Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 53656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 268(@200wpm)___ 215(@250wpm)___ 179(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 268(@200wpm)___ 215(@250wpm)___ 179(@300wpm)
“Good.” Alek nodded.
“Sending you doesn’t mean we trust you,” Lachlan stated, his eyes narrowing on Cassandra.
“I’m well aware that you have Warrick to assure my compliance,” she seethed, color rising in her cheeks.
Damn, the female was exceptionally stunning when riled.
I made note to rile her again at the earliest opportunity.
“We’ll be sending someone with you to report back and keep you…loyal,” Alek said, watching her in a way that told me he was monitoring more than her body language.
“And how do you think that would go over with Edward?” Cassandra blinked, but that was her only physical reaction. “Oh, I’ve come home to vacation, and happened to have brought a hunter with me?” She arched a perfectly sculpted dark brow.
Lachlan pressed his lips together and smothered a laugh.
Alek glanced at Cassandra’s panther, and I cursed, the pieces of his plan falling into place as I took a deep breath.
“You have to be fucking kidding me,” I said to Alek.
Cassandra glanced at me, then our king. “Him? You want me to spend months with him?” Her voice pitched upward.
“Why not?” Alek shrugged. “He is from an ancient, noble family. He knows the rules of aristocracy better than almost anyone—”
“He loathes me!” She gripped the arms of the chair.
So she could lose her temper. How…enticing.
“She’s not lying.” I laced my fingers together in my lap, keeping my composure. “I don’t exactly hold her in high regard.” Months with Cassandra Zorin? Behind what were obviously enemy lines? Gods, we were just as likely to kill each other as we were to discover anything useful.
“See?” Cassandra said.
“He’ll control himself,” Alek promised on my behalf.
“Eh…” I lifted a corner of my mouth in a slight grimace. “Let’s not make promises I’m not sure I can keep.”
“And just how do you expect him to be accepted at my family’s home? By my family’s servants? He’s a giant red flag where Edward is concerned!” She was white-knuckling that chair now.
“Because I won’t be going as myself, will I?” I asked Alek. There was only one reason it was me sitting in this chair and not Zachariah, or anyone with more years in the king’s service.
Cassandra shot me a look that would have withered a lesser male. I, however, was not a lesser male. I was a fucking hunter, trained for years in the execution of bloodmad vampires, and an aristocrat in my own right—if I really felt like pressing it…which I didn’t. “And just who do you think you’ll be going as?” she asked me, pursing those red lips.
Was that lipstick? Or was the color natural? Would she leave a lip print on my—
“Well?” she asked, jarring me from my wayward thoughts.
“My guess is that I’ll be going as her.” I glanced past her to the panther sitting at her side, currently cleaning herself with massive paws. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d posed as the panther, but usually that was just to fuck with Cassandra.
“Absolutely not.” Cassandra’s eyes widened to an almost impossible size.
“I’m afraid so,” Alek said.
“Better pet me really nicely or I’ll bite.” I winked. If I was going to be stuck with Cassandra for however long this took, I was going to be just as much of a pain to her as she’d been to everyone under this roof.
Alek couldn’t take his revenge for the hell she’d put him through, but I could.
This was going to be fun.
CHAPTER 2
Cassandra
My fingers trembled as I reached for yet another silk dress that hung on a satin hanger in my wardrobe in my temporary room—gifted to me when the vampire nobles flocked to the Domum seeking refuge.
Normally I would allow my talem, Conroy, to pack for me, but I wanted to be alone. If my father were alive, he would’ve had an absolute conniption over me packing for myself, not to mention his head would probably explode knowing the secret mission I’d accepted from the vampire king.
The same vampire king I’d tried to seduce some years ago, all at the urging—or rather demanding—of my father that we align ourselves with the royal family. It’d been instilled in me since I was a youngling. I needed to sit on a throne and rule, putting our family on the highest rung of the social ladder. Neither of my parents ever stopped to ask me what I wanted. And after so many years, I’d stopped asking myself that too.
I’d been living in a numb sort of bubble in the months since my father died. Since I realized just how deep his deceptions lied. Since the rest of my family had abandoned me at court, leaving me to face punishment from the king.
I may have sought refuge here, may have put on a brave and elegant face for every single evening repast spent schmoozing with some of the vampire world's finest nobles, but on the inside? I was crumbling. Wasting away into a vast sea of uselessness.