“I’m not leaving.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you tell the wolf you would take care of it?”

“Are you really that thick?” I raised an eyebrow and bit off a corner of the pastry. Considering I typically only ate blood, this tasted ferociously sweet. I puckered my lips before I drank more coffee. “Lucas can’t know you’re here.”

I played with the pink hoodie strings, my anxiety making it impossible for me to sit still. I didn’t like the idea of lying to Lucas so early into this trip, especially not about something this big. But there was no way to make him understand I couldn’t undo Sig’s order to Holden.

Part of me didn’t want to. I liked having Holden around.

“If you put your hair into pigtails, I think you might appeal to a very kinky niche,” he teased.

I threw a hunk of pastry at him. “Do you think you can maintain a low profile? Keep your distance?”

“Yes.” Brushing white spots of sugar off his sport coat, he looked far from intimidating.

“I’d appreciate that.”

Back out on the street, the night was bursting to life in the French Quarter. Streetlights glowed a warm amber, throwing puddles of illumination onto the sidewalks. Holden and I moved through the golden circles without speaking.

Jazz and blues filtered out from various clubs and street musicians. A woman whose voice sounded like Billie Holiday’s crooned mournfully from a bar a block away from the hotel. A faint chill in the spring air reminded me of home, but the scent of jambalaya and fried fish was in stark opposition to New York’s street fragrances. No pretzels and hot dogs here. The air smelled different. It was exotic, tinged with a note of magic—spicy and wicked.

I liked it.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I whispered, feeling unusually confessional in these strange surroundings.

“I’ll always be here. As long as you need me.” The seriousness of his tone surprised me. I’d expected something cheeky or bawdy and instead got frank and raw. I looked at him, hoping to get a read from his face, but it was just a mask. A lovely, chiseled-jaw, bow-lipped mask, but empty of clues all the same.

We arrived at the hotel in time to see a bellhop throw my suitcase into the trunk of a waiting limousine.

“What the—”

Holden had vanished, gone so quickly the night must have opened invisible jaws and swallowed him whole.

Lucas trotted down the steps with Dominick at his heels and came to a stop when he spotted me. “Your timing is impeccable.” He stooped and kissed me on the cheek. “Did you get everything…taken care of?” His gaze raked the sidewalk behind me.

“Yes, it’s been handled.”

“Good.” He nodded, smiling more to himself than to me, and waved Dominick onwards to the waiting car. “There’s been a slight change of plan.”

I eyed the car with wary apprehension. “Oh?”

“Your uncle has requested that rather than stay in the city and have us commute to and from his estate, he would prefer if we come to stay with him.”

“He…” I looked at our idling ride and an unease crept under my skin that felt, for all the world, like a thousand cicadas had begun buzzing inside me. “And you agreed?”

“Keep your friends close…”

“Lucas,” I said as his words drifted off. “This isn’t really that kind of situation, is it? There’s a very real possibility Callum is working with Mercy and together they are responsible for the attempts on my life. And you honestly thought it was a good idea for us to stay where he can see us at all times? How does us going to Callum’s estate help us keep our friends close?”

“Maybe your friends were a little too close.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “This is about Holden? I told you that was taken care of.”

“This is about more than your vampire friend, Secret.” He didn’t look at me when he opened the back door of the car and stepped aside so I could get in. “I can’t refuse an invitation from the king when we are in his territory.”

I didn’t have anything sassy to say in reply. “Well…”

“Don’t mistake me. I’m not thrilled the vampire was here. And I will admit I’m glad this relocation puts us outside the influence of your…sect.” Here his voice lowered, like he was trying to handle his words as delicately as china.

“My council,” I corrected.

“Whatever.”

I grabbed his arm and dragged him into the car, slamming the door behind us. When I was certain the only person with us was Dominick, I fixed Lucas with a cold stare and made sure he knew I wasn’t putting it on for show.

“I don’t pretend to know everything about pack law, Lucas, and I never would, but don’t you dare talk down to me because you don’t have the slightest clue what goes on with the council. I make every effort to respect pack law, yet you dismiss something important to me like it’s meaningless.”

There was a cool, regal silence while he considered my words, and the temperature inside the car dropped several degrees as I waited for him to speak. In the front seat, Dominick drummed his fingers nervously on the steering wheel.

We were all silent.

“You’re right,” Lucas said finally. “I haven’t been fair to you.”

I’d been expecting more of a fight, so I was taken aback by his easy acceptance.

“But…”

Ah, there it was.

“But what?” I never liked “but” statements—they were just another way for a conversation to turn around and kick you in the butt.

“There is a difference between you respecting the werewolves, and my respect or lack thereof for the vampire council you so willingly serve.”

I jerked my chin up to signal him to continue.

“You are part werewolf and have the right and need to know what goes on in our society,” he said. “Whereas I have no desire to be any part of the vampire world.”

Chapter Seventeen

If there were a Girl Scout merit badge for sitting through uncomfortable silences, I would have qualified for it a thousand times over. Lucas and I sat on opposite sides of the backseat while Dominick listened to a crackling classic-rock radio station. “Freebird” twanged on, with brief static solos to change things up a little.

Lucas cleared his throat, and I shifted closer to the door, crossing my arms tighter over my stomach. I refused to look at him.

“Are you going to—?”

I turned, regarding him directly for the first time since we’d left New Orleans, and the move surprised him enough he stopped talking mid-sentence. Either that or my curls had turned into snakes and I’d transformed him into a statue.

“Where are we going?” My gaze was trained on Lucas but somehow Dominick understood the question was for him. Maybe because of the warmth in my voice.

“St. Francisville.”

“Where?” He might as well have told me we were going to Timbuktu for all St. Francisville meant to me.

This time Lucas spoke, forcing me to focus my attention on him for real. “We’re going north. St. Francisville is just beyond Baton Rouge.”

“And flying into the Baton Rouge airport was too obvious?”

“We couldn’t. It’s too deep into Callum’s territory. The only way we could have entered the state that close to his home base was if he brought us. If it had been an option, I think he would have had us land in Florida and drive all the way from there. The only reason we were allowed to go into a Louisiana airport at all was because we were invited.”

Winding the strings from my hood around my fingers, I looked out the window of the car and watched the light from small towns speed by in a glowing blur. The highway wasn’t deserted, but it didn’t feel like we were close to anything substantial anymore.

“Werewolves are fucking ridiculous.”

Dominick snorted, unable to stop himself in time. To try to hide the gaffe, he turned the volume on the radio up a little more. Eric Clapton crooned on about that coldhearted bitch, Layla. I was betting if I could read Lucas’s mind, he was probably thinking, Amen, Clapton. Amen. Instead of saying this out loud, he sighed his particular, regal sigh. “Then I guess that explains a lot about you, doesn’t it?”

My mouth hung open, and Dominick struggled to keep from laughing, but his shoulders were trembling from the effort. I let out a huff of breath and my lips made a pfffft sound. “Can we agree to try not to get at each other’s throats for this trip? We’re in love. We’re getting married. Can we pretend everything is perfect for Callum’s sake?”

“You’re saying it’s not perfect?” This time his smirk betrayed him.

“Smartass.”

“I think we’re already where my parents were after a decade of marriage. Half an inch from strangling each other to death at any given moment.”

“Well, if we don’t do each other in, something tells me Callum will be more than willing to do it for us.”

Lucas’s charming smirk vanished, and with its departure came the familiar sinking feeling in my gut. I’d been teasing, but he appeared to be worried. Deeply and truly worried. He reached across the seat and took my hand, giving it a squeeze of false comfort. He might have meant to be comforting, but I knew he didn’t feel certain of our safety. It was written all over his face.

I squeezed back. “Everything is going to be fine.”

“I don’t know.” He had turned to stare out the window, and now I was looking at the back of his head. “I just don’t know.”

As it turned out, St. Francisville was a two-hour drive north of New Orleans, and the most interesting sight on the way was the dim, ominous outline of the Maurepas swamplands. The farther north we crawled, the more the silence thickened between Lucas and me, to the point where I was looking forwards to hearing whatever shitty, crackling song would come on the radio next because it was just one more three-minute interruption to the uneasy quiet.