House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,50
is in my blood. It’s where I was made, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you run it—and him—into the ground. You’re the reason this House is leaving the GP. If it falters, that’s on you.”
I managed to form words, which was more than I would have thought possible given my anger. “My relationship—his relationship—is really none of your business.”
“It is my business,” she countered. “This House is my business, and the Master who made me is my business.”
Master or not, she was pissing me off. “Your business is in San Diego. You left this House and Ethan when you went there. I don’t appreciate your poaching on what is, quite clearly, my territory.”
Before she could answer, two other Cadogan vampires—Christine and Michelle—both in workout clothes, walked into the kitchen. They waved at me and said polite hellos to Lacey—Grateful Condescension, I supposed—before grabbing sports drinks from the fridge and bananas from a bowl on the counter.
They said nothing more to either of us, but their heads were bowed together as they left; they were undoubtedly chatting about the kitchen encounter between Ethan’s lover and his lover-in-waiting. I didn’t even try to catch their whispers; I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what they were saying . . . mostly for fear that they were right.
She moved a step closer. “Suppose you’re correct. Suppose it isn’t my business whom he dates. Suppose it’s yours. Then maybe you should think long and hard about the kind of vampire he deserves. Are you that girl? Or does he deserve someone better? Someone loyal and true?”
“Someone blond?” I dryly asked. “Someone exactly like you, perhaps?”
My phone rang. Fearing another crisis, I whipped it from the pocket of my jacket. It was Jonah, probably calling to ensure I’d show up at the initiation. I turned off the phone and put it away again, but not before Lacey watched me with obvious curiosity.
“Are we keeping you from something?”
“I’m trying to solve a double murder,” I reminded her. “Just checking in.”
She smiled a little. “I have plenty of decades under my belt, Merit. Decades of having worked with him, watched him, known him. You think, what, eight months of being fanged is going to tell you what you need to know about a Master vampire? About what an immortal needs?” She arched her eyebrow in a perfect imitation of Ethan. “You’re a child to him. A momentary interest.”
If Lacey was working to make me even more insecure—to plant the seeds of doubt—she was doing a damned good job of it.
“Leave me alone,” I said, my anger growing.
“No problem.” She walked to the kitchen door. “Just remember, I don’t trust you, and I’m keeping an eye out.”
“What a witch,” I muttered when she was gone, but I stood there in the kitchen for a moment, my hands shaking with vaulted anger. Was she right? Was I nothing more than a liability to Ethan?
No, I thought. He loved me, and he knew better than anyone what was or wasn’t right for him and the House. He was a grown-up, by God. It wasn’t like I’d somehow teased him into a relationship.
I snapped off the bottle cap and chugged the bottle of blood as I stood there, until the gremlin inside me quieted down again.
I presumed her plan was to make me crazy. To make me uncertain about our relationship until I drove Ethan crazy from neediness . . . or ended the relationship to “save” him.
Lacey had once called me a “common soldier,” but she’d confused soldiering and martyrdom. My job was to stand strong for my House and my Master, not give myself away like a wilting violet because I was afraid I’d ruin him.
I wouldn’t ruin him. Just as I’d told him before when he needed to be reminded, we were stronger together than we were apart. Two souls different from the rest who’d found solace in each other.
She couldn’t take that away from us.
At least, I hoped she couldn’t.
* * *
My mood soured and my nerves even more jangled, I walked downstairs to the Ops Room. Everyone but Juliet was in the room; it was her night for patrol, I guessed. Luc, now officially entrenched as Guard Captain again, sat at the head of the table, just as he usually did.
Lindsey’s gaze found me when I walked into the room, and the question in her eyes was easy to read: What’s Merit’s emotional state now that Lacey has spent an evening in the House?
Since