D. Reynolds - Aden

“… a concern, my lord.” She caught the tail end of Bastien’s sentence.

Aden laughed dismissively. “You know me better than that, Bastien. When have I ever let a woman get in my way?”

The two males laughed, and Bastien said something she didn’t catch, but she did hear Aden’s reply.

“It’s all about blood, my friend,” he growled. “But don’t worry. She won’t be around much longer.”

Sid blinked, surprised at how much his words stung. She wasn’t even sure they were talking about her, but she couldn’t shake the sense that they were. That Bastien had been concerned she would get in the way of their plans to seize the territory, and that hers was the blood Aden had dismissed so readily.

It shouldn’t have bothered her. After all, it was no more than she’d been telling herself all along, that this thing between them was temporary. Her bad boy fling. So why did it hurt so much to hear him say it?

She stood and gathered her things. There was no more reason for her to stay. Aden didn’t need her—he’d made that abundantly clear—and her reason for being here in the first place was done. She’d wanted justice for Janey, and she’d gotten that. Or close enough. Carl Pinto was still out there somewhere, but she had the tools to find him. Better tools than Aden had. After all, she was the one who’d found the house last night. She’d find Pinto, and, despite what Aden seemed to think, she wouldn’t be stupid about it either. She’d find him and pass on the information to Aden via telephone. During the day, when she could simply leave a voice mail message. And that would be it as far as Aden was concerned. There’d be no need to humiliate herself further, no need to pretend that there was something besides sex going on between them. Because he clearly wasn’t feeling anything at all.

Time to let go of her bad boy and go back to her real life.

The phone rang as she closed her laptop and slipped it into her backpack. Someone picked it up before it rang a second time. Not that she would have answered it anyway. She wanted no more part in vampire business. She’d already gotten in deeper than she’d ever intended.

Stepping over to the office, she spied Aden and Bastien deep in conversation. Whatever they were discussing now, they’d gone back to their secret vampire voices. Maybe something to do with the phone call. Not that she cared, she reminded herself.

Aden looked up the moment she appeared in the doorway. A few minutes ago, she’d have interpreted that to mean they had a connection. Now, she just figured he wanted to make sure she didn’t overhear whatever he and Bastien were plotting.

“I can see you guys are busy,” she said, with false cheer. “And if I’m going to finish this, I’ll need my old notebooks, which are back at my condo. I’ll head over there now, and if I come up with anything, I’ll give you a call.”

Bastien smiled, but she could tell by his quick glance at Aden that he was waiting for the boss to react before he said anything.

Aden just studied her silently, as if waiting for her to say more. But there wasn’t anything else. She was going home.

ADEN WATCHED Sidonie as she stood there in his office doorway and fed him a huge steaming pile of bullshit that she apparently expected him to take at face value.

“I’ll give you a call,” she said, and turned away without so much as a wave.

He stared at the empty doorway until he heard the ding of the elevator, followed by the sound of the doors closing. Then he glanced at Bastien. “Put Kage on her. And tell Hamilton I want her tailed during the day.”

Something had put a bug up her ass. He didn’t know what it was, but he intended to find out. If she thought she could dismiss him with a lame excuse and walk away, she had a lot to learn. And he was going to enjoy teaching it to her.

But not tonight. That phone call had been formal notification of a challenge. Not from Silas, which might have been expected, but from a vampire named Ramiro Salvador. Aden didn’t know much about Salvador. He was from Mexico, which made him one of Lord Enrique’s people, and he’d been at the gathering on Sunday which had officially launched the challenge. Officially being the operative word, since the maneuvering, and the killing, had begun days before… as Aden had reason to know.

But other than those few bits of information, Salvador was a cipher to Aden, which was never a good thing going into a challenge. Bastien was working their contacts here in the Midwest and elsewhere trying to find out what he could, but they didn’t have much time. The challenge was set to take place an hour from now in Washington Park. Not the neighborhood, but the actual park. It was a big public space on Chicago’s South Side, consisting of several hundred acres, most of it grass and trees, and largely deserted at this time of night. A public park wasn’t the place Aden would have chosen for a challenge battle, but then he had private properties of his own within the city that he could use. He’d been building his network here for some time, well before Lucas had finally offed Klemens. Lucas had tapped Aden to run his Kansas City operation several decades ago, which had put him only a short flight away from Chicago.

On the other hand, this was probably the first time Salvador had spent any time in the city. Notwithstanding the significant drug trade Klemens had been carrying on with certain interests in Mexico, there wasn’t much in the way of cross-border dealings between vampire territories. Raphael was trying to change that, trying to get the North American territories talking to each other in order to fight a common enemy.

But that was in the future. For tonight, it meant there’d been no opportunity for Salvador to check out the battleground or set up any kind of headquarters in advance. Even if Klemens had allowed the foreign vampire to visit his city, Enrique probably wouldn’t have agreed. The Lord of Mexico was said to be very old school with his vampires and saw the rivalry between the territories as a good thing.

All of which meant that Salvador’s choice of Washington Park was a smart one.

“Sire,” Bastien said, interrupting his contemplation of tonight’s opponent. “I spoke to Lord Raphael’s lieutenant, Jared. We had some dealings last year before his promotion, when he was still troubleshooting for Lord Raphael.”

Aden nodded his understanding. The long explanation wasn’t really necessary, but Bastien’s caution was understandable. Vampires were hugely territorial, and a different master might have wondered why his lieutenant had a relationship with a high-ranking vampire in another territory. But Aden wasn’t that insecure, nor did he view Raphael as an enemy. Especially not with what he’d recently learned about the threat from Europe.

“Jared put me in touch with a vampire named Jaclyn who is Raphael’s representative in the Southern territory. She’s been helping Lord Anthony rule the South—”

“More like ruling the South herself,” Aden observed. “But I’ll play along. What does Jaclyn have to say about Salvador?”

Bastien shot Aden a quick grin. Everyone knew that Anthony couldn’t hold the South without Raphael’s support. But then, based on what Aden had learned recently about who really killed Jabril, the previous Lord of the South, it was Raphael’s mate who had a better claim to the territory than anyone else, no matter whose ass currently occupied the seat of power.

“Jaclyn knows Ramiro Salvador reasonably well,” Bastien continued. “With all the cartel violence in Mexico lately, there have been multiple issues related to territorial security, and she’s met him several times. In her opinion, Salvador’s strong enough to hold a territory, although she was unaware that he had any designs on the Midwest. She’s never met you, my lord, and so had no direct comparison, but she did say Salvador was on a par with Jared. And Jared is more than commonly powerful.”

“He wouldn’t be a member of Raphael’s inner circle if he wasn’t. Has Salvador fought anyone else in the current challenge, or is he jumping right to the top?”

“A few minor skirmishes during the gala, picking off easy targets. No death matches.”

“Guess I’ll be his first then. Let’s get going. Don’t want to make him wait for his own funeral.”

ADEN AND HIS team parked very close to the house where they’d wiped out what was left of Klemens’s slave trade the previous night. Or so they’d thought. If Sidonie was right, there was still at least one significant outlier left to kill.

The neighborhood they walked through wasn’t bad, especially compared to Fuller Park where Sidonie had staked out Carl Pinto’s drug house. But it wasn’t somewhere Aden had ever anticipated visiting so frequently, either. He’d left behind this kind of poverty long ago. Contrary to Sidonie’s assumptions, not all vampires were wealthy, but most of them were at least financially secure. When one lived for centuries, one had a different view of life and necessity. And what vampires couldn’t earn for themselves, they persuaded others to give them. Once upon a time, they had simply taken what they needed and killed anyone in their way. Modern life demanded greater subtlety, but there were still ways of acquiring whatever one needed, or wanted. And a vampire’s life span put a whole new spin on long-term investment.

Freddy and Travis roamed ahead as they crossed into the park and entered the shadows beneath the trees, while Bastien walked at Aden’s side. Kage would probably be upset at missing the fight, but he was sitting on Sidonie, who, by all reports, had gone home and stayed there. But concerns about Sidonie were a distraction Aden couldn’t afford, not if Salvador was as powerful as reported, so he put her out of his thoughts. He hadn’t come this far to be undone by a female, not even one he actually cared for. There would be time for Sidonie tomorrow. Tonight, he had a challenge to survive.