Masquerade (Vampires Realm Romance Series Book 10) (29 page)

He held her on him, unwilling to release her just yet, needing to feel himself inside her and know they were one in this moment. She was his.

He would let the world know that one day.

He kissed the top of her head and she sighed, settling against him, and he felt that she was finally succumbing to the lure of the sun. He would keep her safe, would hold her in his arms whilst she slept and watch over her. He would keep her by his side forever if she let him.

He would claim her as his mate.

One day.

T
ensions were running high in the mansion. Sophis had woken in Vivek’s arms early in the afternoon to find him watching her and stroking her hair. Had he watched over her the whole time she had been sleeping? Part of her liked the thought of that, the idea that he would remain awake guarding her, protecting her in case the hunters returned in the day as everyone feared. After an awkward moment in which she hadn’t been sure what to say to him, he had kissed her and smoothed away her fears with a soft sweep of his knuckles across her cheek. There had been so much love in his hazel eyes that she had been thankful that she couldn’t blush and had realised how Lilith and Prophecy felt whenever their mate looked at them like that. Loved. Cherished. Beautiful.

The most important thing in this man’s world.

So important that he would fight the day and stay awake to protect her.

He looked tired now as they sat in the rest room in the basement of the mansion, both dressed in their uniforms. Commander Tynan sat in one of the dark leather armchairs across the stone floor from them, thumbing through a stack of reports on his lap. He looked relaxed, but Sophis could see his tension in the lines beside his eyes and his lips. Vivek looked the same. Calm on the surface but the lines bracketing his mouth and the steely look in his eyes as he toyed with his dagger gave away his restlessness.

Sophis sat next to him on the faded leather couch, her booted feet on the seat and her knees drawn close to her chest. Her sword rested close to her, together with Vivek’s, within arm’s reach. They were all waiting.

The whole house was.

Most of its occupants were awake and the atmosphere was unbearable. The werewolves were patrolling the grounds and Sophis wished she could go out there too and find some freedom and air. The combination of the dozens of Watchmen now occupying the ground floor, resting wherever they could, and the more powerful lords and ladies and the Law Keepers, made the rooms where they were and those nearby oppressive for anyone her age, or even Vivek’s and older. It pressed down on her and Vivek so they had sought the basement. None of the lords and ladies would dare to come down to the guards and servants’ area of the house so she felt safe here. Only one of the Watchmen had made an appearance so far. Commander Winter had come down to hand Tynan the reports he was now leafing through. They were from the Law Keepers and were details of each vampire in the house and what they had said during the inquisition.

Vivek had stopped by the ballroom on their way down through the house. The servants were setting it up again for tonight’s masquerade, but Sophis wasn’t sure the peace would last that long. The sun was bright today, the sky cloudless. If the vampire hunters were going to attack, it would happen before sunset. They wouldn’t lose this chance. They would risk the werewolves and attack while she and her kin were vulnerable.

Tynan sighed and set his paperwork down on his knees. He leaned back into his armchair and Sophis zoned out as he started to talk to Vivek. It was all tactics. She could never focus when people were talking tactics. It bored her. She had tried to learn strategies and such things from Vivek when he had been training her but it had gone in one ear and out the other.

Vivek toyed with the dagger as he talked and she watched him, studying his quick movements and how precise they were. The dagger was sharp, gleaming under the strip lights, but his reactions were sharper. He twirled the blade around effortlessly, not even looking at it, his attention seemingly fixed completely on Tynan and their conversation.

“The hunters will be stronger this time if there is a second attack,” Tynan said, catching her attention, and she shifted her focus to him. The three other guards in the room were all younger than she was, two female and one male, and they stood at the same time, murmuring to each other, and left as one. She could understand why they didn’t want to be around to hear what Tynan was going to say, but they couldn’t deny the truth in it no matter how much they wanted to hide from it.

Vivek spun Aleksis’s dagger in his hand and frowned. “It won’t be the uninitiated like it was last night. They will send the hunters we saw in the city, and they all looked experienced. I only hope that Aleksis and Izabella show their faces this time.”

Tynan smiled. “They will, and we will be prepared for them.”

“They were scouting us last night, but they didn’t see all of our numbers before Lady Prophecy drove them back, and they might not know that we have more Watchmen here now. We have that advantage at least,” Sophis said and both men nodded in agreement.

“We will defeat them.” Vivek looked at her and she nodded, trying to push out the fear sneaking into her heart.

“You two seem very friendly with each other today,” Tynan said and neither of them responded. He turned his attention back to his reports, shifting the one on the top to the bottom, and his eyes didn’t leave the page when he spoke again. “Word reached me that you slept together... at the ball.”

Sophis went rigid and Vivek tensed beside her.

“Relax.” Tynan moved another page to the bottom of the pile. “I don’t intend to punish you. My informant gave me the intelligence on the basis that I would not.”

His informant?

Who had told him?

“You do not want to ask that question I can feel in your stare?” Tynan glanced across at her. “It must be burning on the tip of your tongue.”

“Commander Winter.” It could only be him. He was old enough to recognise both her and Vivek from signature alone. It didn’t feel right though. Why would he tell her commander about what he had witnessed when she could have revenge by telling the Law Keepers she had seen his affection towards a female werewolf?

Tynan shook his head, his Russian accent laced with amusement. “Close, but, as they say, no cigar.”

“Who then?” Vivek said and she sensed his concern.

Someone else had seen them. Someone from their bloodline? Ella sprang to mind. She had been in the grounds with the rest of the guard. It was possible she had seen them together in the maze, but they had been masked and everyone in the guard had been told they were patrolling the house. It couldn’t have been Ella.

Someone close to Commander Winter. The werewolf? No, she wouldn’t risk Sophis having revenge by informing the Law Keepers. Who else was close to the Validus Watchman?

“Lord Hyperion,” Vivek said and Sophis couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of him earlier. He had said at the meeting that he had been out in the mansion grounds at the time of the attack.

She buried her head in her knees and groaned. She hoped to the Devil that he hadn’t seen them in the maze and had only seen them exiting it close after each other when the attack had started. Just as Hyperion had recognised her at the meeting, he must have recognised Vivek from his scent too, or perhaps the smell of her all over him. Hyperion was old enough to smell that through all the blood that had been on Vivek.

Sophis recalled what Lord Hyperion had said to her at the ball and groaned again. He had known that she was in love with someone. Had he seen Vivek watching her and her looking for him?

“Lord Hyperion told me about what happened on the proviso you weren’t punished for what you had done. He quite eloquently told me that duty shouldn’t stand in the way of love, and that he had wanted to tell me so I didn’t hear it from a more malicious source, and was tempted to punish you. I won’t mention what he said he would do if I punished you for being in love. So how long have you been in love with each other?” The amusement in Tynan’s tone and expression sent Sophis into hiding again.

Vivek’s arm settling around her shoulders sent a jolt of surprise through her and she looked up at him. He smiled.

“Longer than I realised,” he said and she couldn’t contain her smile.

“Devil, I didn’t think he would actually be right about you two,” Tynan chuckled and shook his head. “I should punish you, you both know that don’t you?”

They nodded in unison.

“I accept any punishment you see fit. I ignored my duties and encouraged Vivek to do the same. I placed the masquerade guests in danger. I take full responsibility for it,” she said and Tynan raised a dark eyebrow at her.

“I take responsibility for my actions.” Vivek squeezed her shoulders. “I will face any punishment with Sophis.”

“Very diplomatic of you both, but I thought I made it clear I wasn’t going to punish you. I might give you both a hard time and some unsavoury duties that will annoy you, but it will go no further than that. You have learned your lesson and I don’t think you’ll do it again... well... I am horribly certain you will do
that
again but hopefully it won’t be at a ball when you were entrusted with guarding the lords and ladies.” Tynan drew a long breath and sighed as he leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. “You were there at the fight and that was all that mattered. The ball was safe and you wouldn’t have been able to stop the lords and ladies from flooding out into the fray and participating, just like you or anyone else won’t be able to talk sense into them if the hunters attack again... and it is not a bad thing. They are the most powerful of our kind and we need their help if we are to win.”

Tynan stood and cast a glance over them both.

“I think I have sufficiently embarrassed you both. Lord Hyperion would be proud of me.” He grinned and Sophis tracked him with her eyes as he walked out of the room humming to himself.

She really never wanted to see Lord Hyperion again. The Vehemens Law Keeper’s observation about him was right. Hyperion had developed a strange sense of humour over his long years of life. If she saw him again, he would probably say something that would embarrass her in front of everyone and some chilling sense of awareness was telling her that he might have seen more than just her and Vivek leaving the maze close together.

“Are you thinking what I am?” she whispered and leaned her head against Vivek’s chest.

“We weren’t alone in the maze.”

Sophis cringed and closed her eyes. She sat there with Vivek’s arm around her, trying to shake her desire to remain in the basement and hide until the other bloodlines had left. Vivek stroked her upper arm through her black uniform jacket.

“At least we are not being punished.”

They weren’t? It felt as though they were. How much had Lord Hyperion seen and how much had he told Tynan? She wanted to die at that thought, wished the couch would swallow her. She was never going to be able to look him in the eye again.

She sat there in silence for long minutes, slowly coming to terms with Hyperion knowing what they had done. It could have been worse. Someone else might have seen them and reported it to their lord rather than their commander. She didn’t know what would have happened if Ella or Seth had been the one to witness their moment in the maze. Ella might have reported them out of jealousy.

Sophis looked up at Vivek. “When I found you in the room with Ella the other night...”

Vivek smiled down at her. “Nothing has or would have happened between us. Ella came to me and sat on my lap bare seconds before you arrived and before I could remove her, you were storming into the room like a wild thing.”

He brushed his knuckles across her cheek, affection warming his striking hazel eyes.

“I have not been with another woman since that night over a decade ago when part of me realised how much I needed you... even before then... I did not realise it, but I have been in love with you for a long time and falling for you for longer than that.” He opened his hand and cupped her face, his fingers against the line of her jaw. He slowly tipped her head up and she parted her lips, inviting him in for a kiss. The touch of his lips on hers was soft this time, full of warmth and love that soothed away some of her fear.

When he ended the kiss, Sophis drew back and frowned. “In the maze, you told me not to leave you. I have dreams... nightmares... about the night—”

“So do I,” he whispered and smoothed his hand across her cheek to her throat, softly caressing it. The pain in his eyes said that he was telling the truth. That night haunted him too.

Sophis placed her hand over his, holding it to her throat, not wanting it to fall lower and come to rest on the scar on her burning side. It was hard enough to talk about this without him making her more aware of the pain she still carried because of that night.

“When I was—when you’re holding me in my nightmares, you tell me not to let go... you tell me not to leave you.” Her eyes searched his, her heart tight with anticipation of finally knowing whether that part was only real in her dreams or whether it had actually happened.

“And I meant it with all of my heart, Sophis,” he said and she warmed inside, glad that she hadn’t imagined that part and she had been right to believe in it and hope that things could change for the better between them. Vivek frowned and brushed his fingers over her throat, pain surfacing in his eyes as he stared into hers. “Holding you... seeing you like that... it killed me. It killed me that I had failed to protect you... that I had failed to realise my need for you and that I might never have the chance to tell you things that were so hard for me to say. I denied my feelings for you after that night because I wasn’t sure what to do. I turned them into some strange need to have you thrown out of the guard, covered them up and ran from them. I was so afraid that it would happen again if you continued as a guard... that I would be forced to watch you die and be unable to do anything to stop it. I am sorry... I do not deserve a second chance with you.”