Allowing him to lead her into a modern sitting room, Dahlia replied, “This wasn’t completely against my will. I decided that since neither him or Felix could be reasonable about the situation, I had to take things into my own hands. I want to talk this out.”
“I’ve been saying the same thing for weeks,” he confessed. “All of this fighting could’ve been resolved with a few phone calls.”
“He sankAtlas.”Alastair’s acerbic voice came from the doorway as Colin settled her on a charcoal gray couch. Wisely, Tomas appeared to have made himself scarce.
“And you burned his club to the ground,” she shot back, crossing her arms.
“He kidnapped my daughter.” Alastair strode into the sitting room. The slightest hitch in his step belied the need for the cane, but it didn’t diminish the raw power he exuded as he joined his anchor on the couch across from her.
Sick to death of masculine pride, Dahlia rolled her eyes. “Let’s not pretend like this has anything to do with me, please. You don’t know me. This is about your family legacy and your ego. You don’t like that Felix made you look weak, and Felix doesn’t like that you’re trying to separate us. Both of you need to getthe fuckover it.”
“You’ve gotten bold since we last saw each other,” he dryly noted.
Dahlia gave him a tight, close-lipped smile. “I’m a Bowan now.”
Alastair draped an arm behind Colin and crossed one ankle over his knee. “You’re also wrong. This isn’t just about our name and ego. This is about the fact that my daughter was kidnapped by a family that is notoriously unstable and generally agreed upon as intolerable. Even if IlikedFelix, I wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“Why? Because you want to be able to sell me off to someone of your choosing?”
Colin laid a hand on Alastair’s thigh. In a firm voice, he answered, “No. We don’t believe in that. Never have. When Tomas was born, we all agreed as a family that he would get to choose his partner. You do, too.” There was a pause, then, with a significant look at her throat, “And it seems you have.”
Dahlia smoothed her hair back behind her ear. “If you think this is bad, you should see the other guy.”
Alastair looked like he’d swallowed a mouthful of sour blood, but he didn’t comment on the state of her neck. Instead, he asked, “Can you blame us for wanting to keep you safe?”
“No,” she replied, “but I can call you hypocritical for vilifying Felix when you didn’t think twice about risking my life tonight. Say what you want about him, Mr. Bowan, but he wouldneverintentionally put me in harm’s way.”
“I seem to remember the night we met going differently than you do.”
Dahlia winced. She couldn’t exactly fault him for bringing that up. “I wasn’t supposed to work that night. He had no idea I switched shifts with another employee. If he had, he wouldn’t have let that happen.”
But as she sat there in the sparkling sitting room, locked in a staring contest with her new father and desperate to get back to her husband, Dahlia couldn’t say she would’ve changed things.Getting impaled and turned wasn’t exactly on her bucket list, but Luis was right.
Sometimes change sucked. And sometimes it made things a whole lot better.
Becoming a vampire had taken a lot from her, but it’d given her even more in return. A month ago she would’ve gritted her teeth and taken these men steamrolling her, believing she had no other choice, but not now. The Dahlia who lived by the mottohead down, tray upwas dead.
The new Dahlia wouldn’t just stand up for herself. She’d bite back.
Colin leaned forward, interest splashed across his expression. “Wait, you knew Felix before you were turned?”
“We dated for three years,” she answered, only fudging the truth a little.
Clearly trying to align that with the facts he had at hand, Colin gave her a puzzled look. “How did that work? You were in San Francisco, and Felix has been busy fighting Yvanna over here for years.”
Dahlia gave him a quick and sanitized version of the story, starting with the night Felix’s uncle was murdered in The Lush and ending with Yvanna’s death. If she left out the parts where she wanted to throw her phone in the ocean or throttle him, the story actually sounded a little romantic.
Felix wanted her right away and pursued her, but couldn’t risk her safety, so he’d forced himself to keep his distance until the Amauri civil war ended. It was an honest version, she supposed, even if the story lacked a few critical pieces of context.
But even that didn’t change the fundamental truth that Felix cared. He’d always cared. He’d loved her since day one and showed it the only way he knew how. Always, he’d been trying to do his best by her — even when he planned to let her go.
Her chest tightened painfully as she thought of how worried he must’ve been at that moment. The urgency to get back to him clawed at her.
Turning to Alastair, she said, “I don’t want to be at odds with you. I don’t want any of the Bowans or the Amauris to be hurt because of me. But I’m not leaving Felix. So you either need to pull your head out of your ass, or you need to leave me alone — because if you take one more shot at my husband, I’ll kill you myself.”
Each word landed hard. She spoke them calmly and with the full force of her chest. They came from a deep well of certainty in her, the same place where her feelings for Felix had always lived, even when she didn’t want to acknowledge them.
It was a place of power. One that not even a vampire like Alastair Bowan could rattle.
