We nodded silently, trudged through unplowed snow—thicker here than in Hyde Park, probably because we were closer to Towerline—and into the lobby.

The reception desk was empty, but light and sound blared from a small room beside it. Canned laughter echoed out from a late-night sitcom.

We dusted off as much snow as we could, walked to a seating area on the other side of the room. The hotel was small, the lobby prettily decorated but showing signs of wear—chipped baseboards, threadbare furniture, worn floors.

My grandfather took a seat first, gestured to us. “Why don’t you four talk through what you need to talk through, and then we’ll discuss the details?” Nonplussed by the possibility, he pulled out his phone, began scanning the screen. “I’ll just do a little reconnaissance.”

We left Mallory and Catcher to their own conversation. I was going to have a hard enough time dealing with Ethan; I certainly didn’t need two alpha males in a single argument.

We stood in the elevator bank, the doors of three of four elevators opened like maws waiting to be filled.

Ethan paced to one end of the short hallway, then back again, his gaze focused on me like a predator scenting prey. “You will not hand yourself over to a monster.”

“Ethan—”

But he took a step toward me, emerald fire in his eyes. “I am your husband, and your friend, and your lover. And I am also a soldier. I am a vampire. I am a monster, in no small part.” The emerald shifted, transmuted to quicksilver—one element battling another. “And if I must show them that in order to protect you, I will. Should it come to that, God have mercy on their souls. Because I will have none.”

“You know that I have to do this.” I lifted my chin. “And you know that I can do this.”

“She will kill you.”

“She will try. I won’t let her. Mallory won’t let her. She’s a supernatural, just like the rest of us. And she is a narcissist.” I lowered my voice, trying to make him understand. “She will destroy Chicago if she gets the chance, Ethan. Even if worse came to worst, my life is a small price to pay for that city.”

“There are other options.”

“Name one.”

Heat flared in his eyes again, and he took a step backward, put distance between us. “I want to both throttle you and lock you away.”

“You could try it.”

He looked back at me, eyebrow arched imperiously, a challenged king. “You think I couldn’t best you?”

We’d fought each other before, battled too many times to count. We’d both won battles, lost them. But that didn’t matter now. I walked away, giving myself some room, then looked back at him. “I know you’re torn, and I know why, because I know you.”

His face was still drawn with irritation, but he lifted his brows.

“On the one hand, I’m your family, your life. You love me, and you’re drawn to protect me. That’s who you are. And on the other, I’m your Sentinel, and your partner. You know that I’m skilled because you trained me, and you wouldn’t have allowed any other result. And you’ve helped me be brave, and that makes you proud.”

He still looked irritated, but I thought that was because he knew I was right. And I was.

“That’s our dynamic,” I said. “That’s our life. You’re going to be proud, and you’re going to be worried. And the same goes for me, because if you’d had your way—and the voting hadn’t been rigged—you’d be King of All Vampires, and I’d have to worry about coups d’état and assassinations.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “If the voting hadn’t been rigged?”

“Obviously it was rigged. You scored higher than Nicole, and you saved her life. Little wonder, since she’s the one who set up the voting in the first place.”

He just stared at me.

“Did you think I hadn’t figured that out?”

“You never mentioned it.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t want you setting yourself up for assassination. But look at the evidence—vampires decide to leave the Greenwich Presidium and she wants to be their leader, so she sets up an ‘election’ that pits you against her. And yeah, you have enemies, but enough to decide to vote her, a weaker vampire, into a position of authority? No. She wins, which is what she wanted all along. But she made it look like a democratic process, and then says the vote was close. So everybody thinks the vote was fair and that she was the democratic choice. She wins both ways.”

Something flashed in his eyes. “She rigged the votes. She was required to hold the electoral data, which we obtained. Jeff analyzed it for me.”

“And didn’t spill a word to us.”

Ethan smiled. “He’s good and reliable.”

“So she stuffed the ballot box.” I nodded, thinking it through. “We’d wondered how it was done.”

“We?”

“The guards.”

Ethan blinked. “Luc knew?”

“Of course.” I smiled at him. “You hired canny vampires, Ethan, unless you forgot. And to come full circle, you’d have been head of the GP, and I’ve have worried about you more. Instead, I worry about you the usual amount, and I know you’re capable of handling yourself—at least when you aren’t stepping in front of stakes for me.”

“Well worth it,” Ethan said, inching closer and wrapping his arms around me. The tension had left his body, but the magic still prickled. “You are uniquely skilled at diffusing my anger. Malik, as well, but with a very different energy.”

“I should hope so, as your wife and his would likely object.” I leaned up, pressed my lips to his. “I love you, Ethan. And I appreciate that you worry, that you’re concerned enough about me to do so. I won’t tell you to stop—as that wouldn’t be fair. But we have a good team, and you’ve trained me well. The rest of it—life, immortality, safety. None of that is guaranteed, even if I was House Librarian.”

He chuckled. “You’d have grown bored, Sentinel. Books should be your respite, not your prison.”

It had taken time for me to understand that was true, but I understood it now. “You’re right. And kicking bad-guy ass is so much more satisfying. If we’re going to survive, if Chicago’s going to survive, we have to do what scares us.”

“Last night, a lot seemed to scare you.”

“Yeah, it does. But that’s life, right? Isn’t that what you taught me? To be scared, but do the thing anyway?” I paused. “This doesn’t change anything about our conversation last night. If anything, doesn’t it prove I was right? That we’d bring a child into a world that’s not only dangerous for her, but everyone she cares about?”

“I could throttle your father,” he said, teeth bared. “I could throttle him for what he did to you.”

“The fact that you were assassinated in front of me doesn’t help.”

He growled, put a hand on my chin. “I intend to have you both.”

I didn’t mean to smile, didn’t mean to make light of the fire and emotion in his eyes. But the sheer “alphaness” of it tickled me. “The child isn’t even here yet, and you’re already overprotective.”

The mask of anger dropped incrementally.

“Does it matter that I said I wouldn’t hand you over to her?”

I put a hand on his cheek. “I’m not anyone’s to be handed over, or to be accepted. Mallory and I are volunteering for an op that might end Sorcha’s reign tonight. That’s not an opportunity I intend to pass up. And look at it this way: We are inherently more capable than the mayor and her cabal of bureaucrats.”

“So I shouldn’t consider you prey—I should consider you hall monitors?”

I grinned at him. “Exactly. But minus the teacher’s-pet overtones.”

“I believe we’ve just crossed into some personal territory.”

“Possibly.” I smiled at him. “Now that we’ve gotten the ego and bravery parts done with, can we talk about how truly and terribly bad this plan is?”