— LUCIEN —

The chime rings twice, and it takes a phenomenal effort for me not to wince at it. Rae reaches for her phone and unlocks the door, eyeing me as she does. The door clicks open, and suddenly the room is filled with his presence. I take another sip of my coffee, pretending that I haven't noticed, or that I have but am paying no attention to it.

"I got your favorite cheesecake," Chris says jovially. "You wouldn't believe what I had to —" He stops in the middle of the sentence and halts his steps, his body as still and rigid as a statue when he sees me. It's a surprise, of course, or he wouldn't have made it up on the elevator. I know how to conceal my presence, even to those I've sired and drank from. It takes years of experience and a hell of a lot of practice to master, but for the number of vampires I'm bonded with, it's either this or I'd leave myself open to all of them.

"Hello, Chris." I look up from my coffee and give him a smile, despite the hollowness in my stomach that suddenly appears at the sight of him. He looks just like when I'd last seen him, even though he seems to have kept his hair a little longer and his curls a lot less tidy. The jeans he's wearing are a pair I don't recognize, and neither is the black cotton shirt with black silk trimmings on the hems of its sleeves and collar. It's wrong and selfish of me, to feel so irritated by that last fact. I have no right. None. "You're just in time."

From the distance, Chris stares at me like I'm a monster in his nightmares that has suddenly materialized in front of him. I don't know what disturbs me more — the hurt or the pure hatred in those blue eyes. He draws a breath, clamps his mouth shut, and then walks over to the island, keeping his attention on Rae as though she were the only one in the room.

Dumping the bags in his hand on the marble top in front of Rae, Chris continues to ignore me completely as he opens one for her to see. "There's a cheesecake and some scones in here. Knock yourself out. I'll see you tomorrow," he says with a half smile, kisses Rae on the cheek, then turns back to head out the door.

Something tears inside of me, and I steel myself to not let it show. I know Chris can't stand the sight of me, and for what I've done he has every reason to feel that way. I get why he doesn't want to stay. I understand it enough to let him leave, but something inside me boils at seeing him walk away from me. Something that lies at the pit of the cruelest, most disgusting part of me can't live with the way he's dismissed me like I'm not in the room, like I don't exist. I tell myself that it's because I'm his superior and I need to do something about such a display of insubordination, that this is a job, nothing more. It's a lie I can safely hide behind, and I cling to it as hard as I cling to the memory of what we were.

"Chris," I say sharply, the name tastes like acid in my mouth and pricks me like I'm trying to swallow a pin. "Sit down."

He pauses and looks over his shoulder at the sound of my voice. His blue eyes burning with too many emotions than I can pick apart. "No," he says firmly, decisively like it's the only possible response to my suggestion.

I swallow the bile in my throat, along with any decency I have left in me and put my foot down. "That is an order." He can't say no to that, not as long as he works for me. For everything we've lost, Chris is still my subordinate, my creation, my weapon. Mine.

I expect him to sigh and walk back to the kitchen, to slump down on the chair with a temper, to kick something nearby to show his anger the way he's always done when he's mad at me. Chris wears his emotions on his sleeves, and I've never minded his tantrums, as long as he stays at the end of my leash. Walking away from me had never been a choice. It hadn't even been a possibility. I'm ready for anything he throws at me, ready to forgive all of it if he would turn around and do what I say the way he'd always ended up doing in the past when we fought.

Instead, he snarls at me, his white fangs showing. "Fuck you."

Something snaps inside of me, and I shoot off my seat in seconds, long before I realize what I'm doing or what I intend to do. The next thing I know, my right hand is wrapped tight around his throat, pinning him against the wall. My own fangs have descended, and the sound of my feral, murderous growl fills the room.

I've lost it. My rage is blinding and has risen way past my capacity for control. Through our bond, Rae tugs at me nervously to calm me down. Through Chris', however, I feel nothing but pain and complete resignation. He smiles at me ruefully, hurtfully, like he's just remembered a wound he's forgotten long ago that hasn't yet healed, and that I've just pried it open again with my bare hands.

"Go ahead," he says quietly like he's exhausted and just wants things to be over, "do what you should have done a long time ago. I don't give a damn anymore."

Pain, unforgiving, mind-numbing pain drags its claws down my chest, straight to where that horrid absence in my existence lies, unprotected and exposed. He's tugging at my bond, pleading, begging me to end it. I know I can do this for him. I can give him what he'd always wanted, what I'd selfishly taken from him a long time ago for my own advantage and shaping into everything I lacked and needed. I can finish this, clean up the mess I've created. Do something right for once, for someone.

But my selfishness goes far beyond that, so far that I can't see the end or the bottom of it. I can't kill him. I can't let him go or give him the freedom he wants. Chris is mine. He's the one possession in my life I can't let go, even if it means locking him up in this endless loop of pain and torture I'm already putting him through.

"I'm not going to kill you," I tell him, loosening my grip around his throat but keeping him pinned to the wall, "not today, or tomorrow, or a century from now." You are mine, the voice in my head grows louder by the second, so loud that I wonder if he can hear it through the bond. "You may leave, but the next time you so much as raise your voice at me, I'm not going to kill you, Chris." I take a step nearer, until I can see the purple ring around his blue eyes, until the tip of his nose is a hairbreadth from mine, "I'm going to come after everyone and everything you love, until you get it into your head that you work for me, and that's how it's going to be until I say I'm done with you. Do I make myself clear?"

The hate in his eyes matches the searing pain in my chest in intensity, and for a moment I think he is going to knock me down to the ground. The truth is, I wouldn't mind it, and deep down I want him to. I want someone to punish me for what I've done, for the selfish, entitled prick that I am. I want him to look at me like I'm the center of his universe again, even if it's only hatred and disgust that he's willing to give. I tell myself I'd be content if he tries to beat me to a pulp, as long as all his attention is poured on me and me alone. But Chris only sneers at my threat, like he's given up on trying to fight me altogether, like he couldn't bother to waste his energy on me.

"Crystal," he says, shaking me off and then heads out the door.

I watch him go with an unforgivable sense of victory I shouldn't have. The darkest part of me savors in the satisfaction that, for all the hatred he harbors for me now, he is still on my leash, still mine to do with as I please. For ten years I thought I was content with letting him loose, that I could function with nothing more than an awareness of his existence on the other end of the bond. I've come here expecting to reconcile, believing that his wounds — our wounds — would have healed enough for us to be able to work together at least the same way I work with other subordinates, if not as friends. But the moment he walked into the room, I knew immediately how impossible, how foolish that thought is. I'm drawn to him like a long-term drug addict being offered a bag full of it in the middle of rehabilitation. I crave his attention, his devotion, his careful affection for me like it's the air I breathe as if I've been drowning for the past decade and has just resurfaced when he walked back into my life. It's a mess that I don't know how to get out of. His love is my poison, and I can't find the antidote.

"That went well," Rae says from behind me, her arms crossed over her chest. She hates me for this, I know. Chris is like a brother to her, and he probably tells her everything.

I ignore the remark and head back to the kitchen. I don't like explaining myself to people, especially when it comes to something private. The coffee has turned cold, of course, not that I still want to drink any of it after that fight. I need something stronger. Something that can calm me down, and numb some of my senses enough to do what I've come here for. I need blood, and I know Rae keeps some in her fridge, but that's a bit strong and I can't have hallucinations when I'm trying to work. "Where do you keep your rum?"

Rae brings me a glass and a bottle of dark rum she knows I like, eyeing me as she fills it half way up. I dump the whole content down my throat and gesture for another. It's getting late, and I have places to be after this. I don't have time to wait for the effects to kick in through small amounts.

Next to me, Rae sits down and lights herself a cigarette before handing me one. I stare at the expensive, black and gold cigarette and contemplate whether I really should go that far. I haven't smoked for almost a decade, and the last time I did my sense of smell was gone for days. But my hands still smell of Chris — a wonderful mixture of his favorite musky aftershave, coffee beans, and that peppermint shampoo he always uses — and the more I smell it, the harder it is to keep him out of my mind. So I take the cigarette, and I let the smoke fill my lungs and cover any trace of him that still lingers while Rae gives me a report of everything I need to know about the operation and Veronica Wolf.

Two hours later, I'm standing outside of her cabin a bit further out into the woods, staring up at a headless body of a vampire up in a tree. The head is a few yards nearby on the ground. It's in perfect condition like he's just had his head ripped off without being given a chance to fight back or struggle. I look closer and realize that it's one of the junkies I've indirectly tipped about the cabin earlier that night. I may not be allowed to kill her, but, well, shit happens, especially when you're a girl, living alone in the woods, doesn't it? I wasn't sure if three vampires would be enough to kill her, given how well-trained and well-armed she is, but it doesn't hurt to try. Risky, yes, but I know well enough how to cover my tracks.

This mess, however, isn't made by a human. For the body to have ended up there on the tree, he must have been ripped apart by a pretty powerful vampire, and since both Chris and Rae were way out on the other side of town, there is only one vampire who could have interfered and helped Veronica.

I grimace at that possibility. He can't be here. He shouldn't even know about the attack until it's too late. Not unless he's come before that, for something else.

A bad feeling pools in the pit of my stomach as I teleport into the house, in the kitchen where I think they would be. I look around and all I see is another headless corpse, and another dead vampire with a bullet wound in his chest. There are signs of struggle everywhere — broken glass, knocked down chairs, empty bullet shells — but no one is around. Under normal circumstances, I should have been able to detect his presence if he's really here, but all my senses have been dulled by the rum and the cigarette. It's precisely why I've always avoided it, why I had to walk away from Chris. Every time I've allowed myself to be overwhelmed by him something happens, and one tragedy is already enough to last a lifetime.

A small sound reaches my ear from the living room, and I trace it to the bathroom adjacent to it. The door is half opened, and I can see the silhouettes of two people inside. I wince at the realization that my fear is correct. He's here and has killed those vampires to save her.

On the countertop, Veronica is sitting with her back against the mirror with Lord Remus standing close between her legs, engaging in a conversation I have no right to listen to. But I am his seneschal, and she is a threat I have to take care of. It's my job to know what's going on between the two of them, my job to make sure he doesn't make the wrong decisions. So I stay and hide my presence, listening to the conversation from a distance not so far away.

Rae is right on her predictions. Now that she knows about the bond, Veronica is indeed trying to pull her strings. I should be glad that at least now Lord Remus is fully aware of it, judging from what I'm hearing. He would know better how to deal with her now and the risk of keeping her alive. The problem is what I'm seeing on his face, in his eyes, as his fangs extend to their full length just an inch from her throat. I don't know if he wants to suck her dry as he should or drown himself with the taste of her. My long-time acquired knowledge of him tells me it's the first, but if I'm wrong, if it's nothing but desire and excitement, and the yearning for human blood he hasn't tasted for half a decade that is driving him into this, then some real shit is about to happen and I have to stop it before it does.

He is going to kill me for this, I think as I step into the bathroom.