Parker
The world after midnight is always stranger than the world before. The lines between possible and impossible blur. At 2:01 a.m., the sound of a twin-engine jet cut through the sleeping calm of Dairyville like an autopsy blade. The pack’s private airstrip—just a flattened stripe on the plain, lit by two arc lamps and a dented pickup with its brights on—catered only to the very rich, or the very desperate. Tonight, I was sure, we’d get both.
Fifteen minutes later, Bronc blew through the door, bringing the night in with him and something colder still. Everyone on the floor was awake and alert at the new arrival. Lucia Kozlov looked like she always did. Black curls perfectly in place. Tonight piled on top of her head. Red lips, perfectly glossy, and big dark eyes lined with that cat eye look. The daughter of the eastern Vampire King had the kind of beauty that made you forget what species she was. Her bodysuit was black, seamless, except for the blood-red sports bra visible under the mesh panels, and on her feet were Louboutin tennis shoes—yes, apparently those existed, and yes, she wore them like they were as ordinary as flip-flops.
Lucia’s entourage was three vampire men who could have doubled as nightclub bouncers or professional wrestlers. I didn’tget a good look at their faces, only the moving bulk of muscle and the glossy sheen of their skin in the hallway light. They didn’t try to sit at the kitchen table, just stood against the wall with the stillness that was more military than undead. Bronc gestured for Lucia to take his chair, the only one with an actual backrest and armrests, but she demurred with a little wave of her hand and a honeyed Russian, “Please, I like floor.”
She meant it too. Lucia Kozlov, vampire royalty, settled cross-legged among a scatter of blankets and sleeping bags, smack between Gunner and Maddie, and accepted a mug of Bronc’s burnt coffee like she’d done this a thousand times. Her legs folded perfectly. Her back never touched the wall.
She scanned the room as if cataloguing us for later, her attention sweeping the pack’s tired, battered faces. She found Juliet, and something in Lucia’s entire posture melted—her entire persona softened, sharpness replaced by a curve of genuine affection. She smiled at Juliet, a smile without teeth, and reached over to squeeze her arm.
I watched the interaction, trying to place the feeling in my chest. It wasn’t jealousy, or even suspicion. It was just…otherness. Lucia was here to help, and you could see in the way her eyes slid past the rest of us that the only one who really existed to her was Juliet. The pack, for Lucia, was just a necessary background. Only Juliet was in focus.
Bronc used the opportunity to go over things again, wasting no time on the endless posturing and banter that usually accompanied supernatural guest arrivals. “We have a three-hour window. After that, we expect contact. Parker’s mapped the routes, but we’re assuming infiltration by at least two teams—one wolves, one other. Maltraz is backing them.”
Lucia sipped her coffee, wrinkled her nose with the polite disgust of someone raised on finer things, then nodded. “We are ready. My men will patrol the northern edge of your territory. If the demon brings any vampires, we will know before they crossyour line. We are very good at killing our own kind.” She paused, letting that hang. “You have protocol for inviting us inside?”
Bronc nodded. “You’re welcome here, all of you.”
“We’re happy to help,” she said. She looked at me next, her eyes an uncanny violet in the fluorescent light. “You are hacker?”
I nodded. “I am.”
“Good. We will need all your surveillance, if you have it. And your best weapons.” She smiled again, this time a little wider, like she’d just received an especially clever Christmas present.
Wrecker tightened his arm around my waist, his muscles flexing. Rocket, our little ugly pooch, pressed against my shins, growling a low warning at the vampire men every time one of them exhaled too hard.
I watched Lucia as she watched Juliet, and I realized what I was actually seeing. Not just devotion, but adoration. I wondered if all vampires loved like that, or if it was just Lucia’s curse. It made me shiver.
The rest of the meeting was logistics; the most boring kind of terror. Bronc walked Lucia through the security overlays and fallback points. She took it in with zero visible emotion, not even blinking at the mention of C-4 or thermal. Her men never moved, except to occasionally sync their phones with mine, eyes flicking over blueprints of the Iron Valor compound like they’d memorized the whole thing at a glance.
When Bronc was done, Lucia leaned in, lowered her voice to a register only wolves could hear. “We do not trust the demons,” she said. “Their word is nothing. If you see the one called Adramal, do not try to kill him. Run. Call for us. He can only be killed by those who are not human, not wolf, not vampire.”
Gunner snorted. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Lucia’s lips twitched. “You have one already. She’s sitting next to you. The other is sitting over there. She nodded toward Menace.” Henodded at me.
Every eye in the room went to me. I stared back, caught between pride and nausea.
“I’m just a girl,” I said.
Lucia laughed, a quick, genuine sound. “So was Pandora. So was Medea.”
I didn’t get the reference, and I wasn’t about to ask. Instead, I pulled my knees up and circled my arms around them, resting my chin on the shelf they made. I looked at the circle of faces, some haggard, some hard, all of them lit by the same cheap LED and the blue haze from the kitchen clock.
I felt for the first time since my parents died that I was part of something worth protecting. Not because I was useful, or because someone would die if I failed, but because these people—my pack, my friends, my monstrous little dog—were all I had left. They were the only family that mattered.
Wrecker’s hand found mine. His thumb traced the bones of my wrist. The mate bond hummed like a struck tuning fork. It was a lifeline, a wire through the darkness, and I clung to it.
The rest of the meeting blurred. Lucia exchanged numbers with me, then Juliet, her focus never wavering. The other vampires filed out, silent as falling snow. Bronc pulled Maddie aside for a whispered conversation, then turned her loose to relay instructions to the rest of the compound.
I curled back against Wrecker. Rocket worked himself deeper into the gap between us as if he was worried we might disappear. Around us, the rest of the pack sorted themselves out for a few hours’ sleep.
Lucia curled herself into a ball on a thin black sleeping mat, her knees tucked up, hands folded under her head. She was the only one in the room who looked at peace.
I watched the entire scene—wolves, vampires, broken warriors, mates, settle into uneasy rest, and realized the thing twisting my stomach wasn’t dread, or anger. It was belonging. I belonged here, with them.
My body ached with fatigue. The last thing I remember was the sound of Wrecker’s breathing in my ear, the scratch of Rocket’s claws on the hardwoods, and the faint throb of the mate bond lighting up my skin.
