Fated to My Vampire Lord novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Daylight

Tiernan's POV

I did not wait for moonrise.

At six in the morning I stood in the garage with the keys in my hand and Otis's glasses in my pocket.

Keeley had written a time, and I did not trust it.

"Sit down, Tiernan," said my grandmother.

She stood in the doorway of the garage with her stick planted in front of her.

"I am going to the Ridge."

"You are going to be roasted. The road is open from the gate to the pines, and the sun is up in an hour."

"Then I will be fast."

"You will be a pile of ash, and your wolf will find you on the gravel."

She did not raise her voice.

"I will tell you my price, since you are about to ruin yourself without hearing it."

I waited.

"I will give you the covered car and keep the Council's guard off your road if you keep your seat," she said.

"I did not sit in that hall for fifty years so you could be bartered to a rival House."

"And?"

"Bite her, Tiernan. Seal it. Then nobody on the Council can touch what you have."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it is a term," I said, "and it is hers to break. Not yours, not the Council's, and not mine."

She looked at me a long time.

"You have grown a spine in one month," she said. "I do not know if I like it."

I took the other car, the one without the shutters.

I drove it out of the gate as the sky went grey.

The first of the sun came over the hill at the third bend.

It hit the back of my hand on the wheel and the skin blistered at once.

I put my sleeve over it and kept going.

It hit my neck, and my face.

I smelled myself burning.

At the fifth bend I could not see, and I could not hold the wheel, and I drove the car into the ditch.

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