Holden snorted. “Sig told me to do this.”

Of course. Of course.

“Might have been nice to know ahead of time. You were going to come with me regardless. What if someone had asked me and I was like, ‘Oh, Holden? We fooled around once, and he has a habit of kissing me at inappropriate times, but I don’t know if I’d call him my consort.’”

“Fooled around?” Now he looked offended.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, you know what I mean.”

“Well, blessedly that wasn’t an issue. But I do have a suggestion to make.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“It would help sell the story if you behaved as though I was your consort. Meaning it would look good if one of the beds in our suite went unused.”

This time, the meaning of his words didn’t get by me. “You’re using this as an excuse to get in my pants while I’m away from Desmond, aren’t you?”

He tried—and failed—to hide his smirk. “I’m merely making suggestions to help us convince others of our story. Of course, the vocal sounds of lovemaking would be hard to overlook and would make our union appear more legitimate.”

“I’m not going to fuck you so some strange vampires believe we’re an item.”

“I wasn’t saying that would be the only reason.”

“You devious prick.” I got to my feet, kicking back the ottoman a few inches and trying to stand tall enough I might appear imposing to him. It was a lost cause since Holden rarely respected my authority over him. Probably because two years earlier he had outranked me. It was hard to blame him when we both knew he could physically dominate me.

“How am I devious? The plan wasn’t mine.”

“I’m sure Sig didn’t tell you to sleep with me.”

“He told me to do whatever it took to keep you safe.”

I snorted. “Way to twist his words around to serve your own purposes. Well done.”

“Secret, I’m going to be frank here.” The smirk vanished, and a new seriousness replaced it. “I won’t ever ask you to do anything you don’t want to do, and you know that. But I am serious when I tell you people need to be convinced. It doesn’t need to be sex, and I haven’t forced that issue with you since we came back from Aubrey’s kingdom, but please don’t do anything to make them question us. I know you think this is a ploy, but it’s not. I’m trying to protect you, and this is the only way I can do it. But you need to help.”

All the snippy retorts I’d been building up in anticipation of what he might say vanished. When Holden got serious he got really serious, and I took what he said to heart.

I knew he would protect me at all costs, but I also figured he wasn’t above taking advantage. Now I felt guilty for assuming he was creating a lie solely to bed me. He was better than that.

“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “But if you get handsy without permission, the only sounds people will hear through the walls will be you begging for mercy.”

“Baby…if you do give me permission, I can say the same thing to you.”

Chapter Eleven

Ingrid arrived with two other daytime servants—a man and woman who both appeared to be in their early twenties—and put an end to any further smirking innuendo from Holden.

“Tribunal Leader Secret.” Ingrid bowed, and the other two followed suit. Upon a longer inspection I started to think the new arrivals must be twins. They were each ginger-haired and fair-skinned, with similar facial features. Their close ages indicated that if they were not twins, they were definitely related. “I’d like to introduce Barton and Camille, the daytime servants of Tribunal Leaders Eyelee and Galen.”

“You’re related?” I stated the obvious as if it was a question.

“A brother and sister for a brother and sister,” Camille replied with a soft smile.

I gave a quizzical look to Ingrid, who added, “Two of the West Coast Tribunal Leaders are siblings. Galen was first to the Tribunal, followed by his sister Eyelee.”

“Eye-lee?” I repeated the name back slowly. “Does that have some batty Gaelic spelling?” Judging by the glower I got from Barton, he was Eyelee’s servant. It also confirmed my suspicion about her name.

“E-i-l-i-d-h,” he said with a huff.

“Christ. I thought Siobhan was bad.” I wouldn’t have been so sassy to the Tribunal Leaders themselves, but I could get away with murder when it came to their human minions. I had gotten into the habit of being cheeky with Ingrid, and that apparently transferred over to these new arrivals by some sort of snark osmosis.

Barton wrinkled his nose, but Camille’s smile was patient. They struck me as being two sides of the same coin, one calm the other short-fused. If I stuck around long enough, I wondered how else they might be different or alike.

To break the tension I said, “Only two?” I pointed a finger to Barton and Camille in turn, then held up a third finger in the air, aiming it at no one.

“Much like Juan Carlos, Tribunal Leader Arturo is protective of his privacy and opts not to keep a daytime aid.”

Translation: Arturo was going to be a poncy douche who thought humans were beneath him. He was going to love me. I might not be human, but human-hating vampires tended to dislike me more than most.

From the limited information I’d been given I now knew the West Coast Tribunal had a similar setup to ours. Two males and a female, and one of the males was probably a bit of a jackass.

Maybe it was bitter of me to make assumptions without having ever met them. I was becoming more like them with each passing day because I was learning to judge those I’d never met and to hold their failings against them.

Over time, I was turning into a vampire, even if my heartbeat said otherwise. And that scared the living hell out of me.

“Are we going to meet them now?” I crooked my fingers, beckoning Holden closer. When he took my hand in his, Ingrid’s expression was unchanged. She must have known what Sig wanted Holden to do.

His palm was cool and dry, an anchor keeping me grounded. As long as I was holding on to him, I was still me. I didn’t think Holden would like me nearly as much if I was the kind of vampire I worried I might become.

Right now he still liked me fine.

Barton and Camille whispered to each other, and for the first time since the three of them had arrived, Ingrid showed her annoyance at something.

“Would you two stop chittering like birds? If you have something to say, just come out and say it. You’re in the presence of a Tribunal leader and her consort. Your behavior is appalling.” She nodded to me, bowing with only her head. “Apologies. They’re young, still. Barely older than him.”

She’d indicated Holden, meaning these young servants were over two hundred years old. Yup, veritable babies at ten times my age.

“It’s just…” Camille turned away bashfully, unable to meet my eyes. “You look so much like—”

Ingrid—who’d just been insisting they speak up—stomped down hard on Camille’s foot, making the redhead cry out in surprise. “You’re speaking out of line. Enough.”

“I look like what?” I asked. “She was about to say something.” I focused my gaze on Camille. “What were you about to say?”

“Something it wasn’t her place to comment on,” Ingrid interrupted. “Come along now, please. Time for the introductions.”

Ingrid, who was the definition of unflappable, seemed downright flustered, her cheeks flushed from her apparent anger with Camille. It made me even more curious about what hadn’t been said, and I made a mental note to ask about it again at a more appropriate time.

Stupidly I was hoping Camille was talking about Brigit, and the mystery would end with my friend popping out of a closet somewhere shouting surprise, which would be something Brigit might find amusing. Brigit and I did look remarkably alike at a quick glance—long blonde hair, petite figures, similar facial features—and it was because of those similarities she had been killed.

My own mother hadn’t been able to tell us apart in the heat of the moment, and Brigit had paid the ultimate cost for Mercy’s mistake.

I swallowed the knot building in my throat and tried to shake off any thoughts of Brigit. I sought comfort from Holden by squeezing his hand a little harder, and he squeezed back in two short pulses before running his thumb over my skin.

“Lead the way,” I instructed Ingrid, trying to keep an authoritative tone in my voice.

We all wedged into an elevator, and in spite of the generous space I still felt like I was back in the coffin. My heart thumped, and I don’t think I’d ever been more grateful to be stuck in a small space with mostly humans. Holden would hear it, but he was accustomed to my pulse by now. The humans, as far as I was aware, couldn’t sense my heartbeat in spite of their vampire connections.

I needed to get myself in check before I met with the Tribunal to discuss Sig’s grand-spawn or whatever it was called when you go further down the lineage. If I concentrated hard enough and breathed deeply enough, I could slow my heartbeat right down. Not to a complete stop, of course, but the vampire blood meant I was able to get close. It wouldn’t fool anyone into thinking I was a vampire, but it would make my pounding pulse less of an issue.

The Tribunal here would already be aware of the fact I wasn’t a full-blooded vampire, but they also knew I’d been accepted by the East Coast Tribunal—voted in by the elders no less—and my position on the throne wasn’t in question. It wasn’t up to these vampires to decide if I belonged. I’d killed Daria, and by the rules of succession that made me the rightful leader in her place.

It wasn’t their approval I was seeking as much as a limited acceptance among them. If I was going to stay here, I wanted to keep things as cordial as possible, and I found it was sometimes difficult for vampires to play nice when they think of you as a human instead of one of them.