THE LYCAN KINGS SILENT MATE

Chapter 6

"Numbers," Alistair said, already moving toward the car.

"Twenty, maybe thirty. Vampire infantry, not scouts — this wasn't a probe, it was an invasion." The woman's silver eyes flicked to Eva, cataloguing her in half a second the way soldiers catalogued threats and liabilities alike. "Kade's holding the gate with what's left of the north patrol. He won't hold it long."

"Then we don't waste time standing here." Alistair yanked the back door open and all but lifted Eva into the car. "Eva, this is Reyna. She commands my personal guard. You'll listen to her the way you'd listen to me."

"I don't even listen to you."

"Then this will be good practice." Reyna's mouth twitched — not quite a smile — as she slid into the driver's seat and had the car moving before Alistair's door had fully shut. "She's got nerve. I like her already."

"She's got a death wish and terrible timing," Alistair said, but there was no real heat in it, and Eva caught the ghost of something almost fond cross his face before it hardened back into command. "Route?"

"Service roads. Main streets are compromised — Damon's people have eyes on every camera between here and the wall." Reyna took a corner hard enough that Eva's shoulder slammed into Alistair's, and he caught her without looking, one arm braced across her automatically, like his body had already decided protecting her took priority over everything else it might otherwise be doing. "If we're lucky, we're inside the fortress before they figure out which car you're in."

"And if we're not lucky?"

"Then we find out how many of them Alistair can kill before breakfast." Reyna said it flatly, like a weather report.

The city blurred past — dark storefronts, empty intersections, the occasional flicker of movement in an alley that made Eva's pulse spike before Reyna's voice cut through, clipped and certain: "Civilians. Not ours, not theirs. Ignore it." Eva realized, with a cold twist in her stomach, that Reyna could tell the difference at a glance, at speed, in the dark. That this was simply what her life looked like. What Eva's life was apparently about to look like.

"You said Kade's holding the gate," Eva said. "Is he going to be okay?"

Reyna's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, just for a second. "That's not really a question with a good answer right now."

Alistair's jaw tightened. He didn't say anything, but his hand found Eva's on the seat between them, and this time she didn't pull away. His thumb traced slow, absent circles against her knuckles, an unconscious tenderness that felt strange coming from a man capable of the violence she'd just watched him deliver — and stranger still, how much she craved it. The silence that came with his touch had stopped feeling like an anomaly sometime in the last few hours. Now it just felt like the only quiet place left in a night that hadn't stopped trying to kill her, and she found herself leaning into it without deciding to, her shoulder settling against his like it had always belonged there.

The car screamed around a final corner and the fortress came into view — not the gothic castle Eva had half expected, but something colder and more modern, dark stone and steel rising out of the hillside like it had grown there, gates already grinding open ahead of them, a dozen armed figures visible on the walls silhouetted against the first gray light of dawn.

"Home," Alistair said, low, watching her take it in. "For now."

"It's not exactly cozy."

"It's not meant to be cozy. It's meant to keep you alive." The car shot through the gate, and Eva watched it seal shut behind them with a grinding finality that made her chest go tight. "Everything else is negotiable."

They'd barely cleared the courtyard before a man came sprinting across the stones toward them, uniform torn, blood streaked down one side of his face, and Reyna was out of the car before it had fully stopped.

"Kade." Something in her voice had changed, sharpened into something Eva hadn't heard from her yet — not command, but fear, quickly buried. "Report."

"Gate held. Barely." Kade was breathing hard, favoring one leg. "They pulled back the second the sun hit the ridgeline. Vampires don't like open ground in daylight, and Damon knows it. It wasn't a real invasion, Reyna. It was a message."

"What message?" Alistair was already out of the car, Eva half a step behind him, and the courtyard had gone very quiet around them — soldiers pausing mid-motion, watching their king with the kind of careful attention that told Eva exactly how rarely they saw him rattled.

Kade's eyes moved to Eva, and something in his expression made her stomach drop before he even spoke.

"They left something at the gate, Your Majesty. Addressed to her."

He held out a folded piece of ivory paper, sealed with dark wax stamped in an unfamiliar crest. Alistair took it, and Eva watched his face as he broke the seal, watched the fury build behind his eyes line by line as he read.

"What does it say?" she asked, when he didn't offer it.

He handed it over instead of answering, and Eva made herself read it, even though every instinct told her not to.

Little seer —

You'll forgive the theatrics. My patience is not infinite, and neither, I suspect, is Alistair's ability to keep you sealed behind stone forever. Consider this an invitation. Come to me willingly within seven days, and no harm comes to anyone in that fortress who isn't already sworn to die for their King. Refuse, and I promise you, I will peel his kingdom apart one guard at a time until you change your mind. You have already seen how one man dies at another's hand. I wonder — how many deaths can you watch before you decide mine is worth preventing yours?

Yours, with genuine anticipation —

Damon

Eva's hands were shaking by the time she finished. She looked up to find Alistair watching her, not the letter, his expression unreadable in a way that scared her more than Damon's threats had.

"Seven days," she said.

"He's not getting you." Alistair's voice was quiet, final, the voice of a man who had already decided this argument was over before it started. "Not in seven days. Not in seven hundred."

"He just threatened to kill everyone in this fortress."

"He's threatened worse before and failed to deliver." Alistair took the letter back from her, folded it once, and handed it to Reyna without looking at it again. "Burn that. And double the wall guard — I don't care that it was daylight, I don't trust his restraint to hold past sundown."