Gypsy Origins (Page 4)

“What?”

Going off her tone, I’d swallow the honesty back down if I could. Little late now. The damn bitch cat is out of the bag now.

“Idun can’t die, and it’s doubtful anyone besides Arion will ever rally for her to be raised. She’s overdue by ten or eleven years—”

“Lemon said five,” she says as she turns around, not sounding quite as cold, as I brush my hand over her cheek.

“It’s a terribly complex and archaic calendar system, but I’m certain it’s a full decade overdue. Anyway, Arion randomly came up championing for you, and then said he didn’t care if Idun is raised.” My eyes flick over hers. “I thought you were Idun. I thought she’d found a way out of her hole and had come back to destroy us even more than she already has.”

“I still feel like I’m in the middle of the story. Now I feel like I’m in the middle of someone else’s story,” she says on a frustrated sigh.

“If it is the middle, I hope like hell the next half is better than the first,” I state in a flippant tone. My gaze drags across her crumpled features. “It could be off to a damn good start if you give me a pass on this terrible mistake and try to understand where I was coming from.”

“I’d need to know more about Idun before making that decision.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, frowning when she still seems annoyed.

She yanks open the door I’ve stopped guarding.

She steps out before I think to stop her, and she halts me from following…with her next words.

“If she’s really so terrible, then why did you think I was her?” she asks so sadly, just before she turns and walks away.

My gaze stays on her back as she walks down the driveway, her van nowhere in sight.

A car pulls up and idles, and I spot Lemon behind the wheel. The wolf keeps her eyes lowered, likely reading this situation or just knew I’d bloody well fuck it up worse than I’d already fucked it up.

I slam the door and run a hand through my hair. Frustrated, I go to pick up my phone to plan a damn party.

I genuinely used to be really damn good at this.

“Apparently I’m only fucking irresistible when I host parties these days. I’m the motherfucking charmer of the lot,” I add a little sullenly, talking to myself because no one else cares I exist. “Women used to throw themselves at me and beg for my attention.”

I drop my head and close my eyes, exhaling harshly, as my mind flits back to a time when I wasn’t so forgettable. I never had to work so hard back then.

I never met a gypsy—man or woman—who couldn’t be charmed by me, just because my name was so powerful among our people.

I gave all that up for a soul-sucking bitch, who still haunts me from her undead grave.

Chapter 3

VIOLET

Staring ahead of me, I can’t decide if I want to knock on the door or drive away. Damien was less helpful and more confusing than I expected.

I’ll deal with processing all that later. Not now.

Arion, however, has an agenda. He’s just that kind of man. It’s easy to tell the longer you’re around him, and the more I remember of my time with him as Ace. He’s calculated. He strung me along in a way that still leaves me feeling ridiculously gullible—even more so than what’s normal.

I don’t particularly like Idun right now, and I don’t even know her or what exactly it is she’s done. Just ominous wording and vague references to her leave me feeling a little annoyed that Damien was convinced I was her.

It makes me wonder what exactly Arion is thinking, but I don’t feel like dealing with him.

So I stare at the door from my spot in the driveway, knowing Shera will answer, since the housekeeper has been missing since Arion’s return. That leaves me all kinds of upset about other things—I’ve kissed him, and I know he’s killed people.

My knee bounces in my van, as I finally make the decision to get out, and the door opens before I even reach it. Shera gives me a bored look.

“Arion is busy. Are you going to ask me what happens to vampires in sunlight and try to lure me to my death so you can slip by?” she asks me as she crosses her arms over her chest.

My lips purse. “Do vampires die in sunlight? I thought I saw you in—”

She steps out into the streak of sunlight, flinches, and steps into the shadows.

“Not the burn you were hoping for, I’m sure. But it doesn’t feel great during the brightest times without the right SPF. Nothing electrical will be near me, and I’m not turning my back on—”

“Actually, I came to speak to you,” I say in interruption.

She narrows her eyes on me for a second. “Okay. Let me put on some tea.”

With an abrupt change in her mood, she ends her rant and turns to walk inside. I follow behind the vampire, deciding to pay close attention to everything that goes in my tea.

A shudder passes through me at the thought of her mixing in blood.

Her back is to me, even though she said it wouldn’t be, and I almost feel as though she’s testing me. I’m not that stupid.

We end up in a very small, somewhat adorable type of kitchen with retro appliances. She shuts the door behind me, and then she moves through the unique space that’s decorated with large pastel flowers here and there.

“This is Arion’s kitchen?” I ask incredulously.

“Of course not. He likes all things shiny and modern. He has an entire room full of computers, and I’ve had to turn a technical support guy just to have one on hand to teach him everything about it.”

I pause halfway to lowering myself to a chair and just sort of gape at her, while she primly carries on, collecting a blue teapot from the flowery cabinet.

She stumbles to a halt, blinks, and then gives me a dry look when she sees my stupefied horror.

“Like the tech guy didn’t jump at the chance to live for all eternity, so long as he avoids the pointy end of sharp, wooden objects. He also makes triple what he was making in his cubicle. And now he’s a vampire. Vampires are sort of still all the rage,” she goes on. “Makes useful recruiting so much simpler than it once was.”

I’m not really sure what to say to that, but I finally finish sitting down in a flowery painted chair.

“This is my kitchen,” she goes on, gesturing around. “I prefer to have my own space in all our houses.”

“All your houses? Like you and Arion…when you’re not with Isiah?”

She snorts derisively, carrying on with the task of preparing tea. “Hardly. Isiah is mine, but I share him with Arion’s sister, Emily, when she’s in the mood for him. She’s a little…strange. He loves her, though. And I love him.”

It sounds so sad, but she just sort of states it like it’s the perfect setup—loving a man in place of someone he loves but only gets on occasion.

“I threaten his position too much, and even though Emily is an alpha, she has no desire to rule her own nest. She just sort of travels and fucks and gets wasted, and then she loves him for a while, before she returns to her cycle once she realizes he’s simply not enough.”

“I take it you want your own nest?” I guess, trying to do Shera-version of girl talk, since I think that’s what this is.

“No. I want to stay here and beta rule Arion’s nest, and Isiah wants to take it away from me because he wants me and him and Emily to live his version of happily-ever-after with a nest the size of this one…with Emily at the helm. It’s all rather elaborate, and it’s simply too tiresome to consider.”

It’s almost laughable how primly she discusses this as she puts her apron on the second the pot starts to whistle.

I really need more caffeine than I’ve had. My mind can’t handle this madness right now.

“I like running this nest. It’s harder for a female vampire beta to establish dominance. I rarely have to fight to prove my worth anymore, and Arion shows me favoritism because he essentially raised me since my turning.”

She moves the pot to the stand on the center of the table. Next she goes back to collect the tray she’s been preparing on the side, her hostess mannerisms making this conversation completely weirder than it already is.

I feel like we’re in a sixties version of a vampire family drama sitcom right now.

“Sure, I had a small crush on Arion in the beginning,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand, as she takes a seat and pours the hot water over the tea bags.

“It was sort of hero-worship, since he raided a nest of the unregistered vampires, who’d turned me and used me for the first year of my new life,” she adds matter-of-factly.

A knot forms in my stomach as she continues.

“Arion took five of us out of there, registered us, and killed all the ones who’d harmed us. He gave me a position in his House as a kitchen maid before he learned I was a vampire gypsy freak with a special gift. It’s a small gypsy family that never had much clout like the top six,” she goes on. “He trained me personally then, took me under his wing, and now I’m everyone’s favorite vampire beta. Or at least I was.”

She pushes my tea toward me, and I take it, as she sits back.

“Isiah is his favorite because of how good he treats his sister when she comes back from one of her decade-long—or century long—vacations. I’m his second favorite. If Emily is my alpha, I’ll be her second favorite as well, but I’ll lose Isiah eventually if she decides to go through with starting her own nest. Each time she talks about it, the more serious it sounds like she’s considering it.”