asher and I go back inside and part ways. He heads for the downstairs gym, and I meander around the manor, unable to return to the gym just yet. Not after memories of Asher and me down there are so fresh.

Corvin’s in the lab, and I know Lowell is still reeling from my attempted escape yesterday, so I head for Jasper’s office.

Having thwarted his trip, I’ve been worried about the mood he’s in all night.

I knock and hear him beckon me in, but I hold my hand over the wood a moment longer as I linger.

“Come in, Silver,” he says, and I take a deep breath.

The door squeaks at my entry. I close it behind me as I run my eyes over Jasper, who’s sitting at his desk with three screens before him, and the light from them casts over his face.

Reading glasses sit on the tip of his nose, and he looks older than usual, even though he never ages. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asks with a grin.

“I was coming to apologize to you.”

“For what?!” He turns in his chair as I round his desk.

He’s breathtaking, per usual. He’s wearing jeans and a black button-up shirt that seems tailored to him. Two buttons are open on the top, showing the hair sprawling over his chest.

“For ruining your trip. The prospect of getting out of here for a few days had to be thrilling, and then it all went up in smoke. It’s all my fault, and I’m sorry.”

He chuckles darkly, removing his glasses and patting his knee like I’m five and needing affection.

I shove the feeling back as I can’t resist the urge to heel and slide onto his lap.

He rubs the back of his index finger down my cheek. “Sweetheart,” he says, and a shiver tumbles through my spine.

I’d never considered myself sweet or even meek until I met the four of them.

On the contrary, I had trouble dating in the city because men were intimidated by me.

My heartbeat pounds away in my chest as he turns my face, his fingers on my chin.

Tipping my face, he scans his gaze over my throat and growls.

“I’m fine,” I answer quickly, knowing what he’s looking at.

Lowell wasn’t easy when he nearly choked me lifeless, and the marks from his fingers will be there for days, possibly even longer.

“If I could kill him, I would.”

The sentiment does something to my insides, but I don’t want them fighting over me.

“You can’t kill him?”

He shakes his head. “No. I can’t. Killing him would kill me. All of his line dies with him.”

“All of you would die,” I breathe.

“Essentially.”

Worry makes my heart skip a beat like a rock over the glassy top of a lake.

“Don’t worry, Sweet Silver, we made it this far. I don’t think you’ll be our demise.”

“Lowell does.”

“He said that?”

“He says a lot of things.”

“You unnerve him. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but it will take some getting used to.”

Leaning forward, I let my forehead rest on his. “This is all too much. The curse, my lineage, all of it.”

“I know. I’m sorry to have pulled you into this.”

“Are you?” I draw back and look into his red eyes behind his mask.

He nods. “I am. Even if I know you’ll be the greatest love of our long lives.”

His words slam into my chest and burrow, creating a hole that only they can fill.

Jasper pats me on the butt, and I stand. “Come, let’s go into town for some coffee.”

“I already had coffee,” I tell him honestly. Surely, he could smell it on me.

“You’re telling me now there’s a limit on your consumption?”

I laugh and take his hand as he offers it. “Can I drive?”