There were fancier things in the drawers—silk lingerie so delicate it felt like liquid between my fingertips, lacy and strappy things that weren’t built for comfort, but to excite. I couldn’t say I was feeling especially amorous, not with Caleb Franklin on my mind. I was feeling emotionally exhausted by supernatural drama.

The apartment door opened, closed, locked. Ethan appeared around the doorway, a leather portfolio in hand. He put it on the desk and glanced through the apartment, looking for me.

“Feeling indecisive?” he asked with a smile.

“Unsettled.” I pulled out a Cadogan tank, matching bottoms, placed them on the bed. Ethan had branded the House from top to bottom and everywhere in between. It wouldn’t have surprised me much to wake up one evening and find an inked “C” on my biceps. “I didn’t expect you to come up so early.”

“I decided I could also use a break.” Ethan walked closer, eyebrows drawn together in concern. “You’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Just tired and frustrated.”

His body tensed. Not much, but then I was attuned to it—and his moods—more than most. “Frustrated? About what?”

“About everything.” I walked back to the bed, sat down. “Ethan, every time we turn around, somebody wants to kill us, control us, put us out of business, put the Pack out of business. I guess I’m feeling burned out.”

He walked closer, pressed a kiss to my forehead. “You aren’t the only vampire to have these feelings.”

I looked up at him. “Oh?”

“Many Novitiates, many staff, have talked to me about their frustration, their fear, their stress.” He sat beside me, hands clasped in his lap. “We lived unmolested for many years before Celina decided to announce us. If we’d stayed quiet and let others handle the problems that arose, we wouldn’t have drawn as much attention. But we did. And so we face the consequences of our caring.”

And wasn’t that a kick in the ass? “I know,” I said. “It’s just . . .” I groped for words, pulled up my legs to sit cross-legged, and glanced at him. “I don’t want our child to grow up in a world like the one we’re facing right now. Where every night is a new battle.”

No vampire child had ever been carried to term, but Gabriel believed Ethan and I would change that, but only after we suffered some kind of unspoken “testing.”

Ethan’s expression went hot with protectiveness. “When the time comes, he or she will want for nothing, will know no fear, and will be protected by both of us.”

There was a ferocity in his eyes that surprised me. Not because I doubted he’d be a good father; to the contrary, it was easy to imagine him holding a child, protecting a child. But he’d been as surprised as I was when I told him about Gabriel’s prophecy. He’d come around.

And speaking of the prophecy, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his. “We’ve got an hour before dawn. What would you like to do?”

My seduction game was on point.

“Fantasy football?”

Before I could even blink at the suggestion, which was bizarre coming from him, he pounced, covering my body with his and pinning me onto the mattress. The weight of him, of his sculpted and toned body, felt like a miracle.

“I don’t actually plan to immerse you in fantasy football,” he whispered, his lips tracing a line across my neck, his long and skilled fingers becoming acquainted with the knot in my robe.

“No,” I said, while I could still form words. “I don’t imagine you did.”

“Although the fantasy part—” he began, but before he could finish, his mouth was on mine again, teasing and inciting, igniting the slow burn that sent magic trickling across my skin and seemed to electrify the air.

“The fantasy part is well within my wheelhouse,” he finished, and set out to prove it.

CHAPTER FIVE

TO THE VICTOR GO THE SPOILS

We’d developed a dusk routine. Ethan would wake first and get ready for his day; I’d wake groggily to find him in an immaculate suit, already groomed and golden and ready to take on the night. We were both vampires and should have had the same reaction to the sun’s setting, but he always managed to wake before I did.

Tonight, the bathroom door was closed, the shower running. Maybe he hadn’t completely beaten me this evening.

I stretched and sat up, reached out to check my phone, and found a waiting message from my grandfather: DNA CHECK OF FRANKLIN WOUNDS—NO MATCH IN SYSTEM.

So our bearded vampire wasn’t a known criminal, or at least not one who’d ended up with his biological bar code in the CPD’s databases.

There was also a message from Luc confirming that Jeff had sent the photographs of the alchemical symbols, and one from Mallory confirming that she and Catcher had enjoyed a night of raucous monkey sex. So no backsliding there, however unlikely that might have been. Good for them.

The final message was directly from Jeff—a grainy image of the vampire who’d killed Caleb Franklin. You couldn’t see his face, but his approximate height, weight, color, and build were clear enough, as was the beard that covered the lower half of his face. Again, I had the sense of vague familiarity but still couldn’t place him. I’d run into hundreds of vampires in the year I’d been one; it could have been anyone.

As much as I wanted to avoid it, because I had responsibilities, I sent the photograph to Jonah. It was the first communication I’d had with him in a couple of weeks, since the party at Cadogan House we’d used to trap the vampire pretending to be Balthasar, the monster who’d made Ethan. He’d been edgy then, so I hadn’t followed up. As far as I was concerned, he and the RG were the ones with the issues. If they wanted to talk to me, they knew where to find me.