Page 57 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

“You know what it means.” Maddox’s voice is quiet, but with a certain steel in it that reminds me, against my will, that she is another alpha of the werewolf pack.

That soon enough, she will be considered its queen, and that she, too, will rule.

She nods at whatever expression shows on my face.

“Yes. It means that. You’re his, end of discussion. ”

“What? Like he put a dog tag on me?”

“It’s more like he put a brand on you.” Maddox frowns as she studies me, as if she’s looking for clues. “If he’s giving you space , if I were you?” She shakes her head. “I’d worry more about that.”

“Maybe he’s being respectful.”

She laughs. “Sure. That sounds like the vampire king we all know to love and fear. He’s definitely known for being respectful .”

I sit with that long after she heads back out into the night, lit up by a chunky half-moon a little too close to three-quarters full. It reminds me how little time we have left.

“Did you have fun in town?” I ask Augie the next day.

He and I are doing a perimeter check, though that duty has shifted, too.

It used to be that I was looking for holes in our defenses or evidence that monsters have been sniffing around.

These days, I’m not that worried about defending us.

If the monsters want us, most of them have a key.

But I still need to know what’s going on with our property, because the alternative feels like being willfully blind.

“Jacksonville was exactly the same,” Augie says. “And completely different. It was trippy.”

It’s a chilly morning. There’s frost on the ground, and the mist is thick and wet and decidedly unvampiric. The leaves on the trees are shades of gold. The pine trees stand green and tall. It’s October 26.

“It’s a small town,” I remind him as we check the woods behind the cottages. “Give or take a few apocalypses, that is.”

“What I want to know is how so many people got eaten, but the same pack of middle-aged barflies are still there. Not a hair on any of their heads harmed.”

“Maybe they’re too pickled to eat,” I theorize. “Not everybody likes a pickle. Hard as that might be for you or me to believe, I know.”

“I had Samuel in my face,” Augie says as we keep to the tree line, looking for tracks or tells, checking out angles and potential surveillance spots. “He thinks the monsters got to you.”

“He’s obsessed with monsters. It’s so weird. You would think that of all people, he would be the least wound up by the presence of them since he works with them. But I swear, after spending all this time negotiating with them, he’s just ...”

I don’t even know what he is. I do know that once again, out of sight is out of mind with him, and I still feel strange about it.

“I don’t think he’s obsessed with monsters, Winter.” Augie looks at me like I’m being dumb on purpose. “I think he’s obsessed with you.”

I laugh, and my voice startles a little cluster of wild turkeys. They flutter a bit, then saunter away, eternally unfazed.

“I can’t tell you how much I wish that were true. How much I would have loved that to be true about a year ago, but it’s not. You know we hooked up one time.”

“You hooked up? With Samuel Ruiz?”

I ignore the way he asks that, a little too surprised for my liking.

“It was a long time ago, it never happened again, and honestly? I don’t even know if he remembers it happened in the first place.

If he does, he didn’t care enough about it to discuss it, much less get moody about it years later. He’s not obsessed with me. Really.”

“Whether he is or isn’t, that’s how he acts.” Augie sniffs. “I told him to get it together. You’re the goddamn oracle. He’s beneath you.” He glares at me. “Which was also true before you were the oracle.”

I don’t know if he actually said that to Samuel or not, but I’ll admit that I choose to believe he did. Makes me feel warm and happy.

I try to hold on to that feeling as the last week of October begins, slinking in all ice and gloom, and Savi announces that it will be go time on Friday. Halloween.

Because, of course, it’s not only a full moon, but a blue moon. Sounds like exactly the kind of thing a self-obsessed bitch goddess like Vin?a would like.

The plan is that we’ll go by day. Savi has a spell ready. She and the other powers have put their heads together and determined a strategy.

We go over this at sundown on Thursday, though it seems a lot colder and grimmer out in the yard now. Once again, Briar is nowhere to be seen. I’m relieved. I might not know who she is or why she’s here—or even if she’s human—but she’s not exactly a force for good.

Even on a simple tenant level.

This time, Ty comes without his lieutenants, and both he and Ariel crowd onto the porch.

It makes for a tight little group.

If Samuel’s nursing his obsession for me, he hides it well. He’s much too busy glaring at Ariel, then Ty, and then back again.

“Usually, these things are done at moonrise, in the dark,” Savi says for the human contingent, since I assume everyone else already knows this. “That’s why we’re not doing it that way. If we do it in daylight, it gives us an advantage.”

“Is this goddess a creature of the night?” Augie asks.

“Not at all,” Ariel replies. “It’s nothing but habit. It is easier to be scary in the dark, perhaps.”

I absolutely do not look over at him.

“If everything goes according to plan,” Savi says, “we’ll get up there easily enough.

Winter, you and your grandmother and Augie will all go.

We’ll see if that much oracle blood in one place helps boost the visions and keep us on track.

I’ll make sure it’s nice and cloudy. We’ll have werewolves and vampires ready to fight, but hopefully none of that will be necessary.

I’ll cast the spell, she’ll be trapped anew, and we’ll get back to our lives. ”

“That sounds simple enough,” I say optimistically.

Ty belts out a laugh. “That’s if it goes well. It won’t. Nothing ever does.”

“She was put away once,” Savi reminds him. “It can be done. It gives us an edge to know that it not only can be done, it was done before.”

We talk about a few other details. Samuel volunteers to drive up in his truck, transporting the humans.

Augie and I exchange a look, but it seems easy enough to agree.

The meeting breaks up. Augie’s vampire lady appears, and they wander around the side of the house. Ty and Maddox lope off into the woods. He throws that big arm over her shoulders, and I catch the way she looks at him, like he’s all the galaxies she needs.

When I look back, Samuel has followed Savi over to where she parks her SUV and appears to be making a case for ... something.

I don’t care enough to try to eavesdrop.

Ariel simply waits. He’s wearing dark trousers, which I know aren’t his gi pants only because they cling to his form that much better, and another black T-shirt. In case I was having withdrawal from the sight of his biceps.

“What do you think our chances are?” I ask him.

“You could mean that question any number of ways. Pick one.”

I don’t really like his tone, so dark and edgy, but I don’t argue about it. “You’re the one who knew her. Do you think we can keep her trapped?”

“Can we? Yes. Without question. Will we?” He shrugs. “That very much depends. Some wars are won by superior strength and strategy. Others by trickery. And still others because one side simply would not fall. I cannot say what this particular group will do. We are not an army.”

“Thank you. What a stellar pep talk that was. You should consider becoming a motivational speaker.”

He regards me for too long, and I have no doubt that it’s deliberate. It’s meant to make me feel ... unwieldy in my own skin. It does.

Or maybe it’s the memory of him moving me up and down on his cock, like his own little fuck toy, that makes me feel as close to twitchy as I get.

“I am a fighter,” he tells me in a low voice. “All I have ever known is war. I’m good at it. Give me a battlefield and I don’t need any oracle to predict what will happen.”

He reaches over and brushes his cool fingers over my cheek. What I want to feel is that it’s too cold for vampire nonsense. What I want to feel is that anything that cold on a chilly fall night is too frigid for me.

But I’m not cold at all. And when he touches me, I ignite.

It would be so easy to let him in. Take him by the hand and invite him inside, then lead him up into my attic, where I could lock us both away until tomorrow.

It would be so, so easy.

“Tell me what war I’m fighting here,” he urges me in that same low voice, his silver eyes on mine.

All I want to do is melt.

Instead, I step back, as if I hear something. For a moment, I think I only wish that I heard something, but then I see Samuel’s truck head down the drive.

I can’t tell what he might have seen from where he was.

Was he standing there, watching us? That’s creepy, but I shake it off.

“Sounds like we have a big day tomorrow,” I say, far more brightly than the situation warrants.

Or I feel. “You’re not used to daytimes, are you?

” I smile, then I haul the door open, and I think we’re both completely aware that I’m deliberately putting that gate between us.

“You probably want to get your beauty sleep before you run into your ex.”

Ariel only smiles. He reaches around the gate between us and pulls me toward him, gently enough. But there’s no possibility that I won’t do exactly what he wants me to. There’s no room to do anything but what he wants.

I tell myself that’s why I do it.

He backs me up into that gate and then leans in, his hands fisting around the iron bars on either side of my head.

“If you are going to react this way every time you encounter a former lover of mine, you are going to exhaust yourself quickly,” he tells me, and his voice has some of his own iron in it. “Besides, it’s boring.”

“A happy solution would be to not spend any time with me, then.”

“That’s even more boring.”

Then he leans in and sets his mouth to mine.

I expect the spike of flaming heat. I expect my body to shudder, practically at its flashpoint that easily.

What I don’t expect is the way he kisses me. Soft. Knowing. Easy.

Sweet, I might even say, if I didn’t feel—every now and then—the hint of his fangs.

He kisses me until I’m limp against him, melted down like candle wax, clinging to his T-shirt like I want to climb him.

He kisses me until I betray myself so completely that I don’t even protest when he sets me back against the gate, fixes me with one of those dark, searching looks he loves so much, and then leaves me there.

With nothing but regret and an ache inside me, so deep and so wide it won’t let me sleep.