you stand for. Vincent made damn sure I knew. I suppose that's why he's so interested in the pair of you. A vamp hunter sides with a vampire? Where's the logic in that?"
"If there was one, I would not tell you," I replied simply.
"And then, there's that thing about your order..." he said, voice quiet, barely audible above the clint of coins and a machine blaring obnoxiously. "I thought you were on the side of the humans. Aren't you all some kind of human protectors or something? Why would you go along willingly with the possible deaths of innocents? It just doesn't seem to make any sense."
I stayed quiet and felt Jason's hand tighten on my wrist. My right wrist, the wrist I would need when shit hit the fan.
Not "if" but "when." Because sure as the sun rises and sets, the alpha was not going to let us leave, not without a hell of a fight, and not even a fight I thought I could come out of alive.
I stifled the urge to shake his hand free, all too aware that my warmth grounded him, that he needed to, had to touch me.
Marcus sighed. "What a mess. What a fucking mess, make no mistake. If I don't take you, Vincent'll have my head. If I do, there'll blood and dead people and god only knows how much money I'm gonna lose. An incident like that can really turn this place inside out. And after all the time I’ve spent on this place..."
Jason smiled disarmingly. Did glamour work with the supernatural? I supposed I was about to find out.
"There is no need for violence," he said. "Just let us rest here and then we will be out of here, out of your casino, out of your town. It will be as if we never came here. Surely, you can see the wisdom in letting us pass?"
The werewolf let out a sigh and rubbed the furrow between his dark eyes. "I just don't even know what to do anymore."
Jason bowed low. "We will go now."
Was this it then? Would we be able to leave without a fight, without a drop of blood spilt on the magenta carpet that seemed as though it would mask the color of blood well, perhaps too well?
Marcus sighed. "Vincent'll kill me if he finds out."
"He doesn’t need to know."
The werewolf let out a loud, guffawing laugh. "Are you kidding me? That man knows everything. It's fucking crazy how well he knows his stuff. No wonder that bloodsucker's got Centennial City sitting pretty in the palm of his hand. Wish I could do the same to here."
Camden? This terribly depressed little town? How terribly unambitious.
Someone brushed past us, an elderly couple, one with a cane, the other in a walker and I realized something, something that just might be the death of us.
People were leaving.
Yes, they were quiet, yes, they meandered from here to there, but from the way the doors never stopped moving, it was very obvious the casino was beginning to clear out.
A trap?
Slowly, I managed to extricate my wrist out of Jason's grip. "We need to go."
The werewolf made as if to step towards us, and I leapt back, the bi-su clenched parallel to my arm. There was no one around us to say a thing; they were all behind us, a mass exodus to the doors that seemed to grow farther and farther away with every second we stayed.
"Stop," I said between clenched teeth, one arm extended to keep Jason behind me, keep him closer to the doors.
I swore to protect him.
Without my word, I was nothing.
For better or worse, I was Ailward.
Jason drew in a sharp breath. “Ran.”
The werewolf was sweating openly now. “Now, now...we can talk about this. We should really, really talk about this.”
His bodyguards had their hands on their holster, ready to pull their firearm out and shoot me in the face.
And that would be the end.
“Is this what you would call an impasse?” asked Jason.
Why did I want to laugh? Was it because I saw no way out of this situation? Was it because I knew if I so much as moved a finger, we would be dead? “No. It’s not. This is what you call a last stand.”
Jason laughed under his breath. Did he understand our pathetic helplessness as well as I did? Was that why he laughed? “I didn’t know you were so funny, Ran.”
“I’m not.”
My eyes never left the alpha. “Choose. Either you kill us