wanted to talk to Luka, but she insisted on sending me to Jace. So I spoke to him based on her recommendation. Then I found out he was currently in Clemente Clan territory, and, well, I arranged a meeting. Edon’s on his way here. With Jace. They’ll be here any minute now.”
“You invited a royal vampire into my private home.” I uttered the words slowly, unable to comprehend why my progeny would make such a decision.
I didn’t enjoy entertaining company of any type, let alone a damn royal. There were sixteen others in existence, seventeen if I included myself, and eighteen if I counted Lilith. They were the oldest and most powerful of my kind, and I liked exactly one of them—myself.
Well, I could tolerate Kylan on a good day.
And maybe Jace.
But today was not a good day.
Which was why I demanded to know: “Have you lost your fucking mind?” Because my progeny knew how I felt about the pretentious members of the council. Inviting one into my sanctuary ranked somewhere around eating cow shit. Hence the reason I’d gone after Silvano when he trotted an army of unwanted company through my lands.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he muttered, collapsing into my favorite recliner chair as though he owned it. “Izzy swore to me that Jace won’t take advantage of the situation. He’s only coming to help.”
I’d known Izzy for the same length of time as I’d known Damien. They were twins, after all. But Damien had been my confidant and best friend, while Izzy had been more akin to a little sister to me. Which was why it had infuriated me when Cam took her as his Erosita.
A thousand years later and it still made my blood boil.
She was too good for him.
At least the bastard knew it.
Except he’d left her alone for over a century now with Majestic Clan. Oh, it wasn’t by choice—that much I understood—but he was doing one hell of a job finding his way back to her.
I shook my head, not wanting to go down that land mine of a thought trail right now and instead focused on the present situation.
“Where’s Willow?” I asked again.
Damien sighed and pushed away from the chair, leaving me handcuffed on the couch. We were going to need to discuss this behavior at length later. After I shot him a few times.
I carefully twisted my hands as far as the metal allowed to begin working on the release mechanism I’d built into these. Every gadget I owned was one I knew how to manipulate. It was Survival Instinct 101 to program in fail-safes only I could figure out.
Damien knew this about me, which meant he also knew it was only a matter of time before I freed myself and kicked his ass.
He returned a minute later with an unconscious Willow in his arms. I frowned as he laid her down beside me. “She’s missing a vital trait to indicate life,” I told him, a snarl underlining my tone. She didn’t have a damn heartbeat, nor was she breathing. When I finished breaking out of these cuffs, he was a dead man.
“I realize that,” he muttered. “She’s in some sort of limbo state, and she’s been there for hours.”
I paused at that. “Hours?” A mortal couldn’t remain in limbo for hours without a heartbeat. But as I looked at her again, I noticed the lack of rigor mortis setting in. “How many hours?”
“Seven,” he replied. “She took her last breath before we boarded the plane. I tried to resuscitate her, but she fell into this state… and hasn’t come back.”
“Because you didn’t bury her.”
He shook his head. “She wasn’t transitioning, Ryder. You couldn’t see it through your delirium, but your blood didn’t take.”
“How is that possible?” In all my very long life, I had never heard of a human rejecting the transformation into the undead life.
“I don’t know. That’s why I called Izzy,” Damien said. “It’s like Willow’s trapped in the lycan conversion phase, not a vampire one.”
I stopped messing with the handcuffs and studied Willow, a memory nagging at me. “Her injuries that day by the river…” I trailed off, picturing them. “It looked like she’d been ripped open by a wolf.” I’d thought they were claw marks, but… “What if those wounds had been created by teeth?”
“Then she would have begun the transition while waiting for the follow-up bite,” Damien said, his tone indicating he’d already considered this avenue of thought. “She should be dead.”