I moved towards my bedroom and started to think I was a little crazy. The smell must have just lingered from all the months she’d been living here, because Brigit wasn’t anywhere to be found. In my bedroom, the invitation of my bed was almost too strong to avoid. But first I needed to shower.
Feeling restored once three days’ worth of blood, sweat and pool water had been cleaned off my skin and out of my hair, I towel-dried my curls and threw caution to the wind by not blow-drying them. Tomorrow my hair would be a mess, but I didn’t have the energy to dry it tonight.
Wrapping a towel around me, I walked to my room with the carefree manner of someone who was truly alone for the first time in months. The second I crossed the threshold into my bedroom, I knew how wrong I’d been to ignore my initial instincts.
There was no time for me to react once I realized I wasn’t alone. In one instant I was aware, and before I could open my lips to express shock, I was pushed hard against my bedroom wall with a hand covering my mouth and a strong, cool body pressed onto me.
The dark eyes and pale face looking back at me were so familiar I swore for a moment I must have been dreaming. But there was nothing erotic about this situation. Holden Chancery was in my bedroom, but this time he was altogether too real. My eyes were wide, but my pulse was slow and even. I was surprised, but at this point I still wasn’t afraid.
I was, however, wishing I had on more than a towel.
When I didn’t struggle, he stopped holding me so hard, but still firmly enough I couldn’t get away. I may have been strong, but most vampires were still stronger. Conversely, I could kick most werewolves’ asses in a fair fight. Maybe I was the perfect pack protector.
“Are you going to scream if I move my hand?” he asked.
I glared at him as if to say you’re kidding me, right? He pulled his fingers away.
I took a deep lungful of breath, now that his hand wasn’t blocking my mouth. I looked at him, trying to connect the man in my room to the Holden I knew. He was paler than usual. His skin had taken on a worrisome gray tone beneath the standard vampiric white. His brown eyes, which were always dark, were now almost black, and his pupils were huge. His hair, like in my dream, was longer than I remembered and too wild for him.
“Holden?”
“Welcome home.” There was more than a little sarcasm and anger in his voice.
“Are you insane? You know Sig was here earlier, don’t you?”
He took a step back, so he was no longer pressed against me, but he was still close and still holding me against the wall. He didn’t want me going anywhere.
“I waited until Ingrid took Brigit away before I came in. I’ve been watching.”
Rio had entered the room, but something about Holden upset her, because she was puffed up to twice her usual size and was making a weird howling noise low in her throat. Coming from a kitten, it sounded like the air being let out of a balloon. Holden ignored her.
“What are you doing here?” I put a hand in between us when he loosened his grip so I could keep my towel together.
“Did you come back to kill me?”
Now that he was here with me, I had the perfect opportunity to get the answers to the questions that had been nagging me for months. “What did you do, Holden? Why do they want me to kill you? Did you really go rogue?”
He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Honestly, Secret.” But in spite of the cavalier tone, he didn’t relax, and he was wound tighter than a spring. The whole room filled with tension.
“Holden.”
“Do you think so little of me?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question.”
He moved back and took the few short steps to my bed, where he sat down and put his head in his hands, raking his fingers through his thick, dark hair.
“I didn’t go rogue,” he said finally.
“Then why are they saying you did? Why did they contract me to kill you?”
“I knew I was in trouble when someone told me you’d gotten the contract. The Tribunal only contracts you when they mean business. But then you left. I didn’t know if I should be waiting for you to help me, or if you were letting me put my defenses down before you came after me. I reached out the only way I knew how. I needed to know what you planned to do.”
I froze. “You mean by coming here tonight, right?”
“You know what I mean.”
I pulled the towel tighter and started looking for something else to cover myself with.
“There’s no point, I’ve seen it all already,” he reminded me.
I glared at him and grabbed a robe off the arm of the chair by my door. It smelled like Brigit, but I didn’t care right then. I put it on and let the towel drop.
“You invaded my dreams?”
“It’s only an invasion if the receiving party fights it. You…” he looked right at me, “…didn’t fight at all. You were so open, in fact, I got back in while we were both still awake.”
So my awkward moment earlier tonight hadn’t been my imagination. I shuddered from the deep feeling of violation. Worse still, according to him, I’d let him in.
“How?” I should have asked why, but it wasn’t what came out.
He shrugged. “I was your warden. Wardens have a pretty unique connection with their wards. Before shit hit the fan, my power increased. I think I was about to advance to sentry. The extra power meant I could take better advantage of our connection. It didn’t hurt when they advanced you to warden. The more power both parties have, the better the connection is. Or so I’m told. Getting into your dream earlier this week was my first attempt. And tonight, well—”
“Never again,” I shouted. “You violated the most private experience. I should kill you for that.”
“You could try. But you’re unarmed right now. I’d kill you.”
I couldn’t stop myself. I crossed the room without thinking and punched him as hard as I could right in the face. It made a satisfying crack, and his head snapped back. Then he sat up straight, tentatively touching his nose, and a pinpoint of pain in my hand exploded to a full-blown searing agony. The crack I’d heard had been from one of my knucklebones breaking. I’d never broken my hand punching a vampire before. I was out of practice.
Broken hand or not, I hauled back to punch him again, but this time he saw it coming. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me easily onto the bed. I kept trying to lash out at him, until he climbed on top of me and held both of my hands above my head, sitting on my legs to keep me from attacking him with any well-placed kicks.
“Calm down,” he snarled. “Jesus, Secret, I’m sorry. I opened up the connection with the dream, but I didn’t know it would stay open. It wasn’t intentional.”
“You bit me.” I still struggled against his hold, the desire to claw off his face now all I seemed focused on. “You fucking bit me.” If we were going to argue semantics, he actually bit me while we were fucking. But neither of us brought up that point.
“It was a dream,” he reminded me.
“So? If you bit me in a dream, you probably want to do it in real life.”
“You let me do it in the dream. Does that mean you want to do everything we did in the dream in real life?”
I stopped struggling. Goddamn vampires, how could they be so logical all the time, no matter the situation? The problem was I didn’t know what the dream had said about me or what I wanted. I really didn’t need him to know that. Sensing the fight had started to seep out of me, he released my arms.
I slapped him with my unbroken hand, but it was more of a statement than an actual attack. “You’re an asshole.”
“I needed to know if you were going to go through with the contract.”
“I kind of want to now.”
“You’re not going to kill me because I was the interruptus to your coitus.”
Sighing, I looked up at my water-stained ceiling. He was still sitting on my legs, so I couldn’t go anywhere. A captive audience, as it were.
“You swear to God you aren’t rogue?”
“I don’t believe in God, but I swear to the true immortals and the wrath of the Tribunal I’m innocent of whatever charges they have against me.”
“You mean you don’t even know what you’re being accused of?”
“No. I just know I’m being framed for something huge, because no one is willing to help me. I figured they would have to tell you, if they’d convinced you to take the contract.”
“Sig didn’t give me a choice in taking the contract. I left, and he kidnapped me to bring me home so I’d complete it.”
He let out a long sigh. “You have to help me.”
“How am I supposed to help you?”
“You need to find out what it is I’m being accused of and prove I didn’t do it.”
“Would you like me to solve the mystery of the JFK assassination while I’m at it? Or perhaps you’d like me to waltz up to the Tribunal and say ‘Well, he says he didn’t do it, so let’s brainstorm a new solution.’” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Juan Carlos will eat the still-beating half-breed heart out of my chest before he tells me what you’re accused of or believes me when I say you’re innocent.”
“What about Daria?”
“Daria follows the rules. She’d never break the council rule about guarding the accusation.”
“Then you need to convince Sig. He’s their leader, and he already has a weak spot for you.”
I ignored his comment. “You risked your life coming here. Why?”
He rolled off me, allowing me to sit up, and rose to his feet. “I had to believe our history meant something. That you wouldn’t immediately assume I was guilty.”
“That was a big risk.”
“Are you saying it hasn’t paid off?”
When I got up we were standing face-to-face at the end of my bed. He looked down at me, worry deepening the lines around his eyes and mouth. How could I say no after everything we’d been through and all the times he’d saved my life in the past?