Wicked Soul (Ancient Blood #1)(69)

She blinked at me, for the first time looking truly shocked. “You mean you don’t know? Well, shit.”

“Know what?” I insisted. An uncomfortable sense of foreboding was growing in the pit of my stomach.

“If he hasn’t told you, I really shouldn’t…” She hesitated, a small frown marring her pretty face. “But it’s not right that he’s keeping you in the dark. Oh, shoot! Fine. As soon as you drink their blood, they can feel you.”

“Feel me?” I asked, eyebrows raising high on my forehead.

“Yeah, you know… where you are. He’ll be able to track you. It’s a stalker’s wet dream, I tell you. And they get crazy possessive. If he’s anything like Al, he’s got a key to your apartment and several pairs of your dirty panties in his drawer. And forget about sleeping with other men, whew! Not that I’d have the stamina, but once I met Al, all my male friends just sorta… stopped coming around. Or he’d tell me they’d been saying nasty stuff about me, so I’d scream at them over the phone and they’d think I was crazy and drop me. It took me a little while to catch on. He’s such a naughty boy.”

“That’s… sociopathic,” I said, but Diva only smiled.

“I think it’s kinda cute,” she said with a shrug. “They can’t love, so this is kind of the next best thing, you know?”

“They can’t love?” I repeated, mind still reeling at the level of fuckery Warin’s brother had put this girl through.

“Nope, he told me. I asked him if he loved me once. He said he couldn’t, but if he could… I’d be it.” She beamed at me for a moment before her smile fell. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to gush. You must be a bit shaken up, if this is the first you learn of your master’s tendencies.”

“Warin would never—” My voice died as her words finally sank in. One by one, flashes of interactions I’d had with my vampire friend played before my mind’s eye. From the bra in exactly my size I’d found with the dress yesterday, to the time I was attacked by skinwalkers and he’d not only found me before it was too late, but later… when I’d dropped my key and he’d just happened to pick it up…

No, this was Warin. Warin, who I trusted more than I’d ever trusted anyone in my entire life. Warin, who’d protected me from day one.

Warin, who’d fed me his blood instead of taking me to the hospital like I’d asked the very first night we met.



* * *



I spent the remaining time before the sun set pacing back and forward in the foyer, trying to walk the icy numbness in my chest away.

Diva had fluttered nervously around me for a little bit, but once dusk began to fall, she apparently decided to be as far away from the incoming fallout as possible and vanished back to her room.

“Liv.”

I looked up at the sound of my name and saw Warin at the top of the stairs. He was fixing a shirt sleeve, but stopped when he saw the look on my face. “What’s happened?” The air around him swooshed, and he was at the bottom of the stairs in the blink of an eye, walking toward me with a worried frown. In my periphery, I saw Aleric, Carina, and another vampire I couldn’t name make their way down the stairs at a more leisurely pace.

I help up a single finger, stopping him in his tracks. “Don’t.”

He stopped, the frown deepening. “Is this about last night?”

“I just want you to answer me one thing. Just one, honest answer. Okay?”

“Always,” he responded softly.

“When we met again in the bar. Was it by happenstance?”

“Liv—“

“Was it?” I interrupted him, my voice sounding weirdly high-pitched, even to my own ears.

A pained flicker crossed over Warin’s face before his expression stilled into a blank mask. “No.”

I’d raised my arm before I even realized—but when I brought my hand forward and slapped him across the face as hard as I possibly could, it was with every intent I possessed.

“I don’t ever want to see you again,” I hissed at the still stone-faced vampire. And then I turned around on my heel and walked out of his house and out of his life.





21





I couldn't remember ever have been so angry.

I ‘d trusted him, in ways I’d never trusted another person before. With everything I was—with my life. And he’d… From the very beginning, he’d lied and manipulated me.

Behind the fury, sorrow and sense of loss built every step as I stomped down the road leading away from Warin’s house. But for now, I could keep it at bay by focusing on my anger—and I relished in it, because I knew the second I didn’t have it to cling to anymore, there’s be nothing to stop the despair from closing over my head like the deepest, darkest sea.

But as furious as I was with him, I was even more so with myself—for being so fucking naive. For letting myself get manipulated by a creature who had told me time and time again what he was. I’d been too blinded by the magnetic resonance between us to realize it’d been make-believe—parlor tricks from a man who wouldn’t hesitate to bend my will to his. Goddess, he’d even admitted it, hadn’t he? That he’d tried to Compel my memory of our first meeting.