My Fiancé Swapped Room Cards So I Mated His Rival novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Bite Me

Lucian tells Margo what the Lowell bite does to a bride, she sets her terms, tests Tristan by phone, and tells Lucian to bite her.

I did not go inside.

"You paid a man to put your name on my key," I said. "That is why I'm standing in this hallway."

"Yes."

"You let forty people watch me draw it."

"Yes."

"You don't get to ask me in."

Lucian Ward nodded once and leaned his shoulder on the door frame, leaving the doorway open between us.

He did not apologize, and I noticed that.

"Three years ago my sister was bitten in the Lowell house at four in the morning," he said. "She was Tristan's first mate."

I knew that.

The whole city knew it.

Eleven months after her mating, the Lowells had announced her death, and the Hierarchy had held a memorial in black.

"I was not allowed to see a body," Lucian said. "The Lowells said the sun took her at the window, and that nothing was left to see."

"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it.

"I don't want your sorry. I want you to hear what the four a.m. bite is."

He stepped out into the hall, close enough that I smelled him.

It was not cedar and amber.

It was smoke and cold rain, and it hit my chest before I could stop it.

"A Lowell bite does not only bind the bride," he said. "It opens her to the house. Everything she drinks, everything she heals, goes to the Lowell sire first. Cornelius has not left that house in three years."

"That's a rumor."

"It's my sister."

I looked at his face.

The red had gone out of his eyes, and they were plain grey.

I felt my own pulse in my throat, and I felt how close his mouth was to mine.

He saw it, and his gaze dropped for one second.

"You paid for a key, Ward," I said. "Not me."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

"I noticed."

"Good."

I stepped back and made myself breathe.

"I'm not taking your word," I said. "I'm taking his."

I pulled out my phone and called Tristan.

It rang four times.

Bridget answered.

"Hi, Margo!" she said, bright and out of breath. "He's in the bathroom. Don't worry, I've got him."

I heard a man laugh behind her.

It was Tristan.

"Is that her?" he said, farther from the phone. "Hang up."

"I'll see you at four," I said to Bridget.

She did not hang up fast enough.

"Are you really going to his room?" she whispered. "Margo, he's not safe. Come back to us."

Us.

I ended the call.

My hand was steady, which surprised me.

Lucian had not moved.

"He said he fixed the key so I'd draw him," I said. "He fixed his own so he could have her."

"I know."

"And he planned to bite me at four anyway."

"I know that too."

"What do you want from me, Ward?"

He looked down the hall at the lift doors, then back at me.

"One way stops it," he said. "A mated vampire cannot be claimed by another house. Not by a bite, not by a ceremony, not by Cornelius. If you are mated to someone else before four, the Lowells have no right to lay a finger on you."

"Mated to you."

"To me."

"The man they hate most in the city."

"That is the point."

"And what do you get out of it?"

"A door into the Lowell house with their own law on my side," he said. "And you walk away alive."

I stood there for a moment.

The lift doors opened at the end of the hall, and a waiter looked at us and went back inside.

I thought of two years of dinners where Tristan had touched everything on the table except me.

I thought of Bridget in my wedding dress, laughing, pinning the hem.

"Terms," I said.

"Name them."

"The bond is a shield. It's not a marriage. You don't get my feelings, and I don't want yours."

"Agreed."

"No sleeping in your bed after. No first names while we're, while it's happening."

His eyebrow lifted a fraction. "Is that all?"

"For now."

"Then they're yours," he said. "I'll keep every one."

I walked past him into suite 4012, and I heard him shut the door.

Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the whole island lit up and blinking.

On the table by the window sat a single glass of blood, untouched, and a black ceremony coat on a chair.

He had been ready for this.

He had been ready for me.

I turned around and looked at the man who had paid to watch me be humiliated.

"If you lied to me," I said, "I will kill you myself."

"If I lied, you'd be right to."

I took off my earrings and set them on the table, one by one.

Then I said the words I had never said to Tristan.

"Bite me."

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