THE LYCAN KINGS SILENT MATE

Chapter 3

Eva bit down hard on the hand over her mouth, tasted copper, and got exactly nothing for it except a low, amused laugh against her ear.

"Feisty." The voice was cultured, unhurried, the kind of voice that had never once had to raise itself to be obeyed. "I like that. It'll make this so much more interesting."

She drove her elbow back into what should have been soft tissue and hit something closer to stone. The arm around her waist didn't so much as flex.

"Let me go, or I swear—"

"You'll what? See how I die?" He turned her, still holding her easily, like she weighed nothing, and Eva got her first real look at him — golden-haired, elegant, dressed in ivory instead of black, with the kind of beautiful, ageless face that belonged on old coins. Vampire, she understood immediately, though nothing about him looked like the golden-eyed scouts from the shop. He looked civilized. That was somehow worse. "Go ahead. I'd love to know."

Her gift didn't wait for permission. It never did. His bare hand had found her jaw, tilting her face up to his, and Eva braced for the vision the way she'd braced for six years—

Nothing.

Silence, the same vast, wrong silence she'd felt with Alistair's hand on her wrist an hour ago, except this time it curdled in her stomach instead of easing it, because this wasn't a fated bond. This was something else. Something that made her skin crawl even as her gift stayed dark.

"Interesting," he murmured, watching her face for a reaction she hadn't managed to hide. "You felt that too, didn't you. Your little talent doesn't work on old blood. Vampire, Lycan — anything strong enough, and you go quiet as a grave." His thumb traced her jaw, almost tender, entirely proprietary. "Do you understand what that makes you? A blind spot. The only living creature who can walk into a room full of monsters and never once see which one's about to gut her."

"Get your hand off my face."

"Prince Damon," he said instead, ignoring her entirely, "asked me to retrieve you gently. I'm afraid gently isn't really in my nature." His smile didn't waver. "I'm Julian, by the way. Damon's Second. You'll be seeing quite a lot of me."

"I won't be seeing you at all, because Alistair is going to—"

"Alistair," Julian interrupted, almost gently, "is currently three blocks behind us, burning a bookstore to the ground and howling your name into the wreckage like a wounded animal. Rather undignified, for a king." He tilted his head, studying her with open, clinical fascination. "Do you know why my prince wants you so badly, little seer? It isn't the visions. Anyone with your gift is a curiosity, useful for a season, disposable after. It's the silence."

Eva went very still.

"A weapon that can walk into the North King's court, touch every single traitor plotting against him, and feel nothing — no vision, no warning, no flinch to give the game away — because you'll be one of them." Julian's grip gentled, almost affectionate, which was somehow more frightening than force. "Damon doesn't want to kill Alistair Vance, Eva. He wants to turn his own mate into the blade that does it for him."

"That's not going to happen."

"No?" Julian's smile widened, and for just a moment something ancient and hungry moved behind his pleasant eyes. "You've known the man for what — an hour? And already you're willing to die rather than betray him. Fascinating. Fated bonds really are a remarkable little trap." He started walking, pulling her with him, and Eva's feet moved before her mind agreed to it, some cold, practical part of her deciding that fighting a losing battle now was worse than fighting a winning one later. "You'll understand, in time. The bond doesn't care what you want. It only cares what it's decided you are to him. Convenient, really, for men like Damon, who've learned exactly how to use that against—"

The world exploded sideways.

One second Julian was mid-sentence, elegant and unbothered; the next he was airborne, thrown clean through a parked car's windshield with enough force to fold the hood in half, and Alistair was standing where he'd been a heartbeat before, chest heaving, eyes gone entirely gold, blood — not his own, Eva realized with a lurch — soaked dark down one forearm.

"Touch her again," he said, in a voice that barely sounded human anymore, "and I will end your prince's entire bloodline before sunrise."

Julian pulled himself out of the wreckage with an irritated grace that suggested this was, at most, a minor inconvenience. He straightened his ivory jacket, wiped a thin line of blood from his mouth, and looked between them with something that might have been genuine delight.

"There he is." Julian smiled. "The King everyone whispers about. I was starting to think the stories were exaggerated." He glanced at Eva, almost gently. "For what it's worth, little seer — I meant what I said. The bond doesn't care what you want."

Then he was gone, folding backward into the dark between two buildings with a speed that left no afterimage, no sound, nothing but the faint, mocking edge of his laughter hanging in the cold air.

Alistair didn't chase him.

He crossed the distance to Eva in three strides instead, and for one unguarded second the fury in his face cracked into something rawer — fear, she realized, distant and disbelieving, because she hadn't imagined a man like this was capable of fear. His hands found her shoulders, her jaw, checking her over with a desperation that had nothing to do with kings or coups or fated bonds and everything to do with the simple fact that she was still breathing.

His palm settled against her cheek, and the silence that came with it swallowed every other sound in the street — Julian's threats, the distant sirens, the ringing in her own ears — until there was nothing left in the world except the warmth of his hand and the way his eyes moved over her face like he was memorizing it against the possibility of losing it. For one dangerous, breathless second, neither of them moved at all.

"You're bleeding," he said finally, low and furious, thumb brushing a shallow cut at her hairline she hadn't even felt, the touch lingering half a second longer than the injury required.

"You're on fire," Eva said back, because it was true — smoke still curled faintly off his shoulders, embers catching in the ruined collar of his shirt — and because it was the only thing she could say that didn't involve the words he wants to turn me into a weapon and use me to kill you.

Alistair went very quiet.

"What did he tell you?"

Eva opened her mouth to answer him, and that was the exact moment the ground beneath both their feet gave way.