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Odhran took a step forward, but I placed a hand on his forearm, stilling him as I moved between him and Kane and went nose to nose with the vampire bastard.
Otherworld males were all big assholes, all normally over six-and-a-half feet tall and heavily muscled, built to protect their females and young—if so lucky to have either.
So if Kane wanted to play with fire, I was more than willing to scorch him to the fucking ground.
But the prick didn’t make a move, just stared me in the eyes with that stupid fucking grin on his face. After a long moment he chuckled deeply and stepped aside. Sebastian opened the door and pushed it wide open. The brothers stepped back even more to let us enter, their dark eyes penetrating and missing nothing.
I stepped inside and felt Odhran move in close behind me, my silent shadow, my enforcer in all ways that mattered and counted. I knew he’d come to the States with me to give me moral support but also to use his brutal strength if need be. And I appreciated the hell out of him.
I focused on the room before me and wasn’t surprised to see the disgusting display of wealth in Adryan’s office. I didn’t bother acknowledging when the door was shut and I sensed Kane and Sebastian closing all of us in together. I looked over my shoulder and let a smile curve the corner of my mouth, letting the brothers know that if I really wanted out, they were the last things I was worried about going through.
I faced forward again and took in the long stretch of black, polished wood that made up Adryan’s desk. I could’ve snorted in amusement at the few items littered on top. A fucking paperweight, a stack of folders off to the side, a corded phone.
It was humorous that Adryan tried to take on this image of some kind of businessman, and although he was, in the human sense, the fucker delegated all that shit to others.
In reality he probably laid his victims out on that table and drained them dry as if they were a meal on a massive dinner plate.
I knew things with vampires were different in this modern age, not like how they used to be centuries ago, where they crept in the dark and drank human blood shamelessly. They couldn’t do that shit now, not with cell phones and social media. The threat of people finding out about the Otherworld was too great, even if many things could be “explained” as altered pictures and videos.
I knew Adryan’s sister, Luna, didn’t drink from humans, but instead our king had a direct line to a blood bank and made sure to get his mate all the fresh sustenance she needed. But Adryan? Yeah, the asshole wouldn’t live off blood contained in a bag, that was for damn sure.
The sound of Adryan’s dark leather chair turning around slowly drew me out of my thoughts. The vampire leader’s body was big, dwarfing the colossal piece of furniture. And as I stared him in his eyes, I knew for a fact that the bastard was tapping it right from the fucking source.
His grin was slow and self-satisfied, as if this was some kind of fucking reunion he’d been counting the days down to. He ran a hand over his dark goatee, his teeth a flash of straight whiteness amid the trimmed dark hair. He leaned back farther, and the leather chair creaked as he lifted his hands and clasped them behind his head.
His plain white T-shirt stretched over his massive chest and thick biceps, and I arched a brow at the very clear outline of a piercing in his left nipple. I didn't know why I was surprised. I bet the sick fuck had his cock pierced too.
Adryan seemed like he’d be into a lot of unconventional things. He didn’t have a mate, so I knew he wasn’t physically intimate with any females, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a sadist. I sized him up, neither one of us speaking. Yeah, he was a sadist all right. The fucker liked inflicting pain too much.
“Well shit,” he said and grinned wider, his fangs very long and white. “If I knew wolves were coming to town, I would’ve thrown a party.”
I heard Odhran make a deep, annoyed sound in the back of his throat, but he stayed otherwise silent, letting me lead.
“It wasn’t a planned trip,” I said plainly. No one in the room moved, the tension thick, the air suffocating with male Otherworld alphaness.
Adryan said nothing as he leaned forward and braced his forearms on his table, his grin still in place before his expression sobered. He reached toward a small onyx skull, the top part open. I noticed pieces of candy filling the depressed part of the skull. Fucking red Jolly Ranchers.
He picked one up and unwrapped it, never taking his focus off me. He popped the hard candy into his mouth and leaned back again, one hand braced on the arm of the chair, his other forearm on the table as he drummed his fingers against the tabletop.
The room was so thick in silence the sound of him moving that small rectangle piece of fucking candy around his mouth grated on my nerves.
“You ever have a Jolly Rancher?”
I lifted a brow. “What?”
“Jolly Ranchers. Hard little fuckers that are nothing but sugar but so damn good. Well, only the watermelon ones.” He grinned again. “They are my weakness.”
“The only one ye got, eh.” I didn’t phrase it like a question, because I couldn’t tell if what Adryan said was true. He was so full of shit the majority of the time, with a brutal and savage reputation to follow.
He chuckled dark and low but said nothing, just the clack-clack-clack sound of him moving that chunk of hard sugar around in his mouth, butting it up against his teeth and fangs.
“Heard you got yourself a little human female, Scot.”
The wolf in me stirred even more at the very mention of her on the fucker’s lips. I didn’t realize I was growling until Odhran stepped closer to me, his body poised to fight.
“Damn. Is this what finding a mate does to a male?” He cocked a dark eyebrow. “Don’t know if I want to stay the fuck away from all that, or want to table in some masochism and try it out.”
There was something off about his voice, this tightness to his words. I tipped my head to the side as I stared at him and tried to sift through the scents, trying to understand the leader of the American Vampire Clan.
