“I’m pleased we’re going to have a babysitter on hand whenever we want.” I wink at Grace.
“Oh, no.” Eliza backs out of the cuddle, “I’m going to be far too busy…studying.”
“That’s what she says.” Lydia puts her tongue in her cheek. “But we’ve all been students, Eliza, and this is a big city with a LOT of ruined pubs, so…”
“I mean it. This course is costing me an arm and a leg. I’m going to be making the most of it,” Eliza says, ever the serious one of us.
“You know if you need help, you can come to us,” Grace says to her.
“Spoken like a true werewolf mafia moll.” I choke with laughter.
“Says the queen of the vampire mafia.” Grace retorts.
“We are, aren’t we?” I chuckle.
There’s a knock at the door, and Lydia opens it. A thrall has his hand over his eyes.
“It is time, mistress,” he says in halting English.
Lydia looks at me with her brow creased in confusion. “Thank you, Lázlo,” I say and indicate to Lydia she can close the door.
“What’s that all about?”
“Oh, the thralls don’t want to risk Dominik’s wrath by looking at me.”
“What?” Kezia explodes.
“Don’t worry,” I exhort, “he wouldn’t do anything, and he’s not bothered, but most of the thralls have been in his family since the sixteen hundreds, and they’re a bit stuck in their ways.” I sigh. “I’m doing my best to see if we can at least bring them up to the Eighteenth century, but it’s going to take some time.”
“This is so weird,” Sophia says, “being among the monsters.” She claps her hands. “But I love it.”
“Your friends had better go with the thrall,” Pirosca says. “Your mate will be coming for you shortly.” She smiles at me and cups my cheek with her hand. “And if I have done my job right, he will be unable to take his eyes off you.”
“Oh, you’ve done that.” Kezia snorts. “There’s enough cleavage for him to get lost in.”
“I wish you’d get lost.” I flap my hand at her, unable to stop giggling. “This is supposed to be serious!”
“It is serious,” Dominik intones from the doorway. “And why is there a thrall out here with his eyes closed?”
Lucy
“I thoughtyou were joking about the queen thing.” I stare at myself in the mirror.
Dominik slides his arms around my waist until his hands come to rest on my bump, and he nibbles at my neck where my hair has been swept to one side into an elaborate style by the hairdresser Pirosca organized. I feel the growl in his body as he feels the soft velvet of my dress which both drapes and hugs in equal measure.
“I would never joke about who my queen is.” Dominik turns me to him and grasps my chin in his hand, lifting my face up to him so he can press a possessive, heated kiss on my lips which sends my poor pregnant body into an instant meltdown.
“Since I nearly lost you to an unhinged vampire hunter and a rogue vampire, making you my queen is the least I can do.” His hand plucks at the fabric of my dress. “What are you wearing under here?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m hoping for nothing.”
“Then you might be right.”
Dominik throws his head back and groans. “If I wasn’t already dead, you would be the death of me.”
“And if I didn’t have this”—I pull on the amulet around my neck—“I wouldn’t be there until death us do part.”
