Rebel Obsession (21 page)
In only a short time, Io already felt that way about Miriam. Despite how quickly it had happened, the mating bond had formed a powerful tether to her before he had even realized it. If he had thought his cobalt addiction had been bad, he could already tell his withdrawal from losing Miriam would be devastating if the king took her away. His chest already ached. His nerves were raw, and he was about as fidgety as a crackhead who had just downed three shots of espresso. Miriam wasn’t just an addiction, she was an obsession.
He glanced at Sev, seeing his relationship to Arion differently now. Sev and Ari had only been following biology when they mated each other. They hadn’t had a choice. It wasn’t like Arion and Sev had chosen to be gay. Choice had nothing to do with it. Io could see that now. You loved who you loved. You mated who your biology chose for you.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Sev watched him out of the corner of his eye.
“Sorry, I was just….” Io sighed. “Shit, I’ve been an ass. I’ve been horrible to you and Ari. Fuck, man, but I’m sorry.”
Sev stiffened and his lips formed a tight seal as if he didn’t know what to say.
Io took another deep breath and looked out the window. For so long, he had been the resident gay-basher at AKM. Nobody had been more vocal about putting down homosexuals than he had. Sure, he still had some deep-seated discomfort, because…well, for one, he couldn’t just change overnight, and for another, the idea of a man pumping another man’s ass made him feel weird, but that was
his
hang-up. Other people didn’t have to live their lives according to his version of what he liked.
And Sev had made a good point last night. Io had no problem with two women together, so really, what was the big difference if two men were together?
So much had changed in the last twenty-four hours. He had already been second-guessing himself about how he had treated Ari, but now that he was mated, he was seeing things regarding Arion in an even broader light.
“Do you think Ari will forgive me?” Io spoke softly, cheeks burning. He looked in Sev’s direction but couldn’t meet his eyes. He had treated both of them so badly. After all Ari had done for him, Io hadn’t been able to see past his own prejudice and show support during a time when Ari needed him.
Sev cleared his throat. “I think so.”
“I mean, I’m still working shit out.” Io shifted uneasily. “It’s still weird to think of you and Ari, you know, fucking, but—”
Sev cut him off. “Why? Do you think about everyone like that? I mean, do you routinely think about Micah fucking Sam? Or Tristan fucking Josie? Or Trace fucking whoever he fucks?”
Io stiffened, swallowing nothing but cotton. His mouth was so damn dry. “No.”
“Then why would Ari and I be any different? You can hang out with us, come over and watch the game with us, and I promise we won’t drop down and fuck in front of you, Io.”
Io bowed his head and closed his eyes, rubbing his palm back and forth across his forehead. He was so messed up. “I guess I still have a ways to go before I’m cured of my problem, huh?” He was such an ass.
“Well, admitting you have a problem is a start.”
He had heard that before. In rehab. The first step toward recovery was admitting you had a problem. If you couldn’t, then you were just wasting everyone’s time. With cobalt, Io had known he had a problem by about a week in to his addiction. Still, it had taken him months to admit it, even when Arion had put up with his sorry ass day in and day out to keep him from killing himself.
“Do you?” Sev said.
“What?”
“Do you have a problem?”
Io met Sev’s gaze as they stopped at a red light. Did he? Where Sev and Ari were concerned, did he still have issues that needed to be addressed before he could truly say he was a recovered bigot and no longer walked around with a prejudiced shroud over his eyes? He nodded slowly, the same shame he had endured during his cobalt rehab overtaking him. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
Sev fought back a grin, but Io could still see something close to pride flicker across his face.
“What?” he said.
“Just you.” Sev turned back to front. “I wish it were Arion here with you instead of me. He really needs to hear what you just told me.”
Io shrugged and rolled his eyes, feeling about as pathetic as a shaved cat. “Well, if King Bain doesn’t kill me for mating his daughter, maybe I will.”
“My God. I never thought I’d see this day.” Sev hit the gas as the light turned green. “I know I’m still the new guy on the team, but I had you pegged as the resident playboy right from the start. A Grade A, chauvinistic, ass. I didn’t think I would ever really like you.” Sev chuckled and glanced at him. “But now? Look at you. I can’t believe you’re the same guy. Miriam’s been good for you, my man. Real good. I sure as hell hope this shit works out, because I’d hate to see you if it doesn’t.”
“Me, too.” Io looked out the window and took an uneasy breath, his sweaty palms pressing together as he fidgeted. “Me, too.”
He wondered if Miriam had made it home, yet. And whether or not she would ever be allowed out of the house again.
Miriam waved to Micah and Trace, who had followed her home, then she turned into the driveway. The security gate opened automatically, registering the tracking chip in her car. It closed behind her as she drove up to the house.
Trace had filled her in on the story he had implanted in the guards’ heads, so if she stuck with the script, she and Io should be okay. Everything depended on her keeping herself together, though. She reached her hand into her bag and palmed the bottle Io had given her, swallowing nervously. Hopefully, this would all work out.
She pulled her car into the garage and entered the house through the kitchen, a massive room where upwards of six chefs and countless assistants worked when her parents held parties for the liaisons, consultants, or other distinguished guests.
“Miriam!” Her father’s voice boomed from his office as she approached, and a moment later he barreled out the door into the hall.
He stood nearly seven feet tall, an imposing presence that intimidated others as much as his title did. But he had stopped intimidating her a long time ago. She was still a babe by vampire standards, but old enough for her to have grown a spine against her father.
“Father.” She stopped in front of him with her chin high, shoulders squared.
“Where have you been?”
She raised her eyebrows in mock-surprise and innocence. “Didn’t your lackeys inform you when they returned?”
“They returned without you in custody, and I had ordered them not to return without you.”
In custody. How nice. “Oh, so I’m a criminal? Am I to be a prisoner, too? Perhaps I should be fitted for my cuffs and shackles now. Would that work for you? I assume you’ve already added bolts and chains to my room’s décor.” She was pushing her luck, but who cared? Just being around her father made her skin prickle.
Couldn’t he just give her some damn space and ease up with the Gestapo brigade that followed her around as if she were an enemy spy?
Her father growled and Miriam could swear he wanted to slap her for her insolence. But that was one thing he never did. For all his barbaric ways, he never hit her.
“So, are you saying Donovan failed to relay where I’ve been?” Only she could be so insubordinate with her father. Not even her brother dreamed to talk back the way she did.
“I want to hear it from you. And I wish to know why they failed to retrieve you as I ordered.”
She heard a door close quietly down the hall. Probably her mother or one of the many servants hoping to avoid being struck by shrapnel if she and her father made like a P-51 Mustang and a Japanese Zero in a dog fight during World War II. “I was with one of the members of AKM.”
Her father’s entire face frowned, not just his eyes.
“I had overdosed—”
Her father pulled back and looked away as he always did when her cobalt use entered the conversation, as if avoiding her addiction would be enough to safely tuck the blemish on his family away and out of the public eye. She had only started using in the last two months, but after her infamous overdose two weeks ago, word had spread quickly throughout the vampire community despite her father’s attempts to quell the wildfire gossip. His liaisons and consultants weren’t even allowed to bring it up in conversation. It was as if he thought that if no one talked about it to him, it wouldn’t be true and would just go away.
“Yes, Father, I use cobalt!” She stepped forward, not to be ignored. “I shoot it up, I snort it, whatever it takes to give me my next high! I’m an addict, Father! And one way or another, you will have to deal with that!”
“ENOUGH!” Her father snarled and hissed as his fangs punched out in anger. “My daughter is not an addict!”
He couldn’t even address her in the second person. He spoke as if she were one of his consultants and his daughter was elsewhere while he discussed her.
“Yes, I am! I’m an addict! ME!” She slapped her hand against her chest, leaning forward.” Quit ignoring me! Quit ignoring my addiction! It’s real! You can’t pretend or ignore it away!”
He refused to meet her eyes, and she scoffed at him. If he felt so strongly that she was a disappointment as a daughter, he was just as disappointing as a father. To him, she was nothing more than another person to lord over. Curling her lip, she shoved past him.
“Did he touch you?” Her father said.
He—Io.
She stopped but didn’t turn around. “Yes.”
The air bristled with aggression.
“How?” he said, his voice a low growl.
“Well, it was either he touched me or Donovan would have brought me back here in a body bag. Or an urn if the sun came up before he found me. Which would you have preferred?”
He didn’t answer.
“Maybe you should think about thanking Io instead of killing him,” she said before striding away, her arms itching. Shit. Not home fifteen minutes and she already needed a hit. She had gone hours without suffering withdrawal at Io’s home, but in her own, she was jonesing right after walking through the door. The potion Io had given her wouldn’t last an hour at this rate.
Unable to contain his anticipation, Bishop slipped from his bed and wrapped his robe around him, tying it at the waist. He didn’t even bother with slippers and ended up slinking barefoot through the quiet hallways and rooms, into the kitchen, and further back to the metal door that led down to his underground lab. Quietly, he descended the stairs.
Milky splashes of light illuminated the shadows as he made his way past the tables and counters of equipment. Monitors hummed, and beeping noises occasionally sounded as the subjects remained monitored during the overnight. One technician stayed up to observe them, but remained in a detached room.
Bishop passed cell after cell of vampires. Some slept. Some rocked restlessly, and it looked like one had died. But he was interested in only one. His prize. Maddox.
When he had flown out over a week ago to meet the two vampires who he had been communicating with for over a year, he hadn’t expected to find such a valuable commodity. Bishop had gone into the meeting simply looking for another resource to add to his growing cache of suppliers and allies. The two vampires, Jacob and Haslet, reported having a powerful, ruthless assassin under their control, and when Bishop had inquired how they had managed that, they led him to the basement. Maddox had been lying in an induced coma on a makeshift medical bed that was much too short to hold him. Maddox’s feet had hung off the end.
“Who is he?”
Bishop had asked.
“The assassin’s father.”
Haslet had replied.
Apparently, Jacob and Haslet held Maddox’s safety over the assassin, threatening to kill him if the assassin refused to do as they instructed. The assassin—neither of them would tell Bishop his name—had lost a brother and his mother centuries ago. All he had left was his father, and from the sound of it, the assassin would do anything to ensure his father didn’t come to harm.
“And what of this assassin? Will he work for me?”
Bishop had been eager to employ the services of such a weapon.
“If we tell him to, he’ll do anything we ask,”
Jacob told him.
“Tell me about him.”
“The assassin?”
“Yes.”
“What’s there to say? He’s a mixed-blood with extraordinary talents.”
Bishop had perked up at the mention of a mongrel. And that was when the seeds of an idea had begun to form. He had searched for a vampire like Maddox for a long time. He’d known upon seeing him that he wanted him for his own, but learning that his son was a mixed-blood caused his interest to spike beyond mere wanting. Whatever it took, Bishop would obtain Maddox.
“Sell him to me.”
Bishop nodded toward Maddox as he made the demand.
“What?”
Jacob exchanged glances with Haslet, who held up his hand as if to calm him.
“How much will you pay?”
Haslet seemed more ready to deal than Jacob.
“Whatever it costs.”
The two exchanged glances again, dollar signs lighting up in their eyes.
“Ten million dollars.”
Haslet suggested.
A mere drop in the bucket of Bishop’s hefty cash reserves, and well worth spending for such a fine specimen.
“Done.”
Both Jacob and Haslet gasped.
“On one condition.”
Bishop held up his finger at them
. “His son, the assassin, is not to find out.”
If they were using Maddox to keep him under control, and Bishop ended up wanting to employ the assassin’s services down the road, keeping him in the dark about his father’s transfer to Bishop was necessary.
“How do we pull that off?”
Jacob asked.
“Not my concern. Just make sure he doesn’t.”
