“Atty bite?” He blinked, taken off-guard when she stopped mid-sentence to point a chubby finger at his neck. “Bababite?”
Babawas the Turkish word for father, likeannewas the word for mother, and what Serafina called Harlan about fifty percent of the time. Daddy was used whenever she really wanted something. The strategy had a very high success rate.
It took him a second to process her question. Blanching, he stammered, “Ah, no, Fina. That’s…”
“That’s Carmine’s bite,” Harlan bluntly explained, handing the bottle back to his daughter. “I only bite your mother, princess, just likeyouwill only biteyouranchor someday. Some very, very distant day.”
A flush crawled up Atticus’s neck to sear his ears. He had no idea why. He wasn’t ashamed of Carmine’s bite — far from it — but something about the situation made him feel a bit like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Harlan had been blasé on the phone, but what would he really think about Atticus pursuing a blood bride?
Harlan’s opinion was the one he respected most in the world. If he disapproved, if he thought Atticus should back off…
I can’t. I won’t.
“Where is she?” he croaked.
Harlan tilted his head in the direction of the kitchen. “The girls are doing a makeover.”
“Anne’shaircut,” Serafina chirped before taking a noisy slurp of her synth.
Atticus’s brow furrowed. “Haircut?”
A hint of a smile curved Harlan’s lips. “My anchor thinks that because she trims my hair, she can handle Carmine’s.” He shrugged. “I’ll pay to have it fixed.”
“See!” Serafina squirmed so violently that Atticus was forced to hastily lower her to the floor. She scampered off on socked feet, her palm tree ponytail bobbing.
“Walk,” Harlan called after her. “And careful with your synth, princess.”
Atticus made to follow her, but he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Harlan fixed him with a familiar, scrutinizing look when he said, “Tell me what’s going on.”
Harlan Bounds was an old-school vampire. Raised in the vicious, dog-eat-dog world of the Amauri crime family, he was taught early on to never ask for something when it could be demanded instead. To the soft, polite people of the EVP, Harlan was as hard and rude as they came.
But for Atticus, there was a lot of comfort in the directness with which his adopted father spoke. He and Carmine were similar in that way. Harlan could always be trusted to say what was on his mind, and he never hesitated to act when he deemed it necessary. He was steady. When Atticus needed to lean on someone, Harlan was there, as strong and dependable as steel.
He didn’t even know how to explain the enormity of the thing inside of him, let alone the complexity of it, so instead Atticus rasped, “I want her.”
“You don’t seem overjoyed by that.”
“No, I am. She’s perfect. I…” He rubbed the tense muscles of his nape. “There’s nothing I don’t like about her. I’m fuckin’ obsessed with her, boss. But she’s a bride.”
Harlan’s expression didn’t change. “Not anymore.”
A vicious stab of pleasure struck him.That’s right,he thought, the fingers of his right hand curling into a fist.Junger’s dead.
But the pleasure of that knowledge was short-lived. Atticus squeezed his neck again, saying, “She’s venom neutral.”
“Obviously.”
“I feel so guilty. She’s— Isn’t it weird? That I’d want her when I’ve spent my whole life trying to protect Adriana from being a vampire’s mate? Doesn’t that make me a bad person?”
It was only then that Harlan’s expression changed. He arched a dark brow. “That’s not what you’ve protected Adriana from, boy.” Atticus opened his mouth to object, but Harlan beat him to it. “It’s not. We didn’t leave the syndicate life to protect your sister from finding a mate. We left because we wanted her to have thechoice.”
That was true enough, but it didn’t make a dent in the guilt that sat heavy and thick inside him. He wanted her so bad it made him ache, and he knew he was in too deep to back out now, but… “What if Carmine doesn’t feel like shehasa choice?”
He was fucking haunted by the memory of her bite, but also by the whiplash of horror and shame he felt when he realized the intimacy they’d shared had been a ploy. The idea that Carmine might feel like shehadto return his advances, even subconsciously, ate him up like acid.
Harlan’s brow inched a little higher. “It’s interesting that you think I’d let you get away with that.”
“Boss…”
