Fated to My Vampire Lord novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Five Terms

In the car down to Hollowmere Tiernan lays out five terms and Willa makes her own: her friend Otis comes too; the Council chair summons them to the opera tomorrow for proof of the pairing.

The car was black and silent and smelled of cold leather.

Tiernan sat on the far side of the back seat with a whole seat's width of space between us.

He had not spoken since the gate of the Ridge closed behind us.

I held my right hand in my lap and kept flexing the fingers.

They were still warm.

"Terms," Tiernan said at last.

He did not turn his head.

"There are five, and I'll say them once."

"I'm listening," I said.

"One. We touch only when someone is watching."

"What counts as watched?"

"Anyone with eyes or a lens."

I nodded.

"Two. No biting. A bite seals a pairing under the Council's law, and I won't have it sealed by accident."

"Fine."

"Three. No feelings. I won't hold yours, and you won't hold mine."

I almost laughed.

"You have no feelings to hold, Lord Crowhurst."

"Then it will be easy for both of us."

His voice stayed level.

His name was at the bottom of every Renewal I had copied into the pack archive.

Three years of copies, and his signature sat under the same clause every time.

I had never asked myself what kind of man signs a page like that without reading it.

I wasn't going to ask now.

"Four," I said. "Mine."

His eyes moved to me for the first time.

They were pale grey and did not look tired, though it was nearly night.

"There's a man at the kitchen gate on the Ridge road," I said. "He comes with me."

"A wolf?"

"A human. Otis Goldsworthy, twenty-four. He's worked in the pack kitchen since he was sixteen, and he's the only person up there who ever brought me soup."

"Humans are not allowed to be moved between holdings without a Council permit."

"You're the Council's witness."

He looked at me a moment longer.

Then he pressed a button on the door and said to the driver, "Stop at the kitchen gate."

The car slowed.

Otis was standing in the headlights with a canvas duffel on his shoulder and flour on both sleeves.

He had his glasses pushed up on his forehead and a hand raised against the lights.

The driver opened the door, and Otis stared at the inside of a vampire's car.

"Hi," he said.

"Get in," I said.

"Did you know I watched it on the kitchen phone? You walked across the whole circle. The pot boiled over."

"Get in, Otis."

He climbed in beside me and shut the door.

Then he looked across me at Tiernan.

"Are you going to bite me?" Otis asked.

"Not today," Tiernan said.

"That's what the last guy said."

"Which last guy?"

"Nobody. There wasn't one. I panicked."

Tiernan's mouth did something small at one corner and went flat again.

It was not a smile.

I looked at it anyway.

"You will have your own room," he said to Otis. "You will be paid by my household at the same rate as my steward, and you may leave whenever you choose."

"Is that in writing?"

"It will be by morning."

"Okay," Otis said, and sat back.

"Five," Tiernan went on. "Either of us may end this at the one-year mark, with no explanations asked. Until then, you wear my name in public and I stand behind yours."

"I don't have a name."

"You have one for a year."

The car turned onto the wide road that went down into Hollowmere.

The city lay ahead of us, a long strip of lights beside a black river.

Vampires lived in all of it.

Somewhere in it was a house I was about to sleep in.

Tiernan's phone buzzed against his knee.

He read the screen, and his face did not change.

But the hand holding the phone went still in a way I would learn to recognize.

"The Council chair," he said. "She watched the broadcast."

"What does she say?"

"That she is delighted. That she wants to see us both at the Midnight Opera tomorrow night, in the Council's own box, in front of the whole city."

He lowered the phone.

"She wants proof of the pairing, Miss Bellegarde."

"I'm not a Bellegarde anymore," I said.

"No," Tiernan said. "Then you'll want to practice looking at me as if you would like to be."

Otis leaned forward and whispered in my ear.

"I'm going to need soup and a very long talk."

I put my hand over his.

It was warm, and so was mine.

Across from us, Tiernan's cool grey eyes watched that hand, and then he turned back to the window.

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