Her midnight-blue hair with its streak of glowing white fell past her shoulders. High cheekbones, full lips, long lashes that still looked absurd on a face that hard. Even in plain first-year fatigues, she looked like something the world had been trying to make for a very long time and had finally gotten right.
Give my girl a pair of heels and she’d be the tallest person on the continent.
The sight of her soothed something feral in me.
I strode to the exit of the cabin before the train fully stopped. Nodded at the commanders as they descended. Nodded at Aelindor, who returned it with his usual coolness.
And then Max stepped out.
She took my hand. Her face flushed, her palm warm against my cool skin. She didn’t love the spotlight, but she didn’t flinch from it.
Every officer on that platform was taken aback by my discard of protocol. I didn’t give a fuck. Max Morning was mine in every way I hadn’t yet been able to make official, and I was done performing indifference in front of an assembly.
Then Caspian’s arm went around her shoulders. He undermined me as he always did, and every word I’d prepared to say to her dissolved.
That fucking wolf.
Max went backto her barracks. We’d told her to take the day off, as she’d earned it ten times over.
I returned to the Sanguine Tower and resumed the chess game, righting the pieces I’d knocked over days ago, willing myself to stay in the chair.
I needed to give her space, even though I was so hungry for her that I’d thrown protocol out the window just to stand at the platform.
And I hadn’t sent for her. I hadn’t even hinted.
I stood at the window, staring at the compound without seeing it, my glass of wine gone warm in my hand.
The other heirs had had her for days.
Tonight should be mine. My time with Max.
I heard her before I sensed her, the light footfall of her boots in the hallway, hurried yet hesitant. She wasn’t sure.
My heart rate climbed. A vampire’s heart doesn’t race. It’s one of the few reliable facts about my kind: even in pitched battle, even draining an enemy dry in seconds, our pulse stays low. Controlled. Dead, some called it.
I’d never corrected them.
Until now.
My heart climbed with every step she took toward my door.
The ward recognized her and disengaged before she knocked. The door swung inward, and she walked through it without breaking stride, scanning the room the way she always did—exits, threats, distance to each. A slave’s habit. A soldier’s training.
She pulled up when she spotted me by the window, and for a moment neither of us spoke. The glee sparking in those midnight eyes delighted me more than anything.
She looked stunning even in a plain shirt and dark trousers. There wasn’t a trace of the journey left on her now, just her own scent, clean like sunlight and dark like a secret. She’d showered in the women’s common bath.
Poise, Nikolai. Poise.
I kept my position at the window. Put the wine glass down on a side table. Gave myself a generous count of seven.
If I rushed this, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from carrying her to my bed and burying my cock deep inside her, my fangs sinking into her throat. That had been the fantasy when she wasn’t around, the one I replayed in the dark, the one that left me hard and restless and furious with want.
I strolled toward her with the best smile I could come up with.
“There you are.”
“Nikolai. Hello.” She smiled back.