Half-breed’s Bargain by Samantha Wolfe
9
VAN
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Ethan says. “And you’re just now telling us this?”
I glance in the rear-view mirror to see him scowling at me from the backseat of my Mercedes. Then I look over at the passenger side to see Mercer giving me the same accusatory glare, and I sigh. This is the reason I didn’t tell them we were paying a visit to Randall Lynch tonight until now. They know Lynch and the vampires are involved in Móira’s new job for me, but they didn’t ask for details before we left home tonight, and I didn’t elaborate until now.
“Would it have made a difference if I told you any sooner?” I ask.
“Yes,” Ethan says in a petulant tone. “I could’ve had more time to be pissed off about it.” He growls under his breath. “I fucking hate bloodsuckers enough as it is, and Lynch is the worst of them all.”
“I agree, mon chéri,” Mercer says to Ethan as he continues to give me a hard stare. “But I’m sure Van had a good reason to wait until now to tell us besides mere cowardice.”
Oye. That hurt. I respond with a grimace, then decide to drop the other bit of bad news since I’m about to reach the exit ramp from the freeway that’s closest to Harlow’s apartment building. “We’re also going in as Harlow’s backup. She’ll be doing all the talking. We’ll just be playing the part of her hired muscle.”
I already told them Harlow was joining us tonight, I just failed to mention that little tidbit of information too. I figured it was easier to beg for forgiveness then ask for permission, especially given how unhappy they were to find out about her involvement. Ethan is of the same opinion of Harlow as his mate, it seems, and I think the only reason they agreed to go with me at all tonight is because they didn’t want to leave me alone with her.
“Seriously?” Ethan asks. “We’re going to trust that crazy ass bitch not to get us all drained dry tonight?”
Rage erupts inside me, and I yank the wheel to the right and slam on the breaks. I skid to a tire-squealing halt on the shoulder of the freeway, then whirl to face Ethan. His eyes widen in shock as he leans back into his seat to put some distance between us.
I point a finger at him. “You will never speak about her like that in my presence again,” I say in a low, growling voice. “Do you hear me? Never. Again.”
“Yes, Al… uh… sir,” Ethan responds in a soft voice as he lifts his chin to expose his throat to me and averts his eyes. He almost called me Alpha, but caught himself since he knows I hate it. It always makes me feel like a fraud since I’m only half werewolf and can’t even shift.
“Good,” I say with a baleful glare. “I’ve already told Mercer once, and now I’ll tell you. The rumors you’ve heard about Harlow are untrue. She’s not a monster. She was as much a pawn to that bastard as I still am to Móira. Do you understand?” I ask as I sweep my gaze over to include Mercer, who also averts his eyes and tilts his chin upward.
“Yes, sir,” they murmur in unison.
“Good,” I say again, then turn back to face the wheel and pull out onto the road again. It’s takes a good minute to collect my composure again.
“Van?” Mercer asks when he senses that I’m calm again. “Your eyes were silver again.”
“I know,” I reply in a curt tone. I saw it for myself in the rear-view mirror as I turned away from Ethan, but was trying to ignore it and the slight out-of-control sensation that accompanied it. I don’t know what to make of it.
“What does it mean?” Ethan asks. “Are you going to shift?”
“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions,” I reply.
“Is it because you haven’t completed the mating bond yet?” he asks.
He says the word yet as if it’s a forgone conclusion, but I know better. Not that completing the mating bond matters since anam amháin ensured that our souls entwined the moment they touched earlier today. Even now I can feel the pull in my chest, and I could point in the direction Harlow is with barely a thought. I’ll never be free of it, but I don’t intend to compound that problem by stacking a mating bond on top of it. I can’t risk getting anymore entangled with Harlow and exposing her to Móira’s machinations.
“I don’t know,” I answer through gritted teeth. “You know as much as I do.”
I know this is the time I should tell them about anam amháin, but I’m hesitant. They’re already worried about me enough, and I don’t want to compound it by telling them something they can’t do anything about. I’ve never straight up lied to them, but I’ve kept things from them on more than one occasion when I felt it was for their own good. I hem and haw about it until we’re pulling up in front of an older apartment building, and I’m relieved I don’t have to decide just yet.
We’re in a sketchy area that’s not the worst neighborhood in Unity, but nowhere near safe. Even so, it’s a far cry from the slapped together cardboard and scrap wood hut I lived in as a child. I pull up next to the curb, no doubt quite the odd sight in my dark gray Mercedes AMG, and know Harlow is approaching well before she strides out of the front door of the building.
She walks like she means business with purposeful strides, her lean frame dressed in black from head to toe, from her leather jacket to her Doc Marten boots. Her long golden blond hair is pulled up in a high and tight ponytail, with the silky strands cascading down her back. Her expression is hard, but does nothing to detract from her dangerous and otherworldly beauty. The instant lust and attraction I feel has me hard as granite by the time she reaches the car. I’m almost shaking with it as Mercer climbs out of the front seat to let Harlow take his place, nodding at her in greeting with an uncomfortable smile as her scent drives me to near insanity. I know the boys have to smell my arousal, but I’m grateful they don’t mention it.
Harlow settles into the seat as Mercer gets into the back. She glances over at me, running her eyes up and down my body before focusing on my straining erection with a wicked smirk. “Well, at least someone’s happy to see me,” she says, the scent of her rising arousal causing mine to lean more toward pain than any kind of pleasure.
I frown at her comment, but she ignores it and turns to study Ethan, who’s sitting right behind me.
“I’ve met Sebastian here,” she says as she jabs a thumb toward Mercer, earning herself a low growl from him since he hates it when anyone besides Ethan and me calls him that. “But I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you.” She sticks a hand out toward Ethan. “I’m Harlow Walsh.”
He arches a brow as he glances between Harlow’s face and her outstretched hand, then frowns as he reaches out to shake it. “I’m Ethan Ballard.” He gives her a hard, challenging stare. “Mercer’s husband.”
Harlow smirks as she looks between the two men with an appreciative glint in her eyes. “Oh my,” she says with waggling brows. “I bet you two look hot as fuck when you’re together.”
Ethan gives her a sly grin. “You have no idea,” he says, laying a possessive hand on Mercer’s leg as the man grins and blushes furiously.
I almost sigh in relief. Harlow’s reaction to their relationship and her irreverent humor has gone a long way toward their acceptance. I explained who Mercer and Ethan are and how I met them, and she seemed to get how important they are to me, but this proves that she does.
She throws her head back and laughs at Ethan’s reply, the sound warm and pleasing to my ears. I shiver as I trace my eyes along her throat, imagining my teeth grazing her soft skin there before biting the side of her neck. I rein in the sudden urge to grab the back of her head and pull her sweet mouth to mine so I can kiss her, then turn back to face the wheel and pull away from the curb. Maybe if I don’t look at her, I can manage my attraction to her despite the scent of her arousal now engulfing me in the small space inside the car.
“Full disclosure,” Harlow says after a few moments of silence. “I don’t have a lot of experience with vampires, so I would appreciate any advice. I know the basics, like not meeting their eyes to avoid their glamour, that silver, sunlight, and holy water burns the shit out of them, and a stake to the heart or a beheading will take them out permanently, but that’s about it.”
I should have told her more about vampires this afternoon, but it’s not like we spent a lot of time planning tonight besides our destination and what time I’d pick her up. She seemed just as eager for us to part company as I did. Being alone with her in my penthouse tested my control so much that if she’d stayed much longer, I’m certain we would’ve ended up mauling each other again.
“Ethan and I have seen enough to know they’re best avoided at all costs,” Mercer says with obvious contempt in his tone.
I try to ignore the wave of guilt I feel for dragging them into this. You’d think after all this time I’d get over it. It’s not like I ever force the boys to come along on my jobs for Móira. I know they do it out of love and loyalty, but it still bothers me.
“That’s true most of the time,” I add. “But I’ve met a few decent ones over the years, though those are few and far between.” I’m thinking of one in particular at the moment, but don’t elaborate or dwell on it for long. It’ll dredge up far too many old and unpleasant memories that I’ve been avoiding for a very long time. “I’ve never met Lynch, but I know his reputation as a vicious and merciless killer is well-founded. There’s a reason he’s ruled this city’s brood far longer than any other leader I’ve come across over the years. Vampire culture is cutthroat and ruthless, with only the strongest and most cunning capable of staying in power for any length of time, let alone surviving.”
I glance at Harlow to find her staring out the windshield with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. I can almost see the gears turning in her head. I long to reach over and take her hand, so I can touch her aura and get a taste of what’s inside that fascinating mind of hers. I clench my right hand around the steering wheel and resist the urge, not wanting to make it even harder to fight my attraction to her. If it was only physical, I think it would be easier to deny, but I want her on a spiritual level that makes it more difficult to manage. I continue speaking as a distraction.
“Peace is pretty much nonexistent in vampire broods. Most lack the basic social bonds werewolves share, so dissension and backstabbing are almost constant. From what I understand, Lynch uses that to his favor by encouraging the ones powerful enough to be a threat to him to fight amongst themselves to avoid one of them challenging him or joining forces to overthrow him.”
Harlow smirks and her eyes glitter in a beautiful yet merciless way that I find utterly distracting. “So if Lynch doesn’t trust his own vampires, then maybe I can use that as my angle to talk him into hiring me.”
“Exactly,” I say, unable to keep from grinning at her since she’s thinking along the same lines I am. “Not to mention he probably doesn’t have anyone other than glamoured humans guarding his daytime resting place. No werewolf, mage, or fae affiliated with any of the four factions in Unity would dare to work for him with the treaty in place, if he even trusted them not to just kill him in his sleep.”
None of the factions would tolerate any outsiders living in the city to do the job, either. The only reason Ethan and Mercer are allowed in Unity is because of a rare deal I brokered with Logan Rourke, the Unity Pack Alpha. And to be honest, I’m still shocked he agreed to it.
“That’s it then,” Harlow says with what I can only describe as a shit-eating grin. “We’ll march right up to his front door and exploit my reputation to convince him he can’t do without me.”
She turns in her seat to turn her attention to the boys. “What do you guys think?”
The two of them share a brief expression of surprise, then nod in agreement with Harlow. “It’s ballsy as hell,” Ethan says to her. “But it just might work.”
“It’s risky too,” Mercer adds. “But that might be the only way to get Lynch to take you seriously.”
I smile over at her, unable to help myself. “Then ballsy and risky it is tonight.” It’s not how I like to do things since I prefer a more controlled and thought out plan for anything I do. I’m sure things won’t be that simple tonight, but something tells me if anyone can pull this plan off, it’s her.
Harlow’s answering grin is as triumphant as it is beautiful. Her eyes glide down my body and her pupils dilate with arousal. Desire pulses through me and has my cock throbbing for her. It takes far more effort than it should to pull my eyes away, but I manage it. I even keep my attention on the road for the rest of the drive to Lynch’s home on the southern edge of the city, despite Harlow’s alluring scent and presence next to me.
“Holy fuck,” Harlow calls out as we approach the tall wrought-iron gate of Lynch’s property with its intricate scrollwork. “Is this guy loaded or what?”
It’s even more ostentatious than Móira’s entrance, with massive stone pillars flanking the drive and even more wrought iron fencing stretching off to the left and right to surround the property. I pull up to the gate and stop next to an intercom speaker. A voice comes out of it before I even hit the call button.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get lost,” a gravelly male voice says in an almost bored tone.
Harlow pulls her attention from staring in awe at the gate and leans over my lap to speak. “Tell your boss that Harlow Walsh is here to see him,” she says, her voice as hard as the steely glint in her eyes. Her scent inundates my senses and drives me almost mad with the need to touch her.
“Who?” the voice asks, this time a little more lively and with a definite edge of unease now.
“You heard me,” Harlow answers. “And if you don’t want to get on my bad side, you’ll tell Lynch that I’m here.”
“Uh… uh… yes, ma’am,” comes the reply, followed by a long moment of silence.
Harlow leans back into her seat and throws an impish wink at me, along with a smug expression that I can’t help but smile at. A few seconds later, the voice comes back on to tell us to pull up to the front door as the gate slides open to let us in. I ease the car up the drive and almost roll my eyes when Lynch’s sprawling mansion comes into view. It looks like a literal castle with turrets and battlements, and not just any castle, but one I recognize because I visited its twin in Ireland one of the many times I lived in Europe. Lynch had an Irish castle built brick for brick for himself, and the cost must have been astronomical.
“He lives in a goddamn castle?” Harlow comments with an incredulous expression. “How the fuck does anyone afford something like this?”
“If you live long enough,” I reply, “you have the time to amass a lot of wealth.”
She glances at me with furrowed brows as I drive around a massive water feature with a fountain and stop the car near the front door. “How old are you?” she asks, voicing the question I knew was coming next.
“Ninety-one,” I reply and watch her brows rise at my answer, but to be honest, she doesn’t seem as shocked as I thought she’d be.
“And here I thought I was aging well at forty-seven,” she says.
Now it’s my turn to be shocked as her lips twist into that sexy smirk of hers that always makes my dick hard as a rock. She doesn’t appear to be a day over thirty years old to me. And now I have a lot of questions that we don’t have time for right now. The most important being, what is she? I already know she has to be at least some part fae for anam amháin to exist between us, despite her human scent. Not to mention, I’ve never heard of a human fae hybrid being this long-lived compared to a normal human, but her aura doesn’t feel like any fae I’ve come across before.
There are more kinds of fae than just my mother’s kind, who easily pass as mere humans. Most of the other fae creatures no longer exist in this world or are very few, and they avoid humans like the plague, like trolls, goblins, pixies, and wood nymphs, just to name a few. A lot of them have been so interbred with humans over the eons that they don’t even know they’re part fae, let alone know what kind they are. I have so many questions I have to shelve for later since I can’t get into them while sitting in front of Randall Lynch’s castle, but I definitely plan on asking them later.
Harlow grins at my perplexed expression for a moment before clapping her hands together. “Alright, boys,” she says. “Let’s do this.”
Then she climbs out of the car and the rest of us follow suit. Ethan and Mercer flank her while I bring up the rear as she strides up the steps toward the front door under my assessing gaze. The woman doesn’t display a lick of fear in her demeanor or her scent, which is good and garners even more of my respect for her. Vampires don’t have nearly as good of a sense of smell as werewolves, but they can smell fear. It’s like an aphrodisiac for most of them, and if you let them spook you, they’ll exploit it in a heartbeat and use it against you.
The front doors swing open just as we reach it, and a tall, hulking man with short pale blond hair and an expensive black suit greets us with a stiff nod. His scent is a mix of freshly turned earth and the metallic tang of blood, and it tells me he’s a vampire. He steps aside and another equally large vampire with long dark hair and an identical black suit beckons us to enter with a hand motion, causing his jacket to gape open enough to display a holstered pistol. No shock there since the boys and I are dressed and armed similarly. We enter a foyer where the buildings’ similarities to a certain Irish castle end and give way to the most obnoxious display of wealth I’ve ever seen in my life.
As if the gilded walls and marble floors of the cavernous entryway aren’t enough, the vaulted ceiling is covered in artwork reminiscent of The Sistine Chapel. The furnishings and art are all beyond expensive too, but only make it look like Lynch is trying too hard to flaunt his wealth to anyone who enters. It’s pathetic. I glance at Harlow again and find her frowning all around the room with a definite edge of disgust in her eyes that tells me she agrees with my assessment. I keep my gaze on her because I can’t help myself. I find everything about her fascinating, the shape of her body, the way she moves, her sweet scent. I want to push her up against a wall again, and this time strip both of us bare so I can feel her soft skin on mine. I want to study the contrast of my darker skin against her much paler flesh. I want to taste and touch every inch of her, devour her until our mutual desire burns everything around us to the fucking ground.
I take an instinctive step forward to make that happen when the rich floral scent of narcissus flowers mixed with fresh earth and blood finds my nose and jolts me to a stop in stunned recognition. It’s followed by a familiar feminine voice that chills me right down to the bone.
“Welcome to Lynch Manor,” the voice says with a lilting British accent in a sensual alto. “If you’ll follow me,” she continues as I turn to face the tall raven-haired beauty dressed in a short, skintight black dress. “I’ll take you to…” Her words trail off when her honey-brown eyes lock on me and widen in recognition as her already vampire-pale olive skin grows even more ashen.
“Van?” she whispers, seeming to be just as shocked to see me as I am to see her. Why? Not only have I not set eyes on Ameera Fatali in over fifty long years, but also because all this time I thought my former lover was truly and permanently dead.