Knox says nothing. But he sticks close, closer than Dimitri expects, close enough that their shoulders nearly brush, which means Knox is practically tucked against his side given the height difference. Dimitri realizes after a beat that it's notobedience. It's strategy. The Templar is positioning himself in Dimitri's wake so that whatever comes at him has to go through Dimitri first.
Smart. Infuriating, but smart. And something about having Knox pressed that close, the warmth of his body bleeding through wool, sends a current through the bond that Dimitri acknowledges and then ignores with the efficiency of long practice.
He cuts through the crowd toward the back of the club, where the booths give way to a raised platform and a table draped in red velvet. A card game is in progress. Five players, all women, all stunning in the way that only succubi can be, the kind of beauty that shimmers at the edges and doesn't quite hold up under direct scrutiny. They're playing something complicated with black-backed cards, and the stakes appear to involve favors rather than money.
At the head of the table sits Ruby.
She's draped across her chair, all long limbs and dark skin and a red dress that could have been painted on. Her black hair falls in a sheet to her waist, and her eyes, dark and liquid and faintly luminescent, are fixed on her cards with the lazy focus of a creature who has already decided how this game ends.
"Ruby," Dimitri says.
She doesn't look up. Doesn't move. Lays a card down on the velvet with one lacquered fingernail and watches one of her daughters curse softly and fold.
"Dimitri." The name rolls off her tongue slow and sweet. "You look terrible."
"I've had a hell of a night."
"Haven't we all?" She lays another card. Another succubus folds. "Who's your friend?"
She still hasn't looked up, and Dimitri wonders how she knows, then catches the subtle flare of her nostrils, the faint tiltof her head. She can smell Knox. Of course she can. Everyone in here can smell Knox. He’s like a lamb walking into a wolves’ den.
"He's not my friend," Dimitri says. "He's my problem."
Ruby finally looks up. Her dark eyes slide past Dimitri and land on Knox, and one perfect eyebrow arches slowly upward.
“Quite a problem to have,” she says. “Interesting you would bring a Templar into my club, Dimitri.” She looks back at him. Her smile is very, very thin. “Have you lost your mind?”
"We're bound," Dimitri says bluntly. "Some hedge witch botched a summoning and tied us together. Soul binding. I can't get more than fifty feet from him without my insides trying to become my outsides.."
Ruby's other eyebrow joins the first. "A soul binding. To a Templar. How dreadful."
"I need a witch. A real one. Someone powerful enough to unpick whatever that kid stitched into us."
Ruby studies him for a long moment. Then her gaze drifts back to Knox, and this time it lingers, appraising and curious, and Dimitri turns to follow her line of sight.
One of Ruby's succubi has left the table.
She's tall and willowy, silver-haired, with eyes the color of amethysts, and she has positioned herself directly in front of Knox with the fluid grace of something that hunts for a living. She towers over him. Most things tower over him, Dimitri is learning. But Knox doesn't shrink. He just stands there, very still, very straight, while her fingernails, long and dark and sharp, trail down the front of his coat, tracing a line from his collar to his sternum.
Knox's hands are at his sides. His green eyes are fixed on a point somewhere above the succubus's left shoulder with the rigid thousand-yard stare of a man who is trying very hard to be anywhere else in the world. Her glamour rolls off him, Dimitri can tell it's not working, can see the flicker of frustration in theset of her mouth, but she's giving it everything, pressing closer, bending to murmur something near his ear, her fingers walking up his chest toward his jaw.
Knox doesn't move. Doesn't flinch. Just stands there radiating discomfort so intense that Dimitri can feel it pulsing through the bond in waves.
And Dimitri's reaction to the scene is so immediate and so visceral that it takes him a moment to identify it.
It starts as irritation, which is expected. Then sharpens into something hotter and more territorial, which is not. He watches the succubus's fingers trace Knox's jaw and feels his own claws extend, just slightly, pressing into his palms, and the feeling beneath his sternum is not the bond pulling. It is something older and meaner and entirely his own, and it saysget your hands off him.
Then his next thought is the much more apt,What the fuck?
Dimitri recoils from the feeling so hard he nearly takes a physical step backward. No. Absolutely not. He has known this man for less than two hours. He does not get to feel possessive over an angelic Templar he didn't ask to be bound to, a Templar who tried to bless him to death, a Templar whose entire existence is an affront to everything Dimitri is. The feeling is the bond. It has to be the bond. Some residual territorial instinct hardwired into the connection, a side effect of the magic, nothing more. It is not his.
Knox casts a glance at him, confused, like he doesn’t understand the sudden irritation flickering across their bond. Dimitri glares at him, like it’s his fault, and the confusion deepens, which solves nothing. This is going to be a thing with them, isn’t it?
"There's a woman," Ruby says, drawing his attention back. "Calls herself Madame Vex. Runs an apothecary on the east side.She's old, she's powerful, and she doesn't ask questions." Ruby pauses. "She also doesn't work cheap."
"I'll manage."
"She doesn't take money, Dimitri."
