King of the Asheville Coven (Winterset Coven #1)(11)

And this was the moment. This was the instant that an old, almost-forgotten feeling unfurled in his chest. Everything had been so heavy since he’d been Turned, but out here in Sadey’s woods, a familiar sensation came over him. For a few seconds, he couldn’t put a name to it, but when she looked up at him, filling the night woods with the thick rattle of her content purr, it struck him.

For the first time in a really long time, he felt hope.





Chapter Six


Sadey pulled the long-sleeved sleep shirt over her head in a rush, and then padded into the living room. She sidled around a stack of boxes that stretched up to the ceiling and shoved her feet into a pair of snow boots that had toppled over beside the door. She moved to leave, but on second thought grabbed the card out of her purse before she stepped outside.

Aric was on the front porch, shoving all the papers back into the box she’d shredded after her accidental Change.

She cleared her throat nervously. “It’s been a long time since I Changed unexpectedly like that. I usually have a lot more control.”

“It’s okay. I wanted to lose my shit after you left, too.”

Aric seemed like the quiet type who could go from zero to terrifying vamp in seconds. He also seemed like a man who kept himself in tight control.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because Garret called a meeting and told my people what happened.”

“Right, because you’re King of the Winterset Coven.”

Aric huffed a breath and ran his hands through his hair. His eyes were the soft gray of a dove’s breast right now, and much less intimidating than the pitch black they turned when he was riled up. “I’m actually the King of the Asheville Coven. Or…” He frowned. “I was.”

“Are you not staying in Winterset?”

He looked around pointedly at the boxes strewn about. “Are you?”

Oh, he was an evasive, sexy vamp. Fine, if he wanted to answer questions with questions, she would play his game. “What happened at your meeting?”

He shook his head for a long time, gave his attention to the woods beside her house.

“Your coven doesn’t like me much, do they?” she asked.

With an irritated sigh, Aric sat down on the old porch swing and draped his arm over the back, kicked it into a gentle rocking motion with the heel of his boot and stared at her until she gave in and sat beside him. And then he explained. “Choosing you would’ve been different six months ago.”

“How so?”

The creaking of the swing was the only noise for a while, and it occurred to her that Aric was very careful with choosing his words. Maybe he had to be because he was a king, she didn’t know.

“I was barely able to avoid a war with the shifters.”

“Which shifters?”

“All of them.”

Sadey’s eyeballs nearly bugged out of her head. “What happened?”

“My maker, Arabella, was very old and undergoing The Sickening. She was the queen of my coven, losing her mind slowly, and she became cruel. She stalked a shifter—a grizzly. And she badgered and bribed him until he agreed to be her consort.”

“Consort?” Why did that word taste like poison on her tongue?

“Yeah. She fed from him when she wanted and paid him a lot of money. She wanted someone else to hurt. Someone strong who would heal and who could withstand more pain. She wanted something to feed on that wouldn’t die easily. She wanted something to scar on the outside and the inside.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Sadey murmured, feeling nauseous.

“Eventually, the bear tired of being her plaything and rebelled. And on the night Arabella planned to torture him back into submission, his crew began arriving.”

“Who was his crew?”

“The Bloodrunners.”

She bolted upright on the swing. “Holy. Shit.”

“You know of them?”

“Yeah, everyone does. Female fire-breathing dragon shifter as alpha, two grizzlies, and two birds of prey with some of the most dominant lineages in the world running through their veins.”

“That would be them. Only Arabella couldn’t let go of torturing the bear, so she went after the dragon-blooded alpha as revenge and dragged our entire coven along with her for that shit-tastic idea.”

“What happened?”

“Uuuh.” Aric rocked his head backward and rolled his eyes closed. “Arabella, my queen, my maker, was killed. And as her Second, I took the coven and was supposed to avenge her death. I had to appease my coven and keep us from war with the Bloodrunners because it would’ve escalated. It wouldn’t just be the Asheville Coven against the Bloodrunners. The crew threatened to bring in every crew of shifters from every country. Vampires number at two-hundred in the world. We would’ve put up one hell of a fight, but we don’t have the numbers for a war like that. I had to walk a really fine line and make some really hard decisions to save my people.”

“So that’s why your coven isn’t on board with…us.”

Aric brushed his fingertips against her arm. She had gooseflesh from a combination of the cold and his horrifying story about the Bloodrunners. In a blur, he pulled the blanket off the back of the swing and settled it over her legs.

“They aren’t big shifter fans right now, no,” he murmured. “Hell, they aren’t a big fan of me, and I’m their king. The things I had to do… It’s too soon for them to completely trust me again, and now I’ve bonded to someone they see as a threat.”