B Positive by Jewel Killian

Fourteen

I paced the great room,chewing the inside of my cheek.

This couldn’t be happening. I was not some rich asshole’s mate.

Except it explained everything. Julian’s panty-melting magnetism wasn’t magnetism at all. It was mate bond bullshit. Same with my body’s reaction to his voice. Mate mumbo-jumbo. Which only made this more complicated.

I stopped mid-stride. Was that why he bought my building? Was that some strange rich guy attempt at getting closer to me?

Blech.How was I supposed to figure out if I had genuine feelings for him with this mate magic telling my body that genuine feelings didn’t matter?

“You’ll wear a hole in the marble if you keep stomping those ridiculous boots around like that.” Sunny stood at the far end of the great room, tablet tucked under her arm. Today’s dress was a deep eggplant, and it looked absolutely fantastic with her coloring.

I stole a quick glance at her shoes.

Manolos. Of course.

“He left. Which is fine. Reasonable, right? I mean he is a king, I’m sure he’s got lots of king shit to take care of, but he’s not here which means he can’t answer any of the bajillion questions I have, but maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe some distance is what I need to get my head around this? I don’t know. This mate thing has me all messed up, Sunny. I don’t know if I even want him answering my questions.”

To her credit, Sunny was unfazed by my verbal diarrhea. Instead, she tapped a few times on her tablet. “Ah, he left for a meeting with King Titus. They have some rules of engagement to discuss before things get started.”

I knew that. He’d told me so before he’d left. But that didn’t change the fact that I now had more questions than answers.

“Eden, how can I help?”

I shrugged, arms flopping to my sides. How was I supposed to know that?

“Just start with your biggest question, Eden.”

Yeah, okay. I could do that. “What—what does being mates even mean?”

She came closer and guided me toward one of the soft, honey-colored sofas. I obliged her, but the second my ass hit the seat, I popped right back up and paced the length of the area rug in front of her.

I mean, really. How could she sit at a time like this?

“Well?” I asked.

Sunny sighed. “Being mated just means…” She paused, fingers tapping as she glanced at her tablet.

I stomped to her and snatched the thing from her lap. “No. Don’t look to your tablet for the approved explanation. I don’t care about what Julian wants me to know. Tell me truly what it means, Sunny.”

A weird humming filled my body. Not like the sexy kind that happened around Julian. This was more like raw power coursing through me. It filled me so completely, it eventually spread beyond my body and into the room.

Sunny’s gaze immediately fell to her lap.

“Of course, Eden. Being mated to someone is a bit like human marriage and soul mates got together and made a baby with a perfect success rate and guaranteed healthy offspring. Everything about a mated pair is designed to last. They complement each other. They’re equal in power, but where one might lack, the other shines.”

Equal in everything? Even power? I cupped a hand over my mouth. “I’m not going to get those awful saber cat teeth, am I?”

Sunny glanced up at me. “That’s what you took from it?”

“Sunny!”

“No, Eden. If you don’t already have elongated fangs, you will not develop them.”

I nodded and took another few laps around the room before coming back with my next question. “Before he left, Julian said being his mate would save me. What did that mean?”

Her gaze lasered in on the tablet I still had tucked under my arms, before retreating to her lap once more.

“Real answer, Sunny. Not the party line.”

“King Titus can tell who is a born vampire and who is made. But your mate bond with the king will mask the scent that all turned vampires have. He’ll be so distracted by your co-mingled fragrance, he won’t notice.”

“You’re speaking as though I have plans to meet the man. He killed my maker. I’m willing to help, Sunny but I’m not going anywhere near that crazy-cakes king.”

“Okay,” Sunny said without looking up.

Good. Glad that was settled. I did another two laps around the room and came back to stand in front of Sunny who was still staring directly into her lap.

“What’s with you?”

“You’ve filled the room with your dominance. But I can answer your questions just fine like this. Promise.”

Dominance?

Was that…the humming?

I sucked it all back toward me, whatever “it” was, and sat next to Sunny. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I didn’t even know I was doing anything.”

She let out a long sigh. “It’s all right, Eden. How could you know?”

“Jul—the king said something about being able to hold his stare and use his first name because we were mates. Is this”—I gestured broadly to the room—“part of that?”

She nodded. “It’s also why you push each other’s buttons. You’re his equal. His match in power, strength, and dominance apparently.”

I took in her words and the longer I let them settle in me, the deeper an old wound in my heart ached.

Odette.

“She would have known. She would have been able to tell me what to do. How to handle this.”

“Your maker?” Sunny asked quietly.

I nodded. “Odette would have known what to do with all of this,” I whispered.

Sunny’s head jerked up. “Your maker was Odette Laurent?”

I nodded. “Yes. Did you know her?”

Sunny shot up, snatching her tablet back. “Does the king know?”

I shrugged, baffled by the sudden change in her mood. “What’s going on, Sun?”

“Does the king know?” she repeated, voice going a little screechy.

“I don’t know. BDD might have told him. I haven’t.”

Sunny fished out a phone from some miraculously hidden dress pocket and placed a call. “Rory, did you tell the king who Eden’s maker is?”

A perk of vamp life is always hearing the other side of the conversation no matter how low the volume is on the phone.

“No, I didn’t mention it. Why?”

“Say nothing about it until he’s back in the compound. Clear?”

“Understood.”

She ended the call and tucked the phone back in her dress, then tapped away at the tablet some more.

“Uh, Sunny. You want to tell me what that was all about?”

“I…” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “Eden, I need to talk to the king first. Please, don’t make me tell you.”

That hurt. A lot. “I didn’t mean to, Sunny,” I whispered. “It only happened because I didn’t know it was happening.”

“Of course.” She continued whatever it was she did on the tablet for a few minutes before returning her attention to me. “In the meantime, we can go over the plan for stealing Titus’s—”

“I told you, I’m not going anywhere near the man who killed my maker, Sunny.”

“Right.” She thought for a moment before reseating herself and motioning for me to join her. “Well, would you be opposed to working as a consultant of sorts? I can run our plans by you, and you can amend or correct anything you see fit.”

I gave her a single head bob.

“Good. So, we’re trying to take his scepter.”

“Scepter?”

She nodded and showed me an image of the scepter in question.

“Huh, it kind of looks like a fancy cane.”

“It basically is. And it’s the symbol of his family’s right to rule. But if we can get it back to the compound, we’ll have proven he’s fallible and therefore incapable of holding the kingship.”

“Uh, of course he’s fallible. King or not, Titus isn’t a god.”

Sunny gazed at me, a beam of sunlight catching her coppery strands and turning them to fire. “Titus absolutely believes in his divine right to rule. He’s the last holdover from a time when all aristocracy thought they ruled because God deemed it so.”

Oh shit. This king really was crazy-cakes.

“Does Julian have a similar item? Something that proves he has the right to be king?”

“He does, but King Julian doesn’t believe the object grants him the right.”

Well, that was good news. “What’s the object?”

Without hesitating or taking her eyes off her screen, she answered. “The Tzarina’s Diamond.”

My pulse bounced in my neck as a sick feeling twisted my stomach. “You mean to tell me I stole Julian’s literal family heirloom, and he just let me walk out of the compound with it next to my cooch?”

Sunny lifted a single shoulder before meeting my eye. “You’re his mate. He knew it the moment he saw you in that study. He’d have given you anything you wanted had you asked it of him.”

Sunny’s words leveled me.

And I didn’t know what to do with any of it.

I stared at the ground, fingers tingly and head spinning.

I had to get out of there. I needed to talk to someone. Someone that wasn’t a part of this craziness.

“I’ve gotta go, Sunny. I need some space to think about things.”

She stiffened, her tablet falling in her lap. “There’s plenty of space in the compound, Eden. I’m sure you can—”

“Sunny, I need to go. Away from here.” I needed Jaxson. I needed to tell him everything. We could sort this out, now that I knew we didn’t have to keep secrets.

“Eden, you know I can’t let you leave the compound. Not with everything you know, and especially not now that the kings are discussing the endgames.”

“Sunny, I don’t know what that means, and honestly, I don’t really care. I need to go. I need to be in my own space. Work at my job and talk to my friends. I’ll come back. I just need some time to process.”

Sunny’s bottom lip went right in her mouth. “Eden, I’m so sorry. I can’t let you leave. King Julian left strict instructions.”

My body stiffened, humming like a swarm of hornets just under my skin. The sensation roared through me and now that I was aware of what it could do, what that sensation was, I felt it ten times more.

Ten times more aware that all I had to do to make it stop, to get what I wanted, was set it free.

The idea was intoxicating—making Sunny do what I wanted.

Not what Julian ordered.

I didn’t.

I shoved it all back down, forcing the buzz back into the same ephemeral box I kept my magnetism and compulsion in.

I wouldn’t compel my friends, and I wouldn’t dominate other vampires. Living or not. Whether they were wrong or not. Whether I liked what they wanted or not. I wouldn’t cross that line.

I’d done it too many times before.

I had compelled people to stand silent and still while I drank away their lives. Or compelled them to forget I’d drunk from them at all when I thought I’d gotten the bloodlust under control.

I hadn’t.

It had only ever been a stop-gap.

Compulsion was a door I could only risk unlocking in dire circumstances. Like Roofie Chad. Otherwise, I was afraid I’d slip down that slope and end up face-first in a human’s carotid with no idea how I got there.

“Fine. But you’re showing me the nicest, best, biggest room.”

Sunny face brightened. “Of course.” A mischievous smile lifted her lips. “How about I show you to the king’s room?”