The Vampire Lord's Wolf Bride

Kayla and I came in through the window. Honestly, with Kayla's skills, a third floor window might as well be level ground. She went up first, light as a leaf settling against the wall, then reached a hand down. I grabbed her wrist, she pulled, and she hauled me up like I weighed nothing. Ten seconds, start to finish, and the two of us dropped soundlessly into the east corridor like a pair of mice sneaking home with stolen cheese. The castle was dark. It's always like this, so quiet you can hear your own heartbeat. Think about it: the castle of the most powerful vampire lord in the Night Court, over a hundred rooms, all those people living in it, and somehow not a scrap of warmth anywhere. Less like a home, more like a tomb. A few scattered candles flickered at the far end of the corridor, hanging on like a dying man's last breath. I padded barefoot toward my room, the absurdly thick carpet swallowing every step. My whole body was wrecked, but it was the good kind of tired. Liam and I had fought again tonight. Whenever we fight, he treats me like air, and then the entire castle is too scared to so much as look at me. It leaves this awful knot in my chest, and when that happens I have to get out, otherwise I might actually tear the place apart. Kayla came with me over the wall to the service quarters. We hauled twenty crates of supplies, forty or so pounds each, and by the end my arms had stopped taking orders. Vampires don't do manual labor. Every dirty, backbreaking job in the castle falls to the blood servants, people who couldn't make it in the human world, taken in by their "kindhearted" vampire masters when they had nowhere left to go. They feed their masters, work, wait on them hand and foot, every one of them praying to perform well enough to catch a master's eye and be turned. Eternal life, plus a clean escape, once and for all, from whatever wreckage they left behind in the human world. I go down to the service quarters a lot, and I've gotten friendly with the blood servants. Kayla always worries I'll cause trouble, but honestly, all I've ever done is: fix the kitchen's oven and accidentally punch a hole in the chimney, smoking out half a floor; trip a guard who was bullying a blood servant, only for the servant to blame me for butting in; swipe three bottles of wine from the cellar for the cook, who went white as a sheet and said I was trying to get him killed; and arm wrestle the captain of the night patrol four or five times. I won every match. He hasn't spoken to me since. On the way back we nearly ran into the night patrol, so Kayla and I looped halfway around the castle and finally climbed up the drainpipe behind the courtyard. Three stories. One section of it was loose. A yawn nearly unhinged my jaw. "So tired..." I pushed open my door. Snap. Every lamp in the room flared to life. Helen stood dead center, hands folded primly in front of her, two maids behind her holding lanterns. Quite the production. You'd think she was here to catch a cheating husband in the act. She looked me up and down, her gaze traveling from my muddy hands to the bird's nest that used to be my hair. Her expression cycled through six or seven options before landing on the one I hated most: Distaste. Gathering her skirts, she knelt and briskly set about changing my shoes and clothes, delivering a speech she'd clearly rehearsed a hundred times. "My lady, you... went over the wall again. If the Lord hears of this, you'll be punished. Again." I didn't much care for Helen. Hated that look of hers, the one where she plainly thought I was beneath her but had to wait on me anyway. Call it "serving me" if you're being polite. It was more like keeping watch on me for her master. "Oh, come on. I'm back in one piece, aren't I? Besides, how's he going to find out unless you tattle?" So she pretended to dab at tears, and I pretended to feel guilty, and she directed the maids to stuff me into the bathtub while lecturing me on how to be a proper lord's wife. For all her scolding, her hands never missed a beat. Hot water, towels, nightgown, everything in perfect order. She had no choice. Slighting the lady of the house means insulting the Lord, and however little she thought of me, appearances had to be kept. "Tomorrow is Miss Selena's birthday tea, and you must attend, my lady. The Lord left specific instructions." She paused, as if hunting for a sufficiently diplomatic word. "He hopes you will dress appropriately and conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the Court's dignity." Translation: Don't cause trouble. Don't embarrass anyone. Don't be yourself. A maid was toweling my hair, Helen was still talking, and my eyelids weighed a ton each. After that, things get fuzzy. I have a vague memory of someone catching me. Someone must have, because I woke up in bed and not on the floor. I slept like the dead. The sky could've fallen outside and I wouldn't have stirred. Unless... BANG! The door flew open. Kicked open. My eyes snapped open. A blade of pale daylight leaked through the gap in the heavy curtains. Probably past lunchtime already. Liam stood in the doorway, in black as always. The moment he planted himself there, what little light the room had seemed to get swallowed whole. Helen cowered behind him, head down, not daring to breathe. He has the kind of face that makes you want to back away. Features too sharp. Not the handsome kind of sharp, but the kind that could actually draw blood. Eyes so dark they're nearly black, and whoever he looks at feels like they're being sentenced. His scent hit me before he did. Cold pine, and incense burned down to ash in the dark. The wolf inside me started acting up again. Every time she catches his scent she loses her mind, clawing at the walls deep in my head, straining toward him like she's been wronged. I gave her a mental kick. Settle down. He's here to pick a fight. I was still in bed. Hair a disaster, wearing a nightgown slippery as an eel. You can't win an argument lying down. You're starting from lower ground. So first, I had to sit up. Taking my sweet time, I propped myself up, pushed the hair off my face, treated him to an enormous yawn, and only then looked up at him, lazy as you please. "Morning, my lord. Very dramatic entrance today. Next time, though, you might try the doorknob. That's how civilized people usually enter a room." His jaw flexed. A vein ticked at his temple. "Selena ate the muffins you sent last night. She's been vomiting and worse all night." He bit off each word. "You knew today was her birthday. You did it on purpose, didn't you." Of course. Selena again. I wake up cranky on a good day, and hearing that name lit my temper like dry tinder. Three years. Any time anything happens to Selena, I'm the first suspect. "I didn't send her any muffins." I kept my voice as even as I could manage. "Whatever wrecked her stomach, it's got nothing to do with me." "Drop the act." He took a step closer, raking me with a look from head to toe. "The Silver Moon Pack. Treacherous, every last one of you. Bold enough to do it, too gutless to own it." Insult me all you want. I can trade barbs with him for three hundred rounds and never break a sweat. But he wasn't insulting me. He was insulting my entire pack. Rage shot through me, soles to scalp. My left palm stung. The old scar there, the spectacularly ugly one, was burning again. "Werewolves stand tall and deal straight. What we didn't do, we didn't do! If you have proof, put it on the table. If you don't, bring Selena here and we'll settle it face to face. Let's see exactly who sent those muffins last night! You're a vampire lord, and you come kicking down doors slinging accusations over something this petty without checking a single fact? Have you no shame?!" "You'd better pray Selena recovers." His mouth twisted. He stared at me for three full seconds. "Or I won't mind showing you that this marriage can end whenever I choose." Three years. Three years of swallowing every humiliation this castle could throw at me, and when did he ever care? Selena has one rough night with her stomach and he kicks my door in. I looked him dead in the eye and, out of nowhere, laughed. "Then end it! You think I'm scared?" His pupils contracted. Guess he hadn't expected me to agree that fast. What was he waiting for? For me to drop to my knees and beg? To sob and swear on my life it wasn't me? Sorry. Wrong girl. He spun on his heel and stormed out, the draft snuffing one of the candles on my table. The room went dead quiet. Kayla had slipped in at some point, a cloth for polishing blades still in her hand. She glanced the way Liam had gone, then at me, asking with her eyebrows: You okay? I bared my teeth at her, in no mood for it. "Do I look okay? Whoever sent those muffins behind my back had better hope I never find out, or I'll shift and tear her apart!" Helen was still rooted in place, her face gray. At those words, she dropped to her knees with a thud. "Forgive me, my lady... I had the kitchen make those muffins..." I froze. "Today is Miss Selena's birthday, and custom requires a gesture from the lady of the house. You were out last night, so I took it upon myself to have the kitchen prepare muffins and send them over. In your name..." Her voice shrank smaller and smaller. "I swear I didn't tamper with them. I swear..." Great. So that's what all this was. She sent muffins on my behalf, the muffins went wrong, and Liam came to collect from me. Start to finish, none of it had a single thing to do with me. "Get up," I said. "The floor's cold." Helen lifted her head, eyes rimmed red, looking like she couldn't believe I wasn't screaming at her. "If you didn't tamper with them, then her stomach is not our problem." I yawned. My bones still ached. "Blame those delicate human digestive systems. It's not like I held her down and forced it down her throat." Kayla laughed without a sound. Helen kept hovering there, like she wanted to say something and didn't dare. "Something else?" "My lady..." She hemmed and hawed. "Miss Selena's circumstances... aren't something we speak of freely in the Court..."