B Positive by Jewel Killian
Sixteen
“Well look,if you won’t let me leave and do my job, then at least let me call my friend and have him bring over some stuff for me.” I didn’t have my phone or clothes or anything and if I had to stay here until the king got back, whenever the hell that was, I wasn’t going around braless the whole time, that was for sure.
“I can send someone for your things.”
“Uh, thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want someone I don’t know rifling through my underwear drawer.”
Sunny sighed and handed over her phone and I dialed Jaxson, one of the few people in the world I knew who would actually pick up a call from a number he didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Jax, it’s Eden. Want an up-close and personal tour of the lives of the rich and famous?”
His grin was clear in his voice. “Like you have to ask.”
“I thought as much. It’ll just cost you covering a few shifts at the bar for me.”
Jaxson’s tone immediately soured. “Ugh, Eden, you know The Mixing House is not my scene.”
“I know, but you know the ladies love you there.”
He scoffed into the phone. “More like they want to bleed me for makeup tips.”
“Please, Jax? I’m in a real bind. Plus, I’ll show you inside the compound.” It was a shot in the dark. I hoped he knew what that meant and what a big deal it was.
Just as I stole a glance at Sunny’s stiffening frame, Jaxson screeched into my ear.
“The king’s compound? Are you shitting me?”
“Dead serious. Just bring me some clothes, shoes, and toiletries. Oh, and my phone.”
“Got it. I’ll be there in ten,” he said and ended the call.
I handed Sunny back her phone, and she gave me a suspicious look. “What?”
“The king is particular about who is allowed in the compound.”
“Well, I guess he should have thought about that before he told you to hold me hostage without a goddamn bra.”
Sunny didn’t have a rebuttal.
“Besides, if I’m his mate, that means I have every right to have guests here.”
Sunny raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s absolutely true, Eden.. Are you saying you’re ready to fully accept your role as the king’s mate?”
I scrunched my nose at her. It wasn’t that I was unwilling. I just didn’t see the need to jump in with both feet without knowing him better.
“I didn’t think so.”
Still, she’d made her point. I couldn’t take advantage of the position while looking down my nose at it.
But that didn’t mean I liked it. I changed the subject. “So, the incursions. Do they happen regularly?”
“Approximately every seventeen and a half months.”
What a strange amount of time. And it was almost exactly as long as I’d been a vampire. “Why such an odd number?”
Sunny put the tablet in her lap and met my gaze. “It’s based on the lunar cycle. The incursions occur every lunar year and a half, but since that’s a weird half-amount of days, it can be open to interpretation. Titus called it early this year and scared the shit out of us.” She shook her head. “It would be so much easier if we switched to solar, but that’s not the vampire way, so I’m stuck calculating approximate incursion dates. This year was Titus’s year to initiate—it switches back each cycle—and the despot calculated it differently than we had.”
That brought me to another question. “Did Titus break some rule by having one of his vamps on our turf to attack my friend?”
“He did. And King Julian will roll first because of it.” Sunny answered my question before I could ask. “Titus initiated, right now both kings are negotiating engagement rules, and once they’re satisfied, one of them will roll to see who hosts the first incursion.”
“And we want Titus to host first, right? So we can grab the thingy and end this.”
“Likely not. The king will want to give you as much time as he can to prepare.”
Ah, that made sense.
Sunny stood and motioned for me to do the same. “We’d better get to the great room to meet your friend.”
As I followed her through the compound, another question occurred to me. “You know, there’s so much space here, but I’ve only ever seen a handful of people.” A few guards, one housekeeper, Sunny, plus Julian, seemed like an awful waste of space to me.
“King Julian keeps a small staff and only in the non-living areas of the compound, which is relatively small. The other wings are housing wings. The king offers any vampire in need a place to stay, free of charge, for as long as they need it.”
I stopped in my tracks.
“They mostly stay in the housing wings so you probably won’t see or hear them. Don’t get me wrong, not all who live there have fallen on hard times. Lots of vampires choose to live here because the accommodations are an excellent deal for the price. Myself included.” Sunny turned around, finally noticing I wasn’t keeping up. “What’s wrong?”
“He offers free housing to those in need?”
Sunny only nodded, eyeing me with a considerable amount of suspicion etched across her features.
The bastard. “Why didn’t he tell me that? I went off on him about being part of the system meant to keep people living paycheck to paycheck, and instead of telling me, he said, ‘I didn’t make your mother poor, Eden.’ What a fucking dick! Why wouldn’t he just say something?”
“Probably because he knew you wouldn’t believe him. That and you guys are made to push each other’s buttons.”
Seemed like a flaw in the whole mate thing, but whatever.
“Does it help?” Sunny asked.
“Does it help what?”
“Does knowing he’s not what you assumed help you come to terms with the state of things?”
“No! It absolutely does not help, Sunny.” Her eyes grew wider, and she shuffled backward a half step. “In fact, it makes me angrier that he not only kept the truth from me, but probably did it knowing I’d find out on my own and have some revelatory come-to-Jesus moment, and come running to him. When really, all he needed to do was tell me the goddamn truth!”
My fingertips hummed with dominance. It was there, waiting to be used.
“Is this alpha vampire thing connected to strong emotions?” I yelled in frustration.
“Seems that way, doesn’t it?” Eden said, steadily backing away from me.
I took a breath, squashed all that delicious, tingly power, and tried to shake it off.
Sunny’s shoulders relaxed as I approached, and after a few tense moments staring at each other, we continued to the front of the compound without speaking.