Succubus Unchained - Heather Long Page 0,55

are not at the moment. Of course they are both choosing her.” Arms folded, he took a position halfway between Maddox and Alfred, facing the vampire they could all argue was their maker on some level. “So am I.”

Shock rolled through Maddox at that declaration. In all the years he’d known Rogue and Alfred, all of them, he had never seen the pair at odds. Not truly. Their disagreements were more debates, mild and often over minutia. This was not that.

Alfred’s narrow-eyed gaze confirmed it as he focused on Rogue. “Et tu, Brute?”

The frost elf gave a careless shrug. “She’s the one. You accept it or not, that is your call. But she is one of us. You helped as much as we did to get her through transition.”

“Not that she gives a damn,” Alfred spit the words.

“Oh fuck you,” Fiona snarled into the fray. “I didn’t ask you to do this. I didn’t want you to do this.”

Those dark eyes fixed on her, glaring. “I gave you the choice.”

“You told me I had to say yes, and that if I didn’t, I’d take Maddox with me.”

She hadn’t wanted to say yes. That revelation hit Maddox like a brick. While he’d already been aware of her desires, it was something else to hear it aloud.

“So you said yes for him?” Alfred challenged her.

“Does it matter so much to you if I did?” Defiance was etched into her every syllable, and she lifted her chin, her green eyes blazing. Maddox tightened the arm he had around her. Between one pump of his heart and the next, Alfred narrowed the space between them, and Maddox shifted her behind him so that he was chest to chest with the angry original.

Fin and Rogue moved to clasp Alfred by the arms, even as Maddox braced for the fight. Between them, they could take him. One on one, Maddox suspected he could take him, too. Either way, he would not be allowed to menace her.

“She’s one of us,” Fin reminded him. “We wanted her to say yes. All of us, and if you could get over being a contrary dick for five minutes, you’d appreciate the fact that not only did she say yes, she came back to us.”

Alfred snorted, his gaze cold as he looked past Maddox to where she stood. Fiona hadn’t retreated, if anything, her presence was a blazing warmth against Maddox’s back. “No, she didn’t. She ran from you while you were distracted. Then Rogue helped her escape to here. If I were to gamble, she would already be running if I hadn’t come.”

“You really are an insufferable asshole,” Fiona stated before the others could cut in. “You want me to stay gone? Or are you just pissed that they found me when you couldn’t?”

Fin was the first to take the brunt of Alfred’s blow, and Rogue the next. They went flying in opposite directions, but Maddox braced himself to face the one he’d called friend long before he called him brother. But the lunge never came, he merely glared at Maddox with such icy control that Maddox read the war waging within him clearly in Alfred’s eyes.

He didn’t trust Fiona. But she wasn’t the problem…

Straightening, Maddox stared at him. “Start talking, brother. What’s happened?”

“The others are waking,” Alfred warned, and Maddox rocked back on his heels. “I am not the only one she has awoken.”

“I didn’t wake you,” Fiona protested. “I didn’t want anything to do with you.”

“Kitten,” Maddox said, glancing over his shoulder. “If Fin’s vision is to be believed, the moment the vampire drained you and fed you his blood, it would have sent the tremor that began the waking process.”

Her rolled eyes didn’t do Maddox any favors, but he offered her a faint smile.

“If?” Fin muttered, dusting himself off as if he hadn’t been flung several yards. “She’s here. She’s a hybrid. She’s ours. She claimed you, remember? You told me yourself after you met her—she was ours.”

This was true, and even when he shot an apologetic look to Fiona, she gave a careless shrug, arms folded. “Prophecy aside, who cares if the others are waking? Unless they’re as big a bag full of dicks as Asshole here.” Maddox winced.

“Kitten, can you just call him Alfred?”

She stared at Maddox like he’d sprouted a second head. “No, I can’t. He doesn’t deserve it. He’s treated me like chattel from the moment he met me. The first fucking thing he did was bite me, then he dragged me off