My Fiancé Swapped Room Cards So I Mated His Rival novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Last Key
Tristan's room key shows Margo's best friend, hers shows his worst enemy, and when she goes up to the suite Lucian says the four a.m. bite will change her.
Tristan Lowell turned his room key face up on the glass table, and the name on its screen was Bridget Sayer.
Bridget was my best friend.
She was standing at my elbow in a gold dress, holding my drink.
Forty people in the private lounge whistled and stamped.
Ten minutes earlier, one of Tristan's friends had jumped onto a sofa and announced a game for our last night before the mating.
Every guest put a hotel key on the table, face down.
Each key opened a suite upstairs, and its screen showed the name of the guest staying inside.
"Whichever key you draw is who you spend the night with," he yelled over the bass.
I frowned.
Our mating ceremony was at four in the morning, and the Hierarchy, the council of old vampire families that runs New York, would watch every minute of it.
Tristan leaned down and put his mouth against my ear, his fangs barely grazing it.
"Why so nervous, Margo?" he murmured. "I already fixed it. The key you pick will have my name on it."
I wanted to believe him, so I nodded and agreed to play.
A moment later he flipped his own key, and it said Bridget.
The booth shook with noise.
"Rules are rules!" his friend shouted at me. "The future Mrs. Lowell can take a game, can't she?"
Bridget, the only human at the table, blushed pink.
She took my hand in both of hers and looked up with wide eyes.
"Margo, please don't make this a thing. I'll stick to him all night so you don't have to worry. We've been best friends since college. You trust me, right?"
Tristan's red eyes narrowed at me.
"It's a game," he said. "Don't make a scene."
Behind him, his driver stood at the door with the steel case he carried everywhere and never set down.
I breathed in slowly.
Under the whiskey and the perfume, I smelled cedar and dark amber.
It was on Tristan's collar.
It was in Bridget's hair.
It was the same scent on both of them, and neither had smelled like it at my dress fitting the day before.
A scent like that only gets onto a person after hours of skin against skin.
He had not paid the hotel's man to protect me. He had paid him to give himself a night with her, while I stood there and smiled.
So I smiled.
"Fine," I said. "Then I'll draw one too."
I reached across the glass and took the last key left on the table.
When I turned it over, the lounge went silent.
The bass dropped out of the room.
Lucian Ward.
Head of House Ward, the only family in the city that had never bowed to the Lowells.
Tristan's worst enemy for as long as I had known him.
Someone near the bar laughed, then stopped.
Tristan was on his feet. "Put that back. Draw again."
"Rules are rules," I said.
His friend looked at the floor.
Tristan dropped his voice so only our table could hear. "Ward would never set foot in this hotel. That key is a joke, Margo. Don't be small about it."
"Then you won't mind if I go and see."
Bridget's grip on my hand tightened, and I took her fingers off one at a time.
"Enjoy your suite," I told her. "Keep an eye on him for me."
Tristan caught my wrist.
His hand was cold and it was shaking, which I had never felt before.
"The ceremony is at four," he said.
"Then I'll be on time."
I pulled my wrist free in front of forty people, and three of them lifted their phones.
The ring on my finger had been his grandmother's.
I turned it once and left it where it was.
I did not run and I did not cry.
I had been engaged to him for two years, and I had picked out a dress for this night.
He had not swapped the keys for me.
He had swapped them for her.
I made up my mind right there.
So I walked out of the lounge with Lucian Ward's key in my fist.
The elevator took me to the fortieth floor, and I stood outside suite 4012 with my heart pounding.
The lock clicked before I touched it.
The door swung open.
Lucian Ward stood in the doorway in shirtsleeves, and his eyes were already red.
He did not look surprised.
He looked at my face and then at the key in my hand.
"You came faster than I thought you would," he said. "I paid your fiancé's man twice what Tristan did, to put my name where his was supposed to be."
I stared at him.
"Why would you do that?"
He stepped back and held the door open.
"Because at four o'clock he plans to bite you, and you won't wake up the same woman."
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