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“Gross. Messy.”
“I promise I’ll lick it off,” Angel quirked a brow. And just thinking about his mouth and tongue on me made my dick twitch, trying to come back to life.
“Ugh. Too soon. Give me a few minutes.”
“Immortal doesn’t mean energizer bunny libido?”
“Apparently not. I want a refund.”
“No takebacks,” Angel said.
“You’re stuck with me.”
“Forever,” he agreed, as if unbothered.
“You’re going to regret saying that,” I warned. “You’re going to want those words back.”
“Never,” he said, and I believed that too.
I snuggled into his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart under my ear. Real. Whole. With a renewed purpose, even if it only meant living for this beautiful man and all the chaos that came from us being together.
52
JUDE
Rook escorted us the following morning to a new office per Sergeant Hanna’s request.
Since we’d been given an entire day of rest, I dressed and followed my boyfriend—husband, fiancé, whatever—to the vehicle, with Wade in tow. Rook, the hulking werewolf with salt-and-pepper hair and muscles that rivaled any cartoon superhero, looked entirely too comfortable in the plush seat as he drove us from our building, across a sketchy part of Minneapolis, and through the Veil to another section of merge.
What looked like an office building from the human side became a castle when we crossed. Hanna had sent a message the night before. Brief, as always.
CVED. Cross-Veil Enforcement Division. New headquarters. Be there at 0900. Don’t be late.
I’d stared at the acronym for a long moment. Cross-Veil Enforcement Division. It had a nice ring to it. Official. Permanent. Like we were actually building something instead of just surviving. Seeing the building now brought a whole new meaning to “come to the dark side”.
“Holy fuck,” I remarked as the spires towered over us. Angel sat beside me, pressed hip to thigh, as if he didn’t want space, watching with interest.
“Isn’t that the eastern vampire court?” Wade wondered from his seat behind us in the giant SUV.
Rook grunted. “Was.”
“It’s not a vampire court anymore?” I asked, as if I knew what that was. A place for vampires to judge cases or some aristocratic thing? They didn’t seem to need a place to do either, it was just part of their personality.
“Hanna decided it was time for new management.” His gaze flicked our way in the rearview mirror. The roads on this side were less paved and more cobbled rock, which made the ride rough. “Even vampires listen to dark fae.”
I filed that away for later. Hanna had ousted the vampires from their own seat of power and turned it into the new headquarters. It reminded me of what Angel had told me the first day we’d met—Hanna was the scariest thing I’d ever meet from across the Veil. After saving the world from a giant blob of a changeling who’d been trying to eat everything, I’d have thought maybe not. But ousting vampires? I was not about to question the size of her balls.
Angel’s hand found mine, squeezing gently. I glanced at him. He looked calm, or as calm as anyone could look while riding through a nightmare dimension. But I knew him well enough to see the tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes kept scanning the shadows outside.
The vehicle pulled in through a giant gate, following a circular drive until it stopped before a building off to the side of the center castle entrance, this one filled with obsidian windows. Our team peppered the steps, in different stages of getting out of vehicles, greeting each other, and seeming hesitant to enter.
Victor stood near the door, looking aloof and annoyed, though his grump eased a little when our vehicle stopped and Angel opened his door.
CVED was printed on the outside of the building. But something about it felt like glamour, so I let my vision shift to stare at it.
Bad idea.
The threads hit me like a fist to the face. I blinked back tears at the blinding array of them.
