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CHAPTER 1

JULIAN
A flash of movement grabs my attention. Does she really think she can get away from me after what she did? There’s no way I could let her escape… but making such a simple mistake is going to cost her.
I’m quiet, hoping she doesn’t hear because I know that if she does, it’ll be all over. I crouch close to the ground and make each pawed step in silence. In my wolf form, I can move so quietly that few can hear me, and I doubt she ever would.
The issue is that the area around her is open, like she thinks it’ll give her an advantage to see me coming, when it only gives me more room to run. I have to step out of the shadows to reach her, knowing that all it’ll take is a simple snap of my fangs as I lunge after her to make her pay.
She screams but I’m on her, snatching her ankle as she tries to crawl away, her pants between my teeth as I start dragging her flailing body across the yard.
“DAAAADDY, HELP,” my niece Nina yells as I proceed to drag her toward the kiddie pool in the middle of my mom’s yard. The little shit is definitely getting dunked after she’d smashed me in the face with a water balloon and then thought she could hide from me.
Me… a werewolf.
Oh… what a naive child who is about to understand the definition of karma!
“You shouldn’t have hit Julian,” my brother Rhett says as I pull her right into the pool before letting go. It only has a few inches of water in it, but it’s definitely cold judging by the way she shrieks. It is dark out; the summer sun set not long ago, leading to a cooler night, even though it’s already July.
My father Terrance—who got invited for who knows what reason, seeing as my parents are divorced—pretends like he didn’t just watch his son drag his granddaughter across the yard. If he did acknowledge me, it would be to remind me that we really shouldn’t be playing around like this because being a wolf is for acting badass and growly or something… I don’t actually pay attention to him.
Pleased with myself, I watch as Nina shoots out of the pool and whirls on me. “It’s no fair, I can never win hide-and-seek against you!” She grabs me and proceeds to rub her wet face off on my fur before gasping. “You should hide-and-seek with Casimir! I bet he’d win! Someone could finally make Julian lose. He could be a loser.”
“None of that sounded nice,” Rhett says, which makes Nina hesitate and lower the L she was prepared to present me with.
I look over at Casimir who is just watching the entire scene unfold. I’d dragged him to my family’s cookout with the promise that he didn’t have to arrive until after it got dark so he wouldn’t turn crispy.
“I wouldn’t want to make him feel bad,” Casimir says. While he’s supposed to be sweet and romantic since we’re now dating, he still chooses sass and evilness… but he’s so freaking cute that I can’t find it in me to care.
“Oh?” I say into his mind. It’s something that werewolves can usually only do with their pack while in wolf form, but for some reason, I can speak to Casimir with ease. I’m unsure if it’s because of the blood he gave me when I’d been attacked by a group of vampires or what, but I love pestering him with it. And I kind of love the fact that he can hear only my voice in his mind… but maybe that’s just the sappy side of me. “I guess I need to prove that I am a phenomenal hunter.”
Casimir gives me a grin before squatting down to be closer to the level I’m at in this form. He’s such a handsome man, made even more attractive by the cocky look he’s currently wearing, like he thinks there’s absolutely no way I’ll win. His dark blond hair flutters in the wind as he boops my nose, a wicked grin on his face. “Don’t cry when you can’t find me.”
“There needs to be some rules. No farther than half a mile. And… I get a treat if I win.”
“Am I supposed to carry a tape measure around with me?” he teases.
“You better get running if you don’t want me to immediately find you,” I taunt. “That would be embarrassing.”
“Who wants to take bets?” Rhett says. “Casimir’s winning hands down.”
My entire family immediately concurs—even my father who strongly dislikes Casimir—as I look at them in disbelief. Thankfully, Ezio, a vampire I’d met through Casimir, has my back. He tosses me the nicest smile as he squishes my face and ruffles my ears. “I will bet against all of you humans! I will place a hundred dollars on Julian.”
Aww… and here I was thinking Ezio would be the first to turn his back on me!
“A hundred pity dollars in the pot,” he says as he pulls the money out and flashes it to everyone. “I will miss you, money.”
I show him my fangs as he looks at me like he has absolutely no idea what the issue is. The real question is… who even invited him? He’s so smug, but doesn’t it seem like all of the vampires I’m around are? He theatrically swipes a hand through his brown hair that immediately falls back into perfect place before giving me a wink and a smack on the tush to get me going.
I growl at him and turn around only to realize that Casimir’s already gone.
“Oh, bless his little fluffy heart, he doesn’t even know which way he went!” Ezio says, sounding delighted about this turn of events.
Tossing another growl at him, I take off… before immediately realizing that I went in the wrong direction, so I spin and run off in the other as Ezio laughs and laughs. I’ll show them that I can hunt Casimir’s ass down even if it takes all night.
Without the scrutinizing eyes of my family, who clearly don’t believe in me, I can stop and use my nose. Thankfully, I’m so familiar with Casimir’s scent that I pick it up quickly and trot off after it. With little hesitation, I race out into the middle of a field that I run through, wanting to make up for lost time, but I don’t see any sign of him.
Knowing him, he probably ran a mile and is already back chilling with my family… scratch that, knowing how much he hates human interaction, he’d do anything to keep from sitting with my family for any longer than he has to—unless it causes my father, who he dislikes, misery.
At a full-out run, I clear the field in minutes before hesitating at the road as I realize that his scent is no longer as apparent. Backing up, I notice that even his footprints have disappeared.
Did he jump or something?
Where the fuck did he go? His scent goes this way… but why’s it so high up?
I sniff this way and that before I hear a car coming and look up as it speeds past.
He jumped onto the back of a vehicle, didn’t he? That’s why his scent is now up in the air and not as thick. Probably a truck or something where the driver would never hear the silent man.
I take in all of the smells; I can pull in the lingering fumes of the car that just passed that’s trying to drown out his scent, but it’s not going to break my line of scent. I start trotting after it, moving quickly along the side of the road.
For a good few minutes, I’m traveling down the road, uncertain how long he decided to cling to the back of a vehicle. Seeing a car coming, I dart into the ditch and hunker down until it passes before I’m up again and moving. When I reach a bridge, I hesitate, since this is definitely farther than half a mile. Did he tie a shirt to the back of the vehicle to confuse me and actually jumped off a quarter of a mile back?
I continue following the scent over the bridge, but it just keeps going and going…
Unless he jumped off far down the road, took a wide curve away from the road and tracked back…
Turning, I glance back at the bridge, which would have been a perfect area to hide.
Hell, what’s the harm in checking? If I’m wrong, it’s not like he’s in any peril going for a leisurely car ride.
I go back over to the bridge and peer down, but I can’t see anything from here, so I skid down the rocky side to the creek below where I immediately get hit with his scent.
Ah… apparently this wolf is not as useless as my entire family assumed I was.
“I smell you,” I announce.
“And do I smell good?” Casimir teasingly says from the shadows. I still can’t even see him, he’s hidden so well, but at least I know he’s here and I’m not going to let him get away.
The creek isn’t deep; really only my paws are getting wet as I make my way under the bridge a moment before he drops down into the water, splashing me.
“I was listening to the pitter-patter of your paws as you trotted on by, pleased that I’d fooled you, yet here you are,” he says, obviously amused.
I shift and stand up to face him as a human. My hands are a little wet, but nothing that I can’t rub off on his pants—I mean, really, he is the one who picked a creek. “Here I am. Not as useless as my family predicted, am I?”
Casimir grins at me as he steps up and wraps one hand around my bare waist, the other sliding down to cup my ass cheek as he pulls me in. “Useless has never been a word I’d use with you. Sketchy, nosy, persistent… now those are words I would use.”
I grin back at him. “Are you complimenting me or making jabs?”
“They are one hundred percent compliments about how pesky you are,” he teases.
“I was going to kiss you, but now I’ve realized I’m too ‘sketchy’ to,” I say as he pulls me in tighter, his mouth inches from mine as his hand squeezes my ass cheek. I reach up and cup his face as I lean in, lips parting.
His lips brush mine before he presses in for a deeper kiss, mouth opening, tongue brushing against mine.
How the hell I ever snagged this man, I’ll never know. He’s just so fucking perfect and sweet and funny. He’s also stubborn, but that’s just another thing I love about him.
My fingers slide into his hair a moment before the kiss breaks and his lips trail down my cheek to my neck where he kisses the scars the vampires had left on me when they’d nearly ended my life around two months ago.
If anyone else even brushes my neck, panic tears through me, but not with him. While I don’t think I could handle him biting my neck at this point, his gentle kisses make me feel weirdly safe. Like he’s reminding me that he’s never going to let that happen to me again.
“Do you want to bite me?” he asks quietly.
Oh fuck… “I wish I could,” I admit, tantalized by the idea.
“You could bite me as a wolf before shifting.”
“I… my fangs aren’t made that way. And you heal so fast, you’d probably be healed before I could even shift!” I say, wondering what it would feel like to bite into his throat, feel that sweet taste of blood on my tongue—blood that is keeping me alive. Blood that kept me from dying when I was mauled, ripped apart, and had silver racing through my body.
That much silver should have killed any werewolf, but somehow, his blood froze the effects. It keeps the silver at bay, but because vampires’ bodies don’t work the way humans’ or wolves’ do, it somehow kept the silver from leaving me. It’s like part of my body is stuck in a timeless loop until his blood runs out.
So I’m stuck with the silver, but as long as I drink his blood every few days, the poison from it doesn’t affect me.
“I could force Ezio to bite me for you,” Casimir says.
I grin at that idea. “Just force him to scamper over, bite you and leave?”
“He’s really not good for much else.”
“You’re so mean to Ezio! Isn’t he your best friend?”
He grunts, which is one hundred percent confirmation that he is his best friend. Casimir’s just allergic to admitting that he likes someone. “These are not things I have chosen for myself.”
“Would you have chosen Steve instead?”
“Fuck Steve,” he growls.
Steve is a vampire who Casimir hates for absolutely no reason. That’s it… just pure hatred… and I’m not quite sure why. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand, either. Like I have a handful of people I don’t necessarily like, though I have valid reasons—like being attacked by Weston—but I still don’t resent them for the fun of it.
“I am wrapped up in pleasure, I have a nice handful of ass… a sexy and pesky wolf, and you bring up Steve? That’s enough to make me impotent for half a lifetime.”
“You are so dramatic,” I say as I kiss him again. For being so “destroyed by Steve that he can never love again,” he sure kisses me back with ease. Clearly, the trauma didn’t run too deep.
And as I debate whether or not anyone would notice if we don’t return to the family gathering, the sudden sound of a vehicle crashing makes me jump and jerk back from Casimir.
“What the hell was that?” I ask, but from where we’re at under the bridge, it’s impossible to see what’s going on.
Casimir keeps me close to him. “Ignore it.”
“Ignore the sound of the car crash… and is that a scream I just heard?” I ask.
“It was a happy scream,” Casimir assures me. “It was a ‘Yay, that was so much fun! I hope no one interrupts our fun!’ scream.”
I hear another scream that is definitely much closer to “Oh my god, something horrific and scary is happening.”
“Is it?” I ask as I pull from him and hurry out to the bank. I quickly climb up the hill that leads us to level ground. That’s when I see a car halfway in the ditch about forty feet from us. “Do you have my ultra-awesome pair of underwear I demanded you carry in your pocket for me so I’m not naked constantly?” I ask as we rush toward the car.
“Nope.”
I glance over at Casimir. “That was your one job!”
“Issue is… I like seeing you naked. Bigger issue is that I thought it’d be rather awkward to carry your underwear around in my pocket at your family cookout. Like ‘Hey, Casimir, good to see you… why are my son’s undies hanging out of your pocket?’ Weirdly, I didn’t think we’d need them.”
“Give me your pants.”
“Fine, fine,” he says as he whips them off and I catch them. Trying to put them on mid-jog isn’t the easiest task, so Casimir ends up getting a little ahead of me before pausing.
“Huh,” he says just as I button my new pants.
“What?” I ask a moment before I see a man beating against the door of the crashed car. “Oh. That doesn’t look good.”
The man’s fist stops as he turns to look. What he sees must pique his interest because he steps away from the vehicle.
“That doesn’t look good at all,” I murmur as the man moves toward us.
“It’s fine, I will remove his body from the situation,” Casimir says.
“That doesn’t sound fine! We don’t know what’s happening yet. He could be a cool guy. The person in the car could be the bad person. He could just be asking for directions. Or he could be coming for me. Why’s he running at me?” I ask as I start hurrying away from the man who seems fixated on me.
“But he looks like a cool guy, Julian. What should I do? I’ve never been around such a cool guy before, so I’m uncertain. Should I just stand here and ask him how cool he is?” Casimir asks because he wants to make sure I’m well aware how ridiculous I am to defend this random guy.
The man is transfixed by me. He’s coming after me without hesitation as the person in the vehicle tries their hardest to get their car out of the ditch in their panic. I hear the tires spinning and the engine roaring a moment before it backs out onto the street and hits the man, slamming him down to the road.
For a long moment, the car is still and I swear I can see the look of horror on the driver’s face as she looks back at us before Casimir laughs. Literally laughs.
“Oh, that was fun,” he says. “I’m so glad you made me come out here to watch this!”
“That was fun?” I ask as the woman takes off, the car climbing off the body of her attacker before flying down the road as I stand here in shock.
“It sure was! I would even go so far as to say delightful, even! How about we head back to what we were doing?” Casimir asks.
“Oh my god, we just witnessed a murder, we can’t just leave!”
He waves it off like it’s no big deal. “He’s still alive, it’s fine.”
“Is that fine?”
The man jerks awake and instead of getting up, he starts crawling toward me as I confirm that he’s a vampire. I’d had my suspicions earlier, but the man looked strange and from the distance we were, it was hard to tell why. What I realize now is that he looked strange because his skin is sunken in and his hands that are reaching out for me look skeletal.
Once he gets close enough, Casimir steps down on his hand, pinning it to the road.
“Do you dare think that you could touch my cute wolf with your grimy fingers?”
“S-So… hungry…” the vampire whispers.
“Not my problem. Let’s go, Julian.”
I eye the man as he pushes himself forward enough to reach Casimir whose shoe he tries to gnaw on.
“Ew,” Casimir says as he tries shaking him off. “Only Julian is allowed to chew on my shoes.”
“We could… maybe help him?” I suggest.
“Why would we do that?” Casimir asks, dead serious.
“I… I don’t know. We don’t know if he’s a bad guy or not,” I say. “Hey, buddy. We’re gonna help you out.”
“We are?” Casimir asks.
“Yeah. Go… go find him an animal to eat before he starves to death.”
“And I’m going to just leave you here with him? Absolutely not.”
“He won’t bite me.” I turn to the man. “Will you?”
“I most definitely want to bite you,” the man says, but he can’t seem to find the energy with his lack of blood, so he’s not overly fast as he crawls toward me.
“See? What if I just put him out of his misery?” Casimir suggests.
“Get him an animal.”
“Fine!” Casimir shakes him off and pulls me back a good distance since the man only seems to have the energy to crawl.
And with that, Casimir is gone and back within literal seconds with a fluffy young rabbit in his hands. Its little nose is twitching, confused as fuck about what’s happened as it looks around. The poor thing has no idea that death is so near⁠—
A little squeak escapes it and it’s like the noise stabs me right in the heart as Casimir holds it toward the vampire who eagerly reaches for it.
“Wait!” I say, not wanting to see the precious thing be torn apart by a vampire.
“What?” Casimir asks as he pulls the rabbit back to himself and the vampire on the road groans in annoyance as his hand smacks the ground, rabbitless.
“It’s too cute,” I admit.
Casimir turns to me slowly. “Excuse me?”
“The rabbit… it’s really cute. Go find something else,” I urge.
The look Casimir’s giving me tells me I’m being ridiculous. “Go… Go find something… ugly? We’re only allowed to eat ugly things now?”
“Yes, just… let that one go. Find something else.”
“This is fucking ridiculous,” Casimir grumbles, but he sighs and disappears before returning, this time with an opossum in his hand. “Here. It’s nice and ugly. I made sure to grab the ugliest one. Is this edible?”
It looks me right in the eyes, causing an instant connection.
I grimace. “Casimir, it looked at me.”
Casimir gives me a look of disbelief. “For fuck’s sake. You wanted something ugly, I found something ugly. How much uglier can you get than this?”
“It’s not ugly enough! Scratch the ugly thing. Find something mean, you know? Like the serial killers of cute animals. Something that hurts cute little innocent animals.”
“Do you want me to run off to Africa and find a lion? Is that what you want?” he asks.
“Soooo hungry…” the vampire whines as he reaches for the opossum’s tail, but I smack his hand away.
I give Casimir the sweetest smile I can muster. “Just not that one.”
Casimir sighs. “Okay… something ugly and something mean… Got it.”
He disappears and this time he’s gone for… kind of a long time. Long enough that I have to back up a bit as the vampire continues to slowly crawl toward me.
“I’m back. Ugly and mean,” Casimir announces as he drops my father on the ground.
“Oh my god,” I mutter as my father cusses up a storm from where he’d been dropped.
“What the fuck is going on?” Dad asks before noticing the vampire who has decided that my father will do. Honestly, all I can think about is how Casimir carried my cussing and squirming father all the way here, and it delights me so much. What I would give for a video of that.
Casimir’s look tells me he’s prepared to tell him all about it. “What’s happened, Terrance, is that I want to go home, but nooooo, your son wants to save this man. The issue is that everything I bring the man to eat is too ‘cute’ to eat. I finally found something not cute.”
“We can’t feed him my father,” I protest. “Casimir, this isn’t that hard.”
“Isn’t it? Pick an animal, and I’ll go find it for you.”
I think about it, but then it’s like… I will be causing it to die. I could say a mouse or something… but those are really cute too with their little twitchy noses and round ears. “Um… you know…”
“Just feed him something,” Dad says. “Ignore Julian. He’s too sappy.”
“I’m not sappy!”
“I… I’m kind of starving here…” the vampire says. “Can I eat the sappy guy?”
The look Casimir gives him makes him fully retract that question.
“Casimir, please?”
“Coyote?”
“No, they’re not doing anything wrong.”
“I… can grab a cow.”
“Why would we grab a cow?”
“I don’t know!” Casimir says. “What if you just turn around and don’t worry about it?”
“What if I hear it squeak?”
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t squeak,” he assures me. “What if it quacks instead?”
“But ducks are so soft.”
“You are ridiculous,” Casimir says. “Terrance… be useful and drag him away until the vampire has been fed.”
“Not the rabbit or the opossum. You promise me, Casimir!”
“I promise!” he says as my father drags me away.
“What the fuck is happening?” Dad asks.
“Uhhh… well, you know I was tracking Casimir down and then we heard this crashing noise, and then… we go over and this mostly dead vampire is trying to get to the human inside the car. And I thought that we should maybe feed him since he’s starving to death. And then we’d figure out what’s going on.”
“And you wanted my help?” Dad asks, looking skeptical.
“Y…Yeah… that’s definitely why you were brought here,” I say, not having the heart or the power to tell him that Casimir was totally bringing him in to get eaten.
“Alright, you can come back,” Casimir calls.
“The deed is done?” I ask.
“The deed is done,” he confirms. “I made sure it was ugly and mean.”
“I’m skeptical, but that’s good,” I say as I walk back over to the vampire who honestly doesn’t look much better. He’s got a smidge of color to him, at least, and doesn’t look like horrifically dried-up leather, just… regular dried-up leather.
“Who are you?” Casimir asks. “You’re not permitted here.”
“I… uhh… my name is Delwyn Bach. What month is it?”
“July,” I say.
“Fucking hell. And where am I?”
“In my territory,” Casimir growls, which is not helpful at all.
“Where did you come from?” Dad asks.
“I… don’t know. I woke up in that field there. When I looked around, it was just open field, some trees, and a cabin. I was starving to death and wandered out into the street where that car dodged me and ended up in the ditch. And then all I could think about was how delicious she looked… I’m still so hungry. I haven’t eaten a real meal in months.”
That shocks me. “Months? How are you still alive?”
“I’m not sure I’d consider him alive; he’s quite grotesque,” Casimir unabashedly says.
“This fucker locked me up in this box, fuck… four months ago? He would just give me enough blood to survive. I have no idea how I got out here. I don’t remember any of that.”
Casimir shakes his head. “Who the hell locked you up?”
“I don’t know… he never said his name. It was an irritating male vampire.”
“I bet it was Yorick,” Casimir decides, even though it doesn’t sound like him at all.
Yorick is a vampire we encountered a few weeks ago who mostly made our lives more difficult, even if he did end up saving us. And because of a few… mishaps—aka Yorick tossing me out a window—Casimir seems to have a rather deep hatred of him.
“Actually, I hope it’s him,” Casimir says, clearly dreaming about an opportunity to off Yorick.
“We can ask him if we ever see him again, but I’m sure it’s not,” I say.
“I don’t trust any part of you,” Casimir informs the man. “So go on, get out of here.”
Delwyn tries his hand at giving Casimir doe eyes, but the issue is they just look creepy on a dried-up half-dead man. “Can I stay for a bit? Just until I’m healed up enough to make sure that man can’t attack me again? I promise I won’t do anything.”
Casimir seems rather displeased by this idea but gives him a nod. “Fine. I’ll have Genevieve care for you until you prove untrustworthy. Her harem will tear you to shreds if you do something wrong.”
“Of course! I understand,” Delwyn says. “Now about that rabbit?”
“You’re not eating that rabbit!” I retort, and he tsks.
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CHAPTER 2

CASIMIR
“Showing others kindness causes me to feel disgusting,” I inform Julian.
“How heinous!” Julian teases as I pull into the casino. “Do you think you’re going to be okay? Will you make it? Will life just slip away if you’re kind to others for longer than two seconds?”
“Maybe if you comfort me, I can erase the irritation of tonight from my memory,” I decide. Honestly, he’s pretty good at making all of these tragedies tolerable.
“You guys… do realize I’m still in the car, right?” Delwyn says from the back seat.
I was reluctant to put him back there since he kind of stinks. At least he looks a little better after the rabbit he ate… not the rabbit… a different one. One that was much less compliant and bit the shit out of my hand. I’m sure Julian would have still fallen in love and been unable to eat it even if he was on the brink of starvation because it glanced his way while shredding my hand or some other nonsense.
I pull around back to where Genevieve is waiting for us after I called to inform her of her new duty. She seems rather reluctant, but it really does make the most sense. If Delwyn ends up being a traitor, her house is filled with enough vampires that they could easily take him down, especially in the state he’s currently in.
Parking right next to her, I get out and open the back door. “Genevieve, meet Darwin.”
“Delwyn,” the man corrects as he gets out and Genevieve visibly cringes.
“Jesus Christ. Ew, gross. I don’t want him amongst my pretties,” she says.
Delwyn sighs before looking at Julian. “You… seem to be the only nice person in this city. Will you please take me in?”
“She’s just… kidding around. Genevieve is such a kidder,” Julian says as Genevieve gags.
“God, he stinks,” she whispers.
“How mean of you!” I say, even though I was thinking the exact same thing. I can’t let Julian know that.
“Please? Please take me,” Delwyn says as he looks at Julian.
“I mean… I guess—” Julian must get a good look at my eyes because he grimaces.
“I will find that rabbit and I will find the opossum—” I warn until Julian holds up his hands.
He gives Delwyn an apologetic look, even though I know Julian would be happiest not watching the vampire. He seems nervous around them, but who could blame him after he was attacked and nearly killed? “Sorry, I can’t, but I really think you’ll be happy with Genevieve. It sounds like she has a really nice place. And we’ll get you back on your feet in no time!” Julian says before patting his dried-up shoulder.
“Oh, honey, don’t touch that,” Genevieve says.
“Maybe we could be nice?” Julian suggests hopefully.
Delwyn looks like he’s considering hitting the road to avoid us, which would be much appreciated. No one really wants the irritations he brings. Especially because I’m nearly positive that he’s up to some shit.
“We’ll stop by tomorrow and see how you’re doing, okay? I’m so glad you didn’t try eating me and are still alive,” Julian says, because he understands that if Delwyn had threatened Julian’s life in any way, his end would have been near.
“Let’s… go…” Genevieve says, and as we head back to our car, I hear her going, “Do you think you could ride on the hood? I’ll go slow.”
“You guys are actually the bad guys, aren’t you?” Julian asks as he gets into the car and watches Genevieve ask Delwyn if he could ride in the trunk.
“I have no idea what would make you think that,” I say.
“It’s lucky we found him. Who knows what would have happened if we hadn’t? I wonder if we should check out the area. He said he saw a cabin; maybe that’s where he was being held?”
“I’ll let Ezio know,” I respond as an odd memory creeps out at the mention of a cabin. I push it away since it’d been so long ago.
“I’ll text him right now,” Julian says as I drive toward my home. My house is closer to the university Julian works at, and it’s all around much superior to have him in my home, so I don’t even bother asking if he wants to go to his place. Then again, he won’t be teaching classes until August, so he’s one hundred percent mine to do things with until then.
Like making him paint my dog.
As we head inside, Gustov, the greatest dog that has ever existed and will ever exist, rushes to greet us at the door. The standard poodle with a thick red coat cut to perfection takes immediate notice of our arrival. He is completely majestic, and not at all ridiculous as he skids on the ceramic tiles and nearly knocks Julian down. Slamming into Julian’s legs seems to please him for some reason as he leaps up and bounds around the room, his professional hairdo bobbing as he scurries off.
“I see he’s still as agile as a gazelle,” Julian says.
“If there is a hint of sarcasm in that, I will never forgive you,” I warn him.
Julian beams at me. “Oh no… what are you going to do? Make me paint your dog some more?”
“I sure as fuck will.”
He just laughs and I love hearing the sound of it. I tried so hard not to fall for this man. I was happy with the whole fake dating ruse because I truly don’t know if I deserve someone like him, but when it was “fake” I could pretend I did. Julian’s sweet enough that he assures me again and again that I do deserve him… but what if I don’t? What if he’s too perfect for someone like me?
Julian stops in the doorway that leads to the larger living room and throws a grin at me. “You may enjoy sassing me, and threatening me, but don’t forget, I hold all the power.”
“All of it?” I ask.
“Every last drop of it because if you ever want that cotton ball of fluff painted again, you will listen to me.”
I glance over at the paintings of Gustov that adorn the room. I wanted them to be the first thing people see when they enter the house—not that I want anyone but Julian to enter. They fill me with joy, and for him to threaten to take that from me before he’s had the chance to paint at least two per room?
My eyes narrow at this man who I once foolishly thought was sweet. “You’re playing dirty.”
“Maybe I like it dirty.” Then he winks and disappears, and I’m left staring off in the direction he’d gone. It weirdly makes me want to chase after him… and I’m not even sure what for! I clearly have it bad.
I’ve made it five hundred years, and now… now I’ve become a plaything for a wolf… not that I’m complaining.
“I thought you had to work?” Julian asks as I trail after him.
“I told them to figure it out themselves.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then I guess I eat the man I hired,” I say.
Julian grins at me. “Have you ever gotten a ‘Boss of the Year’ award? Because that right there makes me want to work for you. ‘Honey, how was your day at work?’ ‘Well, love, the boss hasn’t eaten me yet, so I must not have done too bad!’”
“You don’t have to work for me to get eaten up,” I tease. “I can eat you right here.”
“Oh? Now I’m really concerned with what you’re doing to your employees.”
“It’s a different kind of devouring because none of them are as pesky as you.”
“Special devouring all for me.” Julian waggles his eyebrows. “How fun.” He chuckles before cocking his head. “Do you think that maybe we should have done something more for that vampire? Like… detective work or something? I mean, he claims he was abducted and stuffed in a box he couldn’t escape from for four months. And instead of doing something, we shot a text to Ezio and ran home.”
“No.” I don’t even have to think about this answer.
Julian’s eyebrows lift. “Not at all?”
“No.”
“On a scale of one to ten… how much do you care about what happened?” he asks.
“Hmm…” I make a show of thinking. “Negative ten.”
“Ah… impressive.”
“Thank you. We’ll leave Ezio to it. Not saying that that’s any better, but it at least looks like we tried.”
“Good plan.”
When the sun starts to come up hours later, I decide to call it a night, especially because Julian is already napping on the couch. I look down at him before I reach out and gently push his dark hair back.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d have someone to come home to, someone kind and sweet like him. And definitely no one who turns into a wolf.
Reaching down, I carefully slide my hands under him, moving slowly in the hopes of not waking him. I draw him up into my arms where he immediately wakes, but he snuggles against me as I carry him to the bedroom. I don’t blame him for being tired. He’d gotten up during the daylight to spend the time watching Nina while I continued to sleep, then tried to stay up all night with me. Hell, he’s practically rearranged his whole life to spend time with me.
With his teeth brushed, he flops down on the bed, so I grab the ankles of his pants and pull them off as well as his shirt before covering him up.
“You’re such a good mate,” he mumbles into his pillow.
“Nah, my motto is the more naked you are, the better,” I say as I take my own pants off, choosing to leave my shirt on, before climbing into bed as Gustov tries to figure out how to take up as much leg room as possible. I have to sleep with my legs spread just for him to fit.
Julian gives me a soft chuckle. “You’re such a sucker when it comes to that dog.”
“This is how I always sleep,” I lie. “The dog is forced in that position, not me.”
“Ah yes, looks comfortable,” Julian says with a grin. “G’night.”
“Night.”
He presses himself in close to me as I watch him for a long moment. Why is he so good? And how do I make sure nothing ever happens to him?
Closing my eyes, I let sleep take me.

I step through the open door, my feet silent on the wooden floor as I enter the cabin, but how the hell did I get here? Am I here? Why does this seem so strange? It’s like my body knows exactly what it wants to do and yet my mind⁠—
Ah, I’m sleeping. That’s what this is. Simply a dream.
Why else would I have my swords? The ones that were a gift from him. Something he’d brought back from a foreign country I’d never even heard of. That no one even knew existed at the time he’d given them to me.
But he knows everything.
Of course he does.
All I have to do is step inside and end it.
End every life that’s inside.
I turn to the right and find a man sharpening a blade, having never heard me as I let myself into the haven that should have been safe for him after he’d spent so long hiding. The blade he holds is made of exquisite materials that he’s never even given an option to use before my blade slices right through him. The sword he holds clatters to the ground, announcing my arrival.
Movement behind me has me turning as another man darts into the hallway, coming toward me. He dodges my first swing as he scampers back into the hallway. His sword is too long and immediately ends up embedded in the narrow hallway walls. He loses his grip on it as I drive him back into the room he’d come from. Trying to keep me away, he falls back against a chair. He and the chair teeter to the ground, never to rise again.
But there are still more. I’m not done. I’m not done until every last one of them is dead.
The woman is waiting for me as I reach the back rooms. She should just stay sitting down, but she rises up and runs for me, screaming like she thinks she can shout all her frustrations at me. Like they will fall on my ears, and I will care. But the only thing I care about is ending every life in this cabin.
With one strike at her, she grabs for her bleeding side as she backs up toward the fireplace and reaches for an ash shovel set aside to clear ashes out of the fireplace. She scoops up hot coals and flings them at me. My wakizashi cuts through a large chunk, sprinkling hot ash across me as I make sure she doesn’t get up again.
I flick the blood off my sword and head for the hallway as I hear the unmistakable sound of another person.
It needs to be everyone.
I turn toward that dark red door, colored like it’s painted in blood. I reach out, hand on the doorknob as the katana sits heavy in my right hand.
“Casimir?”
Who said that? Who knows I’m here? Are they going to try to stop me? No one can stop me.
“Casimir!”
I jerk awake and look over at Julian who is gently nudging me. “Hey,” he murmurs, voice soft as the dream spins in my mind while I try to pull away from the tendrils still lingering.
“You… you seemed a bit distressed, so I wanted to wake you,” Julian says as he slowly reaches out to me. “Were you having a bad dream?”
“I don’t dream,” I lie. I don’t know why I lie. I blame it on the fact that I don’t want him to ask me about it. That I don’t want him to know about these never-ending nightmares that circulate through my mind every night. They’ve been a little better since he came, but why did I have this one tonight? Was it something as simple as Delwyn mentioning the cabin he’d been near when he woke? Or was it just time for this godawful dream again?
Julian’s brow furrows, like he’s not pleased with what I just said. Can he tell I was lying? Is that why? Or is he wondering what kind of monster I really am?
Julian’s look turns gentle as he continues to persist. “Well… either way, you clearly were upset. But I’m here, okay?” He reaches out to me, but I look away, pretending like I didn’t see him because I don’t deserve him. But what’s even worse is having to deal with the momentary glimpse of hurt that crosses his expression as I turn my back to him. Honestly, what’s hilarious is that he thinks I deserve his comfort. I don’t deserve anyone as good as him—as kind, caring, and loving as him.
“Sorry for waking you,” I mutter, unable to even look at him in case I have to see that expression again.
He’s quiet for a moment before I feel him pressed against my back. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes tightly, enveloping me.
“Julian—”
He persists, squeezing me tighter, his body molding against mine. I want to tell him to stop. I want to push him back because I don’t deserve this… and he doesn’t deserve someone like me. He could find someone so much better. Someone who deserves this love.
“I’m right here,” he says, the feel of his arms, the soft whisper of his breath against my neck, and the way his body molds against mine reminding me that he is here. And that shit from my dreams isn’t. It’s just Julian, and Julian knows how to make it all better.
I set my hand against his, cupping the one I can reach against me, never wanting to let him pull away. Because even if I think he deserves someone so much better than me, I’m too fucking greedy to let him go. I never want to even imagine him with anyone other than me. Right now, I feel like I’m drowning, but I can still breathe because of his hand wrapped around mine, his hand keeping my head above the water, prepared to pull me out the moment I let him.
He kisses my neck and I close my eyes, wanting to think only of the man who holds me now. And while I know that sleep isn’t going to find me anytime soon, he keeps the darkness away.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 3

JULIAN
Sleep was a bit iffy after Casimir woke me up. It’s like I want to help him, but how the hell do I help him when I’m afraid he’s going to push me away? It seems like it’s best when I say as little as I can and just physically show him I’m there for him. I know he wants to push me back, he wants to pretend like he can do this all alone, but every single time, he seems to find relief in my presence. At least he accepted me last night and didn’t push me away. Maybe it’ll get better each time.
I must have fallen back asleep because when I wake up, it’s way later than I usually sleep, and I find that I’m alone. I pull on some jeans and a t-shirt before heading down the stairs. When I reach the first floor, I’m honestly surprised Gustov hasn’t rushed up to greet me. He’s generally so ecstatic to shower me with love the moment I wake that I can’t help but wonder if Casimir and Gustov are out.
“Don’t you dare!” Casimir growls, dispelling that idea.
“Who are you yelling at now?” I ask as I step into the living room to find Casimir on the ground, pinning Gustov down. The dog looks thrilled to see me, but he can’t seem to get up as Casimir refuses to let him do so.
“What are you doing to that poor baby?” I ask, making Gustov’s poofball tail thump even faster.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, but the multiple brushes, hair dryer, and sprays show exactly what’s going on.
“Aww, you’re such a good dog dad,” I coo.
He points the brush at me like it’s a threat. “No.”
“No?” I ask as Gustov side-eyes me. He really wants to give me my wake-up puppy love. His tail is going a hundred miles an hour, but Casimir is relentless and refuses to give him that luxury as I watch him take a pointed comb and separate the hair before spraying it with some stuff.
I bite back a grin and even though Casimir’s attention is on the dog, his eyes snap over to mine. Like how the hell did he know that I was grinning?
“What are you looking at?” Casimir asks as he aims the hair dryer at me, like he’s going to threaten me with it.
“Nothing! I just… you’re doing such a good job. Look at you parting that hair and doing a little spray and fluff as you dry.”
“You’re sassing me,” he growls.
“NO! I was just⁠—”
“He was totally sassing you!” Ezio says as he waltzes into the house. “Oh, Casimir’s brushing his dog. I guess I can come back in a few hours to days.”
“Hours?” I ask.
Ezio gives me a forlorn nod. “It’s weird and creepy, Julian. Before Gustov, that man was all ‘I am king. I smash heads that don’t agree with my ultimate way of life while hating all living and unliving creatures.’ And now he’s like ‘Gotta brush this floof. Gotta fluff this tail. Oh, enemy, hold please while I spritz a little spray to make him like a big cloud of⁠—’”
Casimir flings the comb so hard that I feel like the sass woven into the throw might have been capable of taking Ezio’s head off if Ezio hadn’t caught it.
“What the fuck, bro?” he asks as he shakes the comb at Casimir who is still spraying and fluffing and Gustov who is giving me a “Save me” look.
“You should practice silence. Who let you into my home?” Casimir grumbles.
“I have a key!” Ezio says proudly. “When the Realtor gave me the keys to the house, I just never gave them to you.”
“You… you don’t have keys to your house?” I ask Casimir.
“Eh. I don’t know. Who the hell would break into my home?”
Ezio laughs. “I know, what if they broke in and found you brushing your dog? How embarrassing⁠—”
And there go the scissors. This time, Ezio isn’t as good at catching them and he looks down at his hand with the point of the scissors sticking out of his hand.
“How the hell did you not catch that?” Casimir asks. “Are you not a vampire?”
“You… You stabbed me! I shall make you pay,” Ezio growls as he grabs Casimir by the neck.
“Obviously, I thought you’d catch them!” Casimir says as he starts blow drying Ezio’s face.
“Obviously you think too highly of me!” Ezio cries before hesitating. “Do you think Cyrus will feel bad for me? Quick! Julian, take a photo of me.” He seems to forget all about choking Casimir as he rushes to me, scissors still protruding from his hand.
He thrusts his phone at me as I realize that we’re about to make Cyrus’s day miserable. Cyrus is a human detective who Ezio has taken a liking to. The issue is that Cyrus really doesn’t seem to like him back. Tolerate might actually be too kind.
Ezio takes the moment to hold his hand out, clutching his wrist with his un… stabbed hand, and opens his mouth like he’s in the middle of screaming over the wound. It’s all quite ridiculous and very obviously staged.
“I can make it look more life-threatening if you’d like,” Casimir mutters.
“You would do that for me?” Ezio asks as the scissors fall out of his hand and he immediately heals. “Shit.”
Instead of snapping a picture of Ezio, I take one of Gustov looking goofy, hair fluffed out everywhere, tongue lolling, and send it to Cyrus from Ezio’s phone.
“What kind of… cut is this, anyway? Just like Cotton Ball X-Treme or something?” I ask.
“It’s called an English saddle cut. Are you jealous?” Casimir asks me.
“That I don’t have a… cool cut like that… yeah…” I say, voice dripping with sarcasm.
The phone beeps and Ezio’s eyes snap over to me.
“Here, he replied to the picture I sent of Gustov instead,” I say as I pass it back.
“He… he replied… oh my god… he said, ‘Too cute.’ He liked it! HE LIKED IT, Julian. You are the best wingman I’ve ever met in my life.”
“No one can turn away from a good picture of Gustov,” Casimir states, clearly a proud father.
“I’m glad I’m good for something,” I say. “Ezio, did you find out anything about that cabin?”
“I did not. No idea what he’s talking about, but the sun was coming up and I passed it off to the humans. And Delwyn clarified that he didn’t come from the cabin, just remembers waking up near it but wasn’t sure where.”
“Ah, okay. Casimir, were we still going to the zoo?”
“Yeah,” he says. “When’s it open?”
The zoo is having a late-night weekend where they put up lights and open the zoo from eight until midnight, which is about the only time that Casimir would be able to go. It’s basically a big fundraiser for their rehabilitation program, but I saw it as an opportunity to drag a man who’d never been to the zoo before to see the animals. “In about an hour. Ezio, you want to come along?” I ask.
“Do I get to brawl with a lion and show Cyrus my superior brawling skills?”
“You’re no longer invited,” I realize.
Ezio, somehow, has the ability to look surprised by this. “Fine, fine! I didn’t want to go anyway! I have things to do. Important things to do,” he says, which immediately worries me.
“Should I be concerned?”
“He’s actually doing something of use and running over some paperwork for me,” Casimir says. “I told him if he did, I’d let him look at a painting of Gustov.”
I look over at Ezio, positive that he didn’t actually agree to this. But he says nothing against it, confusing me more. “Ezio? Do I have to be concerned about you now too?”
“Oh, no, no. He said he’d allow you to do a painting for me.”
That traitor! “How did I get dragged into this? I really don’t want to paint your dick!”
“It’s too late, Casimir already agreed,” Ezio says as I turn my accusing eyes on Casimir.
“Cas?”
“Hmm?” He just fiddles away, making his already fluffy dog even fluffier. It’s honestly impressive.
“Are you torturing me for your own gain?”
“One hundred percent,” he admits before letting Gustov go. The dog leaps up, looking like a giant cotton ball. He starts bounding through the air, thrilled that he was allowed to live through this adventure.
“I didn’t think you could get cuter,” I say as I sink my fingers into his fur, ruffling it.
“Right?” Casimir agrees, looking far too proud of his cotton ball of a child. His eyes are practically twinkling as he watches the dog leap and jump around.
Gustov can’t be satisfied with just greeting me as he rushes over to Ezio who has to pet him as well.
“Don’t touch him with your grimy fingers. You’re messing up his hair,” Casimir growls.
Ezio gapes at him. “Am I not just doing the exact same thing Julian was doing?”
“No, it was much different,” Casimir says, even though I am one hundred percent positive that it was the exact same thing. I actually think I was worse, since I had ruffled the hair with vigor while Ezio kind of just patted the fluff.
Ezio’s eyes narrow at me. “Teacher’s pet.”
“Oh my god. How is it my fault that Casimir is playing favorites?” I ask.
Ezio scoffs, flips Casimir off, and leaves the house. Since he apparently didn’t think that was adequate, I see him flipping us off through the window as well before leaving.
“Sometimes… I wonder why Ezio is your friend,” I admit.
Casimir smiles, looking pleased by this. “Right?”
“You shouldn’t be proud of that.”
“I’m quite proud,” he says, and as he stares me right in the eyes, I ruffle the shit out of Gustov’s fur. It’s clearly not going to hurt him in any way—I mean, the dog rolls, leaps, and rubs all over everything—but I just want to see if Casimir will say anything to me.
He just keeps smiling.
I gather Gustov’s ears on the top of his head and put a loose band on them so his ears are sticking up like the fluff on his head.
Still nothing more than sweet smiles while I’m fully aware Ezio’s life would have been in danger if he’d done the same thing.
“You’re such a sucker,” I decide.
“Thank you,” he says as Gustov does a good shake, sending the band flying off his ears. He pounces on it before grabbing it in his mouth and parading it around for everyone to see.
“Are you jealous of Gustov? Do you want me to brush you?” Casimir asks as he holds the brush and comb at the ready.
“Oh my god, you’re not brushing me.”
“We have an hour before the zoo opens,” he says as he points at the spot Gustov had been lying. “Come, boy. Come.” He pats the ground.
“You also going to do my hair? Put it in little bows?”
“I sure will. Come, come.”
Because I think I’m being funny, I pull my clothes off and shift before flopping down on my back as he pins me down like he had Gustov and starts brushing.
And… while I was going to be like “Ha ha, you’re grooming me like a dog” and make all kinds of stupid comments to turn this into a huge joke, I quickly realize that it feels blissful. The brush is just long enough it’s like I’m getting the ultimate scratches.
Oh my god… how the hell could some dogs not enjoy this? This is fucking magical.
“Your tail is wagging.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You’re struggling not to wag it now,” he says as he spritzes my hair and parts it, brushing the spot he’d just sprayed.
“Am not. Gosh, so weird. Ha ha. You’re so funny making me do this. So ridiculous,” I mutter.
“You’re loving it, aren’t you? Let me get your back.”
“Oh, you want me to roll over. Ha ha.” It feels so fucking good. I could just sit here all night and get pampered by this man. And the way he’s rubbing my back and⁠—
The door busts open as Casimir runs the brush down my back. I freeze and look over at Ezio, who hesitates.
“I… I’ve never regretted not knocking as much as I do right now. What… is this? Is… that… oh my god, you weren’t making fun of him brushing Gustov. You were jealous! How funny! Let me get a picture for Cyrus, he’s going to love this!”
I quickly shift, not expecting Casimir to keep brushing, so I’m clawed with the metal slicker brush on my naked ass.
“Ow, my ass!” I cry.
“I didn’t know you were shifting! Don’t get all embarrassed now that Ezio’s here! Don’t pretend you weren’t loving every moment and wagging your tail!” Casimir says as he gives my bare ass a smack with the flat side of the brush.
“I feel weird inside,” Ezio says as I crawl for my clothes, but Casimir evidently doesn’t as he sprays my ass with whatever he was spraying Gustov with.
“Stop!”
“It’ll help detangle,” Casimir says, like he sees absolutely no issue with any of this.
“Detangle what? My ass crack?” I cry as I grab for my clothes but they’re just out of reach. “Am I really love blind? Why did I agree to this?”
“You were liking it until Ezio came in and ruined it all.”
Ezio holds his hands up. “I ruined it? I’m sorry my presence made any of this awkward. I simply forgot the papers,” he says before snatching them. “Sorry, please continue your… grooming.”
“I clearly wasn’t done,” Casimir says as he grabs my ankle and drags me back before he puts my hair up with a rubber band like he does to Gustov. “Perfect.”
“Thank you,” I mutter as I decide to just become one with the carpet. Naked ass and all.
I hear Ezio’s phone snap a picture and quickly look up at him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask a moment before my phone beeps.
“Nothing,” he says before hastily escaping a second time. Snatching up my phone, I open the picture Ezio had sent to a group message and witness Casimir holding a slicker brush in one hand and a comb in the other as he hovers over my ass.

Ezio: I just want to remind you that there are at least two people I’m more normal than.

Cyrus: There is so much to unpack here.

Me: Don’t unpack any of it. Delete it. Please.

Cyrus: Just… why? And were they doing this in front of you? Like they thought it was so normal, they continued to do it while you watched? I have so many questions.
The picture suddenly has a heart emoji on it. Of course from Casimir.

Casimir: I will send this to Terrance. Don’t fret. I’ll put an emoji over your ass, Julian.
I quickly sit up and look over at him. “Don’t you dare!”
Casimir gives me a look of innocence. Like he’s confused about something. “Don’t I dare… what? Julian, I’m confused. What’s wrong? Have I ever done anything but treat you with kindness?”
“Yes! Yes, you have! If it means torturing my father, you lose all sense of reason! Don’t send him a picture where I’m naked.”
“You wolves are constantly naked! You’re like ‘Oh hey, I see you got a Brazilian this week, how fun. Do you like what I did? I sneezed while holding the trimmer, so that’s why it looks like that.’”
I eye him. “That happened once and you promised to never tell anyone!”
“‘Did you do something different with your nipples? No? Huh. Must just be cold out,’” Casimir continues.
“Absolutely none of this has ever happened.”
He ignores me, likely continuing to believe that everything he just said is truly what happens inside the pack and choosing, instead, to smile at his phone. “This is my new favorite photograph of you. It is now my background.”
“Casimir, look at me. Did you send it to my dad?”
He’s sure looking and he’s sure grinning.
“Don’t… come on now. Stop grinning.”
Casimir’s grin widens. “I can’t!”
“But you can!”
“I can send it to him? Thank you. You know nothing beats torturing that man,” he says. “We text each other daily and I hadn’t thought of what to text him yet today.”
“Hold on… you text my father?”
“Every day. I text Steve too.”
I snatch up his phone to unlock what horrors it holds within.
July 9

Casimir: I just want to remind you… that I dislike you.

Terrorance: Good.
July 10

Terrorance: Has my son realized that you’re only a pretty face?

Casimir: Hold please. He’s in my bed. I’ll ask him.
July 11

Casimir: Your ex-wife mentioned your little dick today. It brought me great pleasure.

Terrorance: You are prohibited from looking at my son.
“You literally text my father more than I do… and why do you spell his name… oh… Terror… ance. You’re ridiculous,” I decide.
Casimir is so pleased with all of this. Such a cute smile on his face for such a ridiculous reason. “Thank you. I haven’t messaged him yet today, so this photograph will be perfect.”
“NO! Now let’s go to the zoo!”
“Fine, fine,” he says a moment before his phone starts ringing. I hand it back to him and he accepts the call that is coming from Cyrus. He puts it on speaker before answering with a “Hello?”
“I need you to come look at something.”
“No thanks, I’m going to the zoo. I want to show Julian his brethren,” Casimir responds.
“Well… can you go to the zoo tomorrow? This is kind of important,” Cyrus says.
“I’ll send Ezio.”
“Ezio’s coming too but I think you need to see this. There are bodies.”
“I’ll pass,” Casimir says.
Bodies seem rather important for the territory boss to know about. “Casimir, it’s fine. We can go to the zoo tomorrow,” I tell him. “This seems important.”
“Thankfully, at least one of you is sensible… if I forget about that picture,” Cyrus says.
“Don’t… just… don’t,” I add, not sure what all that helps besides pleasing Casimir even more. He likes my pain. I’m pretty sure he feasts off it. “Send the address.”
“Will do,” he says before hanging up.
Casimir gives me a look, like this is my fault.
“Cyrus has helped us out a lot. If he needs us to look at something, I think we should look at it.”
Casimir sighs and gets up as I return to getting dressed.
“Want me to stay here?” I ask.
“No, you’re coming with me because your presence makes it weirdly easier to tolerate people… unless it bothers you?”
“Nah, I’ll be okay. I want to help.”
“There better not be something else going on in my territory or I’m moving,” Casimir decides.
“You’d leave me?”
“No, I’d take you with me. We’d go live in the middle of nowhere, so I didn’t have to interact with others.”
“Sounds… not very fun.”
“Just you and Gustov.”
I get my shoes on and head to the door. “You like people more than you let on.”
Casimir makes a noncommittal noise as he heads out to his car, and I trail after him while listing all the reasons I know he secretly enjoys others.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 4

CASIMIR
“Isn’t this close to where we found the vampire last night? This must be the cabin Delwyn mentioned,” Julian observes as I park my car behind multiple police cruisers.
“Sure is. Well, at least I know where the suspect is,” I say as I get out of the vehicle and lead Julian up to the front door where Ezio is waiting with Cyrus.
“I told Cyrus it might be a bit since you had to finish brushing Julian,” Ezio says.
“None of that happened!” Julian cries.
“You didn’t cry this much when I raked your ass with the wire brush,” I say. “So what do we have going on?”
“Multiple bodies. The place is a rental. A whole group was killed that included two men and two women,” Cyrus informs us. “Looks like it was done by a vampire from what I’ve seen.”
I sigh, curious why people can’t just be good so I can continue to ignore them and pretend they don’t exist unless it’s to bring me joy at their torment. I follow Cyrus inside the rental cabin and into the dining room where a man is lying dead on the ground. I’m surprised when I realize that it’s not a human man but a vampire.
“The group had permission to be here,” Ezio explains, taking note of my observation. “They were visiting family and had gone through all of the correct paperwork.”
“Strange,” I say as I kneel down to examine the body. I don’t make the mistake of trying to touch it, like I had a time or two in the past before having to hear Cyrus cry that I was “contaminating the scene.” It was nothing like the way he hollered when I thought I could sample the blood to tell what it came from. Boy, that really got him fired up. There was so much blood, it’s not like anyone would miss a little.
“What’s really strange is that some of the bodies seem to have been dragged post death,” Cyrus says.
“Like they were trying to hide the bodies and got interrupted?” Ezio asks as I look at the man who has a hole in his chest from where a stake had killed him.
“No because some of them are dragged away from windows, some toward. None are dragged toward the door… I don’t know. It’s just… odd.”
I stand up and Cyrus gives me a wave in the direction of the next body as we pass by some humans who are oblivious to our presence. It’s a wonder what we can get away with when we simply make them believe we’re meant to be here.
I glance over at Julian to make sure he’s okay with what he’s seeing, but he’s pretty brave when it comes to this stuff. He’s also quite smart and seems good at looking at sides of an issue I might not see or notice.
“Could they have been staging the bodies, then?” Julian asks. “Like if they were putting them in specific places that don’t seem to make sense for hiding the bodies. I really don’t know. I guess I don’t know much about this stuff.”
I step into the next room and look at the man who is lying on the ground, chair posed next to him. Suddenly, my dream from last night hits me so hard that I back up, slamming into Cyrus who stumbles.
“Sorry,” I mumble as I turn from the room and hurry down the hallway.
“Casimir, please don’t mess with evidence,” Cyrus says. He rushes after me as I push a human officer out of the way.
I’m seeing things. Last night is just getting in my head. I had a stupid dream… I always have dreams. My sleep is plagued by them. That’s all this is. That’s all this…
I step into the room and look over at the woman leaning against the wall, ash shovel forced into her hand.
It was just a dream. Just a dream that’s getting in my fucking head. Of course she’d have grabbed something to fight with and something metal would make sense. She grabbed something heavy and hard and⁠—
“It’s weird because the shovel was clearly placed in her hand postmortem,” Cyrus says. “See, her hand is covered in blood, but the shovel has no blood on it—Casimir?”
I step back before going over to the last door. It’s closed, but I can’t bring myself to open it. “What’s behind this door?”
“The… final victim. Casimir, why don’t⁠—”
That vampire last night. He was here. That’s why we found him so close. He was here. He mentioned a cabin. That’s why I dreamed about the fucking cabin. He wanted to direct us here.
I turn and rush down the hallway, pushing the humans who crowd me to the side.
“Casimir, stop, what’s wrong?” Julian asks as he runs after me, but he gets caught up in the humans who are in the way. I get into the car where I start it and throw it in reverse before Julian even leaves the building. My mind is like a raging storm, fury and anger rolling around inside me as I push the car as fast as it’ll go, ignoring the calls from Julian no matter how much it hurts to do so.

JULIAN
“What… the fuck just happened?” I ask as I watch Casimir’s car disappear into the night.
“He was really freaked out about something,” Cyrus says. “Did he know them? Maybe he knew them.”
“I… really didn’t think there was anyone else that Casimir cared about besides those of us here,” Ezio mutters. “I know that sounds mean, but think about it. Casimir is completely closed off from everyone, so… even if he knew these people, I can’t fathom he’d act that way because I can’t imagine he’d be close to them yet none of us would know them.”
I call Casimir’s phone, but he completely ignores the call even though I know it has to be coming through his car. Why the hell would he leave me? If he was upset about something, why wouldn’t he take me with him? He knows he can rely on me. He knows I’m here for him… I thought we’d been making progress.
I bite my lip, trying my hardest not to feel hurt about this.
“Was there something I missed?” I ask, tempted to go back in, but how the hell do I even know what I’m looking for? It seems like something only Casimir saw, and he didn’t feel capable of telling us even though he knows I’d always listen and never judge.
“If you missed it, so did I,” Ezio says. “I’ve been around him for centuries and nothing stood out to me.”
Anxiety eats at me that whatever Casimir saw was bad enough that he left me here. It tells me it has to deal with his past, right?
“On the way over, we mentioned how the vampire we found last night was in this area… Casimir might have gone to Genevieve’s. Would that be the way he’d turn to go there? It’s not the way toward home,” I say.
“Oh, you’re right. It actually would be,” Ezio says.
“Can I take your car? I’m sure Cyrus wants your help here.”
Ezio nods before handing me the keys. “You treat my baby with love.”
“I will,” I promise, even though I ran his last car up on a curb, which seemed to cause him severe distress. This one is brand new after some vampires had destroyed the last one when he’d been coming to protect me, so I’m sure he loves it even more. “Do you know the address?”
“Yeah, I’ll send it. Just… be careful. Some of the… people there aren’t too fond of… your kind,” he says, since there are humans milling about.
I nod and hurry out to his car which I back onto the road before heading in the direction Casimir had gone. When Ezio’s text comes through, I click it and follow the directions. I don’t have Genevieve’s number to tell her I’m coming, but maybe I can catch Casimir before he even goes inside.
The drive takes about fifteen minutes with me speeding my way there, my heart beating wildly in my chest the entire time. I constantly feel like Casimir is teetering on this edge where he will either turn to me… or turn away from me. He’s so used to dealing with everything alone… hell, for hundreds of years he didn’t seem to have anyone until he met Ezio a couple hundred years ago… and then for him to commit to trusting me when we’ve only known each other months? I can’t fault him for that.
When I pull into the driveway of a very nice mansion, I see Casimir’s car right in front of the door. As I park behind it, I see I have a message from Ezio.

Ezio: I can’t get ahold of Genevieve. Please be careful. I don’t know all of the vampires in her group.

Me: Okay. Casimir’s car is here.
I rush out of the car and up to the front door where I hit the doorbell. I can hear the ringing bell bouncing around the house. I just want to push my way into the house, and I would have if I knew Genevieve was the only one home.
They seem to be taking their sweet time answering me as I hit the doorbell again while trying Casimir’s number. The door finally opens and the woman who looks out at me scowls.
“What’s a mutt doing here?” she snarls.
“Casimir is here, right? Please, I need to get to him.”
“Fuck off,” she says. “You’re making everything stink like dog out here. Shoo.”
I hate dealing with vampires. I really, really hate it, but I hate the fact that Casimir’s alone even more. “No, I need to get inside. Is Genevieve here? She knows me—please? I just need to see her or Casimir.”
Two more vampires appear behind her. They’re pressing into my space, standing uncomfortably close as my throat begins to tighten. I want to cover my neck and I know it’s ridiculous. They’re not just going to… bite me… and even if they were, what would covering my throat accomplish?
They could tear me to the ground and⁠—
I shove those thoughts back. “I need to see Casimir.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” a man asks as he gives me a shove. It’s hard enough that I stumble back and my foot catches on the edge of the porch. I’d have fallen down the steps if I hadn’t caught onto the railing. They’re laughing at me as they keep pressing into my space, well aware I can’t do anything against a household of them.
“Hey, hey!” someone shouts as they rush up. “That’s Casimir’s!”
“What do you mean? Casimir’s what? Pet?”
“NO! That’s Casimir’s partner,” he says with wide eyes. “Casimir’s going to fucking tear your head off. He’s clearly already in a fucking mood, he punched Daryl through the goddamn wall! And if he saw you harassing his wolf…” He makes a sign of the cross.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this sooner?” the man who’d been harassing me says.
I feel like this is as good of a time as any to try to reason with them again. “I need to get to Casimir, please?”
The nicer of the group, a vampire with dark red hair, gives me a grimace. “I just… think you’re better off out here. We’re all actually better off out here.”
I push past him, having no time for this bullshit as I rush into the house. I can hear vampires all around and one even jumps, startled, when they come out to look at who’d just entered.
“Casimir?” I call, knowing he has to hear me.
I don’t know what floor he’s on or where he’s at… until I hear a crashing noise from above me. “Where are the stairs?”
Most of the vampires just stare at me, but one finally points. Following his directions, I rush through a door and find the stairs leading up. Taking them two at a time, I reach the top floor as a vampire rushes past, like they’re fleeing something terrifying.
I step into the hallway just in time to see a man get flung down it, landing closer to me. Casimir comes out of a room, eyes completely fixated on the man who is scrambling backward. It takes me far too long to realize that the healthy-looking man with messy dark hair is the shriveled-up vampire from last night.
He holds his hands up, like he might be able to calm Casimir down with some simple hand gestures. “Hey, hey, buddy. I don’t know what has changed.”
“You did it, didn’t you? You killed them in the cabin.”
Finding his hand gestures do nothing, the man crab-crawls backward, like he can’t seem to get his feet under him.
“Casimir!” I shout, but he doesn’t even acknowledge me. His eyes don’t even flick over to mine, he’s so fucking fixated on the man before him. I hear noise behind me, and I turn to find six or so vampires peeking around me, like they want to enjoy the show but have decided to use me as a shield in order to do so.
“I didn’t kill anyone! I don’t know what you’re talking about! I didn’t! I’ve been here!” Delwyn cries.
Casimir rushes forward and grabs Delwyn by the throat, slamming him against the wall.
“Oh, he’s a goner,” someone mumbles behind me.
“You don’t fuck with Casimir. Nuh-uh. There’s a reason our lovely lady gives in to him and him alone,” another says.
“RIP, my man.”
So much for them helping in any way. “Casimir!” I shout as I rush down the hallway before he tears Delwyn’s head off his body. “Casimir!” I grab his arm, but it’s like pulling against a metal pillar.
“Oh, that wolf is gonna get murrrrrdered,” someone says.
“Nope. I’m not cleaning that shit up. I had to clean the last dead body up,” a woman mutters.
“Casimir, that is enough,” I yell. “Put him down, and let’s talk over this.”
Still nothing. He won’t even look at me. And the aura that is exuding from him is almost making me feel… afraid. I don’t want to be afraid of Casimir. I don’t ever want to be afraid of him. He always makes me feel safe.
I shove him hard since that seems to be the only language he currently knows. “You are scaring me, Casimir! Now stop!”
His eyes flicker over to mine and the guilt I see on his face makes me wish I’d never said anything. He drops Delwyn to the ground and Delwyn quickly backs away. Casimir’s eyes flicker back over to him, like he wasn’t quite done with his murderous rampage, but I wrap my arms around him, squeezing him to me.
“Casimir, please. I don’t know what’s going on, but I need you to calm the fuck down and let’s figure this out, okay?” I can feel the tension and uncertainty in his body.
He tries pulling back, but I just lock my fingers around him, so he’s forced to drag me. “Julian, stop,” he urges.
“No, you’re just going to run away from me again!” I say, determined not to let go.
He grits his teeth, likely confirming that I’m right.
“Casimir, besides the fact that he was near the cabin, what proof do you have that he caused it?”
Casimir is silent. He won’t hug me back; he won’t do anything but stand there.
I keep plowing forward, determined. “If… I don’t know what happened, but if someone did this to get in your head, why wouldn’t they throw someone out there for you to take your rage out on? Clearly, they were a sick fuck to rearrange the bodies after killing all of them. But last night, Delwyn couldn’t even catch me. You think he could kill and arrange four perfectly healthy vampires?”
I pull back from where I’m tucked against him enough to look into his eyes. “Casimir, please.”
“What the hell is going on—” Genevieve hesitates as she sees the scene before her. “Casimir?”
“Come on, Casimir,” I say, giving him a tug. I just want to take him away from this place. Take him somewhere that he’ll let me hold him and remind him that everything will be okay.
Casimir’s silent and I don’t know what to do… so I let go of him. I feel like he’s going to jump off that ledge and run from me, but I can’t live every moment afraid he’s going to leave. So I have to trust him.
I turn to Delwyn and kneel where he’s sitting on the ground. “Delwyn, some vampires were killed in a cabin right near where you were found last night. Did you have anything to do with their deaths?”
Delwyn manages to tear his eyes away from Casimir. “N-No. I… I was thrown out into a field. I wasn’t fully conscious, you know? Like… I’d been locked in that box for so fucking long I’d started to sink into my mind… it was the only place I got relief. And then suddenly I was outside… outside the cabin you mentioned. But I didn’t kill them! I never went inside. I… I heard screaming, so I just… left. And that’s when I ran into you two.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about the screaming?” I ask.
“You think that I would willingly deal with that man? I want to pretend he doesn’t exist. I want to return to my normal life. I want it to end. If I told you about the cabin and he found out I was the one who did, he’d destroy me. He already despises me.”
“How do I know that everything you’ve said hasn’t been a lie?”
Delwyn watches me for a moment before simply saying, “You don’t.”
“Who was the guy who took you?”
“I don’t know.”
“So he kept you for months, and you know nothing about him?”
“Yes. I never saw him. He rarely spoke to me. He’d feed me just enough to keep me alive. That’s it.”
“If you think of anything else, I really hope you tell us,” I say as I stand up and turn to Casimir who is still standing there. I hold my hand out to him as anxiety eats through me, afraid that he’s not going to take it. He’s going to turn away from me, and we’re going to be back to square one… no, worse than square one. Because at least at square one, my feelings weren’t thrown into the mix. I just thought it’d be fun and a way to get the vampires and wolves together… and to get some lifesaving blood.
But now…
It’s like there’s a weight in my hand and I’m finding it harder and harder to keep holding it up. I want to put it down; I want to stop while my feelings are still intact. Or maybe while I can make the choice to just step away and not have to feel the hurt of being pushed away.
Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll just drop my hand because then that way I can keep pretending everything’s fine.
I start to lower my hand, but Casimir snatches it up before it completely falls. He looks startled that I would even think about dropping it. He squeezes it and then clears his throat.
“Don’t make me regret this,” he says to Delwyn before heading toward the stairwell where half the house is now crowded, my hand still held securely in his, and I feel like I can finally let out the breath I must have been holding. The swirl of anticipation had nearly wrecked me, but him taking my hand has thrown me back up into a new high.
Seeing Casimir coming, they scatter, leaving only Genevieve on the steps.
“Do I get an explanation?” she asks, looking a bit incredulous. She’s a beautiful woman nearly always wearing some kind of extravagant dress, like she’s going to a party, instead of just living her life. When she’d told me she wanted to add me to her “harem,” I… didn’t actually think she’d have a full-blown harem, but it seems she’s got quite the collection of people in this house.
“Call Ezio,” Casimir says before pulling me past her.
“Casimir, you could still tell me what the hell is going on?” she urges, but if she knows him at all, she’ll know he’s done with this situation.
When we reach the ground floor, I notice there are a few vampires who are too curious for their own good, but Casimir pulls me past them, hand still tight on mine. He stops when we’re next to the man who nearly pushed me off the porch.
It’s like the man tries to become one with the wall, but it’s not enough as Casimir grabs him by the throat.
“Jake, if you threaten or even look at Julian again, I will make sure you no longer have hands to touch him with, got it?”
“G-Got it,” he whispers.
“Apologize to him.”
“I-I’m so sorry,” the man says to me.
“That’s okay…” I reply.
Casimir doesn’t seem overly satisfied but he nods. “Now drive Ezio’s car back to him. You can run home.”
He digs the keys out of my pocket and throws them at the man named Jake with plenty of force. Then he leads me out to his car, hand firmly placed in mine. He only lets go of my hand once we have to part to get into the vehicle.
I’m elated that he chose me, that he gave me his hand, but now that we’re speeding down the road, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if he wants me to say anything or nothing. And then all too soon, he’s pulling into the driveway of his house.
Casimir turns the car off and just sits there. “Sorry this wasn’t the fun zoo trip we were planning.”
“I don’t know, I heard some feral animal threw someone through a wall. I definitely wouldn’t get to see that at the zoo.”
He slowly looks over at me and then snorts. “Fuck, I did, didn’t I?”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Will you?”
Casimir sighs as he leans against the car window. “I… I don’t know if I got in my own head or what. That… fucking dream last night was fucking with me and then these bodies and… it just seemed similar, you know?”
“I’m confused… you had a dream this happened before it happened?” I ask.
“It’s… one of my many recurring dreams, but really, it’s just a fixation on the past. I’m in this fucking cabin and I kill everyone in there. But the bodies from today… they were set up like how I’d killed them. With the shovel and the chair…”
“So you think someone set up all of this like how you’d done it? How long ago did this happen?”
“Fuck… four hundred and maybe seventy-some years ago?”
“You don’t think you might have lost some details in four hundred and seventy years?” I ask. “I mean, yeah, maybe someone was setting it up the way you did it to fuck with you, but did they really wait nearly five hundred years to do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“And who would have?”
“I’m just… in my head. I’m constantly in my head. I overreacted when I know literally nothing. It just seemed like it was set up for me… and then Delwyn was near there last night. I overreacted.”
“I don’t know that you overreacted because it does sound weird. I mean, yeah, you probably shouldn’t have attacked Delwyn like that, but I think it’s okay to be upset that what happened was so similar to your past.”
“But maybe I’m wrong. You’re right, it was hundreds of years ago; maybe I’m remembering parts of it wrong?”
I wish I knew how to help him. “Who all knew what happened back then?”
“Only those who are dead.”
“Could someone else have figured it out?”
“The bodies were disposed of,” he says. “I’m just…” Casimir rubs at his head. “I’m sorry. I dragged you through this and those shitty vampires harassed you.”
“It’s okay,” I say as I reach out and squeeze his hand before pulling it up to my lips to kiss it. “You just… don’t know how relieved I was when you took my hand. I… I didn’t think you’d take it.”
He’s quiet, eyes fixated on our hands. “I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I’m sorry I can’t just…”
“I don’t need you to do anything differently, Casimir. Don’t apologize, just… promise me that you won’t stop taking my hand? I can deal with everything else. I promise you I can deal with all of it. Just don’t stop taking my hand.”
He nods. “I’m sorry I made you feel bad.”
“Promise me,” I say. “Pinky promise.”
I hold my pinky up and Casimir, still obviously having no idea what to do with it, just pokes my pinky with the tip of his.
I don’t know why this amuses me so much, but I love it.
“I promise,” he says.
I get out of the car and wait a moment for him to join me.
“We could still go to the zoo,” Casimir offers.
“I… think it’s closing in a few minutes.”
“I could jump the wall.”
“We’re not breaking into the zoo!”
“I could get you anything you want, just tell me,” he says, voice sounding kind of tight.
I look back at him, wondering where this is coming from. “Casimir, come on. All I need is to know that you’re with me and you trust me.”
“I do, but that’s not enough. Is there something you want?”
“For you to come inside with me.”
He hesitates but when I hold my hand out, he hurries up to take it and lets me pull him inside.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 5

CASIMIR
I refused to sleep today; instead I lay in bed until Julian fell asleep then got up and did every little thing I could think of to keep my mind busy because it’s hardest when Julian’s asleep.
The more I thought, the more I realized that there were inconsistencies. The ones I’d killed were humans, but the ones dead last night were vampires. The genders were only partly correct, and while there was a chair and a shovel, the ones from my memory weren’t in the same places. Was I really freaking out over a fucking chair and a shovel?
Julian comes down around three in the afternoon and finds me staring at a book I’d been trying to read for at least an hour. I don’t think I’d turned the page more than once.
“Hmm… I was sad when I woke up and you weren’t there,” he murmurs as he pushes the book out of the way and climbs onto my lap, straddling me. He sinks down into me, head on my shoulder, clearly still half asleep. “Read to me. Maybe that’ll wake me up. Are you reading erotica? That sounds fun.”
“Definitely isn’t erotica,” I say.
“Boo. What’s it about? Better be fun.”
“Uh… let’s see, there was this pesky wolf who conned this sweet vampire into doing his bidding,” I joke.
“I love the sound of this. Did he turn into a wee bat?”
“He… did not.”
“Boo. What else did this super awesome-sounding wolf do?”
“He made the vampire question why he caved whenever the wolf wanted anything.”
“That’s because he’s a suuuucker. Get it? The vampire is a sucker. Ha ha. I should have been a comedian.”
“I think maybe you need to go back to sleep and dream up a different profession.”
“Noooo! I’m so funny, Casimir. Tell me how funny I am.”
I push him back enough to look him in the eyes. “You’re… hilarious.”
Julian grins at me. “You’re such a suuucker.”
Of course that’s his response. “What the hell? How am I the sucker? I was pressured into answering you! Even if it was an untruthful answer!” I explain.
He beams at me, like that can make me forgive him in any way.
I growl at that radiating smile. “Fucking hell, you’re cute too. It’s like you get away with anything you want.”
“Oh? You sure?”
“Positive,” I grumble as I give him a soft kiss. “And minty fresh. I mean… maybe not my favorite flavor.”
“Your only preferred flavor is blood!”
“Maybe,” I say as I kiss him again. He’s right, I should have just stayed in bed with him. I was miserable without him, but at least with him, I can forget all about that nonsense and just enjoy him because he helps me enjoy life.
“What do you want to eat?” I ask, willing to get him anything he desires.
“Oh? You’re going to feed me?”
“I’m going to use that fun app to force others to feed you,” I say. “I like the ‘special requests’ section. I’ll show you. What do you want?”
“You sure? I can just make myself something.”
“No, no, pancakes with bacon?”
His eyes light up. “Ooh, that does sound good.”
“Got it,” I say as I show off my new human app ordering skills and toss in a special request of “If you’re faster than fifteen minutes, you get an extra $100 tip. If you’re slower, I get to eat you.”
“Oh my god, do not send that!”
He acts like that’s not the same request I give them every time I order something for him. “Why? They love it,” I say. “Look at my ratings as a client. All five stars. ‘Wonderful tipper,’ ‘Super nice… I think. I don’t actually know, he just shoved extra money at me while stoically standing there,’ and a ‘That man can eat me.’”
“You’re quite proud of this, aren’t you?” he asks as he scrolls through all of my beautiful reviews.
“Look, someone already snatched that request up,” I say. “Oh! It’s the girl who wants me to eat her.”
Julian stares at me. “Are you using your sex appeal and tips to make people work harder?”
“Do you want your food nice and hot or cold?”
“Keep being you, my heart bro,” he says.
“I knew it.”
Julian’s eyes narrow a bit and it makes me question what he’s thinking of. “Speaking of… eating… you never really told me where you get your blood from.”
“Hmm… I like biting you best,” I say, lifting his hand up to nibble on it just a little, even though I know that’s not what he’s asking.
“Yeah, but then I bite you. If we just keep biting each other… I don’t think that works. Like if I was still making blood like a normal human, wouldn’t the silver be gone? Or am I not making blood? Am I making blood, and the silver still won’t go anywhere? AM I AN ALIEN?”
I raise an eyebrow. “How did you become an alien in this?”
He shrugs. “I’m confused by all of it, and it seems to be the simplest explanation,” Julian determines.
“Well… it’s not. And… I don’t actually have any answers for you.”
“Alien,” he whispers.
“You’re not an alien. I mean, we could have someone do some experiments on you if you’re super curious. Ezio once claimed to be a scientist. It was about a hundred years ago and he really liked using leeches, so go forward at your own risk.”
“I feel like Ezio’s entire life is a midlife crisis.”
“Don’t even get me started on when he came to me and told me he was going to be a goat farmer until one headbutted him.”
“What’d he do after that?”
“I don’t know. He found some stray human and gave him the house and told him to take care of his goats until he came back. I don’t think he ever came back.”
“A stray… human? What exactly is that?”
“You know, the ones that scurry around. This was like a hundred years ago. Don’t ask me such complex questions. Wow, look at how fast this person is driving.”
Julian scrutinizes the dot, like he’s jealous of my attention on it, and I find it ridiculously fun.
“I am opening the door. Not you,” he demands. “I will make sure this human is well aware that you are my heart bro.”
“Fine, fine,” I say as I pass him the tip.
“You never answered me about who you feed off of.”
“Are you jealous?” I ask, hitting the nail on the head. “Would you rather I starve?”
“No, I’m just like…”
“Jealous,” I say, weirdly delighted about this. Am I almost… giddy? When did I become such a sucker?
He gives me a look filled with stubbornness. “I’m not… jealous. I’m just like, you know… maybe a little jealous? Like do they love it when you bite them?”
I don’t know why this delights me so much. “Hold on, you want me to make it hurt?”
Julian looks horrified. “Oh my god, no! Oh my god, I’m a horrible person, aren’t I? I was just… I… it just feels so good and a bit… sexual or something. And then I got to thinking about you making others feel like that and then I felt… forget all of this.”
“You’re wanting to know if I make it sexual with the people I suck on?” I ask. I think I could tease him all day and never get sick of it.
“NO! Just like… are they… like at least old and not your type?”
I gasp and the moment I do, I can see Julian wishing to take it all back. He’s far too kind and sweet. “You want me to prey on weak, elderly humans? What if I break their bones just by touching them? They’re so fragile!”
Julian is practically melting in my lap. “Stop. Please. Stop. The longer I talk the worse this gets. It’s quite clear it’s getting worse.”
I gasp, very dramatically, of course. “Are you treating humans like that rabbit? Where the cute ones should be left free and I should only drink from the ugly ones?”
“Casimir, stop. Please! Let’s forget I ever even spoke. Hi, I’m Julian. It’s lovely to meet you. What? You’re wondering why this person you’ve never spoken to before is on your lap? No need to fear.”
“No, no, we are partners now, right? Heart bros or whatever you like to call us. I need help figuring this out. Please, tell me. Am I only to eat ugly people?”
Julian sighs as I try my absolute hardest not to grin. “Well, you’re not killing them, right?”
“Oh, so it only matters if I kill them?” I ask. “So if I’m not killing them, I can drink from anyone, but if I am killing them, the ugly ones are the ones I go for?”
“NO! Oh my god, staaahhp. That was only with the animals, and I took that back!”
“I’m just trying to figure this out, Julian. So I’m allowed to go for old and ugly?”
“You made that shit up! That was about the animals! And… it was also not the best advice. Spare me, Casimir. What I want you to eat is like… bad people! Yes, that!”
I’m enjoying this far too much to spare him. But it is rather cute when he sinks down onto me and tries to hug the memories out of me. Like maybe then he can get me to stop.
“I just wanted to know if you were making them hot and bothered because I was jealous. But I see where jealousy gets me… in a grave of my own making.”
“It’s a tough life,” I tease.
“It really is.”
“Maybe…” I whisper as I kiss the nape of his neck. I hate the scar they’d left there and try my best to kiss it away. “I only like your blood.”
“Yeah, but you can’t just drink my blood, right?”
I draw the neck of his shirt down, exposing his shoulder which I kiss as well. “You’re right, I can’t. So I pay a human for it. She gives me a bit of her blood, and I pay her handsomely. And if you want to know whether she enjoys it sexually, let’s just say she generally talks about her three pesky children the entire time. ‘This one is in ballet, and you should see how cute she is! And yes, she might suck at her little kicks, but cuteness is all that matters. Blah blah blah…’” I make sure to use a mocking tone to convey how dreadfully boring it is hearing about these children week after week.
“Oh…” He seems surprised. “Have you always used her?”
“No. Ezio pointed me toward her because the only one I want to bite anymore… is you,” I admit.
Julian gasps and I can imagine hearts in his eyes. “You really are a sucker!” he declares.
“I was being all romantic and shit,” I growl as I grab him and fake bite his arm.
He laughs but I can tell he’s more than a little pleased by this.
“You’re so happy about this.”
“It’s so much better than eating the elderly!” he says. “And definitely better than eating hot people.”
“Uh-huh. As long as you keep telling yourself you’re a good person, that’s all that matters.”
“Good,” Julian says, clearly pleased, although he’s literally the nicest person I’ve ever met.
The doorbell rings and Julian jumps up. “I better go get that in case she’s old.” Then he freezes. “What if I’m the old and ugly one? You just admitted you only want to feed off me!”
“You are ridiculous. Go get your food and don’t scare off the delivery driver. I don’t want to mess up my rating.”
“Of course not!”

“So this is a zoo,” I say as I look around, not yet impressed.
“We’re kind of lucky it’s so late; there aren’t as many people here. Usually the place is absolutely packed,” Julian says as the man at the gate scans our tickets.
“Did you take me here to explain to me which animals I can feed to starving vampires?” I ask.
He shakes his head as he tosses me a grin. “That’s exactly it,” he says as he holds his hand out. “You’re getting so much practice holding hands. You barely even struggle anymore.”
“Right? They’re not as clammy tonight,” I agree.
Julian makes sure I’m looking him in the eyes as he sighs, like he’s disappointed in me. “I’m going to leave you in the bat den.”
“Are they known to be as clammy?” I tease. I love the look he’s giving me and am well aware that I would continue to tease him just to get a chance to see that look every day.
“I want to threaten you with something but I’m pretty sure you’d win.”
I grin at him. “I sure would.”
He shakes his head, like I could be, in any way, part of the issue, and gives me a look. “My hands might be clammy, but your hands are like… fingery. And like… all nice and shit, and it just creeps me out, you know?”
“Are you saying my hands are perfect?” I tease.
“Ew, no. It hurts me inside to hold them because of how… fingery they are. But I do it because I love you.”
Why is he so freaking cute?
His attention immediately gets snagged by something. “Look at them!” he says and off we go as he races over to see some funky-looking dogs with big ears.
They have nothing on Gustov. “What are those?”
“African wild dogs. Neat, right? Look how cute their ears are.”
“Are those ugly enough to eat?”
The expression on Julian’s face makes it seem like I’m the evil one. “No! Don’t be a monster! They’re cute!”
“Hmm…”
“Then again, you thought Gustov looked delicious,” he mutters.
I grin at that. “You look delicious too.”
“Funny, funny,” he says as he pulls me to the next exhibit. This one is a huge savanna area, and while it’s probably too dark for most people to see since there isn’t lighting out in the middle of it, I can see some giraffes amongst some other animals.
“Dammit, I can’t see them very well in this form. I wish my eyes were as good when I’m human as they are as a werewolf,” he mutters as he squints.
“I can see them. They’re out there,” I say as I point.
“Oh… yeah, I can kind of see a shadowy blob if I squint and pretend.”
“I would like to try to eat a giraffe,” I decide.
“No! We didn’t come here to decide what was edible!” Julian says. “So far you’ve just picked animals you’d like to eat!”
“Correct… and I’d like to eat a giraffe.”
“You are the worst,” Julian decides. “Where would you bite? Like would you wrap your arms and legs around its long neck and bite right where the head connects to the neck?”
“Hmm… it might be hard to get to the jugular hanging off it like that, but that does sound fun. We should have Ezio try it. Bonus if he gets trampled.”
“You’re so mean to Ezio… and to the cute giraffe.”
“We don’t need to kill it. Just bite it a bit. It’s got plenty of blood. I have decided that I would like to pet it.”
“What?”
I give Julian a determined nod. “Yes, I will pet it.”
He shakes his head. “You will not! There are cameras!”
“I’ll be quick as lightning. No one will see. I’ve never seen a giraffe up close. I want to see it.”
“Oh my god, don’t.”
I inch toward the darkness. No one is even over here because the giraffes are so far out in the savanna area that none of the humans can see them. They likely don’t even know they’re outside.
“Casimir, don’t.”
I look over at him. “You want to go with me?”
“They’ll stomp me to the ground!”
“I’m faster and stronger than a giraffe. I just want to see it a bit closer.”
Julian’s face tells me he very much wants to. “We shouldn’t. That’s like… bad, right? Bad for animals?”
“If this is the worst thing you’ve ever done, then you probably shouldn’t hang around me so much. There’s a sign right here that you can feed them if you pay ten dollars during the daylight hours. I can’t imagine us getting close to it will scar it for life.”
“It might!”
I pull him into the darkness, a hand around his waist, and just like that, I drop down into the pen as Julian clings to me.
“This is so bad, Casimir!”
“Why the hell be fast as fuck if you can’t break a few rules?” I say as I stop about twenty feet from the giraffe. It doesn’t even notice me as I stare at the tall creature. “I would definitely cling from its neck while eating it.”
“It’s so big. And this is really bad.”
“You’re adorable. Afraid of breaking a couple of rules. If this is the worst thing you’ve ever done, then you really have been too good.”
“This is pretty bad! This is like… I don’t know, probably getting thrown in prison bad.”
“Not when you can pay off the humans… with pictures of Gustov,” I say as I sit down in the grass and pull him onto my lap. The giraffe is oblivious to our existence, still just scavenging around.
“You imagine coming across something like this in the wild? I’d be terrified.”
I eye it. “It seems rather dumb. It hasn’t noticed us at all. I would win hands down in a fight against it.”
“That’s what you’re concerned about?”
I give him a shrug. “That’s what I think about every time I meet something new.”
“So when you met me, your first thought was ‘Can I win in a fight against it?’”
“No, my first thought was ‘What the hell is this wolf selling me chocolate for?’”
“Because you looked gullible.”
“Did I?” I ask skeptically.
“And handsome… and rich. What ever happened to those candy bars?”
“I had someone send them to Terrance. He gets one mailed daily with threats on them.”
Julian stills, apparently taking a moment to let the brilliance of this sink in. “Please… I don’t… I don’t know if I hope this is a true story or not.”
“The one for today says, ‘Every moment with you feels like a lifetime because you’re so goddamn dreadful.’ The one from yesterday said, ‘A mere glance of your face is enough to give me a lifetime of nightmares.’ I wrote them all myself.” Is it too much to say that I’m proud of myself for thinking of such a wonderful idea?
“You’re kidding.”
I can’t tell if Julian’s impressed or not… I would be. “Julian, you seem to think that before I met you, I had a lot of things to do,” I say.
“You own like half of the city!”
“Yeah, but that’s boring.”
“What’s the one for tomorrow say?”
“I don’t remember. I have the woman who mails them send me pictures of them before they’re sent so I can get a daily dose of glee.”
“You are so ridiculous and I love it. Next time you do something like this, let me help.”
And this is why I love being with him. “Of course.” I give him a squeeze, loving the idea of terrorizing Terrance together.
“This giraffe is so cute.”
“I’m gonna pet it,” I decide.
“You’re not going to pet it!” he says. “Just… pet Gustov when you get home and pretend he’s a giraffe.”
I tsk and settle for watching it for a bit until it wanders off to see what its buddy is doing.
“I really like this,” I mutter before feeling stupid and kind of embarrassed.
“What? Breaking into places? Making my heart run wild out of fear I’m going to prison?”
“Yes,” I say. Although… really, it’s just being alone with him. “We could have sex and you can tell everyone that you did it in an African savanna.”
“NO! No one is ever finding out about this.”
“Fine, fine.” I rest my chin on his shoulder. Why did I mutter such… weird things? “I’m going to go touch it. Do you want to?” That’ll definitely make me forget about what I said.
“No!”
I whistle and the giraffe turns to look at us. “Oh no, it’s coming here. Looks like it wants to touch me.”
“We should leave! What if it gets angry?”
“It looks furious,” I say dryly as the thing slowly meanders over to us. I stand up just in case it really does decide to pummel us to the ground—not like I wouldn’t be much faster than it—but instead it lowers its head and sniffs Julian’s hand as he stands frozen in place. When it sees that he doesn’t have anything, it wanders off.
“I touched it,” he whispers.
“It actually touched you.”
“It loved me.”
I debate this. “It actually looked to see if you had food, saw you had nothing and said fuck this and left.”
He’s not deterred by my teasing. “It loved me.”
“It sure did,” I say, just agreeing at this point. “What do you want to see next? Do you want to go in the lion’s pen?”
“NO!”
“We could wrestle an elephant?”
“Cas, I feel like you have a wildly different idea than me of what one goes to the zoo for.”
“But you said you couldn’t see it. I was simply making sure you could see it,” I explain as I pick him up and slip back out of the enclosure. “I will ride one next time we come.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s a warning.”
Julian shakes his head. “Come on, let’s go look at things normally.”
“Do you ever think about whether or not people tried riding giraffes back in the day?” I ask.
“No… No, I don’t.”
“I would have tried.”
“Of course you would have,” Julian says. “Come on. The elephants are this way, and no, you can’t touch them.”
“But what if we rode one? I bet it’d be hard to eat. Tough, you know?”
“These poor animals. I thought we were coming here to look at the cute animals, not figure out ways to eat them.”
“Now that thing looks edible and ugly,” I say as I point to a wolf that is the exact same color as Julian’s father.
“Stop! You are so mean,” he cries, but he’s laughing too, and really, that’s all that matters.
“Am I? I checked off your lifelong wish of touching a giraffe.”
“I… I can’t say that was on it, but it was pretty neat.”
I freeze.
“What?” Julian asks, as though he needs to be concerned. Instead, as soon as he hears my plan, he’s going to be thrilled.
“What if… now hear me out. I mean, that wolf really does look like your father, right?”
Julian scrutinizes it. “I mean… yeah, my father’s bigger and a little better groomed… but yeah.”
“What if we swap them out? I’ll grab your father in the middle of the night, toss him in the pen, and no one will notice. They might actually prefer it.”
I snap a picture of the wolf and send it to Terrance.

Me: I found your doppelganger. I already like him so much more than you.

Terrorance: Fuck off.
“Your father says he loves it,” I say.
“You texted my father? Why the hell do you and my dad talk more than I talk to him?” Julian asks. “And you can’t just swap him out! Wouldn’t people notice if Terrance 2.0 never shifts into a human?”
“They’re going to love it. Trust me. Think of how happy your mom will be.”
That makes Julian nod. “She would be pretty happy.”
“I really see no downside to it. I’ll grab him on the way out. Now let’s go pet some elephants.”
Julian grabs my hand and pulls me to a stop. “Hold on, I want to make two things clear. We’re not petting the elephants and we’re not grabbing the wolf on the way out.”
I scrutinize the werewolf gazing back at me with his bright blue eyes. “This displeases me.”
He keeps claiming I’m ridiculous, but the smile on his face tells me he’s enjoying every moment of it.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 6

JULIAN
“What the fuck is on my front porch?” Casimir demands as he pulls into the driveway where there’s a vehicle I don’t recognize. Thankfully, there’s no stolen wolf with us, much to Casimir’s dismay.
I stare at what is on his porch. And it just… I mean, I’m sure it’s not, but I have the weird feeling that it’s a stripper.
“It looks like a woman… who is lacking adequate clothing,” I input.
Casimir growls as he gets out of the car while I question whether someone bought him a stripper… and for what?
“Is it your birthday?” I ask.
“What? No.” He starts storming up to the front door, so I hurry after him. “I bet your father sent this to piss me off.”
“Why would my father send you a woman who forgot half of her clothes?” I ask.
“Because he knows it’d piss me off,” he growls, and just as he reaches the porch, the woman turns with a beaming look on her face. Her boobs are oozing out of the teeny belly shirt she’s wearing. Honestly, it’s impressive that they haven’t fallen the rest of the way out—they sure are working for all they’re worth to stay inside.
“Well, hello there, handsome!” she exclaims, and it’s like Casimir is shot with acid as he jerks back. At first, I assume the woman’s niceties physically caused Casimir pain, but nope, it’s because Yorick appears.
“Gooooood evening, my lovely friends,” Yorick says.
Casimir’s hand is already making a fist as though he’s imagining what it’d feel like to wrap it around Yorick’s throat.
Which… I don’t blame him for. Yorick is a vampire who’d chosen to work for Ivo, a vampire who’d decided to get revenge for his lover’s death. For some reason, Yorick took it upon himself to harass me. And while I don’t forgive him for any of that, especially setting me loose on a full moon and chucking me out of a window, he did keep Casimir from dying when Casimir was betrayed by someone he thought was on his side.
Yorick holds his hands up. “Hold on! Hold on! Let me explain before you try to murder me! I searched the land of Google for what to send someone as an apology and it said to send them an edible arrangement. Soooooo…” He waves his arms at the woman. “Edible arrangement!”
He’s so proud of himself.
And I’m going to be real honest, I find it a wee bit amusing.
Casimir, on the other hand, is not amused in the slightest. “Alright, you said that after you explained, I could murder you,” Casimir says as he starts toward Yorick who is holding his hands up. He’s a handsome man with longer hair that he keeps tied up. While it’s a bit messy, he exudes sexiness, like every out-of-place strand took a lot of time and energy.
“Hold on just a little bit. I didn’t show you what all she can do! Look. Eva, show him that thing you showed me earlier.”
The woman curtsies. That’s all she does and Yorick is clapping up a storm.
“See? Eh? Good, eh?” Does he really think such a thing would wow Casimir into not eating him? Only Gustov can do the simplest of things that wow Casimir.
“Are you… do you want to leave?” I ask the woman. “I can… pay you or something.”
“Paid? Oh, honey, no. I owed Yorick a favor after he got my kitten out of a tree. He said some handsome vampire was going to bite me and if I’d have known he was this handsome⁠—”
“Thank you but no,” I say as I hover in front of Casimir to make it very clear that he is mine.
She tsks, rather disappointed about this. “Fine, fine,” she mumbles as she heads toward her car and drives off… without Yorick.
“Your ride has just left, Yorick,” Casimir says, pleased about this. “You better start running. I’ll give you a two-minute head start.”
Yorick grimaces. “Okay, now, you didn’t like the edible arrangement, but hear me out… I saved a kitten. You heard her. You’re an animal man, I see,” he says as he waves at Gustov who is watching us with much interest through the window.
And what he says next will determine what his fate is.
“He’s like a little Q-Tip hopping around in there,” Yorick exclaims, and while he looks delighted while saying this, it was not the right thing to say.
“My dog is not a fucking Q-Tip,” Casimir growls.
Yorick seems to realize that he’s leapt headfirst into his grave. He didn’t even bother stepping in, he dove in. “No, no, no! Like a cute Q-Tip. I just… love Q-Tips. They’re so cute! Ha ha ha. Julian, save me. Save me, Julian.”
Why this man is foolish enough to turn to me, I’m not sure. “Like you saved me when you threw me out on a full moon?”
Yorick’s backing away at this point. “Ha ha ha. A blunder on my part. I’ve never been a good judge of things. I don’t know how to make friends and thought I could bully you into being my friend, but that was obviously stupid. I make many mistakes, but the nice thing is I learn from them.”
“Because of a lack of judgment, I allowed you to go free. But you’re clearly interested in death seeing as you returned,” Casimir says.
“Okay, before you kill him, I have a couple of questions for him,” I say.
Yorick seems thrilled at a second chance at life. “I love questions! I can answer questions all day long!”
“Two nights ago, we found a half-starved vampire who said he’d been kept in a box by a man.”
“And you immediately thought of me? I’m so flatter—” He freezes, and the look on Casimir’s face must make him rethink that statement. “I mean… umm… how heinous? I’m really not sure where we stand on this. Are we glad the vampire was in the box? Casimir seems like the kind of guy who would prefer it if all the people he was forced to talk to were stuffed in a box.”
Casimir smiles. “Huh. You know what… I think the issue is I’m having trouble talking to you because of your face.”
Yorick smiles back like Casimir could have, in any way, complimented him. “Aww, is my handsome face distracting you?”
“Or maybe it’s your whole head.”
“Don’t cut his head off,” I urge. “Think of the blood all over your porch!”
Casimir tsks. “I do think he was getting somewhere with the box thing.”
“Ha ha ha. I like you two. You’re both so funny!” Yorick says as he shakes his head, earrings jingling as he does so.
And then Casimir disappears, leaving me standing with Yorick alone.
“Well, now that he’s gone, I suppose that means I can turn all of my attention to the cute little pup⁠—”
Casimir throws a cardboard box down in the front yard. “Get in the box.”
It’s a large one, but still not exactly grown man size.
Yorick warily stares down at it like the box might as well be a coffin. “You’re so silly, Casimir! I never expected someone so silly! Ha ha ha… oh, he’s serious. If I get in… you will forgive me then for my past… blunders?”
“Get in the box and you’ll find out,” Casimir says.
And so there is Yorick, climbing into the box while laughing nervously.
“How fun!” The look on Yorick’s face tells me that he’s not having as much fun as he’s claiming to be. He’s actually looking minorly worried as he sinks down into the box. “I just want to remind you both that I am useful.”
“Very much. I’ve never seen one be so useful,” Casimir says as he puts his hand on Yorick’s face and pushes him down into the box.
“Ha ha… this is so roomy and cozy,” he observes, crammed inside the box, knees to his chest. “You also get to see how flexible I am. Fun, huh? Do you think we can be friends now?”
“Let me think about it,” Casimir says as he closes the flaps and tapes them shut before pulling out a wand lighter and clicking it as he tries to get a flame started.
“I swear I hear the sound of a lighter. I must be hearing things, eh?” Yorick asks from inside the box.
Quickly, I snatch up the lighter and give Casimir a look. “Don’t you dare!”
Casimir grins. “You want to do it? I mean… he did nearly cause you to maim some teenagers.”
I click the lighter.
The box bursts open and Yorick rushes off. “It was wonderful seeing both of you! So fun. Lots of fun. Bye now.”
“See? I knew that would get him to leave… or the fire would,” Casimir says as he lights the box on fire like some kind of threat to Yorick before heading into the house. I sigh and stomp the tiny flame out before it can burn his grass.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 7

CASIMIR
My phone rings just as I’m settling in to force Julian to paint Gustov until he fills the house with paintings. I’ve come to the conclusion that I was a fool when I thought two per room would be enough.
“Shouldn’t you answer that?” Julian asks.
“I’ve actually decided that I will ignore everyone and everything,” I announce as Julian eyes the phone.
“Yeah, but it’s Genevieve. After you trashed her house the other night… maybe you owe it to her to answer a phone call?”
“I owe her nothing. I sent her a picture of Gustov. Was that not payment enough?”
Julian’s face tells me that he weirdly thinks it wasn’t. With a sigh, I grab the phone and answer it.
“Someone better be dying,” I growl.
“Someone just broke into my fucking house, nearly killed half of my beauties, and dragged that vampire of yours out of it.”
“Huh.” I kind of feel like I should retract my prior statement.
“Don’t fucking ‘huh’ me!” she shrieks.
“Did any of your people die?”
“No.”
“Then I will send more Gustov pictures to help them recover swiftly,” I say until I see the look Julian is giving me. “As I hurry over… myself… to fix… this issue?”
“You better,” she growls before hanging up.
I look over at Julian who quickly sets his paintbrush down and rushes toward the door. “Why don’t you stay here? I don’t like you around unpredictable things,” I urge.
“Too bad,” he says as he stuffs his feet in his shoes and hurries out. “I’m going to call Cyrus and Ezio too. See if they can help.”
“Okay,” I agree as I get into the driver’s seat and wait for Julian to buckle up before speeding on our way.
“They’re heading there. I hope Delwyn’s okay,” Julian says.
“I don’t trust Delwyn.”
Julian glances over at me. “Do you trust anyone besides like me… and Ezio?”
That’s a valid point, but there’s a difference. “Of course I do. Obviously, there’s a chance some sadistic vampire targeted him and locked him up for no reason besides some sick pleasure, but do you truly believe that?”
Julian’s quiet, but I know he always finds the best in everyone, and honestly that’s one of the many things I respect and love about him. I could say it’s because he hasn’t seen the darkness of this world, but his life hasn’t always been perfect. He’s had his own issues along the way. Hell, he was nearly killed by vampires, and still he never held it against all vampires.
Maybe he’s just stronger than me?
“Delwyn might be lying to us, you’re right. But I do think that until he proves to us to be untrustworthy, we could help him. Hell, maybe we could even change his mind if he was planning on screwing us over or something,” Julian says.
“Okay.”
Julian glances over at me and smiles. “Okay?”
“Okay as in you can be nice to him while I remind him that his life on this earth is limited if he doesn’t do as I ask.”
“I mean… that’s pretty much how you handle everyone, so that’s fair.” Julian grins at me, and he’s so cute that I could possibly consider being nicer to people just for him.
I pull up to the mansion that I pretend I wasn’t just rampaging through last time.
“Weirdly, it feels like we were just here and there was a wild beast inside,” Julian says.
“Shhhhhh. None of that happened.”
“Ah, silly me. I must have had this weird dream where my cutie-pie sexy vampire was like rawr! And throwing people through walls.”
“I would never be so foolish and uncool,” I say loftily as I get out of the car and head up to where Genevieve comes running out.
“The others said he was dragged off that way,” she says as she points toward the trees. “But you have to be careful. The vampire’s strong. A handful of my group chased after him, but they were nearly killed. Would have been if I hadn’t gotten to them in time.”
“Okay,” I respond. “Julian—and you’re already naked.”
“Well, yeah, I’m going to sniff them out,” he says as he hands me his underwear and sets the rest of the clothes in my car.
“What if you stay here?” I ask.
“No, I refuse,” he retorts as a car pulls in and Cyrus gets out.
“Seems pretty typical for Julian to be naked and Casimir to be holding underwear,” he says, completely deadpan. “How is this my new normal?”
“He can’t get enough of me,” Julian teases before he shifts into a wolf and starts sniffing around.
“Julian, please, I want you to stay here,” I urge, although it’s like talking to a real wolf who doesn’t understand speech. “If Genevieve and several vampires struggled against him—you are not deaf, listen to me!” But nope, he’s caught a scent and has hurried off. I’m left chasing after him, but thankfully, Genevieve follows, and it isn’t long before Ezio hurries onto the scene.
“Cyrus said I’d find you out here,” Ezio says. “He’s searching the house.”
“Did you get anything on the intruder?” I ask Genevieve.
“He was so fast that I didn’t get to see anything, but his face was covered up. One of my ladies said the man found Delwyn and said something like ‘I’m not done with you yet’ before grabbing him. She said that the moment Delwyn saw him, his entire body tensed, and he tried to flee, so he clearly recognized him.”
Which just confirms that Delwyn did know the man who locked him inside.
“Casimir, I know this sounds weird, but as soon as I hit the woods, the smell… it’s all over the place,” Julian says in my mind as he looks around. “I’ll grab the most recent trail, but it’s almost like he just ran around, throwing his scent everywhere.”
“Is there a specific trail with Delwyn in it?”
“Only one, but what’s weird is it’s not the most recent of the trails. I’ll follow it, try to find Delwyn first.”
Julian rushes ahead and I start to follow him when I hear a distinct noise.
No one else seems to pick it out of the sounds already bouncing around the woods because it’s so mundane. While it could easily be mistaken for a bird, it’s different to a trained ear. It’s such a simple noise… one I hadn’t heard in well over four hundred years, and still, it tears right through me.
No, no, I’m hearing things. It was just a bird. That’s all it was…
I turn around, but the others are gone. They didn’t realize I stopped, having gone ahead because I got distracted … fuck… Julian is not with me.
I rush forward and freeze. It’s like my limbs have been weighed down as I watch someone step out from behind a tree, dark burgundy mask set in place, covering everything but his eyes, before he disappears into the darkness.
I’m seeing things. I’m seeing things. That’s all this is.
Quickly, I try to calm the ugly thoughts that rear up in my mind in order to face the masked man who now leans against a tree, obviously toying with me.
“Did you miss me… brother?” he asks, voice muffled behind the mask.
“Who the fuck are you?” I growl, the words he’d said tearing wildly through me.
“You already forgot about me?” he asks. “I guess it has been quite a few years, hasn’t it?”
No, no… someone’s fucking with me. None of them are alive. They all died. So who the hell is this?
He chuckles. “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue? Or should I say ‘wolf?’”
“You leave him alone,” I growl as he pushes off the tree and starts walking a circle around me, never getting close enough that I could rush him, but never getting too far either. He knows to keep a distance from me, telling me he’s smart enough to know what I can do.
“Oh, I’m not going for your wolf,” he says. “Casimir, the only thing I want to do is destroy you. I want to ruin everything you built up. You should have died with the rest of us. This time… I’m going to make sure you do.”
“If you think you’re powerful enough to kill me, you’re sorely mistaken,” I retort.
“No… no, at the moment, I don’t think I am,” he says. “But killing you isn’t fun enough. I want to torment you, Casimir. I want to do to you what you’ve done to me.”
“Who are you?” I growl as I force myself to step toward him.
“Just a ghost,” he murmurs as he disappears into the darkness.
I move forward, planning to rush after him, when I suddenly hear a noise behind me. I turn quickly and grab them by the throat, anger tearing through my body.
“Let go of me,” Cyrus snarls, his hand tightening on my wrist.
Immediately, I drop my grip on him. “I’m so sorry,” I say, but I want to ask how the hell he snuck up on me. Was I so fixated on the masked man that I didn’t hear him? Even so, why did I let him get in my head enough that I grabbed Cyrus like this?
“You’re going to run after him with no plan?” he asks. “He’s toying with you. He wants to push your buttons. See how far he can drive you before you fuck up. People like that are just out to rip you apart.”
Am I seriously going to stand here and let my nightmare get away?
“Casimir! You don’t know anything about who you’re up against… do you not realize how much it matters if you die?” Cyrus demands. “If you’re really the only one who can give blood to Julian, you do realize that if you die, he dies?”
I still as that settles. “What?”
“Did that not ever dawn on you?”
I refuse to believe that our lives are so intricately woven. “We don’t know that. Other vampire blood will work on him,” I say.
Cyrus looks skeptical. “Will it?”
My stomach twists at that idea. Could Julian’s life really be wound so tightly with my own? Was I really that dense that I never thought of that possibility? Or had I just refused to face that fact?
Julian comes rushing up before shifting into his human form. “Oh my god, what the hell, I turned around and then you weren’t there, and I thought something happened to you… what happened?”
What happened is that the past that I thought I buried… has come back. And he wants me dead. But if I die… will the man before me die as well? Will I rip Julian’s life away?
“Casimir?” Julian asks, voice gentle and sweet as he steps up to me. His touch is so soft, so caring as he grabs on to me. “Casimir… what happened?”
Cyrus is still watching me, making me question how much he heard… and how pissed he is after I grabbed him by the throat.
It’s like the world is crashing in around me. It’s suffocating me… but I have to pretend it’s not because I have Julian to worry about now.
“Did you find Delwyn?” I force out.
“Uh… yeah, we did! Genevieve took him back,” he responds, but that interchange doesn’t seem to appease his concerns.
“Ezio,” I say as I look up at the man who’d also joined us.
Ezio’s eyes catch mine, but he appears uncertain. “Yeah?”
“I need you to give Julian some of your blood,” I tell him.
“What?” Ezio asks, confused. Everyone here knows about the silver running through Julian’s veins, but no one besides me has ever given Julian blood.
“I want to see if your blood works,” I say, anxiety unlike anything I’ve ever felt rushing through me.
“What if it doesn’t?” Julian asks, looking nervous.
“I’m going to keep a close eye on you, okay? I need to know,” I say.
Julian seems uncertain but nods. “Shouldn’t we do this later? You know, when we’re not trying to find this guy?”
“He’s already gone,” I inform him. And isn’t it funny that I can push my toxic thoughts of him back because right now, the thing I care about more than anything is the idea that without me… Julian will die.
“Wait, you saw him?” Julian asks.
“Ezio, go on,” I order, but no one wants to proceed. They need to proceed! I need to show Cyrus that he’s wrong. That without me there can still be a Julian.
“He knew Casimir,” Cyrus announces, and I want to tell him to shut up. I want to tell him that nothing matters but making sure Julian will stay alive even if I’m dead.
“Like… you were buddies?” Julian asks skeptically.
“He called you brother, but I have to assume that was just a name you referred to each other by,” Cyrus says.
Julian hesitates before I can see the worry consuming him. “This… it really is someone from your past, isn’t it?”
Their voices swirl around me, trying to suffocate me, so I desperately grip on to my main concern, trying my hardest to beat the rest of these thoughts back. “Ezio, please just give him the blood,” I shout, and Julian determinedly walks up to Ezio. Ezio bites into his own wrist before holding it out to Julian who takes a drink. Julian nearly pulls back as his face scrunches, but I know he won’t give up, and he drinks until the wound heals, cutting the blood off from him.
Julian steps back and gags. “I think I might puke.”
Ezio gasps. “But I’m delicious!”
“Oh god…” Julian mutters as he moves away. “That was… the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth!”
Ezio gasps again. “But you’ve surely put Casimir’s willy in your mouth!”
Julian turns his glare onto Ezio. “This was significantly worse. Trust me. Does anyone have anything to eat? I have to get the taste out.”
“I have some gummy bears,” Cyrus offers as he holds a pack out. Julian greedily takes them and then his face scrunches up.
“They taste like bloody gummies.”
It isn’t good that to him, my blood tastes intoxicating but Ezio’s tastes like… well, blood. But I guess we won’t know for days.
“Let’s go,” I decide.
“Um… but… aren’t… I mean…” Julian waves around while he pops another gummy bear in his mouth.
I don’t know what else to say to him, so I just head toward the car as the others trail after me.
“We will deal with what’s happening inside,” Cyrus says.
While I run away.
“Thanks, Cyrus. If you need us, call,” Julian says as he finishes dressing before getting into the car. I drive home, feeling weirdly numb, and when I get inside, I give Gustov a pat before heading up the stairs. Julian rushes after me but I wave him off.
“I’m fine,” I assure him.
His expression alone tells me he’s not going to drop this. “You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine.”
“Casimir, please talk to me. Tell me what happened, at least, so I know who to look out for.”
I ignore him and head up to the locked room where my swords rest as well as that godforsaken wooden chest. Unlocking the door, I let myself in and stare at that fucking chest. I want to pick it up and throw it through the wall. I want to destroy it, burn it, ruin it like it’s ruined me.
Arms slide around my body as Julian leans against my back, hands coming to rest on my chest as he squeezes me tightly, and it’s like he pulls that pressure off me. Like he tears it out of me with such ease. How the hell can he do this? How can he make me feel this way? How can he fix me so easily?
“I fucked up,” I whisper.
“Did you actually fuck up or are you blaming yourself for something you didn’t do?” he asks, squeezing me so damn hard. It’s like if he lets go… there won’t be anything left of me. Like the arms that hold me are all that keep me present.
“No, I fucked up.”
“Why do you alone wear this burden? Casimir, I’ve seen your scars, both physically and mentally. Why do you act like this… like all of this is because of you and you alone?”
“Because I was supposed to be the only one left. Because I had to bury every last one of them.”
“Who?”
I reach out with hesitant hands, unsure if I can get myself to commit to it before I finally manage to cup my hands over his. “When I was five, I was sold to a man who was collecting young children, all boys. He lied to the families, told them he was a scholar and a rich man who chose me because I looked like the son his wife lost. My parents needed the money. They were thrilled by the idea of me going to a rich home with an educated man who could give me all of the things they never could. They made me promise to visit them again, when I was older, but my mother’s tear-filled face was the last I saw of them.
“When I arrived at this grand estate, I soon realized things weren’t as they seemed. Instead, I found myself as one of among at least thirty who all were around my age. We were taught to read and write, but only in ways that would aid his cause. Our focus was on how to fight and kill.
“He started us on animals, teaching us how to hunt them. If we weren’t quick enough, we were punished. If we weren’t quiet enough, we were beaten. He taught us how to endure pain and how to lose connection to any morals or sympathy. For years, he molded us into husks. Into the perfect monsters to destroy and kill without remorse. And it doesn’t matter how many years pass, or if I meet someone who will look past my sins like you… I’m still that monster.”
Julian murmurs, “You just said it yourself, monsters don’t have sympathy or remorse. Yet you constantly beat yourself up over what you’ve done.”
“I was his greatest failure.”
“Why do you think you failed?” Julian tucks his head against my back and squeezes tighter. “To me, it sounds like you won. He couldn’t break you down.” He kisses my back where the scars of all my failures reside beneath my shirt.
I let go of his hand and pull back from his embrace before turning around. He seems hesitant, maybe even a little hurt that I’d still pull away from him, but instead, I hold my arms out to him, and he eagerly slides into them.
“We’ll stop this man, okay? But if Cyrus is right, and he’s trying to get in your head, you have to fight so fucking hard not to let him. Let me be the only one allowed in your head,” Julian urges.
“Of course,” I say, even though I don’t know how I can do that. But still, I try to believe I can as I draw him into a kiss. His lips part and I pull him in closer, needing him to prove to me that I can do this because of him.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 8

JULIAN
Sleeping was rough. Casimir assured me he was fine, but he refused to sleep so I felt guilty every time I let sleep take me. I was afraid that when I opened my eyes, he’d have run off and gotten into even deeper shit… all alone. But when I finally woke for the day, he was still beside me, pretending that he’d also just woken up.
We get dressed and ready, like there’s not a huge weight bearing down on us as I try to think about how to help him. So as I reach the downstairs area, I shoot Cyrus a text.

Me: Did the vampire say anything that I don’t know about?

Cyrus: He seemed pretty adamant about making Casimir pay for what he did. Do you know what he’s talking about?

Me: No. He’s pretty closed off about his past.

Cyrus: Just… be careful. That guy in the woods seemed set on making Casimir’s life miserable. The easiest way to do that… would be through you.
“Hey, Julian. Gustov gets his shots at six today, and I forgot to set it up for someone to take him. Could you do it?” Casimir asks as I look up from my phone.
“I could… if you do something for me,” I say, giving him a wicked grin. Honestly, what’s a dash of fun to help him forget about last night? At least for a couple of hours.
Casimir’s eyes narrow, which only makes my grin widen. “That look on your face tells me that whatever you’re about to say, I’m going to hate with a passion. What?”
“My father needs my help moving some furniture.”
“Doesn’t he have an entire pack?” Casimir asks.
“He does, but a big group of them are going out of town this weekend and won’t be around to help. Soooo I told him I’d help… but if I’m running Gustov in, then I need to push back some stuff I had to run to the university for… so then… I’m not sure I can help. But if you were to go… I mean, you two would only be alone like half an hour at most. Hell, if you move things fast enough, you might even be done before I get there.”
“Then can’t it wait until you get there?” he asks, like he possibly thinks that he wouldn’t have a fun time hanging out with my father.
“I’m sorry, it can’t wait. Some people are coming to pick up the old furniture at eight thirty.”
He gives me an incredulous look. “Eight thirty? That’s plenty of time for you to get there.”
“Alas… it’s not.”
“The smile on your face tells me you’re enjoying every moment of this.” Casimir sighs loudly, like I need to be reminded that he’s not pleased. “Fine. To show you how much I care about you, I will go. And when I’m finished, I will replace your father with the zoo wolf.”
“It’d be best if you didn’t,” I say.
“Just… starting tomorrow, I don’t want you out of my sight in case Ezio’s blood didn’t work.”
“Okay. I’ll be good,” I assure him.

My phone rings as I finish up some things in my office. I don’t have to do much work during the summer, but there were a few things that I had to do to prepare for the next semester.
When I see that it’s Ezio Facetiming me, I quickly accept the call.
“Look at his face,” Ezio whispers as he points the camera at Casimir who is seated in the car. It looks like he’s in my father’s driveway but seems to be incapable of exiting the vehicle.
“Shut it,” Casimir growls.
“You’re so angry. God, it’s hilarious.” Ezio cackles before lifting his phone. “Here we see a rare creature in an unnatural habitat. We can visibly see the rage bubbling beneath his skin as he threatens to breathe fire. And it looks like we’re about to see him try to kill me—Casimir, no! Come on, please! Don’t!” Ezio cries as Casimir grabs Ezio’s phone as well as his neck if the gurgled cries are anything to go by.
“Looks like you boys are having a blast!” I say.
Growling, Casimir seems to realize that I’m on the phone and lifts it to give me a huge smile. “If I dug one big hole, I could hide your father’s body with Yorick’s body. What do you think about that? Of course I’d make Ezio dig the hole.”
“Oh? I mean… that is a possibility, but I kind of like my father. I think I’d be sad without him,” I muse.
Casimir seems to think about this for a moment. “How sad? Like… what if I got you your very own Gustov? That would cure any woes. I could make Ezio pretend to be a dog. Would you like that?”
I reach over to where Gustov is helping me at work and flash the camera at him so Casimir can see. “I already got this fluff boy whenever I need some puppy snuggles. Okay, hear me out, Casimir. I didn’t tell my dad you were coming. Now think… think hard about this.”
Casimir’s scowl slowly eases. “He’s going to be fucking miserable!”
“He’s going to be miserable,” I concur.
A huge smile has returned to Casimir’s face. I have pleased him with this information. “How delightful.”
He pops out of the car and the camera switches to Ezio. “Why am I always the one being tortured? Like what the hell did I even do?”
“The real question is why you still agree to do stuff with him,” I say.
“Maybe I like it,” Ezio replies before winking at me.
“Like… sexually?” I ask, doing my best to sound confused.
“What? Ew, no, we’re like brothers,” Ezio says as he hurries out of the car.
“Then why’d you wink?”
“Because you can’t stomp down this fire,” he says. “This is gonna be good.”
He switches the camera off his face so I get a view of Casimir knocking on the door.
My father swings the door open and immediately stiffens. “You.”
“Aye, it’s me, my wonderful father-in-law. I heard you needed the help of this strapping young lad,” Casimir says, sounding ecstatic. Like… what the fuck is he saying?
My father’s face scrunches up the longer he talks, and I find Casimir’s odd dialogue is wildly effective.
“No,” Dad says as he tries to slam the door, but Casimir’s quicker and blocks it. “I don’t need your help.”
“I think you do. How else will we spend lovely time together? We’ll soon be family, after all. You can… you can call me son,” Casimir says as the two of them fight with the door. Clearly, Casimir could overpower him, but he wants to make my dad struggle.
“Fucking hell, I won’t call you shit,” Dad growls as he keeps pushing but Casimir’s just leisurely standing there, hand still on the door.
“Well, that’s almost enough to make me cry, Terrance. I never knew you were so cruel. Do you want me to run home crying to Julian about how mean you were to me? Julian would definitely be heartbroken if he heard how you viciously turned me away.”
Dad opens the door before slamming it shut hard enough that Casimir’s outstretched hand dents the door, which then bounces back open.
“You getting all of this?” Ezio asks me.
“Oh, I’m getting it, alright. They’re like children… you know, like five-year-olds on the playground but with super strength,” I say.
“Right? And he thinks I’m the strange one. I am perfection. The fection of per,” Ezio announces… which I’m going to have to say is a no.
“Why’d you buy such cheap doors?” Casimir asks as he examines the dent.
“I don’t need your help,” Dad decides. “Th…Th… Thank you for coming, though. Please leave.” That clearly took a lot out of him.
“Oh, no, Julian said that you begged me to come and help you because your old body was too weak to move things yourself. I don’t want my dear ol’ father-in-law to break a hip now, do we, Dad?” Casimir says as he heads inside and Ezio follows as my own personal camera crew. “This looks ugly, is this going?” Casimir picks up a rocking chair.
“NO! That was my great-grandmother’s chair,” Dad growls.
“Did she die in it? It’s so gross looking. You know, Terrance, I assumed your house would look much more disgusting. It’s surprisingly normal.”
“Thanks,” Dad says, sarcasm dripping off the word. “I need that cabinet moved out.”
“Are you opposed to me taking it through the wall?” Casimir asks. “I can simply punch a hole and we won’t have to jimmy it around all these pesky corners.”
Dad just stares at Casimir.
Casimir simply smiles at him.
Ezio breaks the tension with, “This week’s episode highlights the fury between father and lover. Wait… no… now it sounds like they’re lovers. Huh… wouldn’t that be a plot twist? God, now I want to see them hold hands. Hey, guys, hold hands for the views. Better yet, a little kiss on the lips would do!”
Even though there’s only one person viewing it, I now want to see this.
“They seem reluctant to perform the holding of the hands,” Ezio says.
“Urge them a little,” I suggest.
“By joining your hands, you will be drawing forth your inner power of family, love, and—don’t throw shit at me!” Ezio cries.
“The only time I would hold his hand is if I was dragging his unconscious body to the wolf den at the zoo to replace him,” Casimir growls, all signs of niceties having seemingly vanished.
“Julian, thoughts?” Ezio asks.
“That would be a negative,” I say.
“The bossman says that’s a negative. I repeat, do not murder your papa-in-law and stuff him in a wolf den.”
Father grumbles as he kicks at something I can’t see off camera. “I just wanted help. A little bit of help from Julian. But nope. This is what I get.”
“It’s called karma,” I announce. “You know, for torturing me my entire childhood.”
“Fine. Fine. Come… Casimir. Let’s work together to carry this out,” Dad says, sounding extremely stilted, like he’s reading off a piece of paper.
“Wonderful,” Casimir says. “I’m having. So. Much. Fun. I’m drowning in it.”
Dad flashes the fakest smile and two thumbs up, which Casimir returns with his very own two thumbs up. It’s weirdly aggressive. “Oh no. Don’t drown in the fun… or maybe do.”
“This is going to be good,” Ezio says as he steps back to give them room while they grab the large cabinet. If it wasn’t so long, Casimir could do it himself, but maneuvering it around corners really does take more than one person. Casimir hurries off like it weighs as much as a gallon of milk, dragging my father along for the ride and leaving me to enjoy every moment of their misery as they bark about the correct way to fit it through the house.
It’s a good thing he asked Ezio along to help or I’d have missed all of this!
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 9

JULIAN
“Honey, I’m home!” I announce as I strut into the house like nothing is amiss.
Until I realize that all of the lights in the house are off besides one that hangs over where Casimir is sitting.
“There you are! I heard you had so much fun!” I say, trying to pretend that I don’t notice the menacing look I’m currently getting. Hey, at least I’ve done a sufficient job of distracting him.
“Where did you hear that? And who might have whispered those lies into your ears?” Casimir asks.
“Definitely not lies. Funnily enough, I actually got to see the joy on your face myself. It was clear you loved it. I actually thought that I would be a really good heart bro and set up some playdates with you and my dad. I thought the next time you could throw a stick to him.”
That seems to please Casimir. “May I throw a stick at him?”
“I mean… I… don’t think that’s how the game works.”
Casimir makes a show of dropping a bag down on the table. “I got you some toys. You know… to thank you for sticking me with your father. Making me listen to him complain and bitch, which made me almost set the cabinet on top of his body. And then I had an absolutely brilliant idea. I was like, why should I take this out on Terrance when Julian caused it?”
That seems worrisome. “Oh no.”
“So I got you something.”
“I’m worried.”
“Don’t be worried,” he says as he reaches into the bag and pulls out a doggy bandana that reads “I have a bone to pick with you” before tying it around my neck.
“That was significantly better than I thought it’d be.”
He returns to the table and sets down my art pad and some pens.
“Oh… so I just have to draw Gustov until my hand threatens to fall off? I mean… I can do that.” This is significantly less torturous than I thought it would be. Hell, this is what he tries to make me do every night!
“Yep,” Casimir agrees as I start toward the table a moment before he loops something over my eyes.
“Are you… blindfolding me?”
“Perhaps,” he says as I hear him rustling in the bag again, but I can’t see with the blindfold. He tugs the front of my pants down just a bit, which is… different.
“Oh, hello friend,” I say as he strokes me. “If this is the treatment I’m going to get, then you and my dad are going on a lunch date tomorrow!”
“Uh-huh,” he murmurs as I feel something peculiar wrap around my cock.
“Well, this is interesting… and a little cold,” I observe.
“Yeah? You want something else interesting?” he asks as I feel a wet finger rub past my balls that also get wrapped up in whatever is going on with my cock.
“I sure do.”
“Alright,” he says as I feel him pressing against my hole… wait… no, that’s definitely not a finger…
“Oh?”
“Oh,” he echoes, sounding far too gleeful as he pushes what feels like something round inside me. “There we go.” And then he yanks up my pants, tosses the blindfold and beams at me. “What are you doing, Julian? I thought you were drawing my dog.”
Now… now that’s not quite where I thought this was going. “Umm… are you… I mean, are you finished down there?” I ask as I grab for my pants in case he needs help removing them, but he pushes my hand away.
“I kind of feel like you don’t understand what punishment means. Draw. My. Dog.”
“Okay, okay,” I say as I head over to the table while my cock questions why I’m heading away from the man who can offer me some relief. But I guess I must suffer so I take a seat, brain well aware of the cock ring and the item inside me.
Casimir just smiles at me. It’s such a sexy smile. It’s an “I will win this” smile. And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t also want him to win.
I pick up a pencil and start to draw. I get a small section completed before the device wrapped around me and inside me begins to vibrate. I was not expecting that and I jump, causing the pencil to skid out of line.
“Oh fuck,” I whisper as the vibrations ripple through me in the best fucking way.
“What’s wrong?” Casimir asks, a toying grin on his handsome face as the vibrations rush through me, making my cock ache to be free of these jeans. Is he really going to tease me like this and refuse to touch me? Refuse to even let me take these constricting pants off?
“N-Nothing at all,” I say as he shuts it off. Now that the vibrations are gone, I find myself wishing they’d come back.
“Nothing?” he asks.
“Nope. I was just startled by my atrocious drawing skills,” I say as I try to erase the line I’d fucked up.
“That’s good. Why are you slacking off so much? I thought you were going to make it up to me for torturing me.”
“Absolutely—fuck… no reason…” I say as the vibrations start back up. I swear they’re stronger this time, and whatever he’s put inside me must have something that rotates because I can feel it rubbing me from all angles and it feels so fucking good.
“That really doesn’t look like my dog.”
“Your dog?” I mutter as I try to keep drawing. “I’m sorry. I thought you said, ‘draw my dong.’ Or… maybe that’s all I can… think about right now.” I try to quickly shade in the balls, deciding that maybe if I finish his dick drawing, I can get to being fucked, but instead, he turns the vibrations off, making me tsk.
I glance over at the man who is absolutely loving this. Casimir looks so fucking cocky and pleased with himself as he sits across from me, chin resting on one hand, remote in the other. Just smiling away when I want him… no, I need him to touch me.
Yet I can’t let that sexy man win so easily. “Oh? It was just getting good. I was thinking that maybe… maybe I don’t even need your cock when this thing knows how to make me feel so damn good,” I taunt, hoping he’ll free me from this and fuck me over the table if I make a jab at him.
But of course not. He’s loving absolutely every moment of this. “Oh, that’s good. But… I suffered a very long time for you. I really don’t think you’ve suffered long enough for me.”
“Hmm…” I mutter, since the stimulation is gone, and I very much want it to come back. I reach down with my left hand, deciding that maybe a couple of strokes would help the situation, but he’s up and next to me so he can grab my hand and pin it to the table. And with that taken care of, he leans down to whisper in my ear.
“You need both hands for drawing.”
“I do?” I ask. “Because I’m not quite sure I do. I’m wickedly good with just one hand. Would you like me to show you?” I want to bite his lip to tease him, but he manages to keep just out of reach.
Casimir reaches down and pushes my pants and underwear down, freeing my cock that’s aching for his touch. “Look how eager you are.” He presses a teasing finger against the tip, but that’s all he cares to give me and it’s not enough… I need so much more of him. “So hard and I’ve barely touched you.” He nips my neck, toying with me as it makes pleasure spike inside me. I want more. I want to be touched, bitten, and fucked.
His mouth draws close to my ear as the vibrations start up again. “You better keep drawing. You need to finish if you want me to forgive you.” He slips a pencil in my second hand like he wants to prove that I need two hands to draw, but I can’t even keep the pencil in my right hand steady as he nips my earlobe while the cock ring and what’s inside me vibrate against my sensitive spots. Casimir’s hands slide under my shirt, pinching my nipples as I decide that I can just draw a line and call this dick drawing complete.
“Done,” I say.
“Done? Why are the balls so nicely shaded and the rest looks like a stick figure dick? Is that how you see my cock? If it is… I’m almost too embarrassed to give it to you.”
“No, that’s the new trendy art style.”
“Are you sure?” he asks before sucking my throat.
“Positive. I’m an art professor, trust me. It’s called art dicko. Now I’m pretty sure I need you to fuck me into this table until I can’t stand.”
“Hmm… I don’t know if you’ve been punished enough yet, have you?” Casimir asks as he grabs my hips and pulls me up, kicking the chair to the side as he pushes my pants the rest of the way down. Eagerly, I kick them off and spread my legs, impatient for him to enter me, but instead, he pushes a finger inside me, pressing down on the vibrator, pushing it right against my prostate. My hands knock over some pencils that go rolling across the table as I squirm beneath him.
“Fuck,” I groan, my cock unbelievably hard.
“Your cock is leaking and I’m not even inside you yet.”
“That does seem to be a problem that you could fix,” I say as I push back, with the plan of rutting up against him to convince him to get his cock out, but he just uses the pressure to push harder against the vibrator, making me groan and my legs feel weak.
He reaches up and tilts my face toward him, looking smug. “Do you think you’ve been punished enough?” he asks as he strokes my cock.
“No. I don’t think I have,” I say. “But I know what could do the job.”
Casimir snorts and shakes his head. “You just can’t stop, can you?”
“Maybe your cock will be enough to make me stop?”
He draws his finger out before pulling the vibrating toy out of me but leaving the cock ring in place. His cock quickly fills the space, pressing deep inside me as he pushes my back down until my chest is on the table. The vibrations on my cock and the way he drives into me nearly puts me over the edge just like that, and I have to urge it back down because I can’t come yet. He’s been toying and playing with me so long that I already want to come from the overwhelming pleasure, but the cock ring is holding me back.
“Looking at my cock sliding into you… I have to say you have the likeness down,” Casimir teases as he waves to the drawing packed full of detailed nuts and a stick figure dick.
“I’ve had some practice seeing it up close,” I say. “Now how about you take this cock ring off?”
“How about I leave it on and you think about what you did.”
“All I can think about is how fucking good this feels. I’m struggling to figure out where the punishment is.”
“Want to feel even better?” he asks as he kisses my throat and I shiver at the idea.
“Yes, bite me. Please,” I beg.
Casimir reaches down for my hand, drawing it back until he can reach my wrist, and I want to tell him to bite my throat. That I want to feel him… but I can’t. I can’t because then I think of those vampires tearing⁠—
His fangs slice into my wrist and pleasure rushes through me. It’s like I’m too weak to even keep my feet under me but it doesn’t matter because he’s holding me as he fucks me. He releases the cock ring and with a stroke of his hand, I’m coming.
I moan, knocking something on the table over as he sucks the spot on my arm that he’d just bitten. His hips drive up into me as his other hand runs over my cock. He pulls back before thrusting deeper into me as he comes inside me with a moan. With gentle kisses on my neck and shoulder, Casimir draws out of me before lifting me up into his arms to carry me up the stairs.
“Where are we going now?” I ask, still unsure when the “punishment” is going to happen.
“To take a shower and torture you some more,” he teases.
“At this rate, you’re going to have lunch with my dad every day.”
That makes him hesitate. “This has backfired, hasn’t it?”
“Very much,” I say, feeling pleased.
“Hmm… I guess I can’t complain about that.”
All I know is that next time… he’s going to be the one begging.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 10

JULIAN
I… kind of thought Casimir would want to run off and hunt down that man with the mask, but instead… he’s acted like nothing happened ever since we woke up a few hours ago.
I can tell he’s off. I can tell he’s upset, but he’s just doing his absolute best to pretend like nothing is amiss, and I can’t help but wonder if he thinks he’s convincing anyone else. A few times I’ve found him standing outside that locked room, but whenever he hears me, he turns from it and plasters this smile on his face like he has absolutely no idea why I could act like something was wrong.
Like right now, he just turns to the wall where there’s a painting of Gustov that he “straightens up” like that’s all he was there for and hadn’t been trying to stare through the door.
“You… good?” I ask, sure I’m going to get some fabrication that will steer me as far away from the issue at hand as possible.
“Yes. Gustov’s painting was leaning a little bit. I’m also wondering if we need a bigger one in the hallway, and then I realized that I was restricting you by making you paint on canvases and paper. What if, instead, you painted the entire wall?”
Yep, total avoidance. “You want me to paint your dick on the wall? I mean… is this because you want my dad to see it?” I ask. “You two were flashing some big dick energy there back at his house.”
Casimir gives me a look. “Gustov, not my dick. Now, I’m not opposed to a nude drawing of myself for our Christmas card that will go straight to Terrance. Actually, we’ll print off three hundred and sixty-five of them and send him one a day. Every day he’ll get a hate-filled chocolate and a nude Christmas card. This fills me with much joy. You have the best ideas.”
“I see that. I told him we’d come over tomorrow to hang with the pack. They’re doing a run.”
That makes his face scrunch up. “What the fuck. Does it look like I run with wolves?”
I grin at him. “You do now.”
He scowls. “I am going to go prep this wall so you can paint it.”
“I’m not painting the whole wall! You’re going to scare people away. They’re going to come in and it’s going to look like some creepy Gustov shrine!”
“Good. I only want you here. Speaking of which, why do you even still have another house?”
“What?” I ask, startled. Hell, the man hasn’t even been able to tell me he loves me yet, and now he wants me to just say “fuck it” to my home and move here? I mean… I guess I really haven’t lived there much in the past month. But that’s because his place is so much nicer. There’s a giant bed and a rainstorm shower that feels like it’s dropping buckets on you if you hit the wrong button, and all the windows are vampire safe so he can walk around during the daylight, and Gustov has a huge fenced-in yard, and the TV is huge, and every inch of the house outshines mine.
“I’m just saying it’s foolish to keep your shit over there when you’re over here. That’s all I’m saying. Don’t read into it.”
“I’m reading into it hard,” I say.
Casimir looks a bit uncertain now, which I love. I love it when this man who is always so confident, so powerful, can get flustered by a bit of romance because he just doesn’t know what to do with it. It also reminds me just how much he likes me.
“Wait, no, it was just like ‘Ha ha, my house has plenty of room for you,’” he tosses in, doing his best to save himself.
“That’s not what I heard. I heard, ‘Oh, Julian, you titillate me so much that I can’t survive without you next to me every moment of the day. I love it when you pester me and hug me and make me hold hands. But what I love most is our pinky promises that I can’t quite figure out.’”
“I’m going to fucking look up those damn pinky promises.”
“NO! Don’t!” I say as I grab for him to keep him from looking them up. It’s my absolute favorite thing that he still can’t figure it out.
Casimir scrutinizes me. “I’m glad you believe allllll this romance stuff while I’m here going, ‘Depending on the traffic, it takes him anywhere between ten to thirty minutes to drive to his house, which could be up to an hour per day and seven hours per week, and that could be anywhere between two to seven paintings of Gustov that I’ll get by keeping him in this house.’”
Now that makes me laugh. “You are the least romantic person I’ve ever met.”
He grins as he leans in and gives me a kiss. “I’ll take that compliment.”
“You take it. And you enjoy it. Even if I know you’re trying your hardest to pretend like you’re not a romantic.”
That makes him laugh and give me another kiss. “What are you off to?”
“I’m going to take a shower and do some thinking about you asking me to move in with you. Obviously, I want to say yes. But I also know my heart is like ‘Casimir, yes! Everything Casimir does is perfect and amazing, and he’s so cute’ and my dick is like ‘Fuck yes, Casimir,’ but I also need to remind them that we are adults and yes Casimir is cute and… then I forget all of those adult points I’m trying to make because you smile at me and nothing else matters.”
Casimir grins again, pleased by his power over my heart and dick. “Good. You go think. Let me know. I’ll have Ezio move all of your stuff the moment you decide.”
“I like the fact that Ezio has to do it.”
“He enjoys it.”
“Sure, sure,” I say as I give his ass a smack and hurry off to the shower. Hopefully, by the time I’m out, he’ll have forgotten allllll about me painting the hallway.
Once in his gigantic bathroom that far outclasses my tiny one, I turn the shower on before stripping. I’ve found out that if you preset the water temperature, it comes out at the absolute perfect degree. Like… who owns shit like this? And then he’s got mirrors that never fog up. And the towels are on heaters so when you step out, you’re immediately wrapped in warmth… like… this really could be partly mine.
But is it too soon? I mean… I don’t want to rush him. Hell, he’s the one I practically had to convince to date me after he was so worried about what I might think of him, and then he tosses this bomb at me?
The reasonable part of my brain is trying to remind me that we’ve really only been with each other for a month and a half, but the unreasonable part of me already knows we’re in this for the long run. I sigh as the hot water beats down on me and I try not to gloat as I think about how much he wants me… he really wants me.
I reach forward to hit the button for the water temp to go up when my hand suddenly struggles to make it. For a moment, I’m confused, before pain ripples through my limbs. I gasp and stumble back as my legs threaten to give out from beneath me. Pain tears through me as I stagger, trying to grab anything I can to keep myself from falling before hitting down hard on my knees.
Fuck, I need to reach Casimir. I need to…
I reach up, trying to grab on to the glass door, but instead, my hand catches the showerhead as I yank it down. It smacks into the ceramic walls as the water sprays me in the face, but I can’t get up. I can’t get to my feet.
If I could get the door open, reach my phone… all I have to do is call out for Casimir. Just…
How can this hurt so badly? How can the silver tearing through my body just flip on like a fucking switch?
The door is torn open, and Casimir grabs me, dragging me off the ground and onto his lap as he rips into his arm with his fangs, dripping blood over my chest before pressing it against my lips.
“Julian, drink it. Julian, please,” he begs as he smacks my face.
It takes me a moment as the blood fills up my mouth before I manage to swallow it down.
I gasp out a breath as the pain begins to dull before I feel almost numb. The racing in my heart settles and my limbs don’t feel like lead weights, although I feel absolutely exhausted.
“Fuck,” Casimir hisses. “Julian, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry,” he says as the feeling passes.
“Stop,” I mutter as I take a deep breath and tuck myself close to him while that horrific feeling slowly leaves my limbs.
“Do you not understand what this means?” he asks as he smooths my dripping wet hair out of my eyes. “Do you not understand that if I die… you will die. Of all the vampires who could have turned you… it had to be me. I had to condemn you⁠—”
I reach up and grab his hand to squeeze it. “Casimir, why do you have to beat yourself up over such things?”
I lean my face into his cupped hand, taking so much comfort in the feel of it as my other hand clutches tightly to his shirt. He’s soaked… everything is soaked, but I just want to feel him for a moment. It’s terrifying having that silver burn through me, but now that I’m here with him, I feel so much relief.
“You’d have been so much safer with someone else. Someone like Ezio or⁠—”
“Do we even know if anyone else’s blood would have worked? Maybe yours worked because of how old you are. Casimir, you act like you’ve condemned me to die when you’ve really given me a whole new life. There was nothing anyone could have done that night I was attacked. I was going to die. And every single second since that night is a second you have given me. That you granted me. If something happened right this minute and we both went because of it… then think of how many more days I was given to spend with the people I loved. Think about how, for the first time in my life, I’ve been given the chance to fall in love.”
His hands tighten on me, but he doesn’t seem to be able to answer me.
“Cas, please stop thinking the worst of yourself. I wish you could see yourself the way I do.”
Casimir wraps me up in his arms and buries his face against my chest.
“You’re getting so wet.” I gently rub my fingers against him.
“I don’t care,” he whispers.
So I just hold him close. I squeeze him to me, prepared to never let him go.
“Thank you,” he says quietly. “I… hated myself, thinking that if I took one single risk… your life would be riding on it.”
“The only risk you took was giving me blood that day. And I’m still alive only because you did.”
“How do you manage to take every opinion I have of myself and twist it around?”
“I’m just good like that,” I say. Damn, I feel shaky after that.
“I’m going to test you on old blood next. Like maybe I could store blood for you so if I die, you’d keep living. I also wonder if the blood stunts your aging. Like… if your body is frozen when you have my blood… will you also never age?”
“I… don’t know. But oh my god, I don’t need a horror cellar just packed full of blood. The police will break in, see the massive collection of blood and the dried-up vampire from storing so much, and assume I’m a serial killer bleeding the same man over and over.”
“That’s fine. I showed you how well I can handle police officers. That officer who pulled me over was practically eating out of my hand,” he says, which is wildly different than my memory of Casimir offering to let him look at Gustov paintings, Ezio yeeting his car, and me getting kicked in the face after dragging him across the road.
Casimir grabs a towel and pulls it on top of me before rubbing my hair down and drying me off, even though I’ve clearly used his body to dry most of myself off with. He must have shut the shower off at some point since it’s no longer running.
“I really do want to see if it has to be fresh blood,” he says as he ruffles my hair—even his towels are significantly nicer than those at my house.
“I… don’t want to try it right away,” I admit, terrified of this happening again so soon. “But we can try it later, okay?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you out of my sight.”
“You were just outside the bathroom; I didn’t think it’d be that big of a deal,” I admit as I go to get up, but Casimir refuses to let me. Instead, he picks me up and carries me through the house and into the bedroom. He pulls the sheets back and lays me down before taking his pants off and changing his wet shirt.
I really wish he’d leave his shirt off, but I know it’s selfish to even ask him to when he’s not comfortable with me freely seeing his scarred back yet. So I burrow against him and take his hand. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Seems worrisome.”
I press my thumbs against his palm before running them over his hand, not quite sure how to approach this subject. Gustov, who apparently thought he’d been left out, leaps onto the bed and just collapses on top of us before wiggling around, like he’s scratching his back.
“What if… we talk over… who this guy might be,” I suggest. “Then there’s the possibility he’s in the database and Ezio or Cyrus could deal with him, and presto, all done and tied up in the neatest of bows.”
“Oh, you’re living in a fairy tale if you think any of this shit will easily be tied up,” he says.
I give him a look.
He gives me a look right back, and I hate pressuring him into talking, but I think we need to do something.
“Can you take a guess what my expression says right now?” I ask.
“Uh, let’s see. Something like, ‘Casimir is the fucking greatest and I love it when he’s all cryptic and doesn’t tell me everything. It makes him mysterious and cool. Oh, and look how wet I am with my nipples on display.’”
I give him an even better look as I cover my chest with the blanket. “There.”
“Okay, okay. Now the expression is giving me some new vibes. Kind of like, ‘It’s my favorite thing ever when Casimir pretends like he doesn’t hear the questions I’m asking. It makes me want to show off my nipples again because I’m so hot and bothered.’”
“Absolutely none of that was helpful.”
“Hmm…” Casimir weirdly doesn’t seem convinced.
“Because you have a horrible time reading my expression, the look means: Trying to figure everything out all by yourself will take longer than having others help you. So you should try seeing if someone, even just me, can help.”
“I really don’t think that’s what it means. I liked the version where it was focused on your nipples.”
“Maybe if they were your nipples,” I say as I poke his chest.
“What if… I show you… my penis? What are your thoughts on that?”
“You’re just trying to distract me! It’s a pretty good tactic, but it won’t work. I am a stubborn man. Some may even call me… an aware wolf.”
“That was… something, alright.”
“Thank you.”
He eyes me for a moment before giving me a soft smile. It’s a smile that immediately tells me he has something up his sleeve. “What if… I show you… my mouth around your penis?”
I hesitate.
Fuck, he’s good.
“I apologize, but my penis is out of service today until we have a conversation like two grown-ups.” That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say. It was harder than telling my dad that “No, I will not chase the rabbit.” Or telling my mom that “I think the neighbor guy is hot.”
“Oh man. I’m tired,” he says.
“I bet you are. You haven’t slept in days.”
Casimir makes a show of stretching and yawning. “Oh boy. Must… sleep.”
He closes his eyes, so I flick his nipple through his shirt. Honestly, it’s his fault for his shirt being so tight I can see them.
“What the fuck? Is this also some strange wolf ritual?” he asks.
“It’s a ‘Don’t pretend to go to sleep so you can ignore me’ ritual. You don’t have to tell me everything or much at all, but let’s work on narrowing it down, okay? Want me to get a notepad? We could like… jot down the names of people. That would be easy enough and wouldn’t require you telling me things you’re not comfortable telling me. I don’t want to pressure you.”
“You’re not at all.”
“I just… I want to keep you safe and help you. And I think that if we put our heads together, maybe we can stop him before anything has started.”
Casimir sighs. “The issue is that… we weren’t allowed to refer to each other by name. We never went by our real names.”
“Oh… you said there were about thirty of you?”
“When we were five. He gathered more as I got older. I feel like at one point there were about fifty of us. But by the time I hit twenty-one, only twenty-seven were left alive. Quite a few died out on the field, but many also died by his hands. If he didn’t think they were up to his standards, he’d kill them. As the years went on, he just kept narrowing them down again and again, because he was absolutely ruthless.”
“What was he doing? Like what was his purpose?”
“He had a position in the army… kind of like a general who had some… idea that he was creating the ultimate fighters. We called him the Warden. He wanted to prove to his king that by taking children and manipulating them from a young age, he could create the perfect assassins. Ones who could kill on the field or behind closed doors. For a while, people really thought highly of him because the results he showed were honestly impressive. We were literally unbeatable. The eighteen of us were so highly trained that we could take on groups much larger than eighteen regular soldiers could. And when the king needed something quietly done, we were sent out as shadows who took down anyone he pointed us at. We were like the Warden’s prized pets he paraded around to show off what we could do.
“Of course people were impressed. We had impeccable skills. But when others watched closely, they began to realize that that’s all we were. We weren’t allowed to have names or identities. He kept us masked so none of us could be any different. We weren’t permitted to have relationships or sex. If he caught one of us having a relationship or sex with someone, especially someone outside the group, he would beat or castrate them depending on his mood that day. Our need for love or companionship was beaten out of us by the time we were adults. It was to the point that many of us didn’t even try to find comfort in others. I never once thought to find relationships outside of our group and could barely consider the ones he called my ‘brothers’ close to me because I was caught up in my own head. And even though I was one of his best fighters, I was also one of his worst because I pushed him at times with my stubbornness.”
Casimir starts toying with my fingers as he continues speaking. “But the real shit hit the fan when the bloodthirsty king was assassinated and one seeking peace rose to power. He saw what our master did and claimed quite publicly that it was cruel and unjust and immediately wished to disband this group of ‘special soldiers.’ The Warden was pissed. He’d gone from standing at the top with his elite to being thrown out and looked down upon because of his arbitrary decisions. The power he hungered for was ripped away, but instead of facing that, he thought he’d destroy all who turned against him.
“It started small, picking people off here and there, until his rampage became well known and they sent soldiers our way. We slaughtered them but it didn’t matter how strong or good we were, we were few against an army.
“That’s when he turned to different measures in the hopes of succeeding.”
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 11

CASIMIR
Age Twenty-One
“What is inside that building is unlike anything you’ve seen before,” the Warden says. “What you will face will truly depend on the skills you have and whether you are worthy. Do you understand?”
Of course we don’t answer. We all know he isn’t expecting one. He just wants us to focus on what he’s going to throw us at, and if we don’t stay focused, the likelihood of us dying grows significantly.
After the last fight, our numbers had dropped from twenty-seven to eighteen. The Warden was getting rather antsy that his plan to destroy the peace the kingdom finally felt was slowly slipping between his fingers.
He ached for more and we all knew that either he was going to reach it… or we were all going to die.
The way he continually sends us off to our deaths makes me question how much he truly cares whether or not we live. We are stepping stones for him to reach his greatness, and he doesn’t care how many of us will be left at the end of it. But what I don’t understand is that if he gets all of us killed… there will be nothing left for him. Yes, he beat any semblance of freedom out of us, yes, he trained us, but he was never the one who went out there and risked his life. I suppose he could just go gather more, but hasn’t he already wasted over fifteen years on us?
“Kill everyone inside besides the young woman. Bring her to me, but don’t underestimate her. She’s unlike anything you’ve ever faced before.”
I glance over to my left where Nine stands. While the Warden can’t always tell us apart without the number etched into the mask, I can tell who everyone in this lineup is based on their mannerisms alone. We’d grown up together. Everything we’ve done was together. And often, making it out alive relied on knowing who you were with and their strengths and weaknesses. The Warden believed any weakness was a death sentence, but not if we knew how to work together.
Even so, we were forbidden from relationships with each other because he didn’t want us to falter when another died.
We move toward the building as a unit before spreading out without a word. We already know who we are partnered with. I’m with Nine and Five, since Six was killed right next to me last week and Eight was killed by the Warden after he lost an arm. I remember the way Eight begged me to kill him before the Warden found him. He already knew his death was near… but can’t a man fight without an arm? I wonder if he’d instead begged for me to look away as he ran… what I would have done. My dreams seem to be plagued by these decisions. Where I’m left standing over the bodies of my fallen comrades, and instead of the Warden, I’m forced to decide what happens to them.
If the Warden knew the way my mind wandered, I’m sure he’d kill me next.
“There’s a window here,” Nine says as he makes his way toward it. “I’ll break it. Seven, you go in first.”
I step up to the window as Five joins me. The moment Nine breaks the shutters, Five hoists me up so I don’t have to lower my weapons. As soon as I’m through, I see a flash of movement and look over just in time to see Fourteen’s head get completely torn off his body, blood spraying the wall.
It all happens so quickly that the assailant is gone before the body even hits the ground.
“What the fuck did that?” Five asks.
“Didn’t see it,” I say as I move in. But is that true? Did I really not see it? It moved so quickly… I’m unsure of what I actually did see because a human can’t move that quickly. Animal? What kind of animal could Fourteen not take down? “Stay focused.”
I step into the next room but what I see confuses me. On the ground lies Sixteen… who is our best fighter. We haven’t even been in the building minutes and he’s already dead. But what’s weirder is… he never even drew his sword. How could there be an enemy so silent that he didn’t even hear them coming?
I hear movement and rush back. “Draw back and use the dark,” I order.
And the three of us fall into the shadows as someone moves past the doorway so quickly, it’s hard to track them. The sound of a woman screaming tears through the air.
“Upstairs,” Nine says as he begins moving forward.
“Something’s not right,” Five counters.
“The Warden told us we’d face something unlike what we’d faced before. Don’t tell me you’re afraid?” Nine asks, his narrowed eyes on us.
He starts for the stairs when a young man comes running down them. Without missing a beat, Nine rushes forward and kills the man. As he draws back, a young woman screams for him from the top of the stairs. She rushes down them and grabs the body, trying to stop the bleeding as we stare down at her.
Surely, she’s the one we’re supposed to take.
“Who did this? How could you kill him?” she screams.
Noise on the stairs grabs her attention and she looks up. Twenty-three rushes down to grab her, but she moves inhumanly fast as she grabs his head and snaps his neck before throwing the body down at us. I dodge it as she rushes us, coming at Nine who made the mistake of being closest to her. He jerks back, narrowly dodging her hit as I use her fixation on him to try to stop her. The issue is, she’s not some regular young woman of eighteen or nineteen. Clearly, she has impossible strength and speed, but I’ve never seen something like this. She moves faster than an animal, faster than I knew was possible.
And if the Warden knew… why didn’t he warn us? Was he just culling us again? Assuming that if we couldn’t take on a woman whose speed and strength exceeded even our nightmares, we didn’t deserve to live?
Nine’s sword slices her arm, but I watch in fascination as it heals almost immediately. Does that mean we can cut her and not risk the mission? But what could make someone heal like that?
My sword is at the ready when she comes for me. She moves to the right, and I realize that even though she’s fast, she’s easy to read and I dodge it. But just reading her moves won’t be enough when she’s so damn strong. She hits me with so much force, I’m thrown back and slammed into the far wall as pain shoots into my back. The wall crumbles around me after the impact, and I know I need to get up.
As she comes for me, Five steps into her path and slices his sword toward her, but she’s gone before he can make impact. Thankfully, she doesn’t get far as Nine goes in again, giving me time to get into position as all three of us surround her. Her skills don’t lie in technique, simply speed and strength, so if we can keep her from immediately killing us, we can do this.
I step in behind her and she’s so fixated on Nine that she doesn’t even notice me until I’ve cut through the backs of her legs. It drops her to her knees where Nine pins her down. She flings him off until Five throws her forward and stabs her through the back, pinning her to the wooden floor.
“I think this is the one we’re supposed to keep alive,” Nine says.
“She heals immediately,” I say as I wave to her legs that are already healed.
“What is it?” Nine asks.
“A demon,” Five responds. “The devil knows what we’ve done and has sent a monster to destroy us.”
“If the Warden hears you speaking such nonsense, he’ll kill you next,” I warn.
“We’re all destined to die anyway,” Five says as the monster tries to tear the sword out of her back. She nearly accomplishes it until Nine cuts her hand off. What’s left of her arm heals but the hand doesn’t return.
“You’re the monsters! You’re all monsters!” she screams as the others come down to see what’s happening. “You killed them all! They were good people! You killed them all!”
Someone goes to get the Warden, who is giddy when he enters. I don’t know if he’s ever showed this much happiness, but I do know that if one of us did, he’d beat it out of us.
“That’s my good boys. But really? How many of you died? Clearly, you haven’t been trained enough.”
“She’s not natural,” Five says.
The Warden turns to look at him before grabbing him by the throat. “Did I permit you to speak?” he asks as he squeezes as tightly as he can. He doesn’t stop until Five is on his knees. Then he flings the coughing man to the ground.
“This will be all we need to make them pay for what they’ve done,” he proclaims as he stands over the young woman. “Five, Seven, and Nine, check the house again, make sure there are none left alive.”
“Yes, sir,” I say as I turn from them and start up the stairs while Nine takes the lower levels.
I push open doors, unsure of what I was expecting, but the depiction of a happy family home isn’t it. I suppose there really weren’t any soldiers that we faced. I discover a dead woman in one of the children’s rooms and find myself staring down at her for a long moment. My mind is trying to tell me that she vaguely looks like my own mother… but does she? I don’t even remember what my mother looked like. All I feel for her is hatred after she sold me. Was she trying to make a better life for me… or herself?
I step over the woman when I hear a noise and look up. There’s a small wooden hatch that must lead up to an attic. There’s no ladder, so I can’t help but wonder if the woman had stuffed someone up there.
I use the sheath of my curved sword, a weapon I was told was called a katana that was given to me along with a shorter curved blade called a wakizashi from a country that the Warden says no one knows of. How he got such things or whether what he speaks of is lies, I’m not sure. But the Warden seems to have some… unique acquaintances… and we weren’t raised to question things. I wonder if they were the same acquaintances who told him about this strange woman.
Demon… like Five called her.
No. We’re the demons.
I push the wooden hatch up and shove it to the side before jumping up and catching the edge. I’m not afraid anyone’s going to cut my head off as I pull myself up because that wasn’t the sound of an adult up here. No… what I find is a boy of about ten or eleven running from me. Afraid of me.
At his age, I was already being forced to kill people, and instead of picking up a weapon to defend himself with, he cowers.
I walk over to him.
“Please, please,” he begs. “Cecily, please. Please.”
“No one’s coming,” I say as I use my foot to kick him down on his back and lift my sword.
Tears stream down his face as he grabs on to my leg, fingers clutching tightly to my pants. “Please? I just want Cecily. Please…”
I aim my sword toward him and he closes his eyes.
What the hell is wrong with me? I’ve killed so many… I’ve had no choice, and now… is this even a choice? If I walk downstairs and the Warden sees I left him alive, he’ll kill me.
I grab the kid and shove him into a chest before piling junk on top of him. “If you make a sound while I’m in this house, I will kill you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he whispers.
I shut the chest and start walking toward the hole leading out.
What was that?
I defied the Warden. I went against what he asked. I refused to do what he wanted… and I let a boy live.
Why do I feel so… alive?
Why does that make me feel like I’m not as dead inside?
I drop down from the space above and look over at Five who is standing in the doorway.
Did he hear the boy?
He’s just staring at me.
“Did you find anyone?” I ask as I head toward the door. He’s in the doorway and doesn’t seem interested in letting me pass.
“I did not… did you, brother?” The question sits heavy between us.
“Just some dead. They’re always dead.”
“We were visited by a monster today because of what we’ve done. How many more will come before there’s nothing left of us? Our numbers have dropped to fourteen. Will you bury me next?”
“We will all die someday. Don’t fear death so much.”
“Death is not what I fear.”
He looks up, almost like he’s looking through the floor at the child I hid, before stepping back.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 12

JULIAN
“So… she was a vampire?” I ask.
“She was. We’d never seen such a thing before. Of course there were fairy tales and folklore, but we didn’t grow up knowing any of that shit. Five was convinced she was sent from hell and… I think many of us believed that, but we weren’t foolish enough to say that in front of the Warden because we knew the consequences of believing in anything other than his words.”
I can’t fathom what it’d be like to be refused an identity. To not be allowed to do anything but what one egotistical and selfish man commanded you to do. To not have a family to come home to. No one to love you or care about you. Hell… had anyone ever even told him they loved him before I did? If Ezio is right, Casimir really hasn’t been close to anyone but him and Gustov since Ezio met him.
Casimir thumps me between the eyes. “I see your brain working as fast as it can. I don’t want… sympathy or shit about any of this. You wanted to hear about the people, so I was giving you some information. The two I was ‘closest’ to were Five and Nine… but they’re both dead… they’re all dead. I don’t understand who this man is.”
“No, no, I was just thinking,” I say, kind of lying. “So she was supposed to change you guys, right?”
“Correct.”
“Did she?”
“No. She refused no matter what the Warden did to her. There’s just… no one left for that person to be. So who else is wearing that fucking mask?”
“Was there a number on it?” I really wish I’d seen the person, but by the time I reached Casimir, he was long gone.
“No.”
“Was it a real mask, then?” I ask. “It could be a replica. I mean, depending on what the masks are made of, without proper storage and care, its condition would have deteriorated in nearly five hundred years.”
“I couldn’t tell. The Warden had extras for when one got destroyed, so it could be one of those, but you’re right. It would have required care. He rarely let anyone wear an unnumbered one because he couldn’t tell us apart. For the most part, we were one group to him. He could only pull us out of a lineup if one of us was failing, you know, by not destroying ourselves to bring him some semblance of power.”
“He’s dead?”
“Very much. He was never turned into a vampire and met his death as a human.”
I want to ask Casimir how, but he doesn’t offer it to me, so I have to assume he doesn’t want to give it up just yet.
My phone beeps, drawing my attention away from the possibilities of how this horrible man met his end. Looking over at it, I see that I have a message from Olive, a werewolf I’m friends with.

Olive: It’s supposed to rain tomorrow so we moved the run to tonight. Want to join us? Bring your sexy bat too. Life is significantly more fun when you’re both involved.

Me: Let me see.
Now that Casimir’s blood has had time to work its way through my body, I feel significantly better. And honestly, I think it’d be best to get Casimir out of this house and doing something else for a bit.
“You want to go for a run with the pack? I feel fine now. Might be fun to just get out and stretch our legs,” I urge.
Casimir shakes his head. “You literally nearly died, so no.”
“I’m fine now. Your blood makes power ripple through me.”
His eyebrow lifts at that one. “Sounds… concerning.”
“Right? You can take Gustov. It’ll be fun!”
“It rained all day; he’d get filthy.”
“He’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. It’ll even be fun! I don’t want to run alone. Are you going to make me run all by myself? All sad and alone and thinking only of you and how much I miss your bod?”
He seems quite skeptical of all of that for some peculiar reason. “Am I supposed to run on all fours or something?”
“That would be ideal. Come on, let’s go.”
Casimir growls in response which means he super wants to go, so we get out of bed and get dressed and ready. He does stop by Gustov’s secret cupboard, though, and pulls out what looks like a pack of paw booties.
“I’m not rewashing this dog,” he declares, like he needs to explain why he’s got dog shoes in his hand. “And if you say one word making fun of me⁠—”
I wonder if it’s the look on my face. “Oh, Casimir, my love, I would never make fun of you! I just wanted to know if you had a second pair. Just imagine the look on my dad’s face when I show up with my own booties on. I’ll be setting a new trend! All the weres will wish they were me as my father suffers.”
He stills before a smile unfolds on his face at the promise of Terrance’s pain and suffering. Quickly, he digs around in the cupboard some more. Honestly, he’s going to need a whole closet if he keeps buying stuff for this dog. “These were too big for him and I never shipped them back,” he says as he reveals a second pack and then snatches my “Don’t pet me, peasant” bandana off the table. Yes… my bandana because every time Gustov gets a new one, I do as well.
“You’re the best mate ever,” I tease.
“Thank you. Causing your father misery makes me happy.”
“Of course it does.”
When we reach the bar that’s near the woods that the pack runs in, I shift in the car since Olive informs me they’re already out in the woods and I want to show up looking fine. I hold up my paw which Casimir straps the bootie on. It’s a little tight and feels weird, but Gustov, who is already wearing his, gives no shits. Casimir also has him wrapped up in some kind of… underbody mud outfit where it only covers his legs with straps that go over his back. He looks fucking ridiculous as his poofy fur fluffs out around what are practically dog pants.
“I’m kind of jealous,” I whine.
“Of what?”
“I want pants.”
“The issue is… I like it when you’re dirty,” Casimir says as he grabs my muzzle and kisses the top of it. It makes my tail wag, which is ridiculous and sappy. “Now give me your other feet.”
I hand them off and soon, I am mud booted up and ready to terrorize my father with my brand-new kicks. Casimir opens the door and we both hop out. Gustov, who I thought was used to the booties, flings his feet this way and that as he gallops around. Impressively, the booties stay on as Casimir chases after him, phone out and recording every minute of the adventure. I’m positive he could stay here all night watching the dog, and then the next day, sending the videos off to people who really don’t care about them.
“Let’s go before you use up your phone’s entire battery recording your dog.”
“Are you jealous?” he asks as he turns it on me. “Want me to record you?”
“Not in the slightest,” I say as I head off for the woods with Gustov prancing by my side. When we reach the trees where around half of the pack has shifted, Gustov jumps before rushing over to make friends, tail wagging as fast as it can go.
“What the fuck are you wearing?” Olive, who is in her wolf form, asks.
“Don’t be jealous of my booties and bandana. I wear a collar at home, and he likes it.”
“Look at Terrance. Look at his face,” Casimir says as I realize he’s now recording my father’s expression. He will likely send this to my father when he wants a good laugh.
“Julian… you… I…” Dad just stops talking to stare at me before coming over. “What are you wearing?”
I can’t answer him in this form, so I just prance around, showing off my awesome booties until my father grabs me in a headlock and starts yanking them off me.
“You are embarrassing me,” he mutters as I thrash and fight because those are my booties! How dare he deprive me of the booties!
“Did you not read my bandana!” I growl, but he sadly can’t hear me when he’s still walking on two feet.
“And why is he here?” Dad scowls at Casimir.
“I’m a wolf,” Casimir says. “I have a bandana too.” He points at his matching bandana which nearly ends my father’s life. “You know we’re soul mates because our bandanas match.”
Dad snatches off the last of my booties and chucks them before he goes for my bandana but with a quick gator roll, I manage to break free and proudly prance off with it.
“I think it’s cute,” Olive says.
“Thank you! I think my father is just jealous,” I say as he shifts, which means he gets to hear the tail end of that.
“Every day I wake up and wish that my son would come back to me. You’ve allowed this… monster to do such irritating things to me,” Dad growls. “At one point, I thought that maybe I could respect him… not anymore.”
“I don’t know, Dad, he’s pretty fun,” I say. And while Casimir can hear what I’m saying, he can’t hear the others once they’re in their shifted form. “I mean… look at how handsome he is.”
“I’d let that man put bandanas and mud booties on me any day of the week,” Willow, Olive’s twin sister, says.
“Right? He took me to pet a giraffe, Dad. And told me he’d take me in the lion den if I didn’t straighten up.”
“You’re making it sound like a threat,” Casimir grumbles, and everyone turns to look at him. Like heads snap to him.
My father, who hadn’t planned on the entire pack just stopping dead, trips over Weston, a guy who has fought with me on more than one occasion. I just keep trotting like maybe no one will notice, and Casimir points up like that’s a good distraction. “Oh wow. It’s an owl. Look at the owl, Gustov. Neat, eh? I like owls. They don’t taste very good but they’re fun to look at.”
“Ah, what muddy ground. Weird how rain plus dirt equals mud. Ha ha ha. The more you know is the… more you know and I… know… more.”
“Did you just communicate with him?” Dad asks as he runs over to me.
I feel like it’d be best to pretend none of this has happened. “Oh! Owl! I see the owl. Hoot hoot, guys. Right?”
“How the hell can the vampire hear him?” Weston demands.
“Which vampire? There’s a vampire? Oh my god, Casimir, you’re a vampire?” I ask.
“What? Are you speaking to me? I can’t understand you,” Casimir says.
“What is this sorcery?” Olive asks. “And why didn’t you deliver me the deets?”
I try to get the pack walking again, but no one seems as interested in our run as they are in Casimir. “No deets to be delivered, my friend. This is Casimir, who I’ve just been told is a vampire.”
My father walks up and stares at me for a long moment. I stare back while trying to convey “Do you really want them to know what all is going on?”
Dad stares back with a very clear “I’m hungry for a cheeseburger, but a chicken sandwich would also hit the spot.” At least that’s what I assume from the blank expression on his face… and now I want a cheeseburger and a chicken sandwich.
“Man, I’m hungry.”
Casimir disappears before returning, owl in hand. “Here you go, my dear.”
“I was thinking like a cheeseburger or something.”
“If you use your imagination and turn it on its side, it can become the cheeseburger of your dreams.” He turns the owl onto its side and offers it to me again.
“I would rather not,” I say, positive that everyone is jealous of the beautiful relationship we share.
“You’re so picky,” he grumbles as he returns the confused owl.
“Ah, right. Julian told me all about this and I foolishly forgot,” Dad says, sounding like an emotionless android that has never heard human speech before. “Because Casimir is disgustingly old, he can hear wolves… if he’s close to them.”
“How close does he have to be?” Olive asks.
“Casimir, my father was just explaining how you’re able to hear me because of how close we are. Olive asked how close.”
“Oh, yeah, very close. Like… make you blush close,” Casimir says, which makes my father growl instead.
“I’m pretty sure you’ve made my father blush a time or two. Can you hear him?” I tease.
Casimir forlornly shakes his head. “It doesn’t work if the flushing of the face is caused by uncontrollable rage.”
“Ahhhhh, right, right.”
Then Dad grabs my bandana and drags me off with it. I assume he’s planning on drowning me in the river for a splash of fun, but he eventually lets go of me.
“You.”
“Me,” I concur.
“You.”
“Me.” I’m curious how long this will go on for.
“I,” Casimir tosses in.
“My father wants to know if you two can get close enough that you’ll also be able to hear him. I told him it was a bit creepy, but he persists, going on about how you’re actually closer to him in age than me,” I say.
“Oh… I’m… not flattered… no… disgruntled maybe? There’s another D word that would fit…”
“Delicious?”
“Disgusted,” Casimir tosses in.
Dad, who can’t clarify that none of this is happening, growls at me.
“Casimir, you hurt his feelings. He said after the fun time you two had moving furniture the other day, he is… heartbroken.”
“Why the hell did you have Casimir help you with furniture? I said I could help,” Weston chimes in, and I glance over at my pop-pop… did he lie to me in the hopes we’d spend some time together? I almost feel bad for sending Casimir… but not quite. They clearly need some bonding time as well. Honestly, I’ve never had so much fun with my father until Casimir arrived.
“I’m going to run so far ahead of you, I can’t hear a thing you’re saying,” Dad says as he takes off.
“Casimir, my dad said it’s his lifelong dream to play tag with you, and you, you magical man, are ‘it.’”
“Oh joy!” Casimir exclaims as he races after my father. And Gustov bounds after him, leaping like a gazelle with his pants and booties, red fur fluttering in the wind.
Ohhhh the joy. Could anything have made this day better than this?
“I used to think Casimir was scary and I was actually afraid of him,” Olive says. “But he’s delightful.”
“Right?” I agree as I lope after the vampire chasing my father down. Dad is just running as fast as he can to avoid being caught.
Once we finish our run and make it back to the edge of the woods where everyone is filthy and coated in mud besides Gustov, I turn to my dad. “Hey, Dad, a word?” I ask after pulling my clean clothes over the muddy mess so I can at least get home to bathe.
“Is that word ‘sorry’?” Dad asks.
“Oh god no, don’t be foolish,” I respond. “Can we talk privately?”
“Yeah, come on,” he says as he takes us into the bar and back to his office. “What’s going on?”
Casimir, who obviously hates the idea of talking to my father, sighs. “Someone from my past is back and… seems to have some… intentions to disrupt my life. I don’t know who it is, but I intend to stop him. I just wanted to warn you in case a vampire comes around that you don’t know.”
“What do you mean he wants to disrupt your life… you believe he’d touch Julian?” Dad asks in concern.
“I can’t answer that. These people are unpredictable and ruthless,” Casimir says.
“Of course that’s the kind of people you’d choose to hang out with.”
For fuck’s sake. “Da⁠—”
“There was no choice given in this,” Casimir retorts. “Hate me for whatever you’d like, be pissed at me for bringing this man into your son’s life, I don’t give a shit, I’m just telling you what I know about him and what’s going on. Choices weren’t something I was granted when I was a human, and for many years as a vampire. Your job is to help me keep your son safe.”
Dad nods. “I will.”
“And while we’re at it, you might as well know that my blood is the only blood that works on Julian. If I die or disappear, Julian will die. Let’s just say it’d be in your best interest to help me out.”
Dad quickly looks over at me. “What? No… what about that other vampire? Ezio?”
“Ezio’s blood didn’t work on me,” I say. “But like I explained to Casimir… I would be dead right now without his blood. Every minute I’m alive is time I shouldn’t even have been granted, you know?”
Dad sinks down in his office chair and rubs his head. “I will never forget the look on your mom’s face the moment you shifted into this tiny feral beast on a full moon. I was lucky enough to see it since you couldn’t control the shift and shifted before it was fully dark. She hated that she couldn’t hold you those nights because we didn’t know what would happen if you bit her. Your life was filled with so many unknowns, but I am so extremely lucky that Casimir was there that day. I’m still not going to like him, but I am thankful. Do you know about the shit he sends me?”
I can’t help but grin at that. “I do. Let’s just say you should be really happy that I talked him out of sending you a picture the other day.”
Dad shakes his head. “Did you tell your mom about this?”
“No? I just… feel like it might be unnecessary to scare her.”
“Your mom might be a human, but she’s tougher than both of us.”
“True. That one time she made you cry after you terrorized me will always be burned into my mind,” I say, beaming at the memory.
Casimir looks manic as he quickly looks over. “Oh?”
“Now get out of here and take your weird dog.”
Casimir makes a show of looking shocked. “Don’t talk about Julian that way! His feelings are easily hurt. But yes, we should get home. Did you see how fine Julian’s hair looked when we arrived? That was because I brushed him⁠—”
“Oh my god, just because I managed to keep you from showing him the picture doesn’t mean you need to tell him,” I hiss.
“Please leave while I can still pretend that all is well with the world. And Julian, don’t you dare go anywhere alone.”
“I won’t,” I say as we head over to Casimir’s fancy car. Thankfully, my clean clothes cover up most of the dirt that I’ll have to scrub off when I get home.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 13

JULIAN
Casimir’s phone beeps and I look over at him, curious who it is. Since night has just fallen, we’re on our way out the door to talk to Delwyn, who seems to be doing better after the attack. Whether or not he wants to talk to us is a whole different story.
“What the fuck?” Casimir asks.
I glance over at his phone. “What is it?”
On his screen is a picture of a building sent by what looks like a random number.
I scrutinize the image for a moment. “You… know this building? Oh wait, that’s the hotel you took me to for our first date. You own that hotel, right?”
“I do…”
Three dots pop up, telling me the person who texted him is writing something. The dots disappear before returning a moment before the text comes through.

Unknown: Can you get here fast enough? Time is ticking.
Casimir stills as it dawns on me who is texting him.
“How the hell did he get your number?” I ask, but then again, I guess it wouldn’t be impossible to get his number. Casimir owns quite a few businesses, and while he generally lets them run themselves, I’m sure the higher-ups all know how to contact him.
“Get in your car and go to Ezio,” he orders as he rushes for the stairs. I know he’s grabbing his swords and is planning on leaving without me, but I hate his insatiable desire to tackle everything alone when I want to help. When I’m capable of helping. Maybe I’m not as strong as the vampires he’s used to dealing with… and maybe I get scared much easier than most of them… but I can make a difference.
“Casimir, if people are injured or hurt, the more of us, the better, right? We need to work together to just stop this guy and end it. I’ll call Ezio and Cyrus too, okay? Maybe they can help.”
Casimir’s clearly reluctant about all of this, but when I put myself in his car, he gets into the driver’s seat.
I quickly call Ezio and add Cyrus to the call, so I don’t have to call them separately.
“Guys, there’s been an attack at the Polaris hotel. The vampire who attacked Delwyn is inside. I have no idea what he’s planning.”
“Fuck, that place is packed with humans,” Cyrus says. “I’ll get a team heading in to deal with as much as they can. Is he planning on exposing himself like that?”
“I don’t know. Right now, it’s hard to tell what he’s planning,” I answer. “But we do know he wanted to bring Casimir there. You don’t think he’d like… wait until you’re inside and bomb the place or something, would he?”
“He’s not going to kill me by methods like that,” Casimir says. “If he wanted that satisfaction, he’d bomb my house or would have set up something at Genevieve’s house for when we got there. He’s obviously fucking with me.”
“Should someone pull the fire alarm to evacuate the humans?” Cyrus asks.
“I think avoiding it would be best,” Ezio responds. “If you pull the fire alarm, people will be flooding out of their rooms. While I’m sure there are people out and about, the number of them out right now should be minimal, and it’ll keep him from slaughtering a large group, right? At least that’s the hope.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. The more who are in their rooms, the better. He’ll likely try to pick people off as he goes,” Casimir says. “Julian, I need to call one of the managers there. A few vampires work there who could help.”
“Got it,” I say. “I’ll see you two there.”
I hang up and sit anxiously as he makes some calls. Thankfully, the hotel isn’t that far away… or maybe it’s not a positive… because I kind of wish the situation would just be taken care of by the time we get there.
Casimir pulls right up into the valet area and hops out. The guy working the valet stand opens his mouth to say something until he sees who it is and goes back to scrutinizing how he’s going to get cars around Casimir’s badly parked vehicle.
Casimir rushes inside to where the vampire who’d tried knocking me off Genevieve’s porch stands. He looks a bit nervous but gives Casimir a respectful nod before saying, “I have Hillary on cameras searching the building for him. She’s going to call your phone when she finds something.”
“Got it. Jake, keep people where they’re at. If they’re in the bar or one of the ballrooms, don’t let them leave. Tell them someone had a medical emergency and that to give the emergency personnel space, we are asking all people to stay in their current room, got it?”
“Yeah, of course,” he says as he rushes off to tell some others what to do.
I turn to Casimir. “This place is huge… it’s what? Twenty stories?”
“It is, but you remember his scent, don’t you?”
I look around at all of the humans who could see me, but nod. Right now is not the time to fret about this. Clearly, I look like a wolf, but maybe I can pass for a wolfdog? Fuck if I know.
“Ma’am, get everyone out of the lobby,” Casimir orders the receptionist who nods and starts shooing them back to their rooms using the excuse she must have heard Casimir give Jake. “In here,” Casimir says as he ushers me into a back room where I quickly undress before he gives me the nod to shift.
Once I do, he opens the door and we rush out into the lobby. The smells in here are overwhelming. So many different people have come and gone, and the smell of lavender attacks my nose, but I catch the masked vampire’s scent and dash forward as Casimir trails after me, holding his sheathed swords by his side. Anyone who sees us will question what the fuck is going on, but we don’t have time to care.
I follow the scent through the lobby and past the bar, to the employee elevators. “This one. He went in here.”
“Okay,” Casimir says as he waves Jake over and takes his card. He scans it and the elevator door opens up. It definitely smells like him, so I hurry inside and realize the new issue.
“I won’t know when he gets out if you don’t stop at every floor,” I realize.
“Fuck… Okay…”
“I… am going to ask you to go in the other elevator. You start from the top. I’ll start from the bottom. You might notice if something’s off, okay? Then we won’t be going through twenty floors, but each will be hitting ten.”
“Absolutely not,” he says.
“The longer we spend time debating this, the more people will die. Please.”
“Fuck,” Casimir growls before grabbing the vampire. “Jake, go with him. If there is any danger, you are to throw your body in front of him.”
“Oh… okay,” he says, not looking thrilled about this in the slightest, but he’s scared enough of Casimir to agree. So then there we are, awkwardly standing in the elevator together as it goes up. Jake gives me a scowl like I was the one who threw him off a porch. I growl at him, showing him my pretty fangs, which is how the two ladies on the second floor find us when the door opens.
The one shrieks and scrambles back, but I’m not sure if she’s more afraid of the snarling vampire or the growling werewolf. Either way, I don’t smell the man, so I smack the door-close button with my paw and the door shuts in their faces.
“You’re tricking him, aren’t you?” he asks, and I’m annoyed I can’t answer him.
I growl at him some more and debate biting him as the door opens again. I stick my head out, sniff around and then hit the button for the next floor. I end up going to the fourth floor before I catch a scent. Stepping out, I confirm the smell and give the vampire a nod.
Jake doesn’t seem to know what the nod means, so I growl at him so he can understand that I want him to contact Casimir. Instead, he just flails his arms around.
“I don’t know what the fuck you want!”
I look around but no one’s there, so I quickly shift. “I want you to fucking call Casimir and tell him we’re on the fourth floor. Obviously.”
“Oh, right,” Jake says, pulling out his phone as a woman steps out of one of the rooms and gapes at me.
Fuck… now where do I shift back?
“Ma’am, please return to your room,” I say. “There’s an emergency.”
“Did the emergency take your clothes?” she asks with a drunken slur. “I like this kind of emergency.”
Fucking hell.
I try grabbing for doors to hide behind to shift back, but all of them are locked, and now there’s another woman who has joined the first. The first one points at me like the second could somehow miss my naked ass.
“Your nudist boyfriend tracked him to the fourth floor,” Jake says to Casimir, like that’ll help the situation at all.
I really need to shift back because now I can’t smell shit with my much inferior human nose. If Jake hadn’t been so goddamn dense, none of this would have happened. And these women are highly fascinated by what’s happening, unaware that there’s a killer vampire on the loose.
Then a vampire I wasn’t expecting to see waltzes onto the scene. The door to the stairwell swings shut behind him as he steps out, and while I was really hoping for Casimir or Ezio… I’ve ended up with this man instead. He looks right at me, a beaming smile on his face, before noticing the women who are both gawking.
“It is I, Yorick, who have come to save the day!” he announces as he presses his hand against each of the women’s faces and just… stuffs them back in the room they’d come from. “You are welcome, peasants.”
“Who the fuck is that?” Jake asks.
“A nuisance,” I mutter.
The women cry and smack at him but he’s unperturbed as he slams the door shut in their faces and blocks it with some decorative furniture.
“You are most welcome, puppers,” Yorick says as he rubs his hands vigorously on his pants, like touching the women disgusted him. “And I am most thanked by your beautifully naked⁠—”
Casimir smacks the man into a wall. Like literally, walks up and shoves him into the wall without even pausing to figure out what the situation is. “Where’s the scent?” he asks like he doesn’t even notice Yorick being one with the wall.
“My pretty face! You heathen! You messed up my hair!” Yorick cries.
“Oh, right!” I say as I quickly shift but before I need to do anything, there’s a scream. Getting a better look at the hallway tells me that this floor is made up of smaller ballrooms or gathering spaces. Casimir rushes for the screams as I run after him, but as the doors to the farthest room bust open and panicked people flood out, I’m nearly plowed over by the crowd. Someone slams into me and they fall, knocking me back into some others as I lose Casimir in the chaos.
Of course the one who saves me has to be Yorick.
“I’ve got you since Casimir left you to be trampled!” he announces as he holds me over his head while he charges through, kicking humans out of his way as he steps inside, and I see the masked vampire who is holding up another vampire by the throat. Blood is rushing down the vampire’s body from her head being nearly cut off.
With the mask covering his entire face other than his eyes, it’s hard to read him, but I can tell he’s watching us as he laughs at the destruction he’s caused. He’s standing before a large window, the lights of the city illuminating him in a way that makes the whole scene look even more haunting.
“Oh, Casimir, you came! Or should I call you Seven? How exciting that you paid me some attention. You always seemed so full of yourself… so fixated on yourself that it’s a wonder I’ve snagged it,” he says as he kicks a body toward us of a man who is clearly dead. “I thought for sure you’d never look my way, but look at you running forward to protect them! How absolutely funny is this? Back then, you only cared about what the Warden wanted. You slaughtered so many people without thought or mercy, and now you’re trying to play the hero?”
The vampire he’s holding has healed enough that she seems to be able to talk. “P-Please,” she whispers.
The vampire leans in, like he’s trying to listen better. “Please, what? I can’t hear you. Speak louder.”
“I shall put this here and be on my way,” Yorick says as he sets me down. “I forgot I have… plans.” He tries backing out until I bite his ankle to keep him from fleeing. Ezio isn’t here yet and Jake doesn’t strike me as someone who can fight overly well, so if Casimir needs help, Yorick might be his only hope.
“Yowie. Ow… puppers, come on now… ooh, those teeth are sharp,” he whines. Yorick gives a very fake laugh as he tries to pry open my jaws to get himself free, but I’m not letting him go anywhere. If he really wants us to forgive him for any of the shit he’s done, then he needs to work harder than simply pushing two human ladies into a different room.
“Please… I don’t want to die,” the woman begs.
“Aw, you shouldn’t fear death. You see this man here? He silenced all of his victims. They never had time to fear death because he cut them down without a moment’s hesitation! Funny, isn’t it?”
“Why isn’t this fight between just you and me?” Casimir asks.
“Between you and me? It was never between you and me,” the man scoffs. “At one point it was about our master… and then you decided it was all about you, didn’t you? You didn’t care about anyone else but yourself.”
“I had no fucking choice. Now let her go!”
“Why? Don’t tell me you care about this lady. You don’t even know her, do you? My, you’ve changed.”
Casimir steps forward but the man tightens his hold on the woman, making her cry. “It’s been nearly five hundred years; of course I’ve fucking changed. Why haven’t you? Have you really carried this hate for so many years? Have you really allowed what that man did to us to drive you into this state?”
“I need to end this,” the masked man says.
“Then end it with me. This… what you’re doing is absolute bullshit. You’re hiding behind people. You’re wanting to cause terror and pain. How the hell could you possibly think poorly of me when this is what you’ve chosen to do? It’s like you mock me for my choices while trying to pretend yours are any better.”
The masked vampire starts backing up and I can tell he’s heading for the window, but with the woman in his arms, I’m not quite sure what Casimir can do.
“The world is going to burn around you. I can’t wait to watch it,” he says as he tears the woman’s throat open before slamming back against the huge glass window and jumping through it.
Casimir catches the woman who is choking on her own blood, gently lowering her to the ground as I rush over, hoping to help. Before I can do anything, Casimir turns from me and leaps out the window.
“Casimir, don’t go alone!” I beg, but he’s gone… and I can’t tell if he heard me or not.
I quickly shift and press my hands against the vampire’s throat. She’s bleeding profusely, telling me she’s struggling to heal after the last attack. She needs some blood, but I don’t dare give her mine and there’s no one left in the room for her to feed on.
“Yorick, help!”
“I don’t know what you want me to do. Want me to grab a human? I can do that!” he says, and then he returns with a drunk woman he’s obviously allured.
“Why hello, handsome,” she slurs.
“I need your blood,” Yorick tells her.
“Oh yes, baby. I am O positively in love with you!” she says.
Yorick looks disgusted by the woman who has taken to hanging on him. “That… no. Stop rubbing your boobs on me! Bleed on her,” he instructs as he waves at the vampire on the ground.
The woman looks right past her and instead fixates on me. “Oh my god! There’s a naked man. Hi, naked man.”
“Yorick, bite her.”
“Fine, fine,” Yorick says as he bites her. I shove her arm down into the vampire’s mouth as Yorick spits and moans and groans like he’s disgusted he had to do such a thing. At first, the vampire doesn’t respond, even as the blood trickles into her mouth.
“You are so handsome and naked. Should I be naked?” the human asks.
“Please don’t be naked,” I say.
“Are you a nudist? Are you allergic to clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Oh wow. I think I’m also allergic to clothes,” she says as she tries taking her hand back to strip herself until the vampire clamps down on it.
“Chompy chomped on me! Ha ha!”
“What the hell kind of allure did you do on her?” I ask.
Yorick shrugs. “It’s because I’m so pretty that women are just instantly ready to do whatever I ask.” He brushes some hair back that’d fallen out of his messy bun. “It’s also the accent.”
The drunk woman cuts in. “I do love the accent. I have a naked man and an accented man and McBitey. Is this an orgy? I’ve always wanted to try an orgy but I’ve always been a bit nervous, you know? Like where do I put things? Do I ask before I grab? I only have two hands. Do I grab all the things?”
“How about you deal with things here and I go deal with Casimir?” I say as the woman pokes Yorick in the chest then laughs.
Yorick looks disgruntled by this idea. “No! I don’t want her!”
“Don’t let the vampire kill her, got it?” I ask as the door opens, and I look over to see Cyrus and Ezio. “Cyrus, help this woman. Ezio, can you get me down to the first floor?” I wave at the window.
“Sure, sure. Where’s Casimir?”
“He ran off after the man. Please, hurry.”
“Of course.”
With the woman fixated on Yorick’s nipple which is quite apparent through his shirt that’s far too tight, I shift. Ezio grabs me and, after checking that no one will see us, leaps from the fourth floor into the alley.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 14

CASIMIR
Following the scent of blood that the masked vampire left behind helps me find his trail, but it’s clear the man is running from me and has no intention of letting me catch up. Moving through the city is hard, especially this side of town where people are everywhere. I have to assume he’s stuck to the shadows since the last thing he needs is attention. But while his face is covered, mine is not, and I have a face that’s easily recognizable to people.
I have to be careful. I no longer have just my own life riding on this but Julian’s as well. But if the masked man was confident he could kill me, wouldn’t he face me? Would he keep running from me? Toying with me? Although… isn’t that his goal? Just to do whatever he can to taunt and terrorize me? Or does he think that he can’t win one-on-one with me?
I turn into an alley and see him at the end of it. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” he asks.
“You come onto my territory and threaten me and think I shouldn’t chase you?”
“No, I really think you should lie down and let me destroy you. I’m going to ruin your image. Make these followers of yours realize that you’re nothing more than a heartless killer. I’m going to destroy everything you’ve worked for. I’m going to plant the idea that you can’t protect anyone into those who follow you and entrust their lives to you. Then I’m going to take the people you love and destroy them before your very eyes. And when I’m finally fucking satisfied, I’m going to leave you here to rot.”
“So you think what we were doing was better? You think we should have kept killing innocent people? How is your… vendetta or whatever the fuck this is against me any different than the people who died by your hand? What about their families? Their loved ones. You blame me, but I did what none of the rest of you were strong enough to do.”
He barks out a laugh. “Is that what you’re considering it now? A good act to save others, huh, brother?” he growls. “You’re so fucking selfless! I’m thrilled by this picture of such a selfless victim as you believe you’ve become.”
That pisses me off even more. How could he honestly act like that’s why I did any of it? “I never fucking said that. I will admit to anyone who asks that I am a fucking monster. I deserve to suffer for what I’ve done, but the people I care about don’t deserve to suffer for something I did over hundreds of years ago.”
He shakes his head at me, hood pulled up tight to keep me from seeing any features that could hint at who he is behind the mask. “How did it feel to watch them die? Did you enjoy it? Was it everything you dreamed of?”
My mind flashes to them lying at my feet, blood pooled out around them. It eats at me, that horrible memory fucking eats at me. It ruined a part of me that I never thought I’d get back. It ruined so much of me until Julian fought to show me that I was worth caring about.
And now my past is threatening to take it all away again.
I can go back to being miserable. I can go back to hating myself. But I can’t ever go back to a life without Julian in it.
“I will destroy you. I will kill you. I will finish what I started all of those years ago,” I growl as I start down the alley toward him. He doesn’t have a sword on him; maybe he hadn’t kept his all these years.
“I hear your wolf galloping toward me. Who will get to him first?” he asks as he dashes around the corner.
Fuck!
Turning, I listen closely, pinpointing where Julian is, knowing I have to reach him before that man does. I can’t let him touch Julian. He has to be protected no matter what.
During all the times I’ve fought against people, killed, and hunted, I’ve never felt such panic as I do at the idea that this man could so easily take away what I love. That he could destroy Julian in a single second…
And I left him. I was the one who left him in the hotel. I thought he’d be okay if he stayed in the damn building, but of course he followed me. Of course he’d run after me because he’s Julian. He’s so fucking good all the time… and I can’t lose him. I can’t…
I’m frantic as I hurry down the alley and see a streak of black. I rush toward it and nearly drop my katana in my anxious attempt to snatch him. I grab Julian, pulling the wolf into my arms and jerking Ezio back behind me… but I’m all alone. The masked man is nowhere in the area, but at least they’re with me now.
I realize that I was played like a fool. He just wanted to give himself time to run away by feeding into my fear.
I really have changed.
“You… okay?” Ezio asks from where I have him backed against a wall so I only have three sides to watch.
Julian is just hanging from my one arm, unable to grip on to me with his paws. He seems a bit uncertain, and we are definitely gaining the attention of people walking around who are questioning what this strange man is doing with two swords and a wolf.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
Ezio doesn’t seem so certain as he sets a hand on my shoulder. “You do know we’ve been friends quite a while, right? And Julian’s seen your willy, so that just adds him to the group… although a ton of people have seen his willy… so let’s just pretend that we’re not basing friendship level off willy sightings.”
“I think what Ezio is trying and failing horrifically to say is that we’re here for you and we hope you can tell us how you feel.”
“Stuff your face in his fur, it helps all woes,” Ezio says as he “helps” by pushing Julian into my face.
His fur is ridiculously soft and there’s something soothing about having a face full of it. It makes me wish I could just stay like this and forget all of the bullshit. Forget the past that is like a noose that continually tightens around my neck. I just want to be free of it.
“Come on, let’s go back and see what we can do,” I say. “He acted like he was going for Julian to distract me while he got away. I’m not going to catch him at this point.” Honestly, I’m too worried about leaving Julian behind to chase after him again anyway.
“I was prepared to protect the floof,” Ezio assures me as he holds up his fists like he’s going to start a boxing match with someone.
“Thank you,” I say as I head back for the hotel. Instead of taking the window, we go inside through the front door, but I refuse to put Julian down. I give absolutely no shits who is staring at me as we ride the elevator up. And even less shits when we walk into the ballroom where multiple vampires and Cyrus wait.
“Oh yay, you are alive. Let’s applaud your aliveness!” Yorick announces, and then starts clapping wildly. And because Ezio forgets to use his brain, he starts clapping with him.
“Do not encourage him unless you’re encouraging him toward an early grave,” I growl.
Ezio looks disappointed as he stops clapping… like what I’ve said is in any way cruel!
“You are… evil, but I’m digging it,” Yorick says.
“Weren’t you the vampire who was involved when the weres were killed?” Cyrus asks.
Yorick grimaces, like he somehow thought any one of us has forgotten that. “I… was present but I didn’t kill any! I was actually trying to take this puppers out of the situation. Julian was also present! So if I’m going to get blamed, he should also get blamed! Why are all of you such bullies? I don’t get why you keep picking on me!” Yorick whines. “Let me hold the puppers. It’ll make me feel better.”
He holds his hands out like he actually thinks I’m going to hand Julian to him. He should just be pleased I don’t kick him out the broken window. I’m not sure if it’s the twitch of my fingers or the look on my face, but Yorick nervously laughs as he backs up toward the window and hops right out.
Ezio claps again, so I decide if he has nothing else to do with those hands, he can hold Julian.
“I… know this might seem weird, but I’m actually okay to use my own feet,” Julian says as he jumps down, but when I give him a look, he uncertainly lifts his paws so Ezio can pick him back up. “Good lord. Fine.”
Everyone is staring at me, waiting for me to tell them what to do, but what the fuck do I say?
“Go home,” I decide on.
Jake stares at the mess. “But… sir, there’s… the dead man and… there were a hundred guests in this room when the accident happened.”
“For those who weren’t close to the victim, give them some money and vouchers,” I declare. “As for the deceased and those who knew him…”
I stare at the human, unsure how I’ve caused more death… again. I swear it’s the only thing I’m good at.
Cyrus walks up to me and the vampires look at him. I don’t think they ever know what to make of this human who is quite cold with them. I’ve never seen him show any of them a lick of attention, unlike most humans who know what we are. They find him standoffish, and I’m not sure anyone but Ezio—and Julian, of course—is overly fond of him. But maybe that’s because they’ve never seen the side of him that comes out with Julian, or when Ezio manages to say something right.
He generally only seems to speak to me during situations like this. “I already have our contacts in the media prepared to silence anything about what happened. The detectives on the case will do the same thing. I will have Ezio allure those who are particularly stubborn about the ordeal. He will also be with me to announce the death of the man in case there are issues. I’ve looked up the deceased’s ID and it’s cruel to say, but it’ll work in our favor that he has no family.”
“Thank you, Cyrus.”
“Of course,” Cyrus says. “Just… stop this before more shit happens.”
I wish it were so simple. “Of course,” I lie, because I’m clearly incapable of doing anything but causing more death. “Ezio, Cyrus, can I speak to you two alone?”
They go out into the hallway with me, Ezio still holding Julian who just seems confused why he can’t use his own feet.
“It was made quite apparent that he’s going to target people I’m close to… you three are the only people I tolerate, so I’d assume that he’d target you guys. I ask that you stay with me until this is taken care of. I… hate to admit it, but we are strongest as a team.”
“He’s not going to go after me,” Cyrus protests. “We merely work together on occasion.”
Julian struggles to get out of Ezio’s arms, but a look from me keeps Ezio from putting him down. This backfires when Julian shifts so now Ezio is holding a quite naked Julian.
“Well… this is different,” Ezio says before laughing. “I don’t know where to put my hands. Do I still hold on? Do I not hold on? I think I touched your balls. I don’t know what to do. It’s obvious that if I put you down, Casimir is going to murder me, but if I don’t… he is also going to murder me. Cyrus, help. You hold him. I’ll hand him to you in a way that you won’t grab the balls.”
“I weigh more than Cyrus! Just put me down!” Julian growls as he tries to get free, but Ezio is nothing if not determined.
He cradles Julian to his chest. “No, the floor is lava! Look at Casimir’s eyes. He will murder me if I put you down.”
“He will not!” Julian says as he finally gets free. “Back to what we were talking about. Cyrus, you need to stop thinking that no one likes you. Yeah, I mean… it’s kind of a shitty time to get liked when some guy wants to kill everyone Casimir likes, but remember what happened the last time you refused our help?”
Cyrus is quiet but Julian won’t be deterred.
“Please, Cyrus. All of us here care about you. You’re as stubborn as Casimir. If you don’t answer, I will just keep getting in your space while fully naked. I’ll be like one of those people who just keep getting closer and closer no matter how much you back away… but naked.”
“Hmm…” he mutters, which doesn’t appease Julian at all.
“Cyrus.”
“I hear you. I’m not deaf,” he grumbles.
“Then listen.”
“Fine, after I finish up, I will go to Casimir’s house. But if my life doesn’t appear to be in danger within a few days, I’m going home.”
Julian sighs. “You are… something.”
Cyrus gives him a bit of a smile. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment!”
He shrugs, not at all offended. “Am I going to be forced to watch Casimir brush you? Because if I am… I might take on the vampire alone.”
“I don’t even know why I try saving you guys,” I mutter, which seems to amuse Cyrus.
I want to send Julian elsewhere with Ezio or Cyrus, really anyone else to keep him safe, but I’m afraid they won’t be able to protect him like I could. So once we’ve finished up here, I take him home with me. Ezio and Cyrus promise to come soon, since Cyrus needs to finish up a few things at the department that I’m not quite capable of helping with, and Ezio will be watching out for him.
As soon as I get home, Gustov comes bounding toward me, so goddamn happy as I think about how easy it’d be for him to die. How easy it’d be for Julian to die. How everyone fucking dies so goddamn easily.
“Casimir,” Julian says, voice soft. “I’m right here.”
“Isn’t that the fucking problem?” I ask. “If you weren’t right here, you’d be⁠—”
“Dead,” Julian interrupts. “If I wasn’t right here, I would be dead because you wouldn’t have saved me.”
“I could have saved you and⁠—”
“Left me? I would have died anyway because we never would have figured out that I need your blood. Any scenario where I’m not right here leads to me being dead. Even if we were one hundred percent strangers and I came every three days to feed off you, he’d still know that you are important to me. So Casimir… stop.”
I grab on to him and pull him in close. “Why is it that all I do is cause suffering?”
Julian wraps his arms tightly around me, squeezing me. “I’m sorry that guy at the hotel died. Life can be cruel and unfair. When I was about fourteen, my father took me out to deal with a werewolf who’d shifted in his home for the full moon. He’d made a mistake, and that mistake cost him the life of his wife and caused his son to be inflicted with this curse. My father brought me in the hopes I could at least help the son. Seeing that man opened my eyes to how unfair life can be. Life fucking sucks sometimes. But you can’t carry it all on your shoulders. You’re going to drown with that much weight. So let me carry a little of it so you don’t have to carry it all.”
What did I ever do to deserve someone like him?
I tuck my head against his neck. “You are just so fucking good, Julian. You make me feel things that I thought I could never feel. You make me ache to be a good person.”
“I’m glad I can help you.”
“I love you,” I whisper, finally managing to get the words out after feeling them for so long. “I have to imagine the last person I said those words to was my mother, but that was so many years ago I don’t even remember them. I haven’t desired to say them once in my life until I met you because you’re so damn easy to love, even for someone like me who thought they never could love.”
The arms Julian has wrapped around me squeeze even tighter. “I love you too.”
“Now, I’ve decided that if you really think you want to stay by my side, you’re going to have to learn how to fight better. We need to do all we can to keep you safe.”
“What? I’m a magical fighter!” Julian says as he pulls back to look at me. “Do you not see my awesome fangs and the way I growl? My teefies, Casimir. They’re so long and pointy!”
“They are, but you need to be more ruthless. Let’s go.”
He stares at me like I’ve said something even remotely ridiculous. “Let’s go as in… we’re training now? I thought we were going to like cuddle on the couch. Take a nap⁠—”
“There’s no time. Come on,” I urge as I drag him off to the large room I’ve used to keep my skills honed. “Get naked.”
The look Julian is giving me tells me that he has absolutely no idea what’s going on. “Like… sexy naked? That sounds fun. You know, most people make love after saying I love you. Not brawl.”
I pick up a wooden sword. “You’re going up against a vampire who is heavily skilled and trained for five hundred years.”
“Which means it really doesn’t matter how long I train, I’m not going to catch up, so I might as well pop some popcorn and turn on a movie,” Julian says.
“No, what it means is that we need to train you how to stall him, got it? My goal is to never let you out of my or another vampire’s sight, so your job will be to distract him until help comes. Understand?”
“Vaguely. I just keep thinking about popcorn. That buttery deliciousness…”
“I will pop you… your corn if you can avoid me for ten seconds.”
“Ten seconds? That’s it? Will you bring me the popcorn while wearing an apron with no clothes underneath?”
Why has it turned to this? “This sounds strange, but if that is what you desire, I will… wear an apron…”
“Perfect. Okay. Ten seconds,” he says. “Got it.”
Julian shifts and stretches before wagging his tail at me. It’s ridiculously cute and almost enough to distract me.
He looks around and gives me a nod. “I’m ready.”
“Go.”
Julian turns, scurrying off as I stand here for a full five seconds before I rush after him and snatch him up just as he was skidding down the hallway.
“Got you, wolf,” I growl.
“But you’re so fast. There’s no damn way I could ever stop you.”
“You don’t need to be fast. You need to distract me. You need to draw my attention away from hurting you to give me or Ezio time to get to you.”
“Alright, fine, I get it. I’m slow and boring so I must distract you. Got it. I’m prepared, Master. I will get it right this time.”
“Okay. Go,” I say, and he shifts so now he’s on all fours in his human form, ass in the air.
“Oh nooooooo, there’s a big bad vampire… Whatever will I doooooo. Oh golly. I better run away, but what if I don’t wanna run? What if I want him to look at my naked booty?” he says. It’s all horribly ridiculous, especially the weird voice he’s using that makes it all sound extremely fake.
Julian crawls over to the wall and plucks Gustov’s picture off it before he begins rubbing the frame against his chest. “Ohhh, don’t look at my painting, you dirty boy. You’re making my loins tingle.”
“Your… You are… what is happening?” I feel almost mystified by this exchange. Confused… and a little turned on… it’s a wild mixture of thoughts and feelings.
“What is happening is ten seconds is up. Bring me my popcorn!” he snaps then cackles at his success. “Oh god, I’m so smart.”
“Fucking hell…” I whisper as I realize that I really did just stand here and watch it all happen. I was fucking mesmerized.
Julian grins at me before giving me a wink. “Right?”
“I’m not giving you popcorn. You don’t deserve popcorn with your nefarious ways. You think I want you… seducing the enemy?”
“Hey, I’m still alive, aren’t I?” he teases.
“I’m going to eat you.”
“And I’m going to enjoy it… while eating my popcorn. Oh…. how does it feel to be five hundred years old, and still… you got conned so easily.”
“That’s it,” I growl as I lunge for him, but he holds the painting above his head.
“I will destroy it if I do not get my treat!”
“I don’t even know how to make popcorn!”
“You take the little corn kernels and you put them in the microwave! And when they’re done popping, you trot on over with your little apron and hand them to me. Hurry up, now!”
“Fuck,” I growl. “Just this once.”
I scowl at his sexy ass as I walk by it and down to the kitchen. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing but I grab the bag and toss it in the microwave, having absolutely no idea how this makes “popcorn.” Julian, sadly clothed, comes walking in, still so pleased with himself.
“You’re such a sucker. But you’re cute so I’ll permit it,” he announces.
I sigh because he really did fairly win this. “Thanks. When you’re done with your corn, you’re going back to working.”
“My… why’s the popcorn not popping?”
“Fuck if I know. Do you know what I know how to do? Pour dog food in a dog bowl and suck blood out of people. Before I met you, do you know how much human food I’ve made people? None. Even when I was a human, I was always served.”
Julian hurries over and pops open the door before the biggest fucking grin I’ve ever seen blasts onto his face.
“Oh my god… you were… you were making me a bag of… frozen corn. Did you… did you think it’d turn into popcorn?”
“What?” I swear he said you stick the corn kernels in the microwave… but thinking about it… it must be different corn? What the fuck is this sorcery? “NO… it was clearly a joke.”
“Oh my god… oh my god, this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” He holds his bag of corn and beams at me.
I grab the corn and throw it toward the trash, but of course he whips out some quick moves NOW of all times as he snatches it before it can find its way out of my sight for eternity.
“Oh, Gustov, he’s now having a temper tantrum because he’s embarrassed!” Julian’s freaking delighted by all of this.
“What’s he embarrassed about?” Ezio asks as he waltzes into my house with Cyrus trailing behind him.
FUCK. “Julian⁠—”
Julian is all smiles as he holds out his bag of corn. “Casimir… was making me… popcorn. Isn’t that sweet?”
“But that’s just a bag of corn,” Cyrus says before it seems to dawn on him, and even Cyrus starts laughing.
“It was a JOKE,” I grumble. “I know how to make popcorn. You just fucking… take corn and…”
“Oh noooooo,” Ezio says. “Julian, is this really the man you want to give your heart to? It’s… it’s sad.”
“I said… it was a joke,” I growl.
“Guys, come on, he’s getting embarrassed,” Julian says, but it’s so teasing it’s obvious he’s also making fun of me. “It was a joke. He’s going to show us that he really does know how to make popcorn. Honey, let me help you. Let me grab a bag for you. You see this corn is a different type of corn, m’kay? This type of kernels becomes popcorn.” As if absolutely any part of that makes sense.
He reaches into the cupboard and grabs a bag before handing it to me. I tear it open and look inside at the literal pieces of corn kernels. “What the fuck is the difference?”
“Oh my god, why did you open it?” Julian asks.
“Why? What happens when you open it?” I ask as I shake it around.
Ezio tsks, like he knows any better! “There’s no saving him. There’s… it’s sad, but there’s no way to save him.”
I grab some of the kernels and fling them at Ezio. “Shut it.”
“Why do you turn violent when you’re embarrassed!” Ezio cries.
Deciding that I will show them how easy it is to fix this, I whip out my phone. “See, the issue here isn’t because I can’t figure this out. The issue is that when you’re rich like me, you don’t eat poor people’s popcorn out of a bag like this.” I send out a request for movie theater popcorn with the added note of “Be fast or else. Also, I will tip $100 if you’re here in five minutes.”
“See? That’s how rich people get popcorn.”
None of them look impressed.
“I almost felt bad for him, and then I realize he just threatened a delivery person to be here in five minutes, and I no longer felt bad,” Cyrus comments from where he must have been looking at my phone.
“One would think. But no, they love him. Allllll five stars. This one woman literally lies awake at night hoping to grab his requests,” Julian says. “She volunteered to just move in and fetch things for him all the time the other day.”
“She did not!” I protest.
“The way her eyes flicked over your naked chest when you collected my food told me she was thinking it!” Julian says.
I shake my head at how unreasonable he is being. “I bet she wouldn’t make fun of how I make popcorn.”
Cyrus is still scrutinizing me. “The real question is… did you really think frozen corn was just going to magic itself into popcorn?”
“What is popcorn made of? Fucking corn!” I exclaim.
“It’s a different type of corn,” Julian says.
“You guys act like I’ve paid any attention to what humans do or eat in the past… five hundred years. The only thing I’ve paid attention to is the way that Julian looks like he’d enjoy making love to the donuts I get him.”
“Well… they do have a hole, and he was probably pretty lonely before he met you,” Ezio says.
“Why did the sassing turn onto me?” Julian asks. “Go back to making fun of Casimir!”
“He’s kind of cute and pitiful,” Ezio says.
“Who invited you? Who invited any of you?” I growl, regretting it. “Julian, you could have been a good partner and just stayed quiet, but because you didn’t, you can have the corn. And that’s all you get.”
The look of devastation that crosses his face isn’t even enough to get me to change my mind. “No! Not when you’re getting movie theater popcorn! Movie theater popcorn is the best. You can’t do this to me.”
“Watch me,” I say as I pull out a spoon and force it into his hands a moment before the doorbell rings.
“No fucking way she got here that fast,” Julian says, mystified.
“Of course she did because she listens to me, unlike you,” I say as I head to the door and pull it open to find the woman breathing a little heavily as she beams at me.
“I have three bags of popcorn.” She holds them out to me as the others loom behind me, trying to figure out who this woman is.
“How was she so fast?” Ezio asks.
“I don’t think she’s human,” Julian whispers even though she obviously is.
The woman shakes her head. “Ha ha! I was right next to the theater when I got the alert! Here you lovely gentlemen go. Having a boys’ night, eh?” she asks. “How cute.”
“She’s making some moves on your man,” Ezio whispers.
“That’s my heart bro. I don’t share… even if I’m embarrassed by his popcorn-making skills,” Julian whispers back, which I can hear quite clearly.
The woman just keeps smiling as I hand her the tip. Her eyes light up as she beams at it, and they have to all realize that her true love is the money I hand her.
“Anything else you need, I’m your gal!” she assures me as she gives me a double thumbs-up and backs toward her car.
“I was wrong,” Ezio says. “She definitely just wanted the money.”
“Humans love money. I try to explain this all the time,” I tell him as I use my foot to swing the door shut.
“It’s just because you wave it around until you find someone who does!” Julian says.
“Three heaping bags of popcorn all for you, Cyrus.” I hand the bags to him as he greedily hugs them to himself.
“Wow! Thank you,” he says, heading off as Julian stares after him in disbelief. “Ooh, it’s still warm and so buttery!”
Julian gives me a look that is much like the one that Gustov wears when he wants a treat and I’m taking far too long to give it to him. “Nooo! Heart bro, how have I ever hurt you?” he asks, like he can’t fathom the answer to that.
“Eat your corn and I’ll let you have a bag.”
Julian looks sad as he tears open the bag of corn and scoops out a still half-frozen chunk. He puts it in his mouth and gives me a pitiful thumbs-up as it crunches between his teeth. “Oh yum. So… cold and corny. Ah… delicious, what my one true love has made for me.”
“You poor thing,” Ezio murmurs as he pats Julian. “You poor, poor thing.”
“No, no, I’ll suffer for him,” Julian says. “Even though I wasn’t the one who put the corn in the microwave… I will suffer.”
“Fine, go eat your popcorn,” I grumble.
Julian merrily tosses the corn to the side and rushes after Cyrus.
“You’ve turned into such a sucker. How cute,” Ezio says.
“Do not sass me or I’ll make you stare at Julian’s latest painting.”
“God, I don’t want to see that dog again.”
“This one is of my dick.”
“Weirdly… not much better, but even weirder… I kind of want to see it.”
And with that, he goes to join the others. Even Gustov trots after them to see if he can work some magic to get some of that popcorn.
As the group disappears into the living room, I can’t help but think about how the masked man will not get the best of me. He may be determined to tear me apart, but what he doesn’t realize is that I’m absolutely prepared to do everything I can to protect the ones I care about.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 15

JULIAN
“I’m glad you agreed to meet with us, Delwyn,” I say.
That makes Delwyn hesitate for some reason. “I… had a choice? I thought the choice was either meet with you or that scary guy comes and throws me through a wall,” he says as he eyes Casimir—aka “that scary guy”—who was stopped by Genevieve when we’d walked up to her house.
“He’s really not… like that, you know?” Strangely, I don’t sound overly assured, but it’s just because he hasn’t seen the cute and sweet side of Casimir yet.
Delwyn seems to have a hard time believing that… for some reason. “He… was going to leave me dead on the road, said I stank, and chucked me around like a rag doll he has a vendetta against. Are you… certain he’s not like that?”
I just smile at him. It makes him smile back because I seem to have the ability to fool everyone when I pretend all is well. “Yes.”
“I don’t believe you,” he says while still smiling. “What I do believe is that you will now protect me. So you will need to use your body as a shield to keep me safe.”
“Of course,” I assure him as Casimir comes over, looking very narrow-eyed and grumpy.
“We’re calling a council meeting, much to my dissatisfaction. You are going to plead your case,” Casimir tells him.
Delwyn seems uncertain about this. “Plead my… what’s that mean? Are they going to kill me if I don’t win?”
“It’s a possibility,” Casimir says.
I give him a look to remind him that we really shouldn’t torture others, even if we’re merely joking. Casimir’s look is very smug, much in a “That’s my love language” kind of way.
“Let us go to the council hall. We will watch them fight to the death. I hope Steve is the first one to die,” Casimir declares, weirdly not at all helping the situation. Maybe… even… possibly making it worse.
“We’re really not fighting to the death. It’s a joke we tell each other,” I assure Delwyn.
“But is it a healthy joke?” he asks.
“Who needs healthy when you can have a good laugh? Amiright?” I ask. Why the hell am I over here trying to save Casimir? Yet here I am, diving right into the conversation. “Casimir, who would win between Steve and a bear?”
“Good question, Julian. I would help the bear, so definitely the bear.”
“Thought so.”
Delwyn quickly looks around, almost like he’s trying to seek out help. “I will ride with Genevieve.”
“Did you forget that Genevieve wanted you to ride on the roof last time?” I ask. “We’re much nicer than her.”
“I will ride on the roof,” he says.
“No, you will ride with us. We must talk,” Casimir orders, much to Delwyn’s disappointment. He grudgingly gets into the car as we drive off toward the council hall. “So you might as well start talking if you want me to care the next time the masked man comes around.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“You said you couldn’t recognize him, yet Genevieve says you were afraid the moment you saw him,” I remind him.
“You think I was locked in that fucking box for months and couldn’t pick out the sound he makes when he walks or his scent? I had nothing else to go off of. His shoes alone… the noise will always be stuck in my mind. The moment I heard him walking into Genevieve’s house… I tried to run, but it was too late.”
“Isn’t that kind of weird?” I ask as I think over it.
“What?” Casimir asks.
“Well, you’re very light on your feet. And when you don’t want to be heard, I can’t hear you at all. If he was terrorizing Delwyn, why wouldn’t he be silent? Never knowing when someone is right outside is always scarier than if you can hear them coming.”
“I think he just didn’t give a shit,” Delwyn says. “He’s a sadistic bastard. The box he kept me in had little holes he could stab into just to remind me that I wasn’t safe from him no matter where I was.”
“Why?” Casimir asks. “What did he want out of you?”
Delwyn shakes his head. “Just to hurt me!”
The look on Casimir’s face tells me he doesn’t believe this. “No, he wanted something else.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s just an absolute monster,” Delwyn insists.
“Yeah, he is. But he also wants something,” I say. “So what did he want out of you? I mean, even if it was for his own sick satisfaction, there was a reason he wanted you. Hell, some serial killers target people with specific body types or hair colors… we just need to figure out what it was about you that made him pick you, if that makes sense?”
“And what are you not telling us?” Casimir asks as he glances back at him.
Delwyn holds his hands up. “I’m really not such a suspicious person.”
“I’ll decide that,” Casimir says as he keeps driving. When we reach the council hall, I head inside as Delwyn slowly trails after us. Cyrus and Ezio arrive after a few minutes, and then within fifteen minutes, the council hall is full. Delwyn sits next to some of Genevieve’s people as Casimir hovers in the back, clearly hating every moment of this.
While there’s still some noticeable separation between the vampires and weres, it’s not split right down the middle like it used to be. Instead, Olive is seated next to Genevieve who’d taken a liking to her last time. And Ezio is pestering my father, who seems to grudgingly tolerate him, even if Weston is glowering at him.
“I hate things like this,” Casimir grumbles.
“I’m aware, but thankfully, you don’t have to talk much.”
That still doesn’t seem to appease Casimir. “No, but I have to admit that I’ve failed. I’ve allowed this man to live and terrorize and irritate and… Steve, come here so I can punch you and feel better.”
Steve, who Casimir hates for absolutely no rhyme or reason—that I can identify—turns in his seat and flips Casimir off. “Fuck you.”
“Fuck you too.”
“Fuck you harder.”
“Fuck you even harder,” Casimir growls.
I stare while wondering what happened to my sophisticated and badass partner, and who replaced him with a rowdy teen who just learned that he can use the F word. “Alright, glad that’s accomplished nothing. Now come on,” I say as I take his hand and drag him to the front of the room where he scowls at everyone, like showing them his displeasure is the best way to start this meeting.
“You are all hereby ordered to sacrifice your lives to protect Julian. That is all,” Casimir concludes.
Of course this isn’t going to go well. Why was I foolish enough to think it was?
“That is not all. Ha. Ha. Casimir is such a kidder,” I announce as the whole room packed full of people stare at me… none of whom look impressed with their leader. I’m pretty sure Casimir just stays as leader because they’re confident that he will keep them alive if shit goes bad. He also employs quite a few of them who probably don’t want to lose their jobs.
“HE’S SO FUNNY!” someone shouts from the back.
I lean a bit to see who’s talking, only to realize that it’s fucking Yorick! How the hell did he get in here? He’s not even a member of this territory.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” Dad growls, and everyone turns to look at Yorick.
Yorick’s eyes get wide as he slowly shrinks in his seat, like if he scoots down low enough, everyone will forget he exists.
“Hey! Hey! I just want to remind you that I hurt no one during the attack! I actually protected Julian. Yeah? I was like oh, what a cute puppers. And then later I saved his life and your great lord protector Casimir’s life. And that woman in the second row would have bled to death without me! And I’ve just been saving lives left and right. I… I almost think you could call me a hero! Hero Yorick, gosh, you should all be chanting praises at me. Hero Yorick saves the day! How ever could we thank him⁠—”
“Throw him out,” Casimir growls, and boy do the two sides come together to grab on to Yorick and fling him out through the doors. I’ve never seen them work together like this. There’s a clear moment of bonding brought forth by Yorick’s removal, and I even see Steve high-five Weston… which seems concerning. They all chatter, pleased with themselves as they make their way back to their seats.
Within a minute, I see Yorick’s face plastered against the window, like he still thinks he can be a part of the community by staring through the window… much in the way Gustov does when we leave him at home.
I watch as he uses his finger to draw a heart before slashing a line through it, like he wants me to know that his heart has been broken. It’s all very dramatic, and really… did he think we’d draw him in with open arms after he jumped sides with such ease? I mean… I guess he’s been minorly helpful.
“The way you all came together for that is how I’d like you to come together to sacrifice your lives to protect Julian,” Casimir announces.
“Stop teasing,” I say as I push Casimir away and take his place. “As I’m sure many of you already know, we have a new vampire in our community.”
“TWO. TWO NEW,” Yorick shouts from the window he’s managed to crack open a little.
I wave toward the man we’d brought with us. “This is Delwyn⁠—”
“And I’m Yorick!”
I proceed to ignore Yorick, which few else are doing. “This is Delwyn, and he was attacked by a vampire who held him captive for months before finally letting him free. In that time, he was abused and starved. The vampire who held him has proceeded to attack Delwyn in Genevieve’s home, as well as a planned attack at one of Casimir’s hotels where one of our own nearly died and a human was killed. The vampire seems to have become fixated on Delwyn and Casimir.”
There is muttering among the crowd, and I’m well aware that they’re already trying to think of ways to point fingers at someone else.
Quickly, I continue since they seem to have selective memories. “When the vampires and werewolves got mixed up with murderous vampires not that long ago, Casimir stepped up and took on the task of getting rid of the threat. He even went in alone to kill Ivo. Some of us here were involved in the reason why these events happened. So this time, we need to return the favor and help Casimir stop this man. We are aware that he plans to disrupt Casimir’s life as much as he can, which is why he’s targeted his hotel. We don’t know where he’ll target next, but we need to do what we can to stop him.”
I try to think about the next step before continuing because I really don’t know what we should do. The only reason I’m up here right now is because Casimir has absolutely zero speech-giving skills. “I think it’s important that if anyone sees a vampire they don’t recognize in our territory, they alert someone immediately.” And then I spend some time going over what the man looks like and what we know about him without giving much of Casimir’s past to them. At this point, we don’t have any names or anything to go off, so I’m not sure diving into his past with people Casimir isn’t comfortable with will help. It sure seems like I’m the only one he’s willing to talk about it to. Honestly, I’m unsure how much Ezio even knows.
After I finish up, Delwyn comes to the front of the room and talks about what happened, but he doesn’t reveal anything more than he’d already told us. As he’s finishing up, I head to the back of the room where Casimir had moved at some point during the talk.
“You alright?” I ask.
“Fine. Bored.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You’re bored?”
“Immensely. I might have liked it better when they fought each other. They’re all just sitting there so civilly that it makes me itch.”
I stare at the man who is apparently doing his best to pretend that the issue here is the attitude of the audience and not that he’s frustrated over the masked man. I have a feeling that if it was up to him, he wouldn’t have even told the community since he likes to punish himself for some reason.
Casimir looks over at me and gives me a nod toward the crowd. “Go punch Steve. That will bring me joy.”
“I… think I’ll pass,” I say.
The door opens a crack, revealing Yorick, who’d been trying to sneak back in. He freezes when he sees Casimir standing right there, but he’s then all smiles again as his eyes lock on to me. “Hey, puppers.”
“Hey, Yorick,” I reply.
“You’re so much sweeter than the rest,” he says as he reaches for me, but the look on Casimir’s face makes him refrain. “You know, I’ve heard of these masked men before.”
Casimir’s attention snaps over to him before he shoves him out the door, following him as he goes. I trail after them, wanting to make sure he doesn’t crush Yorick’s throat just for saying that.
“What do you know?” Casimir asks, voice low.
Yorick holds his hands up. Evidently, he already knows Casimir well enough to be aware that his life will likely be threatened if he doesn’t answer the way Casimir wants him to. “So I know they were a group of elite soldiers… if you want to call them that. Honestly, they were assassins who faithfully followed their leader, a ruthless man who killed anyone who even looked at him wrong, although he never dirtied his own hands. Supposedly, they started off as humans until the sociopathic man turned his mini army into vampires, and they were known as the Masks because their faces were always covered.”
“Who told you about this?” Casimir asks.
Yorick gives him a smile, but it’s tight-lipped and doesn’t seem pleasant at all. “Told me? No one told me. Why, I got to see them in action myself. Now granted, I was a wee little Yorick at the time, living with my loving mum and pa. As an earl, my father was invited to this fancy party. I was a really boring kid. I hated these stuffy gatherings, much preferring to read. So I’d nabbed a book and snuck into a little crevice with a cupboard to read in when the vampire Masks came and slaughtered every single man, woman, and child in that party. It’s a wonder I lived. I mean… they were vampires, after all. How did they not hear me? Especially as I sobbed for my mum who lay bleeding to death just outside the small cupboard I’d hidden in. Oh, but I’m sure I didn’t need to tell you that story, did I, Casimir?”
I glance over at Casimir who is standing stone still. First he saved the child in the home and then he saved Yorick? For being the monster he’s painted himself as, he sure went behind the Warden’s back to save those he was supposed to kill.
“You told Ivo,” Casimir growls. “That’s why he said that shit to me.”
“You think I told Ivo that I suspected you were one of the Masks? Oh, no, no. Someone else told him. I just heard Ivo mention it to you that day and thought, ‘Huh, wouldn’t that be funny if he was one of the people who slaughtered my family and left me alone.’”
“I…” Casimir falters.
“Yorick—” I start, wanting to defend Casimir. I hate the look on his face and want to do anything I can to push it away, but Casimir holds up a hand to stop me.
“That had to have been very traumatic,” Casimir says quietly.
Yorick nods. “Yeah, it was. But thankfully this scary masked man pushed a cabinet in front of the cupboard and even remembered to come back later to grab me and toss me into the arms of a woman who took me in like family… even if it was only for a short time. Ah well. All I know now is that… more than anything… I would love to be included in this fun little clique. That would be the most fun I could ever have. It might even make me forget a smidge of the trauma I suffered. Oh, how amazing that would be. How lovely, really. Right, puppers?” The look on his face tells me that he knows he’s going to win this one.
I don’t know what to say, so I just stay silent. It really doesn’t feel like my place to talk.
“Fine,” Casimir growls. “But I still don’t like you.”
“You will grow to love me!” he announces, and with a cackle, he heads off toward the hall, clearly pleased with himself.
“You okay?” I ask.
Casimir just grunts. “I want to go for a walk.”
“Okay. Let me tell Ezio and Cyrus,” I say as I quickly text them before hurrying after him since he’s started walking slowly. “I… didn’t realize Yorick was that old.”
“I didn’t either. He seems so useless.”
“So… would he be like…?”
“I don’t know. Over four hundred and seventy? Give or take.”
“Wow, you were with them for that long?” I ask.
“I was. My mind was extremely dead to what was happening. I… was a tool and I honestly struggled to remember that I had my own thoughts…”
“Was it you who hid Yorick?”
“Yeah. But that was… hell, ten or so years after I’d been turned into a vampire?”
“So… you had some thoughts.”
“That night… happened two days before the fall of the Warden and his ‘Masks.’ Things were crumbling apart. And I’d finally learned how to stand on my own two feet. It was one of the tipping points for me.”
“So you were with him as a vampire for ten or so years at that point?”
“Yeah… in my span of life, it doesn’t seem that long, but at the same time, I can’t understand how I was with him for nearly thirty years. We weren’t turned into vampires right away. I guess… I can tell you how we eventually became vampires.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 16

CASIMIR
Age Twenty-One
I’m standing guard at the doorway with Nine on my right and Eleven standing next to the Warden.
“Turn him,” he growls at the young woman chained to the ground. She has chains around her neck with spikes in them, so whenever she tries to pull against them, they pierce her throat. Her legs and intact arm are also chained up. Since the Warden acquired her months ago, he’s kept two of us on watch with her at all times. She used to fight much more, but now she just glowers at us and despises us. It doesn’t matter what is done to her, she will not turn anyone into whatever monster she is. I’m unsure why the Warden even thinks she can, but I’m not going against his beliefs. Does he even know what this monster is?
The Warden throws around the word vampire, but Five still believes she’s a demon, come to reap our souls for what we’ve done.
“You want to hear a funny story?” the Warden asks as he kneels in front of her.
She ignores him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that he even exists. He can hit and hurt her all day, refuse to feed her the blood she seems to require, but still, she says nothing.
“I heard a funny story about a little boy that you were protecting. See, I thought we killed everyone in the house, but then I hear that the little boy escaped and that he has been sighted.”
There’s a shift in her expression. It’s absolutely miniscule, but the Warden still sees it. He sees everything. The grin that explodes across his face is all I need to know what our next job is.
“Eleven, gather your brothers and start the hunt. Bring me the boy.”
“You will never touch him,” she growls. “I will do nothing for you, even if you find him.”
“We’ll see about that,” he says with a smirk.
We turn and head from the room, gathering the others before returning to the city we’d found her in. We will tear it apart until someone tells us what we need to hear, but the question is… what happens when the child tells the Warden that one of his own hid him away? And while he wouldn’t be able to pick us out, Five could piece together what I’ve done. The Warden would kill me if he learned of my betrayal.
I glance at Five’s back as he leads the way into a physician’s home without permission. The others are off tearing the town apart in the hopes of finding him, so it’s only the two of us. Could I silence him?
Seeing us, masks in place, the physician runs, so I grab him and pin him against the wall. He refuses to talk until I press a blade against his neck and then he tells me everything I’m seeking… or is it everything I’m not?
The boy had run to the physician begging him to help, but what could he do for the dead? The physician tells us how he hid the boy away until he sent him on a carriage to a small village to live with a farmer and his wife who were willing to take him in. With that information, we hurry to gather the others.
Once we’re all together again, we mount up, leaving Four behind with the physician, so the man can’t run if he gave us false information.
As the rest of us move out, Eleven easily takes the lead. Now that Fourteen is dead, Eleven often takes over the moment the Warden is out of sight, and because we’ve all become mindless bodies willing to follow, we accept him as our temporary leader.
I pat my horse’s sleek neck as she moves into a steady lope, taking us closer to the village where the boy—and possibly my fate—resides.
Even riding like this, we are asked to keep formation, which means that I’m in the middle, with Five on my left and Nine on my right. The rest of us stay in our numerical formation… all but Eleven, who I’ve begun to resent… even though I’m not sure why. Is it the freedom he appears to have? And it’s not even like he has much freedom, but just that sliver looks so tempting.
“The ride will take us until morning. The moment we arrive at the farm, you are to gather everyone into the yard. If we don’t find him, we will start killing until someone talks,” Eleven orders.
“Do you ever think we shouldn’t anger the demon further?” Five asks. “Just more sins to pay for.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Nine growls.
Five never says this shit around the Warden, only to us, but it seems to enrage Nine every time his mouth opens. I’m honestly not sure who is worse when they’re both going against our teachings.
“The demon appeared because of our sins,” Five urges.
The butt end of a spear is suddenly thrust in front of me. I jerk my mare back, but the weapon wasn’t meant for me. Instead, it came from Nine who slams the wooden shaft into the side of Five’s head. Five, who hadn’t been expecting it, since Nine used the blind spot the masks cause, is thrown to the side. He’s knocked into by another horse and thrown off his, but in doing so, he jerks the reins to the right. The horses behind him trample him as his horse is shoved into mine, somehow becoming entangled with my mare’s tack. It drags my mare back, who is slammed into as she jerks back, pulling out of the mix as the others ride ahead, leaving the two of us behind.
Both horses have been trained for battle, which means they calm quickly, but the tack didn’t break, so I have to get off to fix the situation. His gelding’s bridle has somehow managed to snag onto my horse’s black breastplate that the Warden had designed to protect the horses we rode. Anytime we were sent out, the black horses were to be in their armor, but I fully believe it’s because the Warden liked the way people recognize us… and if they saw the black horses dressed in black coming… they knew death had arrived.
I unhook the reins and pull the two horses free of each other before turning around to look at Five. I assumed he’d already be up and collecting his horse, but instead, he’s still lying on the ground, mask off to the side from when he’d fallen. I should get on my horse and keep going when I know that it’s a sign of weakness for someone to be lying there when they’re not severely injured. If the Warden saw it, he’d probably order him killed where he lay.
But I also find myself oddly curious about the man without a mask. Have I ever seen Five’s face? Not since we were kids.
I lead the horses over to him and look down at the man lying before me. His eyes catch mine and I find that he looks younger than I thought he would. His hair is cut off, like all of ours are, and there’s really nothing… distinguishable about him, yet I find it so strange seeing him.
Did I imagine something different under that mask?
Or did I imagine nothing at all?
“You might as well kill me or they will,” he mutters.
I pull my katana out from my side as he looks up at me.
“I know you hid that kid,” he says.
“I’m aware,” I say, knowing this would be as good of a time as any to dispose of him. No one would bat an eye if I told them I did it after he’d just lain there saying absolute shit to me.
“You have a fucking heart in there, I know you do! I know it!” he shouts at me.
“A heart? I’m not sure about that. There’s nothing left of me, Five. I wouldn’t have been alive this long if there had been.”
“My name is not fucking FIVE!” he screams. “It’s Byran! Please, please just call me by my fucking name.” He pushes himself to his hands and knees and grabs for my leg. “Call me by my name!”
I kick him off me and step down on his throat. “Your name is Five. You have no name other than the one the Warden has given you. You have no face. You have nothing. Now get to your feet and get on your horse or die for real.”
He nods at the crossbow that’s attached to my horse’s tack. “And if I run? Will you shoot me in the back?”
I hear a horse coming and I grab the mask and slam it against his face before throwing him at his horse. He falls into the gelding, grabbing its leg to keep from hitting on his knees as Eleven returns.
“What’s the issue here?”
“The horses were tangled, brother,” I say. “I had to remove the bridle to get it undone.” Ah, look at me becoming a liar.
“Nine and Five will both be punished,” Eleven proclaims.
“I see,” I say as I get onto my horse and turn her after Eleven. There’s two of us here now, making the possibility of Five’s escape harder… but it will never be easier. The Warden is gone, Five knows that there’s a chance I would just watch, and while Eleven is phenomenal at close combat, he has a new horse that doesn’t respond as quickly as the one Five rides. Hell, Five might even be able to shoot him in the back.
He could shoot us both in the back, for all I care.
I pat my horse again and she glances at me.
When I return my attention to the road, I realize that Eleven is looking back at me. His body language is off, and I question how much of a lie he heard in my tale. He catches me watching, but he doesn’t look away.
“It’s a good thing you were there to help his horse, brother,” he says.
“Thank you.” It’s all so fake.
When we catch back up, we return to our positions, and I notice that Nine doesn’t even look at us. Did Eleven already discipline him? Or did he threaten to have the Warden do it when we return?
When we reach the farm, the group of us prepare to head out, but Eleven shakes his head and sends Five and Nine out.
“Go on. The rest of us will make sure no one flees.”
So we stay there and watch them go. There are no soldiers, so the fight is simple, even for two of them. Before too long, a woman who is crying over the rough treatment of her child gives up the young boy and he’s brought out before us.
Eleven grabs him and drags him up onto his horse where he cries and begs. Eleven turns to the farmers and their workers and watches them for a moment.
“Kill them all,” he orders.

When we return to the Warden, Eleven hands the kid over and is praised, unlike the rest of us. After hearing what happened, The Warden sends Five and Nine out to train, where they will be forced to do so until their hands and feet bleed. And then he orders me to bring the boy into the room with the demon. Trailing after him and Eleven, I find myself dragging the child the entire way as he begs and cries, twisting in my hand like he honestly believes he could escape this place. Seventeen, who’d been left behind to guard her, is still standing watch.
When the boy sees the vampire, he starts sobbing harder. “Cecily! Cecily! Please!”
She refuses to even look at him, but there’s no way the Warden will be fooled into thinking that these two share no connection with the way the boy sobs and begs.
“Seventeen, step up to her. Now listen up, vampire, you will change him into what you are or I will hurt the child until you do.”
“I don’t know how,” she growls. “I was unconscious when this happened to me. I don’t know how!”
“Well figure it out!” the Warden snaps as he grabs the boy, shaking him.
“I… I know… I know the vampire drained me,” she says. “And then it just happened!”
“Go on, then,” he instructs as he waves her toward Seventeen. She grabs him with her one working arm, and with tears in her eyes, she bites into his neck. Seventeen tries to draw back but the Warden shoves him in closer.
“Do not move.” And once the Warden orders something, that’s all we can do.
I watch, interest actually piqued at this spectacle. How long has it been since something’s interested me like this?
Seventeen grows slack in her arms, eyes rolling back as she pulls away. There’s blood smeared across her lips as she stares down at him, at the blood running freely from his throat.
“He should… he… I know the man drained me of blood and I woke up like this! That’s what he did!” she says, sounding panicked. “Now let the boy go, please? He has nothing to do with this.”
The Warden nudges Seventeen with his shoe, but Seventeen doesn’t stir. In fact, he doesn’t even close his eyes. “You think by killing one of my own, that’ll make me let this boy go free? You take me for a fool?”
She’s sobbing now as her fingers dig into Seventeen’s shirt. “NO! No, no, it’ll work, it’ll work! I didn’t kill him! He has to…”
It’s clear she has no idea how to accomplish what the Warden wants, but that isn’t what he wants to hear.
“RUN!” she screams, and the boy twists free of the Warden’s grip and races right past me, but I’m still too fixated on this monster before me. The fangs, the blood⁠—
The Warden cracks me across the head with a walking stick he carries for such purposes. “What are you doing?”
I turn, but Eleven’s already caught the boy and is giving me the same look he’d given to me after I lied to him.
“Eleven, discipline the boy to give her a taste of what we’ll do and then get rid of Seventeen’s body. Seven, with me.”
I follow him outside, not too fond of my odds.
The Warden watches me closely as we walk. “I find it funny, how I sent three of you to check the house after we caught the monster and somehow… this boy escaped. While I’d love to suspect Five, he doesn’t have the guts to do what his brain wants him to do. And Nine couldn’t be more faithful. Does your faith stray, my child?”
“It would never,” I say.
“In that room was the first hint of life I’ve seen in your eyes. Does the vampire interest you?”
“Nothing interests me,” I respond.
“Good. Remove your shirt and get on your knees.”
When I’ve done as he asks, he cups my face in his hands, peering down at me. “You are very talented, but this mind of yours tends to wander. We must stop that.” He drops his hands and reaches for the whip, ready to remind me of where I stand.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 17

JULIAN
“She… didn’t even know how to turn a human,” I realize.
Casimir shakes his head. “No. The Warden could do anything he wanted to her, but it never mattered because if she didn’t know… what could she do?”
“What… happened to the boy? I don’t even know if I want to ask that.”
He pulls me in and kisses the side of my head. “You don’t.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, feeling pain for them all. They literally had no idea how to even live. “Okay.”
“None of this ends happily.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Casimir⁠—”
His phone rings, and he gives the side of my head another kiss before answering, like it’s me who needs to be comforted instead of him.
“Hello? Ah… yes, I’ll be right there.” He ends the call and turns to me. “Some of the vampires want to talk. Let’s go, I guess.”
I follow him back to the council hall, having so many questions I want to ask, but I’m not sure what I should or shouldn’t bring up. So by the time we return, I haven’t asked anything at all. Ezio meets up with us, Cyrus tagging along behind him.
“I’ll take Julian back to your house if you want to deal with them. They’re being all fussy and annoying and I’ve had enough of it,” Ezio says.
Casimir hesitates. “I don’t want to leave you guys alone.”
“Yorick will annoyingly be with us after announcing to everyone that you have accepted him into your clique. I mean, this masked vampire is strong, but is he really going to come after a whole group of us?” Ezio asks. “There’s only one of him.”
Casimir seems to find that reasonable. “Fine, go straight there.”
“We will,” Ezio says.
“Yay!” Yorick claps a little, pleased by the turn of events. “You guys can ride in my car! We can sing together and play road games!” Yorick announces before watching as everyone hurries over to Ezio’s car and quickly leaves him out there all alone.
“FINE. I will follow along! How fun being alone while everyone else gets in the other car! It’s not like at least one of you could ride with me. Ha…”
As I settle in the back and Cyrus gets in the passenger seat, he turns to stare at me like I could somehow be the cause of this. “This is what happens when you’re too nice to someone.”
I wave toward myself. “Me? Why the hell am I getting blamed?!”
“You just reek of kindness,” Cyrus complains, like even saying that puts a sour taste in his mouth. “Just coated in it.”
“You act like kindness is some awful and tragic thing! It’s… not! Anyway, Casimir’s the one who said he could tag along!” I say.
Ezio’s and Cyrus’s heads snap to me. “WHAT?”
“It was a… thing.”
Ezio makes some weird noncommittal noise like he can’t comprehend the information. “Casimir has been replaced by a clone that looks and speaks like him but acts horrifically different. In the hundreds of years I’ve known him, his ability to use kindness has been scarce, leading me to believe that he stored up all of his kindness to use on Julian when he popped into existence.”
How can he be so ridiculous? “Oh my god, it’s not like that. Casimir’s just… things are rough right now with his past literally come back to haunt him. Maybe I’ll buy him something to make him feel better.”
“We should all get him something!” Ezio decides.
“I mean… that is a good idea,” I agree.
“With his money, of course. Ask him for the login to his app so we can use that swift lady again,” Ezio says.
“Okay. But we can all use my money since it was my idea.”
Ezio gives me a wave. “Nah, that man is rich. One time, I saw two cars. Both were the same price and I was like boy, that one on the right is hideous. Who would spend that much for it when they could have that really nice one on the left? So what does Casimir do? He tells me he bought me the car I was looking at. I’m so excited, jumping for joy, and I run outside and find that shit-stain-looking one sitting in the driveway. He forced me to drive it for months all because I said his dog was ‘a wittle floofster.’”
“It’s fascinating to me that I can do the exact same thing, and he just smiles and praises me, yet for you… there’s a lot more torture involved.”
“I don’t know that I would brag so much, child. You’ve known him months and I’ve known him hundreds of years,” Ezio says before wiping a fake tear away. “It’s not… like I’m… jealous or… anything. Cyrus, please… comfort me.”
“I mean… I guess it’s a good thing he’s not your best friend or something, right? Because that’d be sad if he was,” Cyrus says before hesitating. “Oh wait… is he?”
Ezio gasps. “Dammit, Cyrus! You stabbed the knife in and twisted it too.”
Cyrus looks pleased as Ezio whines about this. He secretly loves torturing Ezio and I’m slowly starting to question if that’s his love language. Or at the very least his “like” language. I’m glad to see him opening up a little with us. He seemed so reserved when we first started interacting with him, and now he’s tearing Ezio apart with a vengeance.
While they’re bickering, I pull out my phone to text Casimir.

Me: Yo, my heart bro. Can I have your password to your app so I can hire that woman who loves you and wants to become one with your soul?

Casimir: Oh, you mean Amelia Emily Reynold?

Me: What the fuck? What else do you know about this woman?

Casimir: Her favorite color is magenta, and she told me that she’ll give me a discount if I open the door in the nude.

Me: You know her name while you called me TOTO for most of our relationship?

Casimir: What can I say? She doesn’t make fun of me.

Me: Aren’t you in a meeting?

Casimir: A fucking dreadful one. I just keep mouthing death threats to Steve. He’s so angry that his face is a majestic shade of magenta, just like Melanie’s favorite color.

Me: I thought it was Amelia?

Casimir: Oh… Melanie is our pet name for each other.

Me: You were lying to me! You don’t know her name!

Casimir: Of course I don’t! My brain can only hold so much information, and it’s currently filled with all of the poses I want Gustov in for future paintings. And pissing Steve off. I just held up two fingers to show him how teeny his dick is. He’s now threatening to pull out his dick to show me that it’s larger than a quarter of an inch. I asked him to hold off until I can find a magnifying glass.

Me: This meeting is still happening?

Casimir: We’ve all stopped to look at his dick. We are all curious now. Genevieve is encouraging him.

Me: I… am almost disappointed I didn’t stick around.

Casimir: Your father stayed.

Me: WTF, my father joined you?

Casimir: I asked him to. I thought it would make him miserable. We bonded over me asking which hate chocolate he got today. Steve flashed us his dick. Your father giggled.

Me: You’re joking now.

Casimir: I’ll ask Steve to flash it again so I can get you a picture.

Me: I… don’t want a picture of Steve’s dick. I want your delivery lady’s info. Actually, just send me her username, I’ll make my own account since I don’t want you to see what I’m ordering.

Casimir: Username first and then dick pic. Steve is being weirdly reluctant after the giggle that came from your father.

Me: Did any of this actually happen?

Casimir: Here’s the username: 2Hot4CasimirReady2RideOrDie

Me: You’re ridiculous.

Casimir: Steve thinks I’m laughing at his dick. I’ve sent you a screenshot of her actual info.

Me: Thanks. This is so helpful.

Casimir: Use my card.

Me: I’m not using your card! It’s something for you!

Casimir: I don’t care. Use it.
I decide to ignore him and make my own account. Thankfully, Casimir gave me a beautiful username to use so I don’t have to come up with my own. I decide that what Casimir really likes in life is Gustov, so I order him one of those costumes where it looks like there’s a little cowboy strapped to a saddle on the dog’s back. Really, besides Steve’s dick and my dad’s giggle, what could liven him up any more?
“Here, you guys pick something out for him too. I’ll pay for it,” I say as I hand the phone over.
Cyrus takes it without hesitation and adds something to the cart, and the moment we pull into the driveway, Ezio plucks the phone from Cyrus and swiftly adds what he wants. “And ordered!” he says with a smile.
Yorick appears outside the car, beaming in at us.
“Do you ever feel like maybe he’s the bad guy?” Cyrus asks as he scrutinizes him. “He gives me bad guy vibes.”
“If I battled him to the death, would it turn you on?” Ezio asks with a charming smile.
“Eh…”
“Ezio, he doesn’t look it, but that guy is over four hundred and seventy years old,” I say, which I know is much older than Ezio, and from my knowledge of vampires, the older they are, the stronger they are.
Cyrus hesitates. “Wow, yes, go fight him.”
Ezio gives Cyrus a look of shock. “Oh my god, I would probably die! He doesn’t look that old!”
“He smells old,” Cyrus says.
Yorick gasps. “I DO NOT SMELL OLD.”
“I… forgot he could clearly hear everything,” I admit as I quickly get out. “Hey, Yorick.”
“Hello, my beautiful puppers. Aren’t you looking awfully adorbs today!” he exclaims as he scoops me up. Literally picks me up and starts carrying me to the house as he forces my head to his so he can kiss my cheek.
“I feel awkward and gross… like maybe I should go home and chance getting murdered to keep from seeing this,” Cyrus decides even though he’s not the one being carted all around.
“Yorick, put me down!” I say.
Yorick gasps and drops me into Cyrus’s arms just like that. The issue is that Cyrus definitely weighs less than me and the execution is not quite fluent in any way.
“Oh. My. God. The Q-Tip is the cutest. I just… can’t get over it,” Yorick says as he yanks the front door open and stares at Gustov who is ready to be friends.
“I now have two puppers!”
“No… no you don’t,” I grumble as Cyrus helps me up from where I’d ended up dumped on the ground.
Yorick drops to his knees in front of Gustov, arms outstretched for a hug from the canine who jumps over his arm and rushes out to me, leaving him kneeling there, looking like a lonesome fool. Yorick, who is… somehow so devastated that he can’t withstand the assault, falls onto his side. We all step over him and Ezio shuts the door with him on the outside.
“You guys want to like… play a game of cards or something while we wait?” Cyrus asks.
Yorick reappears. “I love cards,” he whispers.
“Sure!” Ezio says.
Yorick grabs the deck and starts shuffling as I get a snack for Cyrus and myself. Yorick deals the cards out before delivering Cyrus’s cards to him personally by setting them into his hand. He cups both of his hands around them and gives Cyrus a handsome smile. “You are just… the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I could eat you right up.”
Ezio is seething. He’s prepared to yeet Yorick like he had that police car, but he should be well aware Cyrus isn’t going to put up with that shit. Cyrus even hesitates as he looks up and catches Ezio’s wide eyes. And then he gives Yorick the sweetest smile, something I never thought I’d see on Cyrus’s face, before shyly going, “Thank you.”
It’s all so obviously fake, but Ezio goes from seething to shocked. His mouth is hanging open so wide that when Yorick delivers Ezio’s cards he does so by slotting them right into Ezio’s open mouth. “And there you go. And then the last pile is for the puppers!”
“Thanks,” I say sarcastically, weirdly pleased that they’re placed into my hand in a normal manner.
“You are most welcome!”
He’s so pleased with himself as Ezio pulls the cards out of his mouth and sorts them while cursing Yorick under his breath. After Ezio explains the rules, we are absolutely obliterated by Yorick who had claimed he knew nothing of the game before starting. I assume it’s luck and not actually skill until he beats us two more times, which makes Ezio glower at him all the more.
“I won again. Ahaha!” Yorick announces. “Would you like to play a different game?” Before any of us can answer, his phone rings. “I’ll be right back, my precious pretties!” And off he goes.
“What the fuck?” Ezio growls. “Is he actually smart? He can’t actually be smart, can he?”
“I do like a smart man,” Cyrus says, and Ezio’s attention snaps over to him.
Ezio hesitates before going, “I… I taught myself how to read. How’s that for smart? Eh?”
“Tell him about the time you were a goat farmer! Casimir said you were a goat farmer for a bit,” I urge, pretty sure it’s not going to impress Cyrus, but it’s still going to amuse me, and really, that’s all that matters.
Ezio turns completely silent, almost like he won’t even acknowledge my existence.
“Oh? A goat farmer? Color me interested,” Cyrus says, only because Ezio is pretending he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“It was a whole thing with the body and all that jazz. Really, how boring, right? So boring! Ha ha! No one wants to hear about the body and the guy who cut down the tree to try to crush me in my sleep, and the way that farmhouse burned.”
I suddenly feel like we’re talking about drastically different stories. “A body? What the hell? All Casimir told me was that you got headbutted by a goat and gave them to a ‘stray human.’ Wait, was that the man who died?”
“Tragically.”
“What is even happening?” Cyrus whispers.
What is happening is I’ve somehow brought up some weird ancient history involving goats and a dead man.
Yorick pops back into the room and beams at us. “Lovies, I actually have to go for not at all nefarious reasons.”
“Yay, leave,” Ezio says as he waves him off.
“Who would like to walk me out to my car?” he asks as he looks between us.
No one says anything, and because of it, I don’t know what else to do, so I awkwardly get up to walk him to his car.
Yorick is thrilled as can be at my sacrifice. “I enjoyed tonight! It was fun. Very fun.” He’s quiet for a moment, but I can tell he wants to say something.
“It was.”
“Those… Masks… they are unlike anything you’ve seen before. The one we ran into at the hotel was simply playing or there’d be more than one dead.”
A car pulls into the driveway, and he glances over at it before playfully tapping my chin.
“All I’m saying is to watch yourself. I’ve never seen such brutal people as I did the night my parents died. People who can absolutely slaughter like they did… let’s just say that toying with Casimir won’t be enough for that man.”
“Okay,” I say as he gets into his car.
“Oh… I also heard one more thing about those Masks. They were like brothers to each other. One night, after having only each other for decades, one went insane and slaughtered every last one of them. Which one do you think it was? Casimir… or the man taunting him? Do you think Casimir could kill everyone in his ‘family’? Anyway, enough nonsense! Good night, my puppers!”
And with that, he shuts the car door and drives away.
Could… Casimir have killed them all? From the stories he tells, he wasn’t close to them emotionally… but they were all he knew and all he had for what? Nearly thirty years?
The delivery woman gets out of the car that had just pulled up and hurries over to me, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“I… uh… picked up everything,” she says, seeming uncertain when she’s usually so thrilled to be delivering whatever is wanted. Does she think I won’t tip as well or is she really that interested in Casimir?
“Thank you so much,” I say as Casimir pulls in. Instead of letting me tip her, Casimir does and she’s all smiles as she’s off on her way.
“Man, she totally thought I was going to be cheap,” I grumble.
“You were totally going to be cheap,” Casimir says. “What did you get?”
“It’s a secret,” I respond as I take his hand and pull him toward the house. “Come, come. Yorick just left.” I push aside all thoughts of what Yorick had told me and hurry inside. Before I can do anything, Ezio snatches the bag from me and scurries off with it as I lead a quiet Casimir into the living room.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He forces a smile. “Fine. You?”
“Of course. You wait here. We got you something,” I tell him.
“What I got you using Julian’s credit card is far superior,” Cyrus says as he comes in and holds out a book. “It’s the book I was telling you about yesterday. You can read it and immerse yourself in its world so you can forget how weird the people you call friends are and pretend there are normal ones out there.”
Casimir looks surprised as he takes it. “Thank you. I really did want to check this out. I appreciate it. I planned to grab it the next time I was at the store. I liked it when you told me the villain they terrorize reminded you of Ezio.”
“Thank you,” Cyrus says, looking quite pleased.
While they rattle on about books, I hurry into the next room where I find Ezio stuffing something into a gift bag.
“What did you get him?”
“How about you worry about yourself and your much inferior gift?” he asks.
My eyebrows knit at that. “What the hell? Defensive much?” I retort as I snatch up my little cowboy and his saddle before calling for Gustov who prances in, unaware of what awaits him. I strap that bad boy onto Gustov’s back where he nestles right into that poof of fur and send the poodle into the living room. Casimir stops everything he’s doing to stare, unmoving. It takes Gustov all of three seconds of standing statue still before he starts leaping and spinning, trying his hardest to snatch that bronco rider off, but he’s either not skilled enough or not flexible enough as he leaps and flips about. The stuffed rider snaps back and forth as Casimir drops to his knees and hits record on his phone, a look of pure delight on his face.
“He’ll be like this for hours,” Ezio says with a sigh.
“It’s dropped him to his knees,” Cyrus comments with a tsk. “How embarrassing.”
“Right? It was a pretty good idea,” I say, quite proud of myself as Casimir contorts himself in all kinds of positions to get the best pictures and videos of his new bucking bronco.
“Julian, this is what I want painted on the living room wall!” Casimir declares, clearly not embarrassed by the shit we’re saying about him.
“I’m not painting this on the wall!” I protest.
“My gift is superior, but I’ll wait until he’s done embarrassing himself to hand it over,” Ezio says as I take a picture of Casimir. He looks so fucking giddy, and I can’t stop smiling. How can something so simple make me so happy? Of course it’s cute watching Gustov leap around, but fuck… seeing it pull Casimir out of that slump he’d found himself in…
“You are so schmoopy and in love,” Cyrus mutters.
“Good. Love every moment of it like it’s your last,” Ezio says quietly.
“Makes it sound like you’ve actually been in love,” Cyrus teases.
“Hah. Imagine that,” Ezio says, but it’s not a happy sound.
Cyrus, noticing that Ezio isn’t teasing, glances over at him. “What happened with them?”
“They took one glance at Casimir’s sexy body and ran off for greener pastures,” he lightly says before heading over to the couch to make fun of Casimir.
“Do you know what that was about?” Cyrus asks, eyes trained on Ezio.
“I… do not,” I admit. I’ll have to ask Casimir later if Ezio doesn’t mind me knowing.
When Gustov has finally exhausted himself from his inability to knock his bronco rider off, he flops onto the ground, tongue lolling out of his mouth and onto the carpet. Ezio is all smiles as he passes the final gift off to Casimir.
“This is… suspicious,” Casimir says. “And why did you guys do all of this? It’s not like there’s something going on. It’s not my birthday or anything.”
I smile at him. “Because we can.”
“My gift is the best. You better hurry and open it,” Ezio says as Casimir reaches in and pulls out the skimpiest, laciest, most see-through maid outfit I’ve ever seen. “I got it in Julian’s size, but I could probably also pull it off if you’d like me to model it!”
“Oh my god,” I mutter.
“And that is my cue to go to bed,” Cyrus says as he gets up.
“Oh my god,” I mutter again. “That’s why the delivery woman gave me such a look. What is this thing?”
Ezio is horrifically pleased. “What? You said get him something to cheer him up.”
“Nope. I’m not wearing it.”
“Gustov,” Casimir calls, and the dog jumps up and trots over. He slides the top which is made of sheer fabric over Gustov and smiles. “It’s beautiful on him. Thank you.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Ezio says.
“No! You’re ridiculous!” I decide. “Good god. I’m with you, Cyrus. Off to bed.”
Ezio’s laughter follows us as we quickly exit the room.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 18

CASIMIR
Ezio chuckles. “Well, that’s one way to get rid of him.”
“You’re so proud of yourself,” I say as I hold up the sheer skirt that came with just enough fabric to barely reach the included thong.
“You’d have loved to see him in that, and you know it.”
“I sure would have,” I agree. “But alas, I guess I’ll just read my book since you scared him off.”
Ezio is grinning wildly. “You cherish that man like every day is your last.”
I glance over at him, surprised by Ezio’s tone. He sure doesn’t talk about his past often, so I wonder what’s got him mentioning it tonight. “I will.”
“God, sorry. I say stupid shit. You two are just so cute it annoys me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say as I watch him.
He grabs the stretchy skirt and shoots it at me, likely trying to get me to shut up. “Don’t be foolish!” And with that, he wanders off.
I free Gustov of his decorations and grab my book before heading upstairs. I hear Julian in the shower that I apparently wasn’t invited into, so I head into my bedroom and grab the chair near the window to wait for him. I crack open my new book and force myself to get lost in its world as I wait for Julian. At one point, I hear the bathroom door that leads out into the hall open and footsteps leading downstairs and then returning, but still… Julian doesn’t come out.
After what feels like a while, the bathroom door finally opens, and I glance up as Julian steps out and leans at an angle against the bathroom doorway holding a brand-new feather duster. He raises an eyebrow at me, frilly maid headdress in place. The top, which is black and sheer, slides down his chest, cutting in on his sides to show off a pale waist adorned with white frills. The skirt is even more revealing than I first thought. It barely covers anything, and with the sheer underwear hugging his dick, and the way the white frills lift in the back to show his sexy, bare ass, I find myself dropping the book I was holding.
“Fucking hell,” I whisper.
“I heard you have a dirty rod that needs to be cleaned, Master,” he says.
I choke back a laugh. I can’t stop myself with the ridiculous voice he’s chosen to use. And it’s even worse as he struts toward me wearing his fishnet stockings that are sliding down with each step as the skirt fluffs up. The outfit is sexy but the strut he’s doing is ridiculous, making me love it even more.
“You’re such a dirty man, aren’t you?” he asks before he notices my shirt from yesterday on the ground. He turns around so I get to see a very nice glimpse of the bare ass that the skirt is too short to cover as he bends down, delivering me a phenomenal view.
“My, what a messy man we have here,” Julian says as he turns to look at me. The ability he has to keep a straight face deserves an award. How he can say these things while I’m trying my absolute hardest not to laugh, I don’t know.
“Oh no… it looks dirty. I better clean this.” He whips the shirt between his legs, rubbing it in the most dramatic way against his groin before flinging it. “All clean.”
“Oh wow,” I say, trying to sound overly impressed. “I love the way your balls cleaned that shirt.”
“It’s not the only thing my magic balls can clean.”
What the hell is this and why do I love it so damn much? “Oh yeah? I guess I won’t believe it until I see it.”
“Excuse me while I grab my special sauce to make your knob shimmer.”
“My knob?” I ask as he yanks open the drawer where the lube is and moans. Literally moans. I don’t know why, and it’s such a fake porno moan that I’m trying not to laugh. How the hell he can keep doing this after he ran away embarrassed when Ezio showed off the outfit, I don’t know.
“We have a problem, Master,” he announces as he reaches me. He grabs a knee in each hand and slams my legs apart.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
Julian takes his feather duster and taps my jeans with them. “These filthy pants are in my way. I can’t dust your rocks off like this, now can I?” He yanks the button free before tucking the feather duster between his legs so he looks quite… aroused. Then he grabs the ankles of my pants and yanks them off before flinging them.
“Boy… do you look… dirt-yyy,” he says as he strokes his feather duster.
I have to cover my mouth. It’s all I can do to keep from laughing as his headdress drops down into his eyes. With a head snap, it flings back in place. “Oh, I feel filthy, alright,” I reply.
He pokes my dick that’s still hidden by my underwear with the tip of the feather duster. “How about you get those panties off so I can clean you up real good. I’m gonna dust that knob, shimmer that shaft, and make those globes glimmer.”
“Oh wow! I can’t wait!” I enthuse as I rock back to slip my underwear down my hips and kick them off.
“That’s my dirty boy!” he says as he fluffs the feather duster over my dick. “Wowie, it’s so big! I don’t know how I’ll ever clean all of it. You might not know this, Master, but I have magic hands. But even my magic hands can’t clean as well as”—Julian leaps up onto the chair. Like full-on, both feet on the armrest as he grabs my head and stuffs my face against his groin—“my magic dick. I’m going to clean your face all up. Got to scrub that indecent look right off your handsome face.”
The moment where my face is smashed against his groin is the moment I lose it. My hands are all in. I’m grabbing that fine ass, but I’m laughing so hard that Julian starts laughing too and nearly falls off the chair. I yank him in as he sinks down on my lap and tucks his head against my shoulder, shaking with laughter.
“Why did you laugh? Casimir! I was so sexy! Did you see how sexy I was? I was doing so good and you made me laugh!”
“I… I couldn’t see! Your dick was one with my face!”
“It was sexy,” he insists as he bites back a grin.
“You’re very sexy.”
“I was dirty talking you so good! I was knob dusting so good!” he says, the delight on his face so unbearably cute. I wish I could just box up this moment and look in at it every time those bad thoughts came for me.
I give him my best smoldering look, which is rather hard when I can’t stop grinning. “You were the absolute best! I just… I was so turned on! The way you talked about my rocks and my knob… I’ve never gotten harder faster!
He’s laughing so hard his eyes are watering, and I find myself grabbing his face and kissing his cheek as I swipe a tear away. I don’t need presents or words or anything to make me feel better, I just need the wonderful people in my life. And not only do I get that, I get someone as absolutely perfect as Julian.
“Oh my god. Only you could pretend to have enjoyed any of that,” he admits.
I glide a finger across the sheer fabric that runs over his chest and down his stomach. He shivers as he scoots in closer to me. “I don’t know. You’re so beautiful that you could have said anything or nothing, and I wouldn’t have been able to look away.”
Julian hesitates, and I realize his cheeks are a little red. “Stop! You’re being ridiculous now.”
“You’re fucking gorgeous, Julian,” I say before kissing his lips.
He murmurs something against me, probably trying to pretend like he’s not going to take my compliment, but it’s too late. He can’t complain about it now. His lips part, tongue brushing against mine as my hand slides around his waist, pulling him in closer before cupping his ass. I slide a finger under the string of the thong, running my finger over him as my other hand slips into the front of the underwear contraption that’s hiding his cock from me.
I draw his cock out as I grab the lube that’d fallen into the crevice of the chair during his stunt. I use my other hand to snap open the lid before squeezing some out onto my hand. I run the lube down both of our cocks, pressing them together before my left hand travels back to his ass. His lips part from mine as he moves down and kisses my throat, sucking the skin as I wonder how it’d feel to be bitten by him. I’ve never had much of a draw to being bitten by someone—I only wanted to feed off others—but there’s something extremely intimate about the thought of it with Julian. Maybe it’s because there’s so much relying on it. His life is now intricately woven around mine.
My wet finger rubs over his hole before I push it inside him as my hand slides down his cock. He moans as his hand finds its way down and nudges mine aside, taking over stroking our cocks against each other.
“Bite my neck,” he whispers.
“What?” I ask, surprised. I know he hasn’t liked his neck to be touched since the attack, so I’m sure he’s just caught up in the moment. “No, if you want me to bite you, I can bite⁠—”
Julian’s look is full of determination. “My neck. Bite my neck. I don’t want to think about them anymore when you touch me there. I want to only think about you. I want to feel you. I want all of me to be yours. Please, bite my neck.”
I’m afraid he’s saying this but will feel differently when I do it. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to make him anxious when this feels so good.
He nips my lip, snagging my attention back to him. “Don’t get distracted. Did you hear me? Bite me. I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you! That’s why I’m afraid of hurting you.”
“Then bite me or I’ll just keep biting you.”
I grin at that. “Maybe I like you biting me?”
Julian raises an eyebrow. “Bite me or I’m gonna pull the feather duster back out, and… do something.”
“I’m scared,” I tease as I lean forward and kiss his throat. He tilts his head, giving all of it to me. I’m so attuned to his body that I can feel every shiver and every breath as my hand bumps against his while he strokes us. He knows just how to rub my cock, tease the sensitive skin to make me ache for more. I slide a second finger inside him as he sinks into my touch. I nip his neck, just testing his reaction, and when he doesn’t shy from me as he would’ve in the past, I realize that I need to trust him. I kiss the spot before I sink my fangs into the soft skin, and the sweet taste of his blood fills my mouth. The moment I do it, I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake, but he doesn’t pull from me. Instead, he moans as his hand tightens and my cock glides against his as he shifts on my lap.
I love the pleasure I can feel radiating from his body. The way he squirms against me, breathless; the way his arm is wrapped around my back, tightening; the hand on my cock hesitating like he’s so caught up in pleasure that he’s forgotten to keep moving it. But when I try to take over, he pushes my hand away, squeezing the base of my cock like he wants to remind me of the cock ring I’d placed on him and threaten me with the same.
Since I can’t touch his cock, I move my fingers inside him, finding that sweet spot that makes him moan and arch into me. As I listen to his heavy breath, I pull my fangs free and lick the drips of blood left behind.
Julian gasps as he comes, body tightening around my fingers as I lick and suck at that spot on his throat. His hand quickens on my cock, and I know I can’t handle much more of this. He always knows my body far too well to leave me hanging. I groan as I come, his fingers working magic over me as he tucks himself against me.
I draw my hands free and pick him up, carrying him over to the bed where I drop him down onto it and run my hands down his thigh, sliding the long fishnet stocking down before removing the other. I glide my body up his, kissing a line up his stomach as I draw the shirt up and off him before reaching down to the skirt that snaps around his waist. I kiss his stomach as I work the snap open, pulling it off before grabbing the edge of the thong that I slide down his hips and onto the ground. Then I flop down beside him and drag him on top of me.
“Weirdly, I feel dirtier than before maid Julian cleaned me up,” I tease. “I think there’s lube everywhere.”
“Right? I’m talented like that.” Julian lays his head on my chest, then mutters, “I wish I had a naked body to hold on to.”
“My lower half is quite naked.”
“I know, I know,” he says.
I’ve always been reluctant to take my shirt off in front of others, but how can I refuse after he opened up to me? After he let me sink my fangs into his throat the way I did? I hesitate before I reach for my shirt, but he stills my hands.
“I’m just joking. You don’t need to take your shirt off for me. Your shirt is plenty soft,” Julian insists as he tries to take my hands. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean that I wanted you to take it off.”
“It’s okay,” I say as I pull my hands free of his so I can remove the shirt. He smiles as he sinks down, squeezing tightly to me, clearly pleased. I know I need to get up at some point and actually get us cleaned up, but for now, I just want to hold my precious Julian.
“I… really do want to move in with you if you’re positive we aren’t taking things too fast,” he says quietly.
“You do?”
“Yeah. I mean… just so I have extra time to paint Gustov.”
I grin at that. “Perfect!”
“The full moon is in two nights, though… so I’m not sure where you want me. I can move my snazzy crate here or you can chill at my house for the night… although I don’t love that we can’t super block the windows.”
“Or I can just hold you again. We don’t need a crate.”
“You are not holding me the entire night!” he says, though it’s ridiculous for him to tell me what I can and can’t do! If I want to hold him, I should be allowed to hold him. “What if you need your hands for something?”
“I won’t.”
“What if you do?”
“I only need them to hold the fury wolf.”
“No! What if I got loose because something happened, and then you get hurt because you’re trying to keep me from rampaging? No! It’s not going to happen.”
I grumble about that, heavily displeased. But then again… “How much do you remember when you’re in that state?”
“None of it… but no! That doesn’t mean you can hold me just because I won’t remember.”
I growl, not at all pleased with this. “But I like holding you.”
“No!”
This displeases me greatly. “Fine!”
“Just because I listened for some reason that first time doesn’t mean I’ll listen during any other full moons. Got it?”
“Not really.”
“Of course not. You’re so stubborn.”
“I… don’t think I am. I think I’m fully, one hundred percent not stubborn.”
He snorts, so of course I have to give him a shake, which makes him laugh.
“I’m loving this, but my ass is getting cold. You wanna get ready for bed and watch a movie or something?”
“Sounds nice. I’ve decided that tomorrow, I’m going to harass Delwyn until he tells me why he’s so suspicious.”
“That sounds very nice of you,” Julian says sarcastically.
“Thank you.”
I honestly don’t know what the plan is. I just want to do something to make this end. The masked man seems too adamant about dragging things out while being an absolute pain in my ass. But what do I do? Tear the city apart looking for him? No one else has seen him. There’s nothing about him that gives him away. It’s like he’s just toying with us to remind us that he’s here and he’s planning on making my life miserable. Yet as long as I have Julian by my side, how can I be miserable?
But that’s why I have to protect him with everything I have.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 19

CASIMIR
Age Twenty-One
“Warden? I think the boy is severely ill,” Eleven says.
The Warden stares down at the boy who is huddled on the ground, trying his best to pretend we don’t exist, like he thinks we could forget he’s there. “Perfect.”
“Perfect? Sir?” Eleven asks. I’m also unsure how the boy dying will solve anything when the Warden seems determined to use him as leverage against the young woman the boy called Cecily.
“Well… let’s see if she can figure out how to turn him into a vampire. I mean, it’s that or he dies, right? Maybe she’ll work a bit harder if she has something to gain out of it.” The Warden laughs, obviously enjoying this. Despite how irritated he’d been with the young woman, he’s been oddly upbeat lately. I always feel like it’s some kind of joke that only he knows about. Like he has something planned that absolutely none of us are going to enjoy.
Honestly, I feel like the Warden will only truly be happy after destroying all of us, and yet will be enraged when we’re gone.
“Seven, toss the boy to the vampire. Watch her closely so we can see how she saves him. Eleven, come with me, we have much to do. I have a special surprise for all of you.”
“Of course, sir,” Eleven says, pleased as can be to spend time with the man. It’s funny how we’re not allowed to show any affection, but the Warden allows Eleven to practically worship and love him.
And off they go, leaving me in the room alone with the boy. As I step closer to him, he shrinks, becoming a tight ball of terror.
How did we go from being ruthless men on a battlefield to this?
Greed, perhaps. Well… the Warden’s greed. The rest of us are simply pawns in his sick game.
When I pick the boy up, his eyes catch on to mine as he stares at me in fear. I hold him against my side as he begins to fight against me, beating and hitting me. His small fists slam against the whippings on my back that I received after I stood there and watched as one of my brothers tried to escape. I mean… why should I waste effort getting them when I knew the Warden was going to have them killed anyway?
Clearly, that was the wrong choice, and now my back aches from it. The boy has been here about four months now, so the whippings from this time just covered up the ones that were caused by me helping him, but it’s not like that’d been the first time I’d been whipped.
The woman hasn’t seen the boy in a short while, but I know she wishes to hear about him, even if she’s afraid to ask. Recently, it seemed like the Warden had forgotten the boy even existed as he scoured the lands for an answer on how to turn us into the monsters he wanted us to become. He didn’t want the boy to die until he could really use him against her, but he must have given up… or found something new to play with.
And what could be more concerning than that?
I carry the boy into the room where Five is watching her.
Honestly, I thought he’d be the next to run. Instead, I feel like Five has become infatuated with the woman he once called a monster. Maybe he thinks she’ll save him. He’s listened better than he ever has and has done everything that’s been asked of him. He even stopped speaking about the woman like she’s a monster. He steps up and does what the Warden asks without hesitation.
“What… are you doing?” Five asks.
“Warden’s orders,” I say curtly. I feel like interacting with Five is never good. His fear of death and his fear of living have a way of worming into my mind and causing chaos that makes me both listen to him and hate him, leaving me in a state where I feel nothing is best. Even now that he’s more compliant, I can’t separate his uncertainties from the version of him now.
The woman’s eyes snap up the moment she sees the boy, but it’s not excitement I see on her face, it’s dread. She’s afraid of what the Warden has cooked up now.
I peel the boy off me and drop him into her arms before I go stand at the wall.
“Cecily?” the boy says, grabbing desperately onto her.
She hugs him to her as she stares at me, apparently confused.
I shake my head, hoping to dispel her confusion. “It is not an act of kindness. He’s ill. The Warden wants you to change him to be like you. He says it’s the only way he’ll live.”
She glances down at him before pressing her hand against his forehead. Now that she’s been given a moment to look at him, she likely realizes that he really does seem to be ill. He’s weak and I can see the sweat glistening on his forehead even from here.
“Rhys, what’s wrong?” she asks as she holds him tightly.
Whatever he says, I can’t hear, it’s mumbled so quietly. She just holds him, rocking him a little as she keeps him squeezed tightly against her.
“It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay,” she whispers over and over.
“What’s wrong with him?” Five asks as he glances over at me, as though I could possibly know. Better yet, do I seem like a pushover to him? I thought he was getting better about his useless questions, but maybe he hadn’t aimed them at me lately. Or maybe he only aims them at me because he knows I’ll do nothing about them.
“Can you help him?” she asks. “Please? He needs medicine.”
Five seems uncertain but takes a step toward her before glancing at me. I do nothing but stare, so he hurries up to her and reaches out to check the boy, his kindness getting the best of him.
She’s fast, but I’m just as fast. The issue is that even my sword pressed against her neck isn’t enough when her hand is firmly wrapped around Five’s throat, nails digging tightly into it. The edge of my katana digs into her skin, a bead of blood running down her pale neck, but the wound has already healed.
“You’re going to take Rhys to a physician. Get Rhys away from here or I will kill this man,” she says.
“That is all?” I ask as I withdraw my blade. “Enjoy yourself.”
Five’s eyes are wide as he stares at me pleadingly. “S-Seven, please? I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”
“Well, if she doesn’t kill you… the Warden will when he comes in and sees this mess.” And if that happens, at least it won’t be my problem, although I’m sure I’ll still be beaten over it.
“Why are you all so heartless?” she asks. “Have all of you never learned to love, to care, to feel?”
“To have a heart in this place means you wish to die. Five, here, evidently wants to die,” I say. “I do not.”
“I don’t!” Five cries. “Please, I don’t!”
“You’re the one who hid me,” the boy says, eyes latching on to mine.
I still, having believed he had no idea which of us had done it or that he had assumed it was Five since he was the only one who has shown him kindness. The boy had such a short interaction with me; could he really have picked me out?
“Please… save us,” he begs.
Oh, what a joke. What a hilarious joke.
I can’t even save myself. Why would he ever believe that I’d save them?
She digs her nails deeper into Five’s throat as Five pleads for me to do something. But what does he want me to do? She’s faster than me; if I go toward her, she’ll crush his throat. But why risk my own life for his?
The door opens and Nine steps in and takes a moment to survey the issue.
“What is going on here?” he asks, rage eating at his words.
“Please?” Five begs, and I notice a touch of something in Nine’s expression. Surely, it’s more irritation over Five’s inability to listen and to be a weapon for the Warden to use. Five has always gotten on Nine’s nerves the most.
“Let him go,” Nine threatens, his voice low.
“Then make him take Rhys to get help,” she says as she nods at me.
“You are now making your pleas to him? Why does it still involve me?” I growl. Does no one understand that I want no part of any of this?
Her eyes are cold as she watches me. “Because that one would just kill Rhys without hesitation.”
“I very much would, just like I’ll kill you. Let Five go,” Nine snarls.
“She’s not going to kill him. She’s not a ruthless killer. Let her have her fun and go about your day. She’ll eventually get bored,” I say.
But Nine is enraged that this woman would even fathom going against us. He pulls his sword, but that just makes her tighten her grip on Five.
Five gasps as she blocks off some of his airway. “Give me the boy,” Nine growls. “You will not be happy with how this ends if you refuse.”
“No, I want him to take Rhys.” She waves toward me again like she thinks I have some heart. That her only hope relies on me when I clearly have no interest in any of this.
“Give him to me!” Nine barks, and the boy’s grip tightens on Cecily, terrified of the furious man.
She shakes her head wildly, the spikes around her throat digging into her skin and causing beads of blood to run down her neck. “I will make you all regret doing this. I will destroy your lives. All of your lives,” she growls.
Why the hell did I get stuck in the middle of this mess?
The door opens and this time when I see the Warden, I know shit isn’t going to end well. He steps in with a smile on his face but when he sees the situation, it immediately falls to rage.
“What the fuck is this? What the fuck is this?” he screams.
“I will kill this one if you don’t get help for Rhys,” the young woman says.
“Nine, go get Eleven,” the Warden snaps. “I’m sick of all of you being so fucking incapable!”
Nine runs from the room without hesitation and the woman laughs.
“What will more of your men accomplish? My needs are simple. Have that one”—she nods at me—“take Rhys for medical treatment or I will kill this one.” She shakes Five.
“Let me fucking help you with that!” the Warden growls as he grabs my katana from my hand and slides it right across Five’s neck.
The young woman is startled when blood sprays down on her as Five hits the ground on his knees. But she’s quick. She grabs the sword and because the Warden is holding it so tightly, he’s yanked forward where she rakes her nails into his stomach, nearly disemboweling him before grabbing the key that he tauntingly hangs from his hip. She moves quickly, unlocking the shackle that’d kept her from fleeing, and within a breath, she’s out the door.
“That fucking bitch,” the Warden screams. He staggers after her before turning to look at me. “What the fuck are you doing? Were you just going to stand there while she killed me?”
“Sorry, sir. I was waiting for your orders. I have been taught to never do anything until you command it, sir,” I say.
“I had such high hopes for you, but you are so fucking useless!” he shouts as he staggers into the doorframe before stepping through it and disappearing from my sight.
I walk over to Five who is lying on his back, blood choking him. I kneel down as he desperately grabs for me. It sounds like he wants to say something, but all I hear is a gurgle as blood runs freely from his wound.
I pull him toward me and set his head on my lap as I look down at the dying man.
“You’re very right. In the end, a demon did kill you,” I say as I pull his mask off and drop it. “You were far too good for this world. I hope the next one is much kinder to you, Byran.”
His lips shift up and for a moment, I question if that was a smile, but is it too late now for kindness?
Who am I kidding? All that kindness gets you in this world is more death. If I’d have killed the boy from the beginning, wouldn’t Five still be alive? Or was this always his fate for being too human and not enough of a monster?
I lower him to the ground and pull his sword free, since the vampire still has mine, and then hesitate before grabbing his mask. I don’t know why I take it or why I want it. I step out into the hallway and walk out into the dark night as I see Nine moving toward me.
“Is she dead?” I ask.
“Of course she’s dead. The others accomplish tasks they’re sent out to do, unlike you,” he growls as he waves toward the bodies lying out in the yard. The Warden is standing over them, still holding his stomach. So much for his dream of making us into monsters when he slaughtered the only one he had. “I don’t just sit there and watch like some of us do,” he snarls.
“Ah. My mistake.”
That’s when he seems to assess my bloody clothes but cocks his head when he sees the sword and mask that aren’t mine. He opens his mouth, but the person who speaks comes from behind me, instead.
“Well, well, well. What an interesting situation we have here,” someone I’d never even heard walk up says from right behind me.
I turn quickly, pressing my sword against his neck, but he’s gone before I can determine what to do with him. He tears the sword out of my hand and grabs my arm, shoving me down to my knees in front of him. The man grins down at me, showing just a hint of fangs as I question how he’s dropped me so quickly.
“Kill that one. He’s fucking useless,” the Warden says as I fight to get to my feet.
The man is fixated on me fighting against him. “Ahhh, come on now. Anyone who moves like that isn’t useless. Maybe he’s just bored and needs a bit more excitement in his life?” he asks as he moves to drag me toward him. I pull my wakizashi out and drive it toward him. I don’t even know why. This is the Warden’s guest, but there’s something about him. Something dark. Something worse than the darkness that follows the Warden everywhere he goes.
The man jerks back but looks down in surprise at the blood dripping from his arm.
“You… you’ve made me bleed,” he says, lifting his wrist and licking the blood as he faces me. “How exciting… we’re going to have a lot of fun, you and I.”
I hold the blade tightly as I assess him, waiting for him to move and when he does, I step back quickly, trying to judge where he’s going, but I never manage to as he grabs me by the throat.
“No human has ever made me bleed,” he says. “Now let’s watch you bleed.”
And with that, he tears into my throat and forever changes my life.

“So he was your maker?” Julian asks.
“Yeah. He was who turned all of us. Sorry tonight’s tale was a bit dark.”
Julian curls up against me from where we lie under the covers. “I’m sorry you had to live it. I feel like… if circumstances were different, you and Five would have gotten along quite well.”
“Death was the only escape he was ever going to get because this vampire… this vampire was the type of person the Warden had waited his entire life for.”
“Is he still alive?” Julian asks.
“I actually don’t know the answer to that. I haven’t spoken to him for many years.”
“And Cecily and Rhys—the female vampire and the boy?”
“Eleven killed them.”
I pull him in close and squeeze him to me. “I think you need more sexy outfits. I think you need to allow Ezio to dress you,” I say, shifting the topic.
“That idea is even worse than your one to repaint the entire house with Gustov’s face on all of the walls.”
“No! That’s a wonderful idea. It’s the best idea.”
He shakes his head, weirdly not seeing it that way.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 20

JULIAN
“How’d Maid Julian go last night?” Ezio asks as I eat one of the donuts the delivery lady just dropped off at Casimir’s command.
I ignore everything that just came out of Ezio’s mouth.
“Julian?”
I pretend to jolt before looking over at him, like I had no idea he was talking to me. “What? Oh? You were speaking? I didn’t hear you.”
“How were your cleaning adventures? Let’s all just admit I got Casimir the best present,” Ezio says as he watches me, a satisfied grin on his face. He’s so proud of himself.
“I don’t know. I didn’t do anything with it.”
“Weirdly, the outfit was gone when I came down after I forgot my phone down here.”
“I must have thrown it in the trash.”
“That’s weird because I swear I saw you scuttling off with it.”
“Yeah, to the trash.”
He laughs and laughs as I glower at him. “Julian, you’re so cute!”
“Shut it. I am eating my donut quite happily. Allow me to feast.”
Cyrus went in to work an hour or so ago, so that means it’s just the three of us—well… two since Casimir is off doing who knows what. Ezio said he was training, but how much more training can one do? He threatened me with training as well, which I told him I would do after the donut. And I’m just going to make sure this donut lasts me at least another full hour.
My phone beeps, and I reluctantly look down at it, knowing Casimir’s going to try to make me run and brawl and do things that I’m pretty sure aren’t going to matter when up against a five-hundred-year-old vampire. He’s going to convince me somehow, but I will have to stand strong.

Casimir: Come here. You have to see what I just sent your dad.
Now that perks me up. I pop what’s left of the donut into my mouth and trot on down to his training room, eager as can be.
“What’d you do?” I ask, thrilled for the next adventure.
Casimir smiles at me. “Good, you’re here. We’re training now. Let’s start off with a ten-mile run.”
“As a wolf?”
“Human.”
“NO! You lied to me! You deceived me!” I whine.
“I sure did. I had Wanda bring you a treadmill this morning so you can run during daylight hours since you’re not allowed out of my sight.”
“Her name’s Wanda now?”
“Fuck if I know. Get on,” he says as he smacks my ass and pushes me toward the treadmill.
“You do realize that I could run all day as a wolf, right?”
“Yep, that’s why you’re doing it as a human.”
I growl at him and toss my clothes before shifting. I shall ignore the man and show him that his rules don’t apply to me.
“I’m fast as fuck,” I assure him as Gustov perks up upon seeing me shift. He rushes over and tries to leap onto me, but I dodge him. “Let’s race. First one to catch Ezio wins.”
“I’m listening,” he says, interest piqued. “I just texted him now. He replied with an emoji flipping me off. Looks like he’s ready.”
“Perfect.” I rush out the door toward the kitchen where Ezio was last seen, but Casimir runs right past me toward the living room, telling me he heard something. I grab on to the leg of his pants with my fangs and yank them back. He stumbles and then proceeds to trip right into the couch. I leap onto his back and take the opportunity to sniff the air to find Ezio’s scent. Casimir grabs for me, but I bound off him and scurry up the stairs.
“You trying to cheat?” he asks as he rushes after me, grabbing for my tail I just manage to whisk out of his grip.
“I would never cheat,” I say before howling.
“What the hell was that?”
“That was my call to Ezio. It’s our secret call. He knows what it means.”
“What the fuck? You and Ezio are sharing shit now? He will pay for that.”
“Why are you so mean to your best friend? It must be your love language. It’s probably why you’re also so mean to my father. You luv him.”
“Don’t make me laugh, wolf,” he says as we reach the third floor. Ezio’s up here somewhere, I just need to⁠—
Casimir clamps his hands over my snout, trying to disrupt my sense of smell. Then he jerks his long-sleeved button-up off and yanks it over my head so my muzzle is stuffed down the sleeve of it. And there I am, left pawing at my face as I hear his cackle come from farther and farther away. It really is an effective way of stopping me.
“You are a monster,” I growl as I finally snag the fabric with my dewclaws and yank it off just in time to see Casimir step out into the hallway holding Ezio over his head.
“Bow to me,” Casimir orders.
“You cheated.”
“Cheated, my ass,” he says as he seems to forget about Ezio and smashes his body against the ceiling. “Whoops.”
“Why? What is happening?” Ezio whines. “And why did you tell me to run up and hide in the guest bedroom on the third floor?”
I shift back and hold Casimir’s shirt over myself. “You told him where to go? What a cheater!”
“I’ve never cheated a day in my life,” Casimir says loftily as his phone rings. He passes me Ezio, as if I want to hold him. My plan is to drop him on the ground, but he attaches himself to me.
“Julian, you’re… very naked,” Ezio announces, like I could possibly not be aware of this myself.
“I had to drop the damn shirt to grab you! Of course I’m naked!”
“It’s… dare I say… titillating?” he jokes.
“You are ridiculous.”
Ezio laughs while getting comfortable in my arms like it’s now my duty to carry him. Thankfully, being a werewolf makes me strong enough that it’s not exactly a hardship, but I’m still very naked and this situation is quite awkward.
“I like this. I feel like a princess. Julian, my prince. Tell me… am I destined to forever annoy Cyrus? Today, he scoffed at me. Scoffed!”
“What did you say to him?” I ask as I look for a place to put him. Tossing him on the floor doesn’t seem overly kind when he’s clearly trying to explain his woes to me.
“I said, and I quote, ‘Holy hell and back, you look beautiful with that wicked bed head!’ And he scoffed.”
“Oh wow, could never imagine how he’d take offense at that.”
“Right?”
I glance up at Casimir, ready to toss the clingy vampire back into his arms, when I see that he has an odd look on his face. “I think something’s wrong.”
Ezio looks over at him and sighs before doing some dramatic flop in my arms. “Why can’t anything just go right?”
“Dunno, but I’m going to get dressed,” I say as I set him down.
Casimir says to whoever’s on the phone, “I’ll head over immediately.”
I glance over at the window, sun shining outside it. While Casimir’s windows have a barrier on them that keeps the sunlight from hurting them, they’re still not foolproof and it most definitely means he can’t just run out right now. I wave at the window, but he ignores me, so I wave again.
He hangs up and turns to us.
“Someone set off a bomb at Genevieve’s house. While the explosion didn’t kill anyone, the sun killed one. The rest of them are hiding in the shadows, unable to get anywhere safe.”
“Oh fuck,” I say. “You think he’s after Delwyn again? I mean… does he have a human working for him who could have set it off?”
“Or he could have set it up last night,” Ezio suggests.
“Cyrus and I will head over right now,” I say. “Casimir, even if you head over, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t get out of the car. Are you just going to stare at them?”
“You’re not going there,” he stubbornly insists.
“Casimir, all I’d have to do is step outside. It’s not like he can just show up, okay? Please? I will be home before it gets dark. And I’m going to bring Delwyn back whether he likes it or not.”
Casimir frowns. “I’m going with you. I’ll sit in the car.”
“You’ll be fucking miserable in the car. You know you can’t be in it for extended periods,” I say.
“Casimir, don’t forget that if you die, if you make a single mistake, Julian will die too,” Ezio adds, which is probably the only thing that’s going to get Casimir to stay here.
“Exactly,” I agree.
“Fucking hell, don’t try to make sense, it irritates me,” Casimir says.
“I’m going. I’ll have the pack meet me there too, okay? Right now, we have to help them,” I tell him.
Casimir grabs me and gives me a tight squeeze. “Please be careful.”
“I will,” I assure him. “I’ll be back before dark. Can you call Cyrus? I’ll call my dad.”
“I will,” Casimir says.
I hurry down the stairs and get dressed before rushing out to my car. While the new car Casimir got me is also designed to keep the sun from affecting vampires, it could still kill young vampires and severely wound those who aren’t old enough. And really, even if I got Casimir there, they need people who can walk out in the sun to help.
“What are you up to this time?” Dad asks the moment he answers the phone.
“You know Genevieve, right? Her home was bombed just now, and they’ve been cornered because of the sun. Can you get those in the pack able to help to meet me there? I don’t know yet what to do… but maybe we can do something?”
“Got it,” Dad says. “You call Willow and Olive and I’ll get ahold of the others.”
I call them as I drive, hoping they’re not at work, but by the time I reach Genevieve’s, I have a decent-sized group ready to help.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 21

JULIAN
As I get out of the car, I look up at the devastated mansion. I can’t fathom how more than one didn’t die when the place appears to be in ruins. A large majority of the structure has fallen, leaving behind maybe a quarter of what the building once was.
They had to have healed quickly from the explosion, but the sun must have driven them into the corners of the mansion that still stand. The issue is that there’s the threat of the fire that’s licking the edges of the mansion and beginning to spread.
And as I step out of my car and really take it all in, I quickly realize that I have no fucking idea what to do.
“Julian,” Cyrus says as he comes toward me. “We need the fire department on this before the fire spreads. The problem we’re going to have is that they’re going to want to get the people out of the building. I assume there’s a safe room somewhere on the property? Most vampires seem to rely on safe rooms to avoid tragedies like these.”
“I… would guess?”
“I assume they can’t reach it from where they’re at or they’d already be inside. We need to try to get them down into it, or at least somewhere safe. You need to be careful. If the fire spreads to a gas line or something, there will be an explosion. I’ll try to figure out if there’s a way to shut the gas line off to the main house. I would love to just cram them all into a box truck or something, but I’m afraid it’d take too long, and time really doesn’t seem to be on our side.”
“I’ll go… see where everyone is until then,” I say.
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
I take off at a run toward the house, avoiding the area the fire is eating away at as the smoke stings my nose. I rush inside and stumble over some debris that blocks the entryway to a room. “Genevieve?” I call.
I hear someone and rush deeper into the chaos, wishing I could remember the layout of the house a little more to know where the safe room’s location would be. When I get farther in, I hear a man shout, “In here! Don’t open it!”
The voice is coming from a closet tucked back against the most stable of the corners. “How many are with you?”
“Just two. Most people would have been upstairs. I need help. I don’t think he’s going to make it. Please.”
I press my hand against the door, wishing I could help, but the sun is beating right in on the door. “We’re going to be quick. Where’s the safe room?”
“At the center of the house, there’s a drop down into a basement that should be completely safe and have blood to help the wounded.”
I glance over at where I assume the center of the house is and notice that even with all of the smoke, the sun is beating right onto it. I can’t see the entrance to the basement, so I can only assume the walls that have fallen in have covered it.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be back.”
I rush toward the area where the stairs once were, but now all that lies there is debris and a hole leading up to the sky where the sun smiles down on us. I yank my clothes off and shift before eyeing the opening. I back up to get a good running start and jump. It’s quite the leap, but by climbing straight up the wall, I get purchase on the edge before hauling myself through the opening. Now I can’t shout, but I don’t need to because I hear someone call out to me, and I pick my way toward them. As I move, the floor groans beneath my weight, forcing me to slowly work my way toward them since I really don’t want to fall through the floor. Reaching the closed door they seem to be behind, I realize that there’s barely feet left before the floor or wall would fall away, exposing them to the sun.
I shift so I can speak to them. “Genevieve?”
“How bad is it?” she asks.
“Umm… you know, not the greatest. Do you think it’d be best to get you guys to the safe room? Or… do we try to take you somewhere else? I’m not sure,” I admit.
“The safe room would be the best option. It’s a short distance and it will hold out until nightfall.”
“How many are in the room with you?”
“Twelve, including me.”
“Okay. Is Delwyn with you?”
“He is.”
“Are there more on other floors?”
“Five on the next floor. Three on the first floor.”
“Just… stay as far back as you can. This area isn’t steady, so prepare yourselves for this wall to go. It’s on the edge and the fire doesn’t show any signs of slowing, but my pack is headed here, and Cyrus is taking charge of the situation. We’ll get it figured out.”
Genevieve sounds a little shaky as she says, “Thank you, Julian.”
“Of course.” I shift to my wolf form and drop back down to the first floor where Cyrus is barking orders at the pack members who have just arrived. Dad is standing beside him as he assesses the situation. Once I’ve shifted back to a human, he looks at me. “Locations and numbers?”
I quickly tell him, and he gives me a quick nod.
Cyrus glances at the house. “I think we’re going to put them in the safe room. In the amount of time it’d take to find a vehicle, get it here, and load them in it, we risk the rest of the structure caving, and I don’t think it’s feasible. What I do have in my trunk are body bags which we could use to transport them.”
“You generally… carry those around?” Dad asks.
“I started to after I watched a vampire burn up in front of me when the blanket he was trying to hide under wasn’t enough. But I only have three. I didn’t… you know, expect this situation. So we’ll have to move three at a time. Julian, ask whoever has the highest ability of alluring to be one of the last ones taken to the safe room. The firefighters are going to have to be persuaded that what we’re doing is normal, okay? We can’t have them trying to carry one to safety and get someone hurt or killed.”
“Yeah,” I say. “There is an injured person on the first floor who needs blood. I know wolf blood doesn’t work well to heal them, so if we could send some blood in to help them, it’d be fantastic.”
“I’ll send a firefighter to them the moment they arrive. I don’t…” He hesitates, since he’s the only human here. Out of all of us present, his blood would be the only blood that could help the wounded vampire. “I don’t want to be lightheaded. I can’t handle it well.”
It’s not the first time that I’ve questioned if he’s been attacked by vampires before. He’s never been the fondest of them, and his attitude toward them very much reminds me of my own after I’d nearly died in that alley. I… don’t think I could let some random vampire feed off me. I’m positive Casimir and possibly Ezio are the only ones I’d trust.
“It’s okay,” I say. “There will be someone here shortly, but there could even be blood stored somewhere we could hunt for, and they told me there was some in the safe room too, once we manage to get into it.”
Cyrus hands me two of the body bags and tosses the third to my father. “Start moving.”
“Got it,” I respond as I grab them. “Willow, Olive, can you two help me?”
“I’ll help transport those on the first and third floor. The rest of the pack will get the safe room cleared up,” Dad says as he waves to the other pack members who were able to show up. It makes me happy to see how many did. I know that they aren’t always willing to get along with the vampires, but for them to go out of their way, to possibly risk their lives, means a lot.
“Thank you. And please be careful. We don’t know what that fire could do.”
“You too,” Dad says.
Olive shifts and I tie the bags around her before Willow and I shift as well.
“Definitely not what I thought I would be doing today,” Willow says.
“Right? I think I need something to cover the door so we can open it and get inside. I’ll meet you two at the door to the room,” I explain as I lead them over to the spot where I’d climbed up to the second floor.
Once on the second floor, I rush into a bedroom and grab the thickest blanket I can find before hurrying back to them. After we all shift back, Willow helps me get it over the door as Olive slips behind it and enters the room before me. Willow stays outside to keep the barrier over the door for when we’re ready to come out.
“Hey, so we’re going to transport people in these bags,” I tell the group of vampires huddled against the far wall. “Cyrus promises they’re sunproof. The wolves are uncovering the safe room, so while they do that, we’re going to get two of you ready to go. We’ll drop you into the safe room, get the bag back, and come for the next person.”
“I’m not going in a fucking bag the wolves are going to drag out into the sun,” a man snarls.
“How do we know for sure the bags are sunproof?” a woman asks.
“Cyrus said they are,” I assure her.
That doesn’t seem to appease her. “How the fuck does he know? He’s a human who obviously doesn’t trust vampires.”
The werewolves finally stepped up to help and now the vampires are going to be the stubborn ones? “I… come on, guys, you need to trust me. The fire is getting worse. So either you get in the bag or you burn to death,” I say as I lay the body bag down.
“Beatrice, get in the bag,” Genevieve orders.
The woman balks. “Why do you want me to go first?”
“I’ll get in the fucking bag so I don’t fry up and die here,” Jake says, which surprises me. Maybe we bonded at the hotel, but hell, the time before that he was ready to chuck me off the porch. “If I burn up, I am going to come back to life and haunt your naked ass.”
“Splendid,” I say as I stuff him into the bag and zip it up.
“You zipped up my fucking hair!” he growls from inside.
“Just be glad that’s the only thing I zipped up,” I retort as I drag him out. Olive quickly grabs the other end, and together, we head toward the door.
“What’s the plan now?” Olive asks.
“Just chuck him over the edge like he chucked me off the porch,” I say.
“Don’t be a dick!” Jake snaps, but honestly… he’s at my mercy.
“Willow, we’re coming out,” Olive calls.
“Ready.”
We push through the door and blanket.
“You burning up in there?” I ask Jake.
“Not yet, at least,” Jake grouches, almost like he’s disappointed that we’re right!
“Good,” I say as I look over the edge where Weston is. “Weston, buddy, pal? Can you catch?”
“Grudgingly,” he grumbles, but thankfully, Benny rushes over to help.
We drop him down and the two catch him and ferry him off as I hurry back in.
“This is… going to take far too long,” Olive says as we reach the door. “The fire is getting hot. I can feel the heat on my face even from here.”
“Yeah, but I can hear the fire trucks. Maybe they’ll get it stopped in time?”
“In time for them to be like ‘Why the fuck are you tucking all these dead bodies in the basement?’”
“Maybe,” I say, and when I return, I’m thankful to see someone’s already in the second bag. We just have to drag them out and toss them down to Benny and Weston after Benny tosses the first bag to us. It’s going to go significantly faster if they work with us like this.
“Jake still alive?” I ask.
“He cussed at us enough I have to assume he is,” Benny says.
“These vampires are always so pissy!” Olive comments. “Besides your handsome boo.”
“My heart bro.”
She gives me a smile. “Yeah, yeah. Rub it in.”
“Hey, I only had to bleed to death in front of him while naked in some dirty ol’ alley to snag him.”
“That’s true. You know what else is weird? Whenever I’m with you, I end up naked more often than not,” Olive grumbles.
“I mean, you might as well flaunt it.”
“Maybe I will,” she teases.
Working quickly, we get eight vampires down. The only ones who are left are Genevieve, Delwyn, the asshole who is positive we’re out here roasting all the vampires we took before him, and the woman who is rather reluctant about the whole thing.
“Get in the fucking bag,” Delwyn yells at the guy.
“I would rather burn to death than trust them,” he growls.
“Then fucking burn,” Olive snaps as she grabs the terrified woman who screams while Olive starts forcing her inside. She’s positive she’s going to die, but we haven’t lost one yet, so her odds are pretty good. We zip her up and drag her out, but just as we go to lower her, the flames erupt from where they were concentrated. It’s like a moment of pressure as I’m flung back, and then heat flares up around me before I find myself dropping and slamming down painfully on my back. I don’t even remember how I got there, it all happened so quickly.
I hear screaming and look up as I realize that there’s a vampire above me—the man who’d been resisting our efforts to safely move him. His skin is blistering as the sun eats into it while he runs for the safe room, but he has to realize that it’s right in the middle of the sun. He falls onto the first floor where he begins to writhe under the brutal heat. I try to get to my feet to help but pain erupts into my thigh, making me hesitate and look down where I find a wooden board has pierced my leg.
“Fuck,” I groan as I grab the board and take a deep breath before pulling it out so I can be freed from this location. Groaning, I push myself up, knowing I need to help. The vampire is shrieking as I see my father reach him and start throwing clothes on top of him to shade him, but I think it’s too late because the cries almost immediately stop.
“Olive? Olive!” I shout as I look around for her. Did she get hurt? When I was flung back, where did she end up?
“I’m here,” she calls as relief rushes through me. “I’m fine. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, but what about Delwyn and Genevieve? Shifting makes pain tear into my leg, but I have to push through it because there’s no way I’m getting back up to the second floor with my human legs, especially now that there’s even more wreckage to contend with. Lunging up, I scramble and start to slide off the second floor since my leg isn’t assisting my ascent. I keep sliding until someone gives me a shove from below, and I realize it’s Benny.
I dash into what’s left of the room, sunlight raging into it as I find Genevieve pinning Delwyn in the corner. The sun has eaten through the skin on her back as I shift and quickly grab the blanket we’d been using to hide the door so I can fling it over them. It won’t be much protection, but hopefully it’ll be enough.
“We’ll get you down,” I say, trying to ignore the smell of burning flesh.
“Hurry,” Genevieve replies through gritted teeth.
Olive rushes onto the scene, body bag in her mouth. She shifts quickly into her human form, and we work hard to keep them covered as my father appears with the other bag.
“Dad, Delwyn needs to go to Casimir’s. So can you get him into the trunk of my car? We need to get him out of this situation so Casimir can watch him.”
“Okay. You’re bleeding,” he says as he looks at me in concern.
“I know.”
Dad’s mouth tightens, but all he says is, “Be careful.”
Olive and I take Genevieve down, carrying her ourselves into the safe room as my father deals with Delwyn and starts helping those who are left.
“Is Nathaniel dead?” Genevieve asks through the bag she’s in. “The one who was fighting with you?”
“I don’t know. He was burned pretty badly,” I respond as I drop down into the safe room, and as soon as I have her pulled away from the light leaking in through the doorway, the vampires down there hurry over to help get her out. She’s severely wounded, the sun having torn into her without remorse.
“Are you going to be okay?” I ask as I free her of the bag.
As I gather the bag for whoever we might have left, I notice her eyes are fixated on my leg… but I’m a werewolf… even half dead, a vampire wouldn’t be drawn to werewolf blood. I’m sure I’m reading into it, but even so, I quickly start to back away as nerves eat at me.
It’s like my movement triggers something in her as she lunges at me, forcing fear to tear through me as she drives me off balance and slams me to the ground. Her fangs go for my throat as I kick and shove at her, but in this form, I’m nothing compared to a vampire.
My head hits the ground as her teeth miss my throat and tear into my shoulder. Someone grabs her, ripping her off me as Olive drags me back.
Genevieve is determined to get to me, but thankfully, there are multiple vampires to hold her back as she screams and snarls at them, driven by bloodlust to devour me.
“Genevieve, what the fuck are you doing?” Jake yells as he pins her to the ground.
My heart is pounding out of my chest as I try to get my feet under me.
“Come on. It’s okay. Come on,” Olive says as she tugs me toward the way out. She quickly pushes me through the doorway and out into the sun.
I want Casimir here. I really fucking want Casimir here, but he’s not, and… it was just a bite. It was just a bite. She wasn’t going to… do anything. She was starving. I’m fine. I’m acting ridiculous, thinking this was such a big deal.
“What’s wrong?” Dad asks as Olive wraps a blanket around me.
“N-Nothing, I’m fine,” I say, trying to force my face to convey this.
“Genevieve bit him,” Olive tells him.
Shaking my head, I try to push it off. “Ha, it’s fine. She nearly died in the sun, so that’s why she tried biting me. It’s fine,” I say, trying to make myself stop shaking.
Dad reaches over and grabs me, pulling me into a hug. “Hey, it’s okay,” he soothes as he squeezes me.
I hesitate before grabbing on to him as he holds me tightly. “I just… get a bit freaked out now… because… you know.”
“I’m sure. But you’re okay,” he assures me. “I’m sorry that happened.”
“What happened?” Cyrus asks as he rushes over.
“Nothing, I’m fine,” I say, not wanting another person to know how ridiculous I’m being.
“You’ve been bitten,” Cyrus growls as he notices my shoulder. “Who the fuck bit you?”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, but he looks pissed. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a cold look on his face as he stares down at the door leading to the vampires. His jaw is set and he looks enraged.
“Cyrus, I’m fine,” I assure him.
Dad checks me over before saying, “I think you need to go to the doctor to get your leg looked at. Do you want me to take you or do you want me to take Delwyn?”
“Take Delwyn,” I say. “I can take myself to the hospital, but I’d rather you take Delwyn before something happens.”
Cyrus slowly looks over at me. “I’ll run Julian to the hospital. I’ve pretty much done what I can here. Everyone who is still alive is down in the safe room.” There’s a bite to his words, but he has to understand it was an accident, right?
“The pack will stay here until night to watch the place,” Dad promises as he guides me toward Cyrus.
“Come on. And let’s find your clothes so you don’t look like a creepy naked dude going in,” Cyrus says as he grabs my wrist and pulls me after him. I guess the blanket Olive draped over me isn’t really the best in terms of clothing.
“Text me how you’re doing,” Olive calls.
I give her a nod as Cyrus realizes that finding my clothes or any clothes that aren’t damaged probably won’t be the simplest of tasks, and instead, grabs some of his out of the back seat of his car. “Might be a bit tight on you, but better than nothing,” he grumbles as he ties a shirt around my bleeding thigh before shoving clothes on me, like I can’t dress myself.
“I’m fine, really,” I say as I quickly find that I don’t actually help much beyond waving my hands around as he does all of the work making me look decent.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 22

JULIAN
After retrieving my phone, I get into Cyrus’s car, and he starts to drive. “Don’t go to the hospital.”
“You go to the vet, right?” he teases, acting back to normal.
“Ha ha. Funny.”
“You know it’s not a big deal to be freaked out by them, right?” Cyrus asks as he looks over at me. “I mean… really, it’s only natural to feel fear from something like them. They can be monsters.”
“I just… don’t want to think of them that way,” I respond as I give him a smile that comes out a bit forced.
“I didn’t say all of them were,” he says as he stares at the road. “Don’t mind me. I guess seeing the shit I have makes you see the worst sides of people… but I’ve seen the worst of all sides. Vampires, weres, and humans… some people are just so… toxic… so fixated on themselves as they enjoy the destruction of those around them. You know, you should call Casimir before he hears that you got hurt from someone else. He’s going to be upset enough as it is; imagine your father arriving and telling him. He might tear his head off.”
“Oh, true,” I agree, but I’m still hung up on what he was saying. What has Cyrus seen that made him wear the look he’d had when he’d seen that I’d been bitten?
Casimir answers immediately when I call. “Are you heading home?”
“Um… shortly. Things went… okay. We got most of the vampires down in the safe room. I believe one died but the rest are safe. My father is taking Delwyn to your house and should be there shortly. I think at this point, we might be the only ones who can keep him safe, you know? And then… Cyrus and I are going to make a little teeny detour and be home shortly.”
“What kind of detour?” Casimir asks.
“Teeny tiny one.”
“Doing?” he asks, clearly catching on.
“I got… a scratch. And Dad was just being overbearing, you know? Like ‘Go to the doctor’ but really, it’s such a tiny scratch the doctor is probably going to laugh at me.”
Casimir is silent for a moment as I realize that I really didn’t fool him. “Let me talk to Cyrus.”
“Cyrus doesn’t want to talk to you,” I say, but Cyrus ruthlessly snatches up the phone.
“Yeah, it’s a puncture wound. It doesn’t look severe, but he is bleeding and favoring his leg. It’s a long way from his heart, I think you’ll both survive… no, it wasn’t close to an artery… yes, he’s still breathing… no, his gums aren’t white… Casimir, I think I’ve seen plenty of wounded people to be able to tell you he’s going to be fine… if you threaten me, I will not bring him home. And I will shave that damn dog of yours. Just a strip right down its back… yeah… we’ll probably be done in an hour, depending on how long the doctor takes. We might pick up some food, though. I’m starving. Yeah, bye.”
I glance over at him. “He’s mad.”
“Well, if he says anything, I’m shaving the dog,” Cyrus says as he pulls up to the clinic where the werewolf doctor works. It’s the same guy who’d helped me after I’d nearly died… I doubt he’s expecting to see me back so soon.
As I go to open the door, Cyrus pushes my head to the side to look at my shoulder where I was bitten. “Casimir’s going to be absolutely pissed about this.”
“I know.”
“I’m pissed about this.”
“She couldn’t help herself.”
Cyrus stares at me for a long moment. “Vampires love to use that excuse. But I’ve been in situations where I was confident that I was going to die, that there was nothing left, and I’ve never once imagined hurting another over it. You look me in the eyes and tell me—if Casimir or Ezio were in that situation, would they have bitten you? Do you truly think they would have?”
I hesitate because… I really think they both would have chosen to suffer or even die to keep from making me feel fear like I just did.
“It’s because no matter what, they think they’re superior. They think it’s their right to hurt and take. This is why I hate vampires,” Cyrus says as he pushes the car door open and gets out.
I want to tell him that they’re not all like that, but he knows. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have tossed Ezio or Casimir into the equation… but… isn’t he right? I mean… maybe she really couldn’t stop herself… or maybe she could have tried harder…
Fuck if I know.
I get out of the car and follow him inside as that thought twists around in my mind. The nurse sees me looking a bit rough and hurries me off into a room.
“What happened?” she asks.
“I fell onto a wooden… something. It pierced my leg,” I say.
“Let’s get you in a gown so I can see what I’m working with.”
She hands it to me then leaves for a moment while I get changed.
“Awfully nice of you to wear something for once,” Cyrus teases.
“Right? Out in the street chilling with the cops, I’ve got my balls out, but here in this private little room with my doctor while bleeding all over, I have a snazzy gown to cover up the bits.”
He chuckles. “At what point do you just stop giving a shit?”
“Well, you see, I’ve… had this ability to shift… for a very long time,” I say, not afraid of telling him but not wanting someone in the clinic to overhear. “I don’t think I ever learned that whole ‘It’s inappropriate to be naked in front of people’ thing.”
“I’m glad I’m not a wolf. I’m very happy keeping my clothes on. I’d be like, ‘I see you nearly dying over there, but I need to find a tree to hide behind while I shift.’”
I grin at him. “You’d get used to it.”
“Eh…”
“Like Olive and Willow are pretty shy, but in the moment, I think they just suck it up and suffer.”
“See… I’d have to like people enough to suffer for them,” he says, but I see his eyes twinkle.
“You like people! You like me and Casimir and Ezio.”
Cyrus just makes a noncommittal noise, which makes my grin widen.
“Don’t pretend you don’t.”
“I can pretend all I want,” he decides. “The issue is, two of you are vampires and the other is a werewolf. Why can’t I make human friends? Boring people who do gross things like hang out… drink beer.”
“Humans are overrated. We’re the cool kids.”
“Uh-huh,” he says sarcastically as the door opens and the doctor comes in.
While Dr. Hernz is a werewolf, he doesn’t do much with the pack. He rarely goes on runs with them, and pretty much keeps to himself. But he’s a lifesaver when it comes to situations like this because going to a human doctor would likely lead to a lot of questions and some confusion.
So he sets to work getting my leg numbed, then flushed and thoroughly checked over. He decides to leave the wound open, since it won’t take too long to heal. Then he checks the spot where I was bitten. Once it’s all set, I’m sent on my way.
“Did you want to stop for food?” I ask. It’s after six at this point.
“Casimir said he ordered that lady to bring us stuff,” Cyrus says.
“Why’s he texting you and not me?”
“He asked how you were and knew you’d lie, and I’d tell the truth.”
I raise an eyebrow as I get into the car. “Yeah? And what did you say?”
“I said, ‘Well, they didn’t have to amputate.’”
“Wonderful. Not sure how that’s any better than what I would have said.”
“Well, they didn’t. I probably need to run back into work once we’re done eating, though,” Cyrus informs me. “But I’ll be back before it’s too dark. I don’t think it’s safe to be out.”
“It’s already going to be too dark. It’s nearly dusk now! What did we say?”
“That you guys enjoy making everything difficult. I think that’s what you said.”
Clearly, he’s as stubborn as Casimir.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 23

JULIAN
When we arrive home, the delivery lady is leaving, and I find the house has the most wonderous aroma that makes my mouth water.
“Oh… ohhhhhh,” I mutter as I hurry for the dining room where the smell is coming from. But before I can, Casimir whips my pants down.
“Why?” Cyrus cries. “I was just complimenting him on his ability to keep his clothes on.”
Casimir is refusing to acknowledge Cyrus, who is scurrying away, or me, who’s really trying to make it toward that wonderous smell. He grabs me in a headlock as he pulls the bandage up on the edge and looks at the wound.
“I’m going to kill them,” he decides.
“Kill the wood shard? Casimir, I’m fine! Let me eat!”
He growls as he gently smooths the bandage back down and pulls up my pants before cupping my face in his hands. He’s not saying anything, though. He’s just staring at me.
“Casimir?” I ask. “I’m fine. I promise. I’m sorry for scaring you. Okay?” Then I kiss his unresponsive lips. “Don’t do this to me.”
His eyes narrow even as I kiss him again.
Still nothing.
“Casimir! My heart! You’re hurting your heart bro’s heart!”
He sighs loudly. “You made me fret.”
Ezio nods. “He fret-brushed Gustov while you were gone. I’m surprised the dog still has fur!”
Casimir glowers at him, obviously embarrassed by this. Gustov sure does look poofy. “Shut it. I did not. I did manly things like forlornly staring out the window while waiting for your return.”
“Then he threw the brush at the wall after hearing you got hurt,” Ezio says as he points at a painting of Gustov that wasn’t there earlier today.
Ezio plucks it off the wall and does a dramatic waving like he’s on some game show presenting a brand-new car, but in this case, it’s a dog brush-shaped hole.
“Oh god… Casimir. I’m fine.”
“My hand slipped,” he says as he pushes Ezio away and quickly covers the hole.
“And… Delwyn?” I ask, worried about his fate.
“I’m alive!” Delwyn announces from what sounds like the dining room. “Surprisingly.”
“Are you going to let me eat?” I ask Casimir.
He doesn’t seem sure of that, so I toss him a smile and twist out of his hands as I hurry to the dining room.
“Delwyn explained what happened,” Ezio says as he trails after me. “I’m glad you guys were okay.”
“Julian, loooook,” Cyrus enthuses as he waves toward the absolute feast on the table. Steaks and lobster and shrimp drenched in garlic and butter adorn the table.
“Oh damn—” I am immediately stopped from my feast by Casimir grabbing the back of my shirt.
“You swear you’re fine?”
“I’m getting less fine by the moment as I’m forced to watch Cyrus eat all the food! Look how fast he’s eating!” I cry. “There’s going to be none left by the time he consumes it all!”
Casimir sighs and I see the tension leave his shoulders. I guess it required torturing me to finally submit to the idea that I’m really okay.
“I’m glad you’re alright, Delwyn. Actually, most ended up extremely lucky. I know at least one died and… I don’t think the other vampire made it after the wall and floor caved, but… considering all the damage done, I’m thankful more weren’t killed,” I say.
Delwyn gives me a slow nod. “I just…” He sighs and leans back in his chair. “I shouldn’t have stayed with them. I shouldn’t have… fuck. You mind if I just… go upstairs? You have a room I can just… decompress in for a bit?”
“Yeah, I’ll take you,” Ezio says as he gets up and leads him upstairs.
I glance over at Casimir as I chew. “This is delicious,” I tell him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he responds, but he still looks pretty upset.
“Casimir, you can’t blame yourself for any of this. Neither can Delwyn.”
Cyrus points his knife at Casimir. “Listen to Julian. This would be like someone blaming a victim for their assailant hurting someone else.”
That doesn’t seem to appease Casimir either. “I’m not much of a victim, now am I?”
“Everyone can be a victim,” Cyrus says. “Instead, worry about the fact that literally everyone I know has seen Julian naked.”
“But the real question is… did they enjoy it?” I tease, wanting to jump on this boat to make Casimir feel better.
Cyrus shakes his head. “Even thinking about it is trying to ruin my delicious meal.”
“Nah, see, we’re just already getting over that awkward stage in our friendship,” I explain.
“I… don’t know about your friends, but I don’t generally see mine naked… and mostly would prefer not to,” he says, which makes me laugh.
Ezio returns around the time we’re finishing our meal and Cyrus glances at him before sighing, like he’s finally giving in to something he’d been trying not to.
“I need to go into work and Julian won’t let me leave. I can take you or call that Yorick guy⁠—”
Now that snags Ezio’s attention. “He gave you his number?”
Cyrus looks quite smug as he nods. “He sure did. Said I could text or call him at any time. Even put a heart around it.”
Ezio, on the other hand, looks absolutely horrified by this information. “NO! You refused to take my number for weeks… maybe even months. For a while you even blocked me!”
Cyrus shrugs, like he can’t see the issue with any of this. “Because you were so creepy. You kept staring at me.”
Ezio’s hands start going and I’m confused whether he’s trying to mime his way through the issue or is at a loss for words. “I was flirting!”
“You were?” Cyrus asks.
“You were?” Casimir echoes.
“Why can’t you be suave like Casimir?” Cyrus asks.
Ezio wipes away a fake tear. “Maybe I was so suave I outsuaved your ability to comprehend my suaveness.”
Cyrus just stares at him for a moment. “Yeah no, I’m going to give this Yorick guy a call. He’s fucking strange, but I’m going to take my chances.”
Ezio smacks his hand down on the table. “NO! I’m taking you. I’m… much superior and I will promise to act super-duper normal. Let me go get ready!” And off he scurries.
“Get… ready? What does he have to do?” I ask.
Cyrus shrugs as he enjoys the last of his meal. “Hopefully find the common sense he misplaced.”
He clearly does enjoy teasing Ezio, even if he likes to declare that he’s not interested in dating anyone. And though it’s slow going, he has warmed up to him. Hell… maybe Ezio has a chance yet… possibly in like ten years at the rate they’re going.
After Cyrus finishes eating, he heads toward the garage, probably planning on taking Ezio’s car since it’s still dusk out. He seems determined to leave without Ezio.
And that is when Ezio steps onto the scene wearing a suit I’ve seen Casimir go to meetings in. He has his hair slicked back, but still runs his fingers through it before sliding a pair of sunglasses in place and slinging a curtain rod over his shoulder like it’s a baseball bat he’s going to use for some back-alley brawl. It’s a weird mixture of sexy CEO and delinquent… but then why does it work so damn well?
“Alright, I’m ready. I’ll kick the ass of absolutely anyone who even looks your way,” he says, taking on this weird deep voice like his body has been possessed by a knockoff gangster.
“This… is supposed to convince me of… what exactly?” Cyrus asks.
“I mean… at least he’s cute,” I offer because he really is pulling off that suit.
That doesn’t seem to help much as Cyrus scoffs and just heads off into the garage.
“You’re doing good, buddy,” I say as I give Ezio a thumbs-up. He beams at me as he disappears, apparently pleased with the results even if Cyrus seemed uncertain.
“Well… glad that’s over with,” I mutter as I sit here, feeling absolutely stuffed. I really should have stopped before I ate five more shrimp and more steak coated in mushrooms and onions, but it was just too good.
“Imagine if that was the man who found you on the day you’d been attacked,” Casimir says.
“You and Cyrus are both so evil to Ezio. He’s trying so hard! Maybe he’s not the best at flirting, but he gets a participation award. You know, I was kind of surprised that he said he’d had a lover before. He strikes me as someone who is still trying to learn how to flirt.”
“Right? It was a long time ago, though. He was a human at the time, I believe.”
“Do you know what happened?” I ask curiously.
“Just that he died.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah… Ezio’s been pretty closed off ever since when it comes to relationships, which is why it surprised me so much that he was almost immediately infatuated with Cyrus. He apparently likes a challenge.”
“Clearly. I hope… things work out for them. I can’t fathom losing someone like that. But I’m glad he’s opening up to the idea of being with someone else. Even if it’s fiery Cyrus.”
“Me too,” Casimir says as he leans in to kiss me, but I refuse the kiss like he did to me when I first came in.
“Oh, now we can kiss on your terms?” I tease.
He looks at me in shock that I would dare refuse him. “Let me kiss you. I have never been refused!”
“Well guess what, buddy, this time you are. Because you were disgusted by my kisses.”
Casimir grabs me, dragging me onto his lap where he forces a kiss on my cheek which makes me laugh. He kisses me multiple times all over my face as I teasingly try to get away.
“You can’t get me to cave even with your handsome face and sweet words!”
“But I can! I can make you—” He freezes before yanking the edge of my shirt down. I jerk back but it’s far too late and I know he’s seen it.
“What the fuck is that?” he asks, and I can feel him tensing up. I’m confident that he’s prepared to deposit me in another chair and rush off to maim whoever did this to me.
“It’s…” And I was going to say fine. I was going to make excuses again, but what Cyrus said hits me and I stop myself because maybe it isn’t fine. Maybe it really fucking bothers me. And maybe it’s made me look at Genevieve in a whole different way. “Genevieve was burned in the sun… and I guess the smell of my blood made her attack me. I was… I was telling Cyrus it was fine, but he kind of made me realize that… I didn’t have to pretend it was fine. So it’s… a thing.”
“She fucking bit you?” he asks, voice sharp. Genevieve is probably lucky that Casimir should stay here right now or her very life might be in danger.
“Yeah… I guess I don’t really know if she was that starving for blood or… if she could have controlled herself.”
“She could have fucking controlled herself,” he states flatly. He wraps his arms tightly around me, squeezing me to him. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe she did that.”
“Hey! It’s okay, it really is. I’m fine,” I assure him. “Yeah, I’m pissed about what she did, but I’m physically fine. Maybe I won’t forgive her right away and I’m definitely going to remember it, but I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”
He squeezes me again and gently brushes my hair back. “You don’t have to be fine. And I’m always going to worry about you.”
“I know,” I say as I sink into his arms. He makes me feel so safe. So loved… how can just a hug do this to me? “When it happened, I just wanted you so fucking badly… but my dad was there, as well as Cyrus and Olive. And they all helped and made me feel better. But it’s nothing like how you make me feel.”
Casimir tucks me against him. “Obviously, I need to make people more aware that you are mine, and if they touch you, they will lose their hands.”
He’s so ridiculous. “I’ll come home, and you’ll have filled the mantel with the hands of your enemies.”
“You do seem to get yourself into a lot of shit,” he realizes.
“No idea what you’re talking about.”
“What I realize is that your shirt is multiple sizes too small.”
“Right? I’m wearing Cyrus’s clothes.”
“Let me go get you something,” he says.
“I can get it myself.”
“No, I’ll get it. Then I want to see if I can figure out anything about this bomb that went off, alright?”
“Got it,” I agree as he sets me down in a chair and hurries off. Why I can’t go up to the bedroom like a normal person, no one knows. While he does that, I grab his laptop and set it up. I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for, but I’d love to find out at least something. I end up opening a new document and writing down the people from the past who Casimir has told me about… but supposedly, at the end of the story, everyone but Casimir dies… so could it be someone outside the Masks?
Casimir returns carrying a pair of my pants but one of his shirts. I’m not quite sure why, but I pull it on anyway and he looks pleased to see it.
“Is this… some weird way you’re now claiming me?” I ask.
“You are your own person; I don’t own you. I just want others well aware that if they even merely look at you, I will destroy them. Especially Steve.”
“Of course! I bet Steve is behind it all!”
“We should harass him just to be sure,” Casimir says as he whips out his phone and grabs Steve’s number to send a very simple “Fuck you, Steve.”
This seems to please Casimir greatly.
Casimir tries to see what he can find out about the bomb at Genivieve’s, including scrutinizing security camera recordings, but whoever did it managed to keep from being caught by the cameras. After that, he reviews the footage from the hotel, watching it again and again, trying to pick out something we might have missed.
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CHAPTER 24

JULIAN
“I hate to stop what we’re doing, but before the daylight comes, I need my cool werewolf cage. We need to move it here so when I get all cranky and bitey during the full moon tomorrow night, you can lock me inside.”
Casimir squeezes me to him instead. “I would much prefer to just hold you.”
“Denied,” I say as I get up. “I’m going to ask Delwyn if he’ll go with us to get it. I really don’t think we should be separated.”
“I’ll just call my delivery lady.”
“The crate weighs more than her! It’s literally bolted to the floor! She’ll wonder what the fuck it is!”
“I’ll tell her it’s a sex thing.”
I look at him in disbelief. “Oh my god, do not tell her it’s a sex thing!”
“She doesn’t care what kinky stuff we get into. She just wants money! I’ll pay her more for the sex thing!”
I sigh and give him a kiss. “Nope.”
“Fine, fine,” Casimir says as he gets up and lets Gustov out into the fenced-in backyard. “I can hear Delwyn heading down, so let’s see if he’ll go with us.”
“Okay,” I say as I walk toward the door leading to the living room to greet Delwyn as he comes down the stairs. “Hey, Delwyn, we need to run to my house—” Suddenly, I feel a tight hand wrap around my neck as I’m slammed back against the doorframe.
“Don’t move,” he growls. And I realize that it’s not me he’s talking to but Casimir, who’s appeared right next to him. He holds Casimir’s katana that he must have retrieved from upstairs tightly in his hand. “If you move, I will crush his throat.” And just like that, Casimir stands completely still as Delwyn drives the katana into Casimir’s stomach, pinning him against the wall. Still Casimir doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch, like he’s numb to the pain. All he can do is stare at the man with his hand tightly wrapped around my throat.
I freeze, incapable of comprehending what has just happened and why the fuck Casimir didn’t stop him. Delwyn wouldn’t kill me, right? He… we were helping him, and he…
“If you move or take it out, I will crush his throat,” Delwyn threatens, holding me tightly against him, nails digging into my throat.
“Let him go,” Casimir growls, hands held up to show that he isn’t planning on doing anything, but I need him to do something. I need him to help himself. To heal… to stop Delwyn… He’s getting hurt because of me. He’s so horribly hurt, all because of me.
My eyes are fixated on that blood dyeing his shirt, coloring it red as fear of what Delwyn is going to do takes hold of me.
“I can’t let him go,” Delwyn says. “Clearly, I fucking can’t. It doesn’t matter what I do, he’s just going to keep coming for me, Casimir. I have to do what he says. Do you see how many people died because I took too long? More and more will die… and no… I don’t want you to die, and I don’t want Julian to die either… but aren’t two deaths better than all of the deaths that he’s going to leave in his wake driving you to the brink? If you and Julian are going to die in the end anyway, why not just keep others from dying?”
“No! You could tell us where he is and we can stop him!” I plead.
“I can’t,” Delwyn snaps.
My eyes are trained on the blood running down Casimir’s shirt, dyeing the waist of his pants. He’s bleeding so much, but he still acts like it’s nothing. Casimir has to be hurting; it’s not like he can’t feel pain. Is he keeping from showing it for my sake? He’s stronger than Delwyn, he can win this fight… but he’s so afraid of me getting hurt that he’s prepared to suffer for it. He’s being forced to suffer because of me.
“Delwyn, please,” I beg as I try to twist free, but it only causes his grip to tighten on my throat. The air is immediately cut from it as I grab at his wrist, clawing it desperately as black spots flicker before my eyes.
Air hits me, and I start coughing violently, trying to gather my breath as the world comes back to me.
“Don’t hurt him! I’m the one he wants,” Casimir yells as I see blood running down his lips. What the hell do I do? How do I stop this? How do I help him?
“I’m going to set Julian’s phone up right here with the camera facing you,” Delwyn says as he sets it on the table we’d just sat at and aims it at Casimir. “I’ll do a video call with you and if you move from that spot before… let’s say, twenty minutes are up, I will kill him. Do you understand?”
“Delwyn, you don’t have to do what he wants,” Casimir says.
“Sadly, I do,” he responds as he starts dragging me back.
“No! No, please,” I cry as I try to fight against him, but the vampire is so fucking strong. In this form, I’m practically useless fighting against him. “Casimir! Please… Casimir⁠—”
“Just do as he asks. Protect yourself. It’ll be okay. I promise it’ll be okay,” Casimir says, using such a gentle voice when he’s so hurt. Even like this, he still does whatever he can to comfort me, to care for me, when I just want to care for him. He’s still talking as I’m dragged out to Casimir’s car, but I can’t hear what else he says. I’m pushed into the passenger’s seat from the driver’s seat so Delwyn never has to let go of me.
He starts the car and backs it out of the driveway as my stomach winds up into a ball of anxiety. “I’m going to let go of you. But I hope you realize that I will hurt you badly if you try to run, okay?”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “We really wanted to help you.”
“Yeah… and I mistakenly thought you could,” Delwyn says as he turns out onto the road. “But sometimes… you just have to do the worst thing for someone you care for.”
“If they truly cared for you, they wouldn’t make you do something you hated.”
“You think?” he asks as he pushes the car faster. Occasionally, he glances down at his phone that I can’t see from here to make sure Casimir hasn’t moved.
“Please let him pull it free, he could bleed out in twenty minutes.”
“I can’t,” he says as he speeds down the road while I sit in the passenger seat, my heart beating out of my chest. I don’t know what to do. I could leap out of the car, but could I really outrun him? He’s clearly stronger than me, but could I fight him? We’re—what? A mile or two from the house at this point? I would just have to show Casimir that I’m okay and he could stop Delwyn.
But a single mistake…
“I know you want to run, but how exactly will you accomplish that? I am significantly faster than you. Don’t tell me I need to tie you up. Julian, I really don’t want to hurt you, okay? So just… be good and maybe we can get you out of this alive, alright?”
I ignore him as I try to stay focused on what’s surrounding me. If I ran into a crowded area, could I get away? Would he still take me? What if I shifted; could I hide from him?
My father’s bar isn’t far from here. If I ran to it, could the two of us take him down? He’s right… he’s faster than me, but… if I just tried. I just need to try⁠—
Delwyn brakes hard and just like that, he grabs me, shoving my face against the dashboard as he pushes my hands together behind my back. “I can just see your brain running away with horrible ideas. Just… fucking listen, okay? I don’t want to hurt you, I really don’t.”
He pins me there as he tears his shirt and winds the cloth around my wrists until it’s so tight it cuts into skin.
“I have to think logically, you know? Two dead versus however many it would take to sate him? I know you’re innocent in this, Julian, but… how many should I let die? How many should have to suffer?”
“This shit happened nearly five hundred years ago!”
“You don’t think I’m fucking aware? I’ve told him that! But he won’t listen. And he’s definitely going to kill me if I don’t… so just… stop talking to me. This isn’t my fucking war. You talk to him.”
Delwyn drives as I sit there. Even if I shifted like this… what would I accomplish? Would he really just kill me? Or does he need me alive to use me against Casimir?
Fuck.
After about an hour, the car stops outside a large home. He pulls into the connected garage and drags me out and into the place.
“I got him. Please… can I see her now? Can I please?” he begs, but he’s met with silence.
“Is he making you do this?” I ask. “Delwyn, you don’t seem to want to do it, so is he making you?”
“I have to do it for her,” he says. “Just… stop. Just… be quiet.”
He hauls me up the stairs, but he seems to frantically be looking for something. When he steps into a room, he quickly looks around, anxiety tight across his features.
“Where the fuck is she…” He pulls his phone out and is nearly shaking as he makes a call. “You told me she’d be here. You told me—Yes, I have him… oh… yes, I’m waiting. She better get here soon. You already promised me that I could talk to her and you’ve refused.”
Delwyn hangs up the phone and just stands there for a long moment until I hear the soft sound of footfalls. He slowly looks over at the long-haired calico that steps into the room and looks between us. The moment she sees Delwyn, she rushes forward and starts rubbing against his legs.
“Hey, Gigi. I missed you. You missed me?” he asks as he pulls her into his arms and cuddles her. I think it’s the first time he has really looked at ease since I met him. He presses his face against her fur as he sits on the floor, holding her, like he’s closed off everything around him but this cat until the woman he’s waiting for arrives.
It also tells me that I can use the cat as leverage against him. I could grab it… and what? Would he really think I’d maul a cat?
Fuck… this is the issue with being too nice.
While he plays with the cat, I assess my surroundings. I’m on the second floor, but a jump like that wouldn’t kill me. It sounds like others are coming, so if I’m going to make my escape, I need to make it now.
“She seems really sweet,” I say.
Delwyn looks over at me. “She is.”
“She obviously missed you. Have you not seen her since before you were placed in that box and starved?”
His finger trails over the cat’s head as he stares at me.
“I… I don’t think I told you, but I’m an art professor… and drawing calms me down a bit… can you bind my hands in front so I can draw her? Please? Just… I’m fucking… I’m scared and I just… need something to do, please?” Literally anything to keep talking. To keep reminding him that I don’t deserve to die.
Delwyn quickly looks away, but I know that he isn’t cut out to be a bad guy. He really does feel for me. He really does care about me.
“Fine… it’s not like you can escape,” he says as he stands up and grabs a paper and pen and tosses them on the table before me. Then he unties my wrists. After rubbing them for a moment, I reach for the pen and one of the pieces of paper he’d gotten for me. But I set to work drawing his cat, knowing that Casimir is right. Up against the vampires, I probably couldn’t win… but I do have other talents… like getting people to like me enough that they decide not to kill me.
“She has such beautiful markings. Have you had her a while?” I ask.
“Four years.”
“Did you find her as a kitten?”
“I did… she was just lying there, not moving, and I thought she was dead. Cold as ice… but I still gave it my best shot.”
“That was very kind of you, Delwyn.”
I hear a noise as someone enters the house. Tension fills my body as I realize that I waited too long. Things happened so quickly, I didn’t even have time⁠—
I lunge for the window, not even sure what it’ll gain me, but Delwyn grabs me, tearing me back and throwing me into the chair just as the door opens and a woman steps in. The moment she sees Delwyn, a smile explodes across her face. “Y-You’re back! You finally came back!” she says, and he rushes to her.
He grabs her in his arms, lifting her off the ground as he buries his face against her neck. “I didn’t leave you. I didn’t. He⁠—”
Delwyn grows quiet as the masked man steps into the room and their joy is immediately cut short. Delwyn lowers her to the ground as his smile falls.
“How touching of a reunion. Cute,” the masked man says.
He pushes them out of his way and starts toward me. “Hello there, Julian. We finally get to really meet, don’t we?”
I sit in the chair, unsure of what else to do. There’s no fucking way I could outrun or outfight three vampires.
The masked man reaches me before slowly kneeling down. “You are such an interesting man to have snagged that monster… honestly, I didn’t think that monster had it in him to love.” He sets a finger under my chin and tips it toward him. “Don’t be afraid.” He places a hand on the chair I’m sitting on and rises up a bit so we’re face to face. “I’ll make sure your death doesn’t hurt too much.” He lifts his mask just a bit before kissing my wrist like he wants to remind me how easy it’d be for him to tear into my wrist and kill me. “I mean… maybe just as much as he hurt the person I love, you know? Just enough.”
“This… This was nearly five hundred years ago.”
“Would you forget Casimir’s death in more than four hundred years if you finally found the last piece of the puzzle?” he asks.
I don’t care how many years I lived; I’d never forget him.
“Exactly,” he says, reading my expression alone. He grins before he pulls the mask back down into place. “Now let’s make him hurt.” He turns to the others. “You two are going to watch him?”
“Of course,” the woman says.
“Good. I have some preparations to make. I mean… it’s no fun just… killing him. I want to watch Seven hurt. I want to make him ache and push him to the very brink of existence.” He pats me on the head. “And you get to be the star of the show.”
With that, he leaves the room.
Delwyn stands quietly in the middle of the room for a long moment even as the woman beams at him and looks him over, like she’s checking him for wounds.
“I’m so happy to finally have you back. I know… I know your thoughts don’t align with ours, but we have to do this,” she says, voice gentle.
Even so, Delwyn doesn’t seem convinced as he shakes his head. “He fucking locked me in a goddamn box. You act like I went on a fucking vacation! He nearly killed me. He starved me. Tormented me.”
Her smile falters. “He wouldn’t do that.”
Delwyn seems to be in shock over her words. “He… he wouldn’t do that? Why the fuck do you trust him? I thought you loved me, Cecily?”
I still at that name. So was Casimir wrong and Cecily lived? But he said he saw the Warden standing over the bodies of her and the boy. Yet if I think about it… would they even know how to kill a vampire? They would have no idea that you’d have to remove the head or stake the heart. Who knows what they did and what she was able to heal from.
“I do… you know I love you. But I have to do this. After this is over with, then it’s all done. All of it,” she assures him.
“Are you Rhys?” I ask quietly as I stare at Delwyn. But while her living through it was explainable… how would he have? Or maybe she protected him in some way. Obviously, the Warden wouldn’t be all that concerned over a dying child’s death. He likely checked Cecily and had the bodies disposed of…
Delwyn glances over at me, but his attention drifts back to Cecily just as quickly. “Come on. Let’s just… forget all of this and run. Please.”
“Do you not understand what they did? They slaughtered your mother and your father. They slit the throat of my husband, your brother, in front of me. And when he didn’t die immediately, they stabbed him again and again before I could do anything to protect him.”
Delwyn looks away. “I know you will always love him more than me, but he has been dead for nearly five hundred years. Why must you be tormented like this?”
“And why aren’t you? Your entire family was slaughtered. These Masks tortured you for months.”
“Because I just want to love you and forget all of that ever happened,” he whispers as he drops to his knees in front of her, wrapping his arms around her legs. “I just want this to end. I just want you to only look at me and to stop fucking staring at that monster and wishing that he could create some miracle that will bring you back everything you lost.”
Cecily holds his head against her as she stands there, fingers running through his hair. “I really do love you,” she says. “But let me end this first. And then we can run away⁠—”
“And what about him? He killed as much as Casimir did. Why do you idealize him?”
“Casimir is too strong for us to deal with alone. He has a whole city at his beck and call. So once Casimir is dead, I will take care of Giles myself, and then it’ll just be us.”
Giles? Is that a name Casimir will recognize? As far as I know, the only name he knew was that of Five.
She leans over and kisses his forehead before pulling away from him and walking over to me. Seeing the drawing I’d been doing of the cat, she looks absolutely delighted.
“This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen! You are phenomenal.”
“Thank you,” I say as she slides into the chair across from me and smiles. “Casimir isn’t the man you once knew. You are trying to condemn him for something he couldn’t change.”
She shakes her head, refusing to listen. “Or maybe after hundreds of years, he just learned how to wear a mask better. What do you think?”
“He’s not like that,” I say.
Cecily cups my face and I realize she’s using a prosthetic to replace the hand taken from her. “But what if he’s just telling you the tales he wants you to hear?”
“Who really is the monster? The one who claws their way out of hell and changes their life for the better? Who learns to help people and to care for and love them? Or someone like you who is so fixated on the past that you’re blind to the suffering a man you claim to love, a man that you fought so hard to keep from suffering as a child, is going through?”
She hesitates before giving my cheek a soft pat. “You understand nothing. Don’t pretend you do.”
And then she walks off toward a bedroom. I glance over at Delwyn who still kneels on the floor, caught between the person he loves and what he sees as right.
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CHAPTER 25

CASIMIR
I’m shaking with rage. I haven’t felt like this for years. I haven’t felt an uncontrollable desire to kill like this since I slaughtered the other Masks. Since I thought I finally ended that nightmare.
The moment the phone shows that the call has ended, I tear the katana out of my stomach and turn to the stairs. Anger and fear course through me because this time… this time I have something to lose. Last time the only thing left was my life, and at that point I was so used to how my life didn’t even matter that I felt I had nothing to lose. Honestly, I cared so little for it that the threat of death did little to me.
But not this time. This time I have to do everything I can to keep Julian safe.
The door opens and as Cyrus walks in, he cocks his head when he looks at my furious expression before getting an odd look on his face and stepping back, slamming into Ezio who wraps a protective arm around him.
“What… Casimir, what the fuck happened?” Ezio asks, but I don’t even know what to say to them. That I was so fucking useless that I let them take Julian from me? I’ve already stood there replaying the scene over and over in my mind as the minutes ticked on.
I should have killed Delwyn the moment I met him. I should never have trusted him, never have trusted any of them. This is what happens when I stop being skeptical of everyone.
I turn to the stairs and start up them to that dreadful room. Instead of unlocking the door, I tear it off its hinges and fling it before going over to that fucking chest.
“Casimir, where’s Julian?” Ezio asks, voice gentle.
“Delwyn took him.”
“W-What?” Cyrus asks in shock. “What the fuck happened?”
Rage is coursing through me as it threatens to suffocate me. My grip on my katana’s hilt is so tight, it’s making my hand ache, but the pain is meaningless. “I said Delwyn took him!”
“How long ago?” Cyrus asks.
“At least twenty minutes. He told me if I moved, he’d kill Julian.”
“Your car is gone… did he take it?”
“Yes.”
Cyrus nods as he nudges Ezio. “Ezio, I need my computer. Quickly.”
The two of them rush off, leaving me alone as I tear open the chest and pull out all of the masks stored inside. I’d laid them in neatly, but with my years of abuse to the chest, they’d gotten jumbled around. Grabbing them, I lay them out in front of me, looking over each one. The one closest to my hand is the one that I hid behind for so many years of my life. Quickly, I shove it to the side before grabbing Five’s and pushing it over to mine where it clinks against it. My eyes fall to the rest… all of the masks belonging to the ones who are dead. Four, Nine, Eleven, Twelve, Twenty… it goes on until I have all ten masks.
“I killed you. How can you still fucking haunt me like this?” I growl before I pick up Eleven’s mask and throw it hard against the wall.
“What if one didn’t die?”
I whirl on Yorick and slam him against the wall as I press the blade against his throat. “Do not test me at this moment.”
He holds his hands up. “It was a simple question. What if one of them didn’t die?”
“I staked every last one of them to make sure they were dead. I drove it through their hearts and watched them die,” I say.
“But what if you failed? I can’t fathom you took them all on and were coherent enough to verify every single death.”
No… I was as close to death as I’d ever been, but I know how to kill, and I know I killed them. I… didn’t fuck up. I couldn’t have fucked up…
“They were all monsters, Casimir. I can’t understand how you’d beat yourself up over killing them. The issue is that this monster is peskier than the rest. But don’t worry, I’d love to help.”
“You know nothing,” I growl.
Yorick shakes his head, like I’m being ridiculous. “What? I’m not allowed to also hate the people who killed my family? Really?”
I loosen my grip on him as reason slowly drips into my mind. He’s right. I’m so fixated on my pain and my fight that I forget that it’s not my fight alone. “What do you know?”
“Not much, honestly. I was a dumb kid who thought I was going to become a vampire hunter. My information on the Masks led me to Atticus, the man who turned you. Well… let’s just say that didn’t go too smoothly, but he did inform me that all of the Masks were dead… besides you… and another.”
“What?” I ask.
“I might have been in the middle of trying not to get killed by Atticus, so my information might not be… the best. I mean… yeah, I’d hunted down a couple of vampires, but this asshole was on a whole other level, so I was running and shit and never actually got any information on either of the two Masks. But there was another vampire in the place with Atticus. One who seemed quite interested when I brought up the Masks. I mean, I’m not saying that was the man after you. But he seems similar… familiar…”
“You said you only got a glimpse of him?”
“Uhhh, no… your maker kept me there for a bit. Things were… messy, you know? Eh, don’t worry about all of that. I’m just saying that this guy… had a similar vibe to the Masks, you know?”
“What was his name?”
“He went by Giles.”
I don’t recognize the name, but that’s not surprising. Do I know any of the names of the Masks besides Five? “What did he look like?”
Yorick leans against the wall as he thinks. “Oh man… let me see what I can even remember. I believe he had dark hair, almost black, and I remember how cold his blue eyes were. He was a bit… different. He rattled on about bullshit and seemed to irritate Atticus, so it’s a surprise he even kept him there. It didn’t seem like they were overly close, so I’m unsure why he was there, honestly.”
Dark hair? That would exclude Four who, even with his hair cut short like the Warden wanted, had light blond hair. Nine, Eleven, and Twenty all had dark hair… but what else can I remember about them?
“His speech. Was he soft-spoken?”
“No.”
I slide Twenty’s mask away, confident it’s not him. Even with the different accent, Twenty had a distinct way of talking… when he did talk, and even that was rare. I look at Nine’s and Eleven’s masks, my eyes fixated on them. I set a hand on each mask, staring down at them as questions wildly circulate in my mind. Both of them hated me with a passion. Eleven was calculating and firmly believed that everything the Warden wanted or asked for was like the gods speaking to him. But more than anything, I can remember the way he screamed when I dropped the Warden to his knees minutes before killing him.
And then Nine… Nine always disliked everyone, but he had a heavy dislike for me. Maybe because I didn’t get irritated over the shit Five would spout? Or the way that the Warden continually forgave me for not listening? But in the end, Nine wasn’t as coldhearted as I’d always assumed he’d been.
And while the masked man no longer has an accent, his voice doesn’t match my memory for either of them. But if it was Eleven or Nine… how did they escape death? And what do they have planned?
I would hand myself over in a heartbeat to save Julian, but wouldn’t I still be condemning him to death? He’d live days without my blood… no more. We still haven’t figured out a way to keep him alive without me.
“He wants to make you hurt,” Yorick says. “He’s not going to kill Julian when you’re not there to see it.”
“Then I assume he’s busy setting the scene,” I reply as I stand up, picking up my katana and grabbing my wakizashi as well before hurrying down the stairs. I look over at Cyrus and Ezio who are both staring at Cyrus’s laptop set up on the dining room table.
“Casimir, I’m speaking with the Department of Transportation to get camera footage to identify which way your car went,” Cyrus says. “There’s a vampire who works there that Ezio’s on good terms with who is doing his best to help us.”
“Thank you.”
Ezio gets up and wraps me up in a hug. “Hey, we’re going to find him, okay?”
I nod and instead of pulling away, like I once would, I lean into him. Julian really has taught me how it’s okay to rely on others, to care and feel love for them. How can he have changed me so much in such a short amount of time?
Ezio checks me over before giving my cheek a soft pat. “You need to feed. You need to be ready before you face him. So I’ll call someone here.”
“Sure,” I agree, stepping away. “I have to find him.”
“We will,” Cyrus says. “The issue is that we’re working against the clock. We only have a few hours before we lose the night advantage… I’m sad to say that we might have to extend this into tomorrow.”
I feel useless standing here as Cyrus and Ezio slowly begin to piece together the direction my car went. The problem is that the moment the car heads out of town, they lose all sight of it. It’s not much, but at least we know the direction he went in.
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CHAPTER 26

JULIAN
As morning rises, I’m met with a weird mixture of relief and fear. I feel like the masked man won’t do anything to me during the day because he wants whatever he does to affect Casimir. And I have to assume he wants to do it in front of Casimir. Yet I also know that with the sunlight comes the fact that Casimir can’t come to me.
But if I just made it outside, they could do nothing to stop me. There’s no way they could get to me or touch me outside this house. And if I can’t make it out before then… tonight is the full moon; something they don’t seem to realize. The full moon will make me stronger and fight harder… but it’ll also make it so I’m incapable of comprehending what is happening. I won’t be able to make my own decisions… and might be putting myself more at risk.
When I glance up, I find that Delwyn is staring at me across the windowless room he has me locked in. Cecily is leaning against him as she cross-stitches something while watching the TV that plays behind me. I’ve spent endless hours drawing this cat and thinking about how I don’t know what to do. Maybe I should have taken Casimir more seriously when he wanted to teach me how to defend myself. Maybe I should have listened to my father’s lectures through childhood on how to fight better.
Or maybe nothing I do will save me from three vampires who are all around five hundred years old.
I look up to find Delwyn still fixated on me.
Realistically, he’s my only hope, but he loves Cecily so much that maybe it’s not him I need to convince, but her.
“What are you making?” I ask her.
She glances over at me and flashes me her needlework. “A dragon. Delwyn loves dragons. I’ve only been working on it around, ohhhh, five years. I’m rather slow, but it’s something he picked out and I’m almost done.”
“It’s gorgeous,” I say.
Cecily beams at me. “Thank you. I almost gave up multiple times. I’m not very good at this type of thing, but you pick up random hobbies throughout the years.”
“I took some classes in college for art, and one was more of an obscure one where the professor wanted us to make art with an artform we’d never touched before. As a voracious artist, I’d already played with all types, so I decided to do a mixed media involving needlework. Really made me appreciate stuff like that.”
“That sounds delightful,” she says.
“Trust me, yours is significantly better. When my mom saw it, she thought it was a whale… it was, in fact, not a whale.”
The skin around her eyes wrinkles as she smiles at me. “Oh no.”
“That’s okay, my mom has always encouraged me in everything I’ve done,” I tell her as I set the paper to the side and pick up a new one and begin to draw away. “My whole family has, really.”
“That sounds very nice.”
“Were you not close to your family?”
“No. I don’t even remember them,” she says as she hugs the hoop to herself. “But I got a new family, and I loved them to pieces. And that included this guy.” She fluffs Delwyn’s hair.
Then why can’t she see the suffering he’s going through? I really do think she loves him, but she’s so caught up in her fixation on revenge that it’s made her blind to what is happening around her.
“Are you okay, Delwyn?” I ask.
Delwyn looks away from me, but I notice Cecily glance over at him. She smiles and pulls him in close before kissing the top of his head. “This will all be over soon.”
“It could be over now if we’d just leave,” he whispers.
She responds by kissing his forehead before turning back to the TV.
What am I doing thinking that I’ll get her to cave if the man she loves can’t?
The pen slides across the paper, completing crisscrosses to fill in the shading as my mind continues to race about what I could possibly do. They’re between me and the door… the only way out.
“I… I know this is stupid to ask… but do you know what’s going to happen? I’m scared and… I just want to know what’s going to happen,” I say.
Delwyn tenses as Cecily looks over at me before giving me a smile. “Don’t stress. I’m going to try to keep you alive, alright? Really, we just need you around to get Casimir here.”
“Don’t lie to him,” Delwyn says.
Cecily glances over at him. “I’m not. I mean, why kill him once Casimir’s dead?”
“You really think he’s going to kill Casimir without torturing Julian? You really think that’s what he wants? Why do you not see the monster he is?” Delwyn’s voice rises with each word.
She shakes her head as she tries to give him a convincing smile. “He’s… he’s been through so much that… he doesn’t always make the best choices. You can’t possibly be surprised after how much he’s been hurt once Casimir killed the person he loved, can you?” she asks. “It’s why he wants others to suffer.”
“I’m only surprised by how much of a monster you’ve become,” he says.
Her hand stills, needle between her fingers. “Don’t say that.”
“Is it a lie?” There’s a bite to Delwyn’s words.
“Why would you say that? I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you… but I can also hate what you believe in while loving you,” he says as he gets up and leaves the room. She sighs and sets the cross-stitch down before leaning back.
“Did Casimir ever choose to hurt you?” I ask.
“They all hurt me.”
“But Casimir is the one who hid Rhys… hid Delwyn so the others couldn’t find him. He was trying to protect him.”
Cecily shakes her head, of course refusing to listen. “He never showed him kindness. If he would have taken him to the doctor, whisked him away that day…”
“Do you not understand that he’d been beaten and abused by that man until he couldn’t even think for himself? You realize that he was younger than Rhys when he was taken from his family and mentally tortured until he thought there was no other way? When he told me he loved me, he said it was the first time he’s ever told anyone that. Can you imagine living five hundred years and not knowing how to love because it was tortured out of you? You act like he did all of this with a smile on his face.”
She grits her teeth as she looks away from me. “You didn’t live it. I did.”
“No, I didn’t⁠—”
“You’ve had a pampered life with a family who loves you, allowed to go to college to learn and do whatever the fuck you wanted.”
“Right, I have. But this is not about me! You’re blind to the way Delwyn is suffering. You dismissed him after he told you he was tortured by the masked man, and yet you still claim to love him?” The look on her face as I hesitate makes me realize that I’m doing a pretty shitty job of this. Fuck, fuck, I don’t think enraging her was the way to accomplish this. “I’m going to sleep.” I toss the drawing down and curl up on my side. I still have Casimir’s shirt on, so I pull it up enough to press it against my face, wanting to smell him. Wanting to feel him.
But more than anything… just needing him.
I hear the woman walking toward me and tense up, but I hear her grab the paper of another drawing I’d been working on before stepping away.

The way Delwyn—who had returned to the room a couple of hours ago—tenses tells me that the masked vampire is back. Dusk has just hit, and my entire body feels electrified, letting me know the full moon is here. There’s no window to see out of, but I can feel it out there calling to me.
Delwyn rushes over to Cecily and grabs her hands. “Please, the three of us can work together to get away from him. Cecily. Please?”
She’s quiet and watches as Delwyn holds up his phone. “I’ve told Casimir where we are. He’ll probably kill me, and hell, I deserve it, but I’m not doing this. Julian doesn’t deserve to die. I’m done. So either we run or I’ll stand here and die with the rest of you.”
Casimir is coming?
Ohhhh, I want Casimir… I need Casimir… I need to… I need to run… I need…
No, no… stay focused.
“What… What have you done?” Cecily asks in shock.
“Run with me,” Delwyn begs. “Please. If you truly love me. Run with me.”
The door slams open and the masked man steps in. “No one is running. Delwyn, this is why I locked you away. You’re such a liability. Cecily loves you so much that I thought, foolishly, that maybe you’d be useful. And you did bring the wolf to me, so I guess that’s something, but I’m just… done with you.”
He pulls a sword free and rushes Delwyn. Delwyn jerks back, but the room is small and there’s nowhere to go. Before the masked man can do more than cut Delwyn, Cecily rushes forward, slamming the masked man’s sword away.
“Don’t you dare hurt him,” she growls. “You cannot touch him!”
The smell of Delwyn’s blood hits me, making the bloodlust of my wolf grow. Delwyn reaches for his chest as blood oozes out from between his fingers before he rushes forward and grabs me.
He shoves me into the next room, right as the masked man tears him to the ground. As he’s driven down, he slams into me, throwing me forward. The cat, startled, scampers off to avoid the collision. I twist around, my eyes fixing on the moon through the window as everything around me becomes obsolete.
I don’t know what will happen if I don’t fight it, but what I do know is that Casimir is coming. Casimir is coming and I need him unlike I’ve ever needed anything.
The shift tears through me, knocking me to the ground. I’m tangled in clothes as rage eats through me. The desire to kill and hunt, but… no… I must find Casimir… Casimir… and…
“It’s a full moon,” Cecily whispers, and I realize that at least a part of me is cognizant. Almost like I’ve taken a back seat to my body because right now… all I care about is killing this monster who’s caused Casimir so much dread and pain.
Lunging forward, I rush him. He turns to face me, planning on grabbing me, but I slink out from beneath his blade and rip him to the ground where I tear into him, listening to the bones in his arm break. He swings the arm I’m attached to, bashing me into the wall, forcing me to drop my hold on him, but I refuse to stop. I have to kill him. I need to destroy this man.
Delwyn seems to draw the masked man’s attention to him but all I can think about is tearing this horrible man apart. I lunge at him, and he jerks back.
I rip into him as Delwyn takes the opportunity to cut into the masked man’s throat. He staggers back before grabbing Delwyn’s throat and throws him against the wall before driving his sword into his chest.
“Don’t kill him! Please! Don’t kill him!” Cecily screams.
“Julian, go to Casimir! RUN!” Delwyn yells as he tries to push back against the masked man.
I snarl, flashing fangs at the masked man as I taste his blood in my mouth.
Casimir… I have to kill this man. I have to tear him apart. I have to⁠—
“Casimir needs you! If he can’t use you against Casimir⁠—”
The masked man jerks the sword down, ripping Delwyn’s chest open. Cecily tosses the masked man back and grabs Delwyn before throwing him through the window and disappearing after him.
Casimir… ahhh, Casimir. I need Casimir. I need…
I rush to the window, leaping through it and dropping down onto the ground. The moon is slamming down on me, driving my rational mind back as I see the two vampires that… I should kill. I should tear them down… rip them apart… no… I was doing something… ah… right… I was killing them⁠—
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CHAPTER 27

CASIMIR
We’re scouring the city—Ezio had let me drive his car with surprisingly no complaints—when the text from Delwyn comes in. I stop the car to check my phone.
A simple address.
“What is it?” Ezio asks.
“An address. I’m going now,” I say urgently. “It’s fifteen minutes from here. We’re close. I need to get to him.”
Cyrus seems less certain. “It could be a setup. We should wait for the others to join us. I know the wolves can’t help us with the full moon, but the vampires can. We have to be… and he’s already zooming off.”
I have the accelerator pressed to the floor as I glance over at the others. “I can let you guys out if you want to stay here.”
“No, we’re going.”
“It’s the full moon… so if you see Julian… don’t trust him,” I say. “Especially you, Cyrus.”
That makes Cyrus hesitate. “Dear god. I don’t want to be naked half the time,” he says as I hear him check his gun.
“Like Cyrus said, this might be a setup,” Ezio warns as he takes my phone and scrutinizes Delwyn’s text.
“I know.”
“So what if we come up from the woods? It looks like there’s a patch of trees here,” Ezio says as he examines the map on my phone. “Obviously it won’t offer much coverage, but it’ll break the line of sight.”
“Yeah,” I agree, trying to pay attention, but how can I think about anything other than Julian?
“Turn right here,” Ezio says, so I make the turn and push the car faster.
“Pull in up here on the left and park it. We’ll go on foot.”
“Okay,” I respond as I do as I’m told, turning the car off and jumping out with both my katana and wakizashi in hand. I start running, well aware that Ezio’s not as fast as me and there’s no way Cyrus can keep up, but I have to get to Julian. I have to⁠—
“Don’t be fucking foolish!” Ezio snaps at me. “Yorick’s almost here to help, and if you run ahead, no one can help you!”
I still as I hear someone coming and my attention snaps toward the tree line. “I can hear…” I listen carefully as I see a streak of black racing through the darkness. “Julian!”
He skids to a stop before his eyes shift over to me, his fangs bared. And that’s the moment he’s torn to the ground by that fucking man.
“Oh, isn’t this going to be fun?” the masked man growls as he jerks Julian back toward him.
Julian explodes in his arms, flailing and tearing at him, ripping at flesh so wildly that the man nearly drops him. But he manages to stop Julian when he gets him around the throat. My attention is fixated on him, but I see two other vampires standing not far from them.
“I will slit his throat right here,” the masked man snarls. “Cecily, I might forgive you for what you’ve done if you deal with Casimir. Go on, face the man who ruined your life.”
Cecily? Cecily?
But they killed her. The Warden stood over her to verify she was dead. There’s no way she would still be alive if the Warden checked… could he have made such a grave error?
Cecily faces me, holding Delwyn against herself as she watches me with cold eyes.
“Take your revenge,” the masked man says.
“No, Cecily, please. If we work with Casimir, we can stop this,” Delwyn begs. He looks weak, likely from the blood that coats his clothes.
“You promise you won’t hurt Rhys if I do?” she asks.
Ah… no wonder Delwyn is filled with hatred toward me, if he’s that boy from long ago. I’m sure I would have been as well if I was in his shoes.
“I promise,” the masked man says as he starts backing away with Julian.
I will never forget the cold look Cecily would wear every time we stepped into that room. How could I? I’d seen it nearly every day for—what? Four months? I was there when she was ripped away from her home and family. I was there when she was tortured. And I turned away when she begged for help to save the child.
Delwyn shakily reaches for her. “This fixes nothing, Cecily. This saves no one. This brings no one back from the dead. Please⁠—”
He hesitates before turning toward the masked man. “Please… just let Julian go and we can finish this together. Just let him go. He’s innocent in this. You know as well as I do⁠—”
Maintaining his grip on Julian’s throat, the masked man rushes forward, apparently to finish off what he’d started as he drives his sword down toward the man begging him to stop. Delwyn, who is weak from blood loss, isn’t fast enough to react, but Cecily is. She shoves him hard out of the way and the masked man shifts the sword, choosing, instead, to drive it right through her chest. She gasps as she looks down at the weapon protruding from her heart. Before Delwyn can grab for her, the masked man drops her to her knees, cutting her right open.
“No! No, no, no,” Delwyn screams as he lunges toward her. He catches her as she sinks to the ground.
“All you’ve done for me is cause issues,” the masked man growls before looking up at me.
Anger is eating through me that this horrible man still has Julian and I need to get him back. “Who are you? Eleven?”
That makes him laugh. “Oh? I thought you killed them? You slaughtered all of our brothers.”
How can he still not understand why? Was he really so blind to what we’d done? What we’d become? “They’d gotten out of control. The power they’d acquired made all of us ruthless… monsters.”
“We were always fucking monsters. Brother, you’re going to watch him die and then⁠—”
A gunshot goes off. I’d seen Cyrus coming in from the side, but I think the masked man never saw the human as a threat, so he’d paid him no mind. What exactly did he have to fear from one?
And while the bullet doesn’t hit him, it makes him jerk back, and that’s all Julian needs to twist free and rush for me. I reach for him a moment before Ezio races forward, and I realize what’s going to happen.
The masked man simply replaces one with another as he grabs Cyrus by the throat and jerks him back, rushing from the scene because he’s well aware he won’t overpower me and Ezio.
“NO!” Ezio yells as he runs after him. I move to help him just as Julian slams into me. His teeth sink into my arm as he tries to tear me to the ground, driven mad by the moon’s light.
“Julian, please,” I beg. “Julian, please, listen to me.”
I’m afraid of hurting him, but there’s no way Ezio can take that man down alone. He might even take the opportunity to hurt or kill Ezio without my protection. And who is to say he won’t just kill Cyrus after using him as a shield?
“Julian, please,” I repeat, but he can’t hear a word I’m saying.
Suddenly, I hear someone behind me and see Yorick hurrying toward me.
“Watch Julian!” I yell as I throw the werewolf to him. Julian’s more than pleased to have someone else to maul, and Yorick yelps as Julian tries to latch on to him. I run deeper into the trees, looking for the others, but I don’t make it far before the stench of blood hits me. Turning quickly, I scan the brush until I see a body lying on the ground.
“Ezio!” I yell as I reach him, my stomach knotting as I drop to my knees beside him. There’s so much blood, but thankfully, he’s healing, telling me it’s not fatal.
“F-Fuck,” he groans as he fights to get up, causing blood to gush from his wounds.
“Stop, I’ll get Cyrus.” I have to get him. It’s my fault Ezio’s hurt and Cyrus is in danger.
Ezio seems damn near panicked, not caring at all about his own wounds, only caring about Cyrus. “Please. I shouldn’t have put him in danger. Please⁠—”
“I promise, I’ll get him.” And I really hope that I can keep that promise.
Quickly, I rise as Ezio tries to follow me, but he can’t keep up as I run toward the area that Cyrus had been taken and rush toward the thickest part of the trees, feeling anxiety unlike anything I’ve ever felt. So many fucking emotions are racing through me because of this fucking man trying to tear my life apart. Trying to take what makes me happy. I’ve forced a wall between myself and my affection for others for years and now that I’ve finally started to break that wall down, this man thinks it’s his right to destroy all of it.
The trees are blocking my view, but I can smell the masked man’s blood from Julian mauling him. Fear eats at me that he’s fooled me somehow. Could he have run back to grab Julian… or what if Yorick can’t hold him? I hate being this far away from the man I love.
But the fear that’d been written across Cyrus’s face when he’d walked in to find me enraged pushes me forward. Cyrus can’t handle something like this. Whatever happened to him in the past has destroyed a part of him, and I can’t let it happen again because I was incapable of keeping him safe.
And here I am, allowing yet another I’d promised to protect to get caught up in this bullshit. I can’t let him die. I can’t let him get hurt… I…
The sound of a branch cracking snatches my attention.
I turn and slow as I see Cyrus standing in the middle of the trees all alone.
“C-Cyrus?” I ask, but everything about this scene is wrong. It’s making my instincts toss up warnings.
Cyrus slowly looks up at me from where he stands. I hesitate, positive it has to be a trap. There’s no way he just let Cyrus go so quickly.
“Is he… where is he?” I ask as I look around, grip on my katana tight in case he comes for me while I’m not ready.
Cyrus shakes his head. “No, he… let me go.”
“He just… let you go?” I ask in disbelief.
“Y-Yeah,” he says as he stands there, an odd look on his face.
“Cyrus?” I ask as I slowly walk toward him, feeling that this situation is all kinds of wrong… but Cyrus is safe… and that’s all that should matter, right? But then why do I feel like I’m on high alert? Why do I feel like something’s not right?
“Sorry… that just freaked me out a bit,” he explains as I reach for him. “Is… Ezio?”
“He’s fine,” I say reassuringly, wanting to run past him, wanting to chase that man down, but would I even catch him at this point?
The look of distress on Cyrus’s face captures my attention, so instead, I push past the standoffish attitude I generally don when it comes to others and I grab him, wanting to comfort him like Julian has taught me.
His entire body is rigid, coated in tension, but his fingers dig desperately into my shirt, enough that if I was a human, he’d have been hurting me. He gasps like he’s taking his first breath since he’d been captured.
“Cyrus, what happened?” I ask. “Why did he let you go?”
He jolts, his breath catching. “He just… did. Just…” His tension returns at my question, and he starts to pull back from me. I want to ask him more, but I know that’s not what Julian would do. No… he’d comfort him… he’d help him.
“Cyrus, I’m sorry. It’s okay,” I say, squeezing his small body tightly against me. “You’re okay.”
The tension slowly leaves him as he sinks his fingers into my shirt. “I’m sorry, I’m acting foolish. We need to get back to the others. We need to make sure they’re okay.”
“Okay. Can I carry you so I can run?” I ask.
“I… guess.”
I grab him and turn to run back to Ezio who meets us partway.
The moment he sees Cyrus, relief washes over his face, and I can’t help but remember how he’d lost the man he loved. I don’t think he’d have handled losing Cyrus well. His hands are shaking as they reach out to Cyrus. “Oh fuck, you’re fine… I’m so sorry. I did fucking nothing but just⁠—”
“You did a lot,” Cyrus says as he pulls from me. He steps up to Ezio and seems to check him over. “Don’t reduce what you did to nothing. You were literally willing to die for me. I firmly believe that was something.”
“I’m so glad Casimir could save you,” Ezio says.
“I didn⁠—”
“Right? We’re lucky we have an old fucker with us,” Cyrus responds, cutting me off, and when his eyes meet mine, there’s something in them that tells me that I’m supposed to take this and agree with it.
“I need to get to Julian. Come on,” I say as I hurry back to the trees.
There, I find Yorick brawling with the werewolf who very much wants to tear him apart.
Yorick’s attention snaps to us, which causes Julian to strike again. “Oh joyous day! You’re back! Finally! Come take your bitey puppers. So bitey! Ha ha ha!” It’s a bit more of a cry there at the end as Julian hangs off his arm. “That… is my arm! Ha ha!”
I rush forward and grab Julian. “Julian, please, let him go.”
Julian growls at me but as I pry his mouth off, he does let go. He twists and growls, but the tighter I squeeze him, the more he calms down until he seems satisfied to just lie in my arms. He sets his head on my shoulder and just shows his fangs to everyone who looks at him as my fingers sink into that thick fur of his.
I look around before moving back to where Delwyn is and find him kneeling on the ground, sobbing as he holds Cecily’s body.
“Is she…” But I don’t even have to ask. It’s obvious that she’s dead. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” And I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for. Her death? For not saving him as a child?
“No… the one who should be sorry is me,” he says shakily as he holds her tightly in his arms. “She was so caught up in her own desire to destroy her nightmares… that she ended up letting them consume her.”
“Maybe it was greedy of me not to save her back then. Not to save you⁠—”
“Why would you?” Delwyn asks. “Why the fuck would you throw your entire life away for some random person? But she couldn’t understand that. She could only see that the way to contend with her nightmare was to destroy it. But she was my whole world. My whole life. My only family… she was a good woman. She really was. She was all that I ever had. And now… she’s gone.”
“I’m truly sorry,” I say. I can tell the moment Cyrus gets near because Julian starts to flail and fight against me, trying to get to him.
Cyrus kneels near him. “Delwyn… can I take her from you? We can⁠—”
“No! No, no, no,” Delwyn says as he wildly shakes his head, clutching her tighter to him.
“Okay… Casimir, I could drive you guys⁠—”
Julian lunges at him, but I hold him down, afraid I’m going to hurt him with all of his flailing… and what if he gets free of me and causes the car to crash? While I could make Ezio drive me and have Cyrus stay in a different car, the crash could still cause Julian to get hurt.
“I’ll wait here,” I say.
“What if he returns?”
“Then I will kill him,” I growl. “I hope he returns. I will end his miserable life. I will destroy him.”
“Okay…” Cyrus says, seeming uncertain.
I step back to give Delwyn some space before sinking to the ground to hold on to Julian. He snarls and snaps until the others are out of sight, and only once we’re alone does he settle. I sink my fingers into his fur and kiss the top of his head, so fucking thankful that I finally have him back in my arms.
The tension leaves his body as he watches me with his blue eyes, resting against me, finally content.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 28

JULIAN
When I open my eyes, Casimir is staring down at me. His finger gently slides over my cheek, slowly running over it.
“C-Casimir?” I ask before relief washes through me. “Casimir!”
Even though I’m already on his lap, I feel like I’m not close enough. I push into him, grabbing him tightly. “Casimir, Casimir.”
“Hey, I’m right here,” he soothes, hand cupping my cheek.
“The others? Ezio? Cyrus?”
“They’re okay,” he says as he gently rubs my back. He pulls me up and wraps his arms around me, squeezing me tightly against him. “I’m right here. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“No, don’t ever apologize. It’s not your fault.”
Casimir kisses my cheek. “You chewed him up good.”
“I did?” I ask. “I remember jumping out the window and the rest… god, I don’t remember the rest.”
“You also chewed the shit out of Yorick.”
Now that horrifies me. “Oh my god…”
“He’s fine. He deserves it.”
I grimace. “I’m… not sure he does.”
“Guys, the sun is going to come up and we need to get Delwyn inside,” Cyrus calls as he makes his way toward us.
“Did McBitey finally settle down?” Yorick asks as he walks up wearing clothes that are absolutely shredded. His shirt just seems to be there for decoration at this point and I can see his underwear through the multiple tears in the pants.
“Do… do not tell me I did that,” I whisper.
Yorick tugs his shirt that’s ripped and bloody. “Oh, puppers! This is a new fashion style. This is definitely how I showed up and didn’t happen while we were full-on brawling.”
“It’s definitely not,” Cyrus says. “You were… infuriated unless Casimir was holding you. Then you were like a sweet doe-eyed puppy.”
“I am… horribly embarrassed,” I realize.
Cyrus gives Casimir a push. “Come on, we need to get inside. We’re already not making it back like this. And we need to deal with Delwyn.”
“What’s… wrong with Delwyn? He helped me,” I say, in case they’re wanting to hurt him over his actions.
“Cecily… was killed,” Casimir tells me.
My stomach sinks.
While she wasn’t exactly the nicest to me… she was still someone Delwyn loved deeply. I stand up and Cyrus drops a blanket on me that I wrap around myself as I scan the area, but I see him not too far away.
Slowly, I walk over to where Delwyn sits, holding Cecily.
“Delwyn—”
“Not yet. Please, not yet,” he begs, and it guts me to hear the pain in his voice. “Just… I just need more time to say goodbye.”
I see she’s covered in a blanket, but he doesn’t appear to have moved from where she died if I go by the blood that coats the ground beneath him. “Okay. But we need to get inside, okay? Come on. Let me help you.”
I reach for him, but he’s reluctant to rise. Cyrus and Ezio come to help him, but he doesn’t move until Casimir walks up to him.
“Come on,” Casimir urges.
He slowly rises with her in his arms and walks toward the house as the others lead the way. I don’t really want to stay in this house, but we clearly can’t make it home before the sun is up. There’s already hints of it in the sky, and we can’t push our luck when it comes to it.
Once inside, Cyrus hands me some clothes which I pull on as Delwyn decides that he doesn’t want to go farther than the foyer.
“Do we call for the coroner?” Ezio asks quietly.
“I… was hoping to give him time until he was ready, but…” Cyrus glances toward the foyer. We can’t see Delwyn, but thinking of him alone makes me feel sick. I’ve only known Casimir a short time and I already feel like I couldn’t live without him… imagine if I knew him nearly five hundred years?
I button the pants I’d been given and walk into the foyer where I sit on a bench. Delwyn’s kneeling on the ground, head hung, eyes closed, not acknowledging me.
“Is there something I can do to help you?”
“No,” he whispers.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Please. Don’t apologize,” he says.
For a long moment, we sit in silence. I don’t know how to help, and I don’t know if sitting here is even of any comfort to him, but I don’t want to leave him.
Delwyn slowly looks up at me. “I know… in your eyes she might seem selfish… and horrible, but she was such a kind and wonderful person. She cared so much… she would do anything she could to keep me safe… to keep me fed and happy as a child, and then opening her heart to me as I got older. She loved so much that she could get lost in this idea of revenge for those who had died too soon. You really would have loved her… but you met her at the worst moment.”
“I’m sure I would have.”
“Could you get something for me? She had this jewelry she loved… that she cherished after I got it for her. Can you get that?”
“Of course. What’s it look like?”
“A ruby pendant. It’s the only jewelry she wore; you can’t miss it.”
“Okay,” I say as I get up and start toward the stairs.
Casimir looks up at me and I give him a soft smile. “I’m just going to grab something for him,” I explain.
He gives me a nod a moment before his eyes flicker up. I turn to look at what caught his attention, expecting Delwyn to be coming toward us, when I hear the front door slam shut.
My eyes snap to the sky outside as I see the first rays of the sun coming up, and I realize with horror what Delwyn has just done.
“No, no, no!” I grab the blanket that Cyrus had covered me up with off the floor and hurry to the door. I shove through it as I see Delwyn all the way across the yard as the sun innocently peeks over the horizon.
“Delwyn, don’t! Please? Run to me!” I beg as I rush toward him.
He turns and smiles at me. “I have lived almost five hundred years, Julian… and every moment of it was filled with happiness because of her. She is the light of my life. She is what I live for… she is all I love…”
The sun is beating down on his back as he drops to his knees and buries his face against the blanket she’s hidden beneath. “There is nothing left for me here,” he says, his voice gutting me.
“Please! NO! She wouldn’t have wanted you to die,” I yell as I race toward him. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer, Delwyn. Please run to me.”
“Nothing would hurt as much as living without her,” he says as his hands tighten on the blanket wrapped around her. “I don’t know how to keep going without her. I don’t know⁠—”
I can see the sun burning him, but just a little farther. I have to reach him. He’s severely hurt, and I can’t fathom the pain he’s going through, but he has to keep fighting.
“I don’t know how to live alone.”
I nearly slam into him as I drive him to the ground, covering him with the blanket as the smell of burning skin hits me. “You don’t have to live alone! I know it feels like it right now. I know it feels like your whole world is crashing around you, but I’m here. We’re all here.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, you’re right. I don’t. And I’m so sorry you have to. But she loved you for so many years. She did everything she could to protect you, to give you a good life, and then grow older together. Don’t waste this. You need to live to cherish those moments with her. To never forget how much you loved her.”
I hear footsteps behind me and see Cyrus reach us. “Get in the fucking house,” he yells. “I know it fucking hurts when the ones you love die. It’s the worst pain you can ever feel. You feel like you can’t go on, but you have to.”
“Come on, Delwyn. The sun is getting higher by the moment. Please.”
I feel him move under me and I realize he’s setting Cecily down. “She loved the sun… I just… let her be out in it… one last time.”
With Cyrus guiding him, and me keeping him covered, we manage to pull him back to the house. I don’t let him sit in the foyer; I guide him in deeper before turning to Casimir. “Watch him,” I say before rushing up the stairs. I look through every room, around every corner until I finally see that calico cat and grab her. Then I hurry down the stairs to where Delwyn is alone with Ezio. I don’t want to interrupt, but Ezio waves me in when he sees me.
I hold the cat out to Delwyn who quickly takes her, dragging her to his chest as she purrs the moment she’s in his arms.
Quietly, I back away to give them space. Ezio had lost someone he loved as well, so he really is the best person to speak to Delwyn. Hell… it seems like I’m surrounded by people who were forced through pain again and again. I glance at Cyrus and question who he’d lost, then look at Casimir who’d lost so much.
“You did good,” Casimir says as he pulls me to him.
“I feel a bit shaky…”
“If he really wanted to die, he would have waited another ten minutes,” Cyrus tells me. “He just… needed someone like you to remind him that he needs to keep living. Fucking hell, you guys exhaust me. I’m tired.”
“You okay, Cyrus?” I ask.
He looks a little off but gives me a forced smile. “Just… wondering why I didn’t go to school to be a librarian or something. I could have been so good at shushing troublemakers and instead… I’m stuck with this lot.”
“You love us, and you know it.”
“Eh.”
I give him a smile which immediately makes him grin.

While Cyrus deals with Cecily, the rest of us wait in the house for night to come. The house seems very oppressive, and I don’t know about everyone else, but I’ve never been more thankful to get out of it and back to Casimir’s place. Even exhausted, I didn’t sleep a single moment.
“I feel like it has to be Nine or Eleven,” Casimir says as he sits at the dining room table in his home after filling everyone in about his past. Delwyn is sitting in the corner holding his cat, Gigi, while Gustov questions whether she’ll be his new best friend—Gigi is not quite sure about that. Delwyn’s looking a little better after he got some blood. Yorick, Cyrus, and Ezio are also at the table, but none of us seem to be overly helpful.
“He called himself Giles, right?” I ask Delwyn.
“Yeah.”
“And you don’t recognize him from when you were a child?” I ask.
“It was so many years ago… and all of them wore masks… I never saw the faces of any of them. I only remembered the number Seven because I saw it as he put me in that chest. I couldn’t even tell you a thing about the rest; I’d just built them all up to be monsters in my mind. But this man, he introduced himself as Giles to Cecily… and told her that he wanted her help killing the final Mask.”
“Does he forget he’s also a Mask?” I ask.
“Hell if I know. I would not consider him a rational guy. He was very adamant about making Casimir pay for killing the person he loved.”
“The… person he loved?” Casimir asks, eyebrows knitting. “Did any of us love anyone? I’m pretty sure we were just all… existing. Half of them wouldn’t even bat an eye when one of their ‘brothers’ were slaughtered.”
“Do you think because it’d been so driven out of you that you might not have recognized that someone was in love with someone else?” I ask. “Or maybe they kept it extremely hidden to keep the Warden from abusing them more?”
“Maybe. The only one who seemed to…” Casimir falls silent. “Eleven was obsessed with the Warden. But I don’t know that I would have considered that love.”
“Did this Giles ever hint at who it was that he was in love with?” Cyrus asks.
“No, but I’m going to be real honest, I talked to him very little. He was rarely at that house. He only stopped to talk to Cecily, and I tended to avoid him whenever he was around. He seemed to hate me because I disliked him,” Delwyn says, which makes sense when we searched the whole house and found nothing that even seemed to belong to Giles.
“Whose home is it?” Cyrus asks.
“His.”
Casimir looks over at Yorick. “Do you happen to know where Atticus is?”
“Atticus?” Cyrus asks.
“My maker,” Casimir explains.
Yorick gets a funny look on his face. “Ahhhhh. I’d rather not.”
“But do you?” Casimir asks him.
“I’d really rather not. Oh, look at the time, I should go. I should go far, far away. So far you cannot ever make me find that dreadful man. Yessir. That is how far.”
“Yorick, it could help us,” I say softly.
Yorick stares at me and his frigid expression melts. “Fuck, puppers. Don’t do this to me. The last time we saw each other, it did not end well. He was all ‘I will finally kill you, you pesky prick.’ And I was like ‘Oh no! I really think you shouldn’t! Look how lovely I am!’”
“I’m confused… is that any different than your interactions with anyone?” Cyrus asks. “I’m pretty sure Casimir has threatened your life.”
Yorick waves him off. “It’s different. You think Casimir is scary… nuh-uh. Nothing like this guy. Fuckity fuck fuck. Fine. I will… put in a request to speak to him. Maybe he’ll be happy to speak to Casimir.”
I turn to Casimir. “You think your maker might know something?”
“Yorick said he’d had a run-in with him years ago, and at that time, he believed that Giles was with him,” Casimir says.
“I have grudgingly sent him a message,” Yorick says.
“Okay! Now that we have that set, let’s… do something distracting, eh?” I suggest.
“Do we have it ‘set’?” Yorick asks, looking absolutely devastated as he stares at his phone. “The only thing I have ‘set’ is how much you guys cause me pain. I thought you all loved me?”
“Did we mistakenly give you that impression?” Casimir asks.
I glance over at him and raise an eyebrow. “Be nice. He’s helping us.”
“Yeah, but he can still help us and fear me instead of love me. I know nothing about Yorick beyond the fact that he’s irritating. I don’t even know his last name.”
“I don’t either,” Yorick says. “I made one up when I wanted to be all cool and fit in. So I picked Cox. Fitting, eh? I like it. It’s got a ring to it, right? Yorick Cox. It’s how I get laid.”
“Is it?” I ask skeptically.
“All I have to do is go, ‘My name is Cox. Mr. Cox. What? That turned you on? Why yes, allow me.’”
“Has that ever worked?” Cyrus asks. “Like at any point in your life has it worked?”
Yorick cocks his head and gives him a seductive smile. “My name is Cox, and do you wanna see⁠—”
“No.”
“Then once,” Yorick says with a sigh. “And I think it was a pity fuck… no, I’m pretty sure it was.” He sighs again. “Let’s talk about someone else’s embarrassing life. OR we could play a board game!”
“Sure,” I agree. “That sounds significantly better. I think we have Monopoly around here somewhere.”
“I was thinking like The Settlers of Catan or something,” Yorick says with a tsk. “Not some grandma game.”
I feel like I should be offended by this since I suggested it! “How am I a grandma when I’m the youngest… Cyrus, how old are you?”
“Uh… thirty-two,” he says.
“Why did that take you so long?”
Cyrus shrugs. “I’m old, okay? After a certain number of years, one struggles to remember! Like once I hit thirty, I really just stopped remembering most things.”
“I remember every single birthday,” Ezio says. “Especially the one where Casimir got me a donkey. An evil fucking donkey that bit me and knocked me down. It took its little hoofies and just beat me with them. OH, but he got Julian, who he knew for merely weeks, a car. A really nice car.”
It is a really nice car.
“Sometimes, I feel like that’s your fault for having questionable friends,” Cyrus says.
“I will buy you something!” Yorick says as he beams at Ezio. “What would you like in order to be my new best friend?”
Casimir gives him a displeased look. “Oh hell, no. If I’ve had to put up with his antics for hundreds of years, I get that title no matter how grudgingly I take it,” he grumbles.
“We’re BEST FRIENDS?” Ezio asks, all pain over being beaten with “hoofies” gone. “Oh hell, my heart.”
“Then who will be my best friend? Ju⁠—”
Ezio gives him a look like he wasn’t just willing to befriend him. “Julian’s my best friend too. So is Cyrus. You can be friends with the dog,” Ezio decides.
“Gustov only needs me,” Casimir growls. “And Julian.”
“B-But…” Yorick appears quite heartbroken as he looks around.
“Even though you chucked me out of a tenth-floor window to plummet to my death, I will consider you a friend,” I say, which pleases Yorick. I really shouldn’t have forgiven him so easily.
“You’re such a sucker,” Casimir says.
“I know. I know. Delwyn, would you like to play Monopoly with us?” I ask.
“We’re only playing it until a better game arrives,” Yorick says as he takes Casimir’s phone without permission and starts ordering something.
“Come on, Delwyn,” I urge. “It’ll be fun.”
Delwyn slowly looks over at us as I push my chair toward Casimir’s and slide an empty seat next to me.
“Even if you don’t play, I’d like it if you sat with us.”
Delwyn seems uncertain. “Why would you even… forgive me? You haven’t even gotten the bloodstain off the floor yet,” he says as he waves toward the stain that I had taken one look at and tossed a few paper towels over before calling it a day.
“Because Julian has a fucking heart of gold,” Casimir says. “Yorick literally tried killing him and look at him, pretending like he’s part of the group.”
Yorick gasps. “I’m not pretending! I am a part! Puppers!” he cries, like he knows I’m the weakest of the group and most willing to accept him. “I’m sensitive and need to be loved.”
“I may not always understand Julian… and sometimes I might find his ability to forgive others so quickly a bit… much. But he’s taught me a lot,” Casimir says, which is as good of an acceptance as Delwyn’s probably ever going to get. Honestly… it’s better than I ever envisioned. I think Delwyn’s grief is the only reason Casimir hasn’t tossed him into a ditch somewhere.
“Why the hell is it we all talk about how awesome Julian is! What about me?” Yorick cries.
“Welcome to the club,” Ezio says dryly. “It’s an ‘Either praise Julian or get out’ kind of attitude here.”
“Is not!” I protest as I hurry over to grab the game. Thankfully, I can still hear them praising me, since it’s just in the next room. “But if you want to keep talking about how awesome I am, I’m listening.”
“You know what, Delwyn, Julian is useful for one thing,” Ezio says as I return.
“Only one thing?” I ask in disbelief.
“Shift.”
“Why?” I ask as the game is plucked out of my arms.
“Go on now. Shift,” Ezio orders.
“I only shift if Casimir promises to put doggy clothes on me,” I say.
Ezio raises an eyebrow as Casimir pretends to have never heard anything.
“I’ll bite. Where are the dog clothes?” Ezio asks curiously.
“Oh, let me show you,” I say with a grin as I hurry over to the cupboard.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Casimir growls. “That was shown to you in faith that you would never show another.”
Ezio grabs Casimir before he can stop me, allowing me to reach the secret cupboard and snatch up the first costume I can find.
“What do we have here? Christmas tutu! How cute.”
“I am… so embarrassed right now,” Cyrus says.
“Everyone, just forget the freaking cupboard,” Casimir demands.
“Aw, cute little tulle skirt, how fun! Shift, Julian, shift!” Ezio says as he pushes Casimir back toward his seat.
And since everyone is expectantly looking at me, I sigh and drop my pants.
“Can you not go in another room?” Cyrus cries.
“Now this is my kind of entertainment,” Casimir says. “I’m loving this, Julian. Please continue.”
“Now I feel awkward!” I comment.
“Your balls are literally already out. I’m not sure how much more awkward you could get,” Cyrus says.
“Do I pull my pants back up?”
“Turn around,” Casimir suggests.
I quickly turn around.
“So then they can see how cute your ass is,” Casimir says, sounding quite pleased.
“Oh my god, this is the worst,” I grumble as I try to hobble out of the room with my pants around my ankles.
“He acts like you asked him for a strip show, Ezio,” Cyrus says.
I quickly shift, and before I can do anything Ezio tugs the teeny tulle skirt on me, and then picks me up before plopping me down on the table in front of Delwyn.
“Stuff your face in his fur. It is guaranteed to make you feel better,” Ezio urges.
Delwyn looks more than a little confused by this. “W-What? I’m… I’m sure that’s not…”
Ezio pushes his face against my chest.
“Oh… That… does feel nice,” Delwyn realizes.
“Right? The skirt just sets it all off.”
“You guys are ridiculous,” Cyrus says.
“If you don’t believe me, try it!” Ezio tells him. “Every time I’m sad, I come over and just burrow my face against him. Presto, everything fixed.”
“How often does this happen?” Casimir asks.
“Probably more than you want to know,” I admit.
Ezio pushes Cyrus’s face against my side.
“This… no… this is weird,” Cyrus says, but he says it while continuing to cling to me.
“I wanna hug the puppers too!” Yorick cries as he shoves Casimir out of the way and squeezes me.
“Look how happy he is! His tail is just going!” Ezio says. “He loves it!”
“Julian… you’re supposed to only let me hug you,” Casimir complains, sounding jealous.
“I know, but they’re all so happy. Look at our friends.”
Casimir scoffs, evidently not agreeing with this. But Delwyn is giving me a soft smile as he pokes my ear while petting his cat who is wondering why there’s another animal.
“He would make good mittens,” Cyrus determines.
I stare at him in shock, very much wanting to “What the fuck, Cyrus” him, but I’m incapable of saying anything in my current form.
Yorick just burrows his face in there. “He’s so fun when he’s not chewing you to pieces. Ha ha ha.”
“I will shift right here if they keep sassing me.”
“Do it,” Casimir says.
“Do what?” Cyrus asks. “Make him into little mittens?”
I shift back, right there on the table while Yorick and Cyrus are still clinging on to me. “You are not making me into mittens.” I mean… I assumed the tulle skirt would cover up everything but it busts, slingshotting itself right into Yorick’s face. His head snaps back as he grabs for his eye.
“Oh my god! Julian, why? My face was… so close to you,” Cyrus cries. “Your flesh was flush against my cheek. Fucking hell.”
“Oh… I forgot others aren’t naked half the time,” I say. “And in my defense… I thought the skirt would still cover most things…”
“I see no problem with this,” Yorick says, having recovered enough that he continues to hug me.
“I see a fucking problem with it,” Casimir growls as he tries to separate me from Yorick who seems prepared to fight for this.
Delwyn even chuckles at the look of horror on Cyrus’s face. “You guys are… ridiculous…”
Cyrus is scrubbing at his face while looking at me like I’ve done something horrible to him. “I have been fucking deceived. Why is this fine with you? You are so very naked… you are still on the table. I have eaten here.”
“I know… but I was scared you were going to make me into mittens!” I say. “And the skirt was supposed to hide my jewels, Cyrus! It’s not my fault Casimir bought such cheap costumes!”
“Oh no…” Ezio whispers.
All of us look over at the large window that looks out onto the porch that the delivery woman was walking across to reach the door. She’s staring right through the window, eyes fixated on me, perched absolutely naked on the table while Yorick tries to hug me, and Casimir is trying to beat him off me with what’s left of the tulle skirt. Cyrus is covering his eyes and Ezio is cackling with absolute delight over what’s just happened.
“Oh fuck. I’ve locked eyes with her, and I can’t look away. Did she see me shift? Oh my god, what if she saw me shift?” I whine.
“Those are totally the eyes of a woman who has seen a naked man, not a wolf man,” Ezio assures me.
“She won’t stop looking. Yorick, let me go.”
“But if I do, she’ll get to see all of your bits and pieces!”
“FUCK. Never mind, don’t let me go. CLOTHES, SOMEONE FIND ME CLOTHES.” I can’t find anything but the Monopoly board that Cyrus is just casually pulling out of the box, like he’s decided to ignore the whole situation. Yanking it forward, I cover my groin.
“On it!” Ezio says as he starts tugging my shirt on me, but somehow gets my head stuck in the armhole.
“Why would you go for the fucking shirt first, Ezio? My pants! Get my pants! Is she still looking?”
I manage to yank the shirt down, but as I grab for it, the game board goes sliding off to oblivion as my eyes latch on to hers… clearly, she never looked away. “MAKE HER LOOK AWAY!”
“What if I got naked?” Yorick asks. “That would make her look away.” He pulls his long hair free of the ponytail he has it in. Then in the most dramatic way possible, he gives her a smoldering look as he flicks his hair back and turns to look her right in the eyes, his smolder notch cranked up to a thousand.
She does not, in fact, look away from me at all.
Yorick lets out a screech reminiscent of a pterodactyl. “What the fuck? I’m so pretty, though! Look how pretty I am! How could she not even spare me a glance? Do I look ugly? Is my hair laying weird? Julian, am I pretty?”
“You’re fucking useless is what you are,” Casimir says as he shoves him out of the way. “Deal with her!”
“Fine, fine!” Yorick yells as he trots off.
“Casimir, get my pants! If I stop crouching, she’s going to see more.”
“I… I can’t,” he says, sounding devastated. “Julian, I’m sorry.”
“Why the fuck not?!”
Casimir points at the floor with a shaking finger. “Gustov is using them as a pillow. Look at how cute he is. Look at that little sleeping baby. Do you think you could draw that? Let me get a picture for you to refer to later!”
“What the fuck? Why is the dog napping? Why couldn’t he be barking at the delivery lady like a normal dog? CYRUS, please, my pants. If I stand up it’ll all be on display.”
Cyrus is over there sorting the Monopoly money, like he’s not even a part of any of this anymore. “I’m sorry. The close-up image of your naked ass where I eat has made me incapable of doing anything. I’m actually in the process of rewriting your existence.”
“Now what?” Yorick asks as I look over and realize he’s brought the woman into the room with us.
“Why did you bring her in here?” I hiss as I quickly go to dismount the table but because Cyrus has now spread Monopoly money all over it, I step on a pile that sends my foot slipping out from under me as I crash off the table and right into Cyrus’s lap, seeing as the man of my dreams is too busy on his hands and knees photographing his dog that’s finally woken up.
“WHY?” Cyrus cries. “Why me?”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “Please. Just give me pants. In my delirious sleep-deprived state of mind, I thought this was going to be so funny. Like ha ha, Julian’s naked with a goofy little dog skirt. But instead, it’s turned horrifying. I regret everything.”
“GOOD!” he grumbles as he grabs Ezio’s shirt, yanking it off to toss at me.
I cover myself as I look over at the delivery woman. “Good evening.”
“… I see,” she says.
“I would like you to describe what you saw on the table,” Yorick says.
“A very naked man being held by other… men in an oddly intimate manner. I am highly confused. Is this why you guys pay so much? No one else will deliver here?” she whispers.
Oh, thank god, she didn’t see me shift. What a fucking mess.
“When I pulled in, I swear I saw a dog on the table⁠—”
Oh fuck.
“And was like ha, that’s weird there’s a dog on the table. Maybe they’re grooming it… although it was also a fleeting question whether it was some kind of strange worshiping circle. And then… no… it wasn’t a dog at all. It was a man. A very naked man. And like… okay, I can deal… but what is under those paper towels?”
I glance over at the paper towels covering the bloodstain I couldn’t get up.
“Why… why does it look bloody?” she asks.
I give Casimir a nudge. “Casimir, help out here.”
“Ah, right. Gotta protect my five stars,” he says. Not “Gotta protect my boyfriend’s naked ass,” nope. The stars.
He pulls out his wallet and flips through, pulling five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills out. Then he looks at me and seems to realize the trauma I’ve put her through is well worth more than that and adds two more before holding them out.
“There we go.”
She stares at the money. “I mean… this can be a thing if you want. What’s it called? You know, where I come and watch you guys… be naked… on tables while other men hug you?”
“Exhibitionism,” Ezio unhelpfully tosses out.
How the hell can these people be so unhelpful? “Oh my god. We were playing a game, and it just… you know. Like strip poker.”
“But you’re playing Monopoly,” she says as she points at the board.
“Stripopoly, it’s all the rage,” Yorick tells her.
“Then why’s he the only one missing any clothes?” she asks.
“He’s just really bad at it,” Ezio says. “He just kept not passing Go, you know?”
“L-Let me give you more money,” I whisper as I grab my pants that Gustov has left to greet the guest. Quickly, I pat for my wallet.
“What the fuck. My face was smashed against your naked torso, and you’re not paying me off?” Cyrus asks.
I open my wallet and hand Cyrus all the money in it.
“Three dollars? I almost feel like this is more of an insult than an apology.”
“I don’t carry much cash on me, sorry,” I whisper.
The woman just watches it all, absorbing every moment of this night. “I… brought the board games you ordered… but I’m highly curious how these are played,” she says as she holds up the bag.
“Excuse me while I sulk,” I mutter as I quickly replace Ezio’s shirt with my pants. Then I go over to my chair and just melt into it, face down on the table.
“You want to join us?” Ezio asks her.
“No… No, I don’t,” she says.
“I’m really not weird,” I whisper as I look up at her. “It was all for a laugh… all I ever wanted to do was make people laugh.”
“I thought it was hilarious!” Yorick reassures me as he pats me on the back. “The look of desperation on your face while your boyfriend took pictures of his dog instead of helping you was the highlight of my day, at the very least! I mean… if you were my boyfriend and that naked, I’d sure be looking at you instead of a dog, but to each their own… I guess.”
I sigh and sink back down. “I regret everything.”
“Uh-huh… and your username is starting to make more sense now. What was it again?” She’s quiet for a moment as I realize with horror what is about to happen. “2Hot4CasimirReady2RideOrDie, correct?”
The squeal that escapes out of Yorick will haunt me for the rest of my life.
“It was a joke! Casimir actually came up with it!” It really sounds like a plea at this point.
“Oh my god that’s… so pitiful,” Cyrus says. “I can’t believe I once considered being friends with him.”
“It was a joke… a stupid joke… Oh, someone save me. Casimir, make me look cool.”
Casimir turns to look at the woman. “If it makes you feel any better, we got pulled over by the police a while back and he was naked then too,” he says.
“That makes no one feel better! Definitely not me!” I whine. “Casimir thinks popcorn is made from frozen corn!”
“It’s not?” Yorick asks.
“Yeah, I mean, that’s an easy mix-up. Anyone could do that,” Cyrus says, even though he’d been just as brutal while making fun of him!
“You traitors,” I hiss.
“Oh, look at that, a new delivery just came in, so I need to hurry. Although… while I was joking about the exhibitionism thing… I have been wanting a new car… so maybe I’m not joking…”
“I’m not… nooooo,” I whisper. “Casimir. Allure her.”
“I see no reason to,” he says. “She seems perfectly lovely to deal with.”
“You’re the worst,” I decide. “And yet… I still love you so much.”
I feel something on my head and realize that Cyrus has just started putting my Monopoly money on top of my body that has succumbed to sadness.
As soon as the woman’s gone, I look over at Casimir. “This is your fault.”
“There is absolutely no one to blame at this table besides the man who got naked on it,” Cyrus says.
“I… I thought it’d be funny. And I really thought the little skirt would hold. We’d all have a good laugh and then you guys would be like ‘WOW, JULIAN. YOU FUNNY.’”
“Why would we be yelling it?” Cyrus asks.
“Because that’s how funny you’d think I am,” I explain.
“I have never met a more ridiculous group of people in my life,” Delwyn says before giving me a soft smile. “Thank you.”
“You… sure you should be thanking me?”
He nods. “Yeah. I haven’t… it’s been so long since I’ve seen people be goofy, you know? I’ve been caught up in Cecily’s stuff for so long, but this reminds me that we used to have good times. So thank you.”
I feel slightly better about myself as I give him a smile. “You’re welcome… I think.”
“Now let’s play,” Delwyn says.
“I have no idea how to play this. Julian brought it over and then we got distracted,” Casimir says as he stares at it.
“It’s doing your favorite activity, throwing money at things,” Cyrus tells him.
Casimir, needing no more explanation than that, nods eagerly. “Ah, I am very good at that.”
“Then after this, we’ll play a campaign!” Yorick enthuses as he holds up one of the games the lady brought. “It only takes three hours, but since you guys are new, it might take more! We might be stuck here all night!”
“That sounds like a nightmare,” Cyrus says.
“NO! You’ll love it! I’ll make you love it. You have no choice but to spill your love upon it!”
Cyrus smirks. “As long as it doesn’t take Julian’s clothes, I’m here for it.”
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 29

JULIAN
After an obscene amount of time playing games that Yorick fucking demolishes us in, his phone starts ringing. He takes one glance at it, cringes, and pretends to have never noticed.
“What game do we want to play next?” Yorick asks eagerly.
“I’m confused. Is he actually intelligent?” Casimir asks as he scrutinizes Yorick like he’s some alien lifeform. “I want to say he cheated, but he strategized the hell out of that.”
“There’s no way,” Cyrus says, like the man they’re ridiculing isn’t inches from them. “Look at his face… there’s no way there is any intelligence inside him.”
The phone is still ringing. “Don’t you think you should answer that? What if it’s the vampire we’re trying to get ahold of?” I ask.
“It is him,” Yorick says. “But I don’t want to talk to him. Here. Someone else do it.” He slides the phone to the middle of the table where we can see it says “Count Jerkula calling.” Everyone leans in close to look at it, but no one volunteers to take it.
“I vote Julian. Casimir is the absolute worst at communication,” Cyrus says.
I glance over at him. “Why me? I don’t even know the guy.”
“You could make friends with a rock. You already did,” Ezio chimes in as he points at Yorick, who looks mildly offended. “And Casimir generally just grumbles at people he doesn’t like.”
“Fine.”
I grab the phone before the call can end—honestly, it’s already been an impressive amount of time. “Hello, this is⁠—”
“Not Borick, I see,” the man on the other end says.
“Uh… no, but I believe his name is Yorick? Unless I have it wrong.”
“Hmm… and who might this be?”
“Oh, right. I’m Julian.”
“Julian… you sound far too cheery, and it irritates me. Tell Borick that I said to fuck off,” he says, voice deep and rich.
“Uh… no? We need to talk to you. It’s rather important.”
“No thanks.”
“Too bad. We’re talking to you,” I say, and everyone at the table looks at me like I’ve just committed some grave offense. “Sir?” I tack on. I guess he is an ancient vampire or something… but really, he just seems rude.
“Your voice is grating.”
“I take my ‘sir’ back. I actually take all of my niceties back. Here’s the deal. There was a second member of the Masks who Yorick believes was in your care at some point. I want to know everything you know about him.”
Everyone in the group looks even more horrified, other than Casimir who is giving an approving nod, telling me that whatever I did was likely wrong.
The man lets out a huff of a laugh. “You… you’re honestly going to tell me what to do?”
“Well… I tried asking but you got all huffy and angry, so then I just… told you… You know what? Let’s start over. Hi, I’m Julian.”
“Tell me, Julian. What makes you think I would be willing to do whatever nonsense you’re ordering?” he asks, clearly not interested in the whole “let’s start over” stunt.
“I’m not ordering you to do anything! I’m wanting to know about the second masked man.”
“Julian… Julian… that name sounds vaguely familiar. Did I try killing you at some point?”
“Uh… no… no, you didn’t.”
“Ah, then you must not be that gardener called Julian… or maybe his name was John… ohhh, you’re Casimir’s thing.”
“Thing? I’m… not…”
“I’ll send you an address. I want to look you in the face when I refuse to answer any of your questions,” he informs me.
“Then why the hell would I go? I can sit here and be refused shit,” I say.
“See you in four hours.”
“Four hours? Is that how far away you live? I have… things to do, like…” I stare at the board game. “Come on. This is really important. I think we could discuss it over the phone. Oh! You want to Facetime? That sounds fun. That way you can see my face when you⁠—”
And he’s hung up.
“Oh my god,” I whisper.
“Right?” Yorick asks. “Dreadful. Yet no one listened to me.”
“Fucking dreadful,” Casimir adds.
“He wants us to go to him,” I announce, and everyone at the table looks displeased. Even the ones who don’t even know the guy.
“Oh hell, no. We can do this ourselves,” Yorick decides. “We’ll just take Casimir to the middle of the city and tie him up. Then we’ll wait for the masked man to come. Once he does, we’ll pop out of the shadows in our color-coordinated attire and we will take that man down with the power of… friendship.”
“What are we? Power Rangers?” Cyrus asks.
“I don’t know, man… I just really don’t want to go,” Yorick says as his phone beeps with an address. “I didn’t even know he was around. Urgh. I have an idea; what if we kill him instead?”
“Well, you can’t stay here. We all have to stick together,” I declare.
Casimir picks up one of the game cards and points it menacingly at Yorick. “If you’re wrong and we go deal with that dreadful man and he doesn’t know shit, I will throw you so fucking far every time I see your face.”
Yorick’s quite displeased by this, if his face is anything to go by. “Why the hell are you so violent? Why is it when I’m like ‘Look at me, all handsome and helpful’ you’re like ‘Me angry. Me throw things and still somehow gets the cutest puppers’? Like Julian… you must see this.” Yorick tosses me a huge smile. “You could have someone like me. Someone who could make alllllll of your dreams come true.”
“Does he call you Borick because he…” I hesitate.
Yorick’s smile falls as he realizes he’s not wooing me. “Thinks I’m boring. Yes. Yes, he does.”
“Ouch.”
Yorick slumps down, head hitting the table as he whines. Absolutely no one goes to comfort him as we all get up and head out to the car.
“Last one there has to ride in the trunk,” Ezio decides.
“I’ll just… lie over everyone’s laps,” Yorick says as Casimir pushes Yorick out of the way to send Gustov in.
“Sorry, no room. I don’t want to leave Gustov here.”
“Genevieve has one of those large three-rowed SUVs we could all ride in together?” Delwyn suggests as I see Casimir trying to urge Yorick up on the roof, like he’s just going to cling on for the whole four-hour drive.
“I’m sure we can all fit,” Casimir says as Gustov sits right in the middle, taking up multiple seats. “Gustov gets the back and Yorick rides on top.”
I hold up my hands to stop them. “Wait, before we cram into this car for four hours or call Genevieve, you realize it’s about six hours before it gets light. Wherever we end up, we’ll be stuck. Do you guys trust this guy well enough to be stuck all day with him?”
“I’d kill him if he tried anything,” Casimir replies, like that’s the answer I was looking for.
“Wildly unhelpful,” I say before turning to Yorick who Casimir is lifting up onto the hood. “Yorick?”
“Oh, he’s not going to kill us. Trust me, he’d have killed me years ago if that was the case. No, no, this man doesn’t kill. He likes to terrorize and torture and torment.”
“Wow, that sounds significantly better.” I make sure this is said with plenty of sarcasm. “But what if he’s working with the masked man? What if they’re buds?” I ask as Casimir manages to get Yorick up on the roof.
“They’re not buds,” Yorick says as he tries getting down, but Casimir seems adamant that he stays.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know! Maybe I stalk him sometimes. Maybe I go and try to off him other times. And he’s never hanging around anyone then.”
“Like… get him off?” Ezio asks.
“No, like ‘In the ballroom with a rope’ kind of thing.”
“I’m still uncertain if he’s talking about sex. That cleared nothing up,” Cyrus says.
Ezio nods. “I’m actually more certain now that he’s talking about sex.”
That reinvigorates Yorick enough to get off the car. “Oh hellllll, no. I’m not having sex with that crusty old man. Simply looking at his face fills me with disgust. Fucking hell, I thought you were all my friends,” he complains. “Julian, I really don’t think he’s out to get us.”
“Yet you dislike him.”
“Strongly.”
“Interesting,” I say as I shrug and turn to Casimir to see if he can borrow the SUV. Less than twenty minutes later, one of Genevieve’s crew brings it over. Once we’re all packed into it—including Gustov and the cat—we head off.
“I still don’t understand why Yorick had to be inside the vehicle,” Casimir says.
“We don’t have time to pick him up off the road,” I explain.
“Ah, right.”
Somehow, I ended up with the front passenger seat, and Yorick and Delwyn got the far back seat. Gustov has a nice spot on the floor to lie between the two middle aisle seats where Casimir has stuffed a giant dog bed. I see Cyrus eyeing it as he yawns. His yawn is apparently contagious because I start yawning too.
“You can take a nap,” Casimir says.
“I’m fine,” I assure him. “I’m sure you’re tired too. You didn’t sleep all day either.”
“I’m a vampire.”
“Well, I’m a super awesome wolfman who needs no sleep,” I announce.
“As you yawn.”
“Shhhh.”
“We could play a car game! I Spy!” Yorick suggests.
“I Spy a man who should be on the roof,” Casimir says.
Yorick gasps. “Why the fuck are you so mean to me?”
“Why the fuck did you throw Julian out a window?” he asks.
“And me!” Ezio adds.
Yorick turns silent quite quickly. Honestly, it’s impressive how quickly.
“Man, you guys are fun, but I’m currently extremely jealous of Gustov,” Cyrus says as he pushes the dog out of the way and curls up on Gustov’s plush memory foam cushion that probably cost more than my bed. It looks brand-new too, since I’ve never seen Gustov sit on it, choosing the couch or bed instead.
“Cyrus, that is not yours,” Casimir growls.
“Is now,” he says as Gustov takes Cyrus’s seat, pleased as can be to watch out the window.
“Can I join you?” Ezio asks.
“Fuck no,” Cyrus retorts.
“But… it looks so nice,” Ezio says as he forlornly looks down at him.
“Stop staring, it’s creepy.”
“Just wondering how deep you can sink into that bed. I’m feeling confident it’s going to consume you and I won’t be there to notice.”
“I feel like I’m lying on a cloud of money. How much did you spend on this thing?” Cyrus asks.
“Gustov gets what Gustov wants,” Casimir replies… like that’s an answer.
“Hey, Cyrus, did I ever tell you how Casimir acquired Gustov?” I ask, feeling like now is a good time to make fun of Casimir. They’ve been brutal to me lately, so someone else deserves to be made fun of for a bit.
“No, I assumed he paid off the delivery lady to bring him the weirdest designer dog she could find,” he says.
“No, no. It’s a much more tragic tale than that. Someone left Gustov in one of the hotel rooms,” I inform him.
Cyrus’s eyes go wide. “That’s so mean! Who could just leave him? And why not try to sell him? You’d get money out of that weird-looking creature.”
“He didn’t come looking as magnificently groomed as he is now,” Casimir says, proud as a peacock.
“Oh, I’m not to the tragic part yet. Go on, Casimir, tell Cyrus why you took him home,” I say.
“To eat him,” Casimir responds without hesitation. It’s like he’s not at all ashamed of this fact. “His fur got in my teeth when I tried, though. It was like biting into a hairy sponge.”
“You actually tried?” Cyrus asks.
I’m glad Cyrus is on the same page as me. “See? See? That’s what I said! I want to think he’s joking… but I can’t tell!”
“Good,” Casimir says, proud of this fact.
“He tried eating me too, but no one cares,” Ezio says.
“You’re a vampire; how could he have tried eating you?” I ask.
“He tried when I was still a human! He was all ‘I’m gonna seduce you’ and I was like ‘Weird… but I’m listening.’ But nope. He was doing it to eat me!”
Everyone’s attention snaps to Casimir, who is still driving with a pleasant look on his face. He almost looks pleased by this memory.
“You pretended to seduce Ezio to eat him?” I ask in horror.
“I know, it was horrific of me, wasn’t it? To pretend to seduce such a man.” Of course that’s Casimir’s reply.
“That’s not the concerning part!” I announce.
“Would have been if you’d seen how he looked back then. He had this giant beard and facial hair that was like its own entity attached to his face.”
“It wasn’t that bad!”
“And I was hungry! Do you guys not eat when you’re hungry? And clearly, I didn’t eat him… completely. He’s fine. They’re both fine! I don’t see what the big deal is.”
Ezio shakes his head like he’s tragically recalling the memory of it. “I was so scared⁠—”
“You were not! You had no idea what happened and then came crawling back to me later. You’re fine.”
“My heart’s not,” Ezio whispers as he grabs his chest.
“Just… go to sleep. All of you. Julian, stop starting shit to try to make them forget about you flashing them.”
“And I’m the bad guy because I accidentally pushed Julian through a little teeny drop,” Yorick mutters.
“Why am I even in this car?” Cyrus asks. “I regret it all.”
He yanks at Ezio’s shirt until he manages to pull it off, throws it over his head, and proceeds to presumably go to sleep.
Ezio leans forward until his mouth is next to my ear. “My nipples are cold. Can you turn the AC down?”
“You’re a vampire!”
“Are you shaming me for my nipples being cold?” he asks as he covers his bare chest.
I turn off the AC and look back to see if that appeases him. He seems reasonably satisfied and maybe even a little creepy as he beams down at Cyrus using his shirt.
“God, this shirt smells like desperation,” Cyrus groans. “Julian, give me your shirt.”
“NO! Don’t take Julian’s shirt. Do you want my pants too?” Ezio asks, prepared to whip them off.
Cyrus pulls the shirt down just a little to glower at him before covering his face again.
As Casimir drives, we slowly lose the others one by one as they drift off to sleep until the only ones who are awake are me and Casimir.
“You want me to drive for a bit?” I ask.
“Absolutely not. I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
“Very much,” he replies. “I pinky promise.”
“Good,” I say as I hold my pinky up for him to poke, glad that no one in the car is awake to tell him how this very much isn’t a pinky promise. Or maybe they’d all be jealous over how awesome our secret pinky promise is.
Then Casimir squeezes my hand. “Get some sleep so when we get there, you can charm Atticus with your charisma since I might murder him on the spot.”
“How… is your relationship with him? Can’t be too good if you didn’t even know whether or not he was alive,” I say.
“I dealt with him very little. I fully believe that to Atticus, the Warden was just something fun to play with for a bit, and he got bored of that quickly and moved on. He traveled a lot. I guess he was the one who directed the Warden to Cecily. He’d dealt with the Warden some, mostly in selling him weapons he’d brought back from these… faraway places. But the Warden never knew what he was until Atticus finally got curious enough to come turn us himself. He was an interesting and terrifying man all at once.”
“Sounds like it,” I say. “Is he a fighter?”
“I believe he can fight but often didn’t choose to.”
“So… if this is all a setup to get us there…”
“Then I will stab them both. You underestimate my desire to destroy,” he says.
“Ah, I see.” Yet I’m afraid that what we do won’t be enough.
I set my hand against his and his fingers slip over the top of mine, thumb brushing over them as I close my eyes. Just the feeling of his fingers on mine comforts me, but I can’t keep my mind from racing.
“Go to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep like this.”
“Go boot Cyrus out of the dog bed.”
I glance back at where there does seem to be enough room for the wolf version of me to fit. It’s wildly tempting. “If I get naked again, they’ll just cry.”
“I like tears,” Casimir says.
I grin at him and decide that there’s no way I’m sleeping like this, so I strip and shift, but instead of climbing back on that wildly comfortable-looking pad, I shimmy myself forward and lay my head on Casimir’s lap. Since the car doesn’t have a gearshift—instead having buttons on the dashboard for things like drive and park—it leaves enough room for me to slumber uncomfortably draped across the cupholders. The hard plastic digs into my sides but nothing beats my head on Casimir’s lap. His fingers trail over my fur, smoothing down my ear as I close my eyes.
It still takes me a while to fall asleep, but the way his fingers glide through my fur pushes me further and further toward the sweet grasp of sleep.

“We’re here,” Casimir says softly as his fingers nudge me. I lift my head and look up at the grandest house that could ever scream “an evil vampire overlord lives here.”
“I’m going to shift back. Warn them so our friends don’t cry like last time,” I tell him.
“Julian said he’s going to do a magic trick and would like everyone to watch intently,” Casimir announces.
“I love magic!” Yorick says as he steps over Cyrus—who seems to be pretending he’s still one with the dog cushion—to get a better look.
“You are the worst,” I grumble before shifting.
“Ooh! I love it. Absolutely delightful!” Yorick enthuses as he claps wildly. “Ten out of ten!”
“Thanks, Yorick,” I say as I get dressed. “I do want to put it out there I told Casimir to tell you guys to look away.”
We all get out of the car and gaze up at what looks like some kind of Victorian gothic mansion.
“Just one look at the house tells me this man is going to be absolutely dreadful to deal with,” Cyrus says.
“Right? Gosh. Hideous! And kind of cool… like if it was Julian’s house, I would like it, but because it’s that asshole’s house, I hate it,” Yorick agrees.
“Wonderful,” I say as I start toward it, not wanting to waste time in case we really should go elsewhere to sleep. There are huge knockers on the door and no doorbell, so I use the knocker and within a minute, the door opens, and a man wearing some kind of butler outfit looks out at us.
“Please, follow me,” he instructs, making me question what we’ve walked into.
“What is this place?” I whisper to Cyrus.
“Looks like someone’s midlife crisis,” he whispers back as we’re led into a grand hall where a man sits at the front in what very much looks like his own throne. He’s leaning against the armrest, a wineglass filled with blood in one hand as he sips it and scrutinizes us, much like I’m scrutinizing him.
His dark hair is slicked back, a few strands straying to hang over his forehead. His dark eyes watch us as he stands, and I very much realize that I don’t want anything to do with this man. It’s like he wears his power out in front of him, so as he rises and walks toward us, I decide that I’d like to just fuck off. Sassing him on the phone was so much better.
Cyrus and Delwyn also look like they wouldn’t mind waiting out in the car with the cat, who is chilling in the vehicle that is cool enough for her with the early morning breeze.
The only one who looks bored out of his mind is Casimir, who’d brought Gustov in. Yorick’s got some weird expression on his face like he wants to appear badass but also wildly sexy. It’s a rather confusing look and doesn’t come off as well as he’d probably like.
Gustov rushes forward to greet him, and Atticus stares down at the dog like he’s not sure what this creature is. He pokes the fur patch on the top of his head, finger sinking into it.
Since he’s now one hundred percent interested in the dog and no one else is saying anything, I clear my throat. “H-Hi, I’m Julian.”
Atticus’s finger stops its poking as he turns to me. “Ah, the one on the phone.” He walks up to me as my entire being tells me that it’d be best to just turn and go back out to the car, but if Yorick and Casimir trust that he won’t murder me, I’m sure it’ll be fine… right?
“My, Borick, you’ve brought yourself some interesting friends. Do you think this will impress me?” Atticus asks.
“HA. Impress you? Like I want to impress you. No, these are all my lovers,” Yorick says as he hooks me and Casimir with an arm and kisses both of our cheeks. “We are beautifully entwined with each other.”
The look on Casimir’s face says otherwise.
Atticus takes a long moment to scrutinize us, during which Casimir somehow refrains from shoving Yorick off and I just stare in confusion. “How funny and sad,” Atticus settles on as he pushes Yorick off me and grabs my chin, which immediately makes warning bells go off. Casimir reaches to push Atticus’s hand off my face, but Yorick beats him to it by smacking his hand away.
“Are you so dense you can’t see that he doesn’t want you touching him?” Yorick growls.
That gets Atticus to let me go as he grabs Yorick’s throat and pushes him against the wall. Yorick’s got this weird mixture of “I want to murder you” with a dash of… “But I also want to fuck you” on his face. Am I reading into things? Am I not? Yorick looks absolutely fired up and Atticus looks so calm and collected.
A cold smile unfolds across Atticus’s face. “Oh? Your balls get big enough that you think you can talk to your maker like this?”
But Yorick won’t back down; instead, he shoves into him while snarling, “I will never recognize someone like you as my maker. You turned me to torment me.”
That seems to please Atticus. “I sure did.”
They end up in some weird stare-off that kind of makes it look like they’re going to kiss. I side-eye Casimir who seems bored and is wandering off to check out some swords Atticus has hung up on his wall. Cyrus, though, gives me a look like he gets it. At least someone understands.
“When you two are done doing… whatever this is, can we talk?” I ask.
Atticus pushes away from Yorick and walks over to me as Yorick’s eyes burn a hole right in his back. “What are you?” he asks me.
“Me?” I ask as I notice Cyrus wandering over to Casimir to get away from Atticus.
“Yes, you.”
“I’m a wolf.”
That makes him chuckle. “Ha, funny. No, what are you?”
“A wolf. Like… a werewolf,” I say. I throw up some mimicked hand claws for some reason before realizing how horrifically embarrassing that is and quickly putting them away.
He scrutinizes me. “Stop being skittish. If I’m going to eat anyone here, it’ll be Borick. Now, you can turn into a wolf?”
“I can.”
“But you…” He takes my hand and sniffs my wrist. It’s all quite weird. “Let me taste your blood.”
“No thanks,” I say.
Casimir walks over and takes my wrist from him before catching my eyes. “Can I?”
“Y-Yeah?” I ask, confused. Casimir bites my wrist, but instead of letting the man lick it off, he swipes it with his finger like he expects this ancient vampire to just lick the blood off his finger.
Atticus raises an eyebrow but when it becomes apparent that Casimir’s not joking, he licks Casimir’s finger, just like that. It’s all so freaking weird.
He cocks his head as we all stare at him like something magical is going to happen. “What the hell are you? Is there silver in your blood?” he questions as he eyes me.
“Yeah… it… seems to be stuck there for some reason,” I say.
“And you’re a wolf.”
“It’s a long story.”
“And you’re part vampire.”
“Uh… I’m not sure I really am.”
Atticus doesn’t seem interested in stopping. “But you’re part wolf.”
“Yeah?”
“But you were turned into a vampire.”
“I’m not really turned into anything. I can’t drink blood… mostly… and I can walk out during the sunlight, and I don’t heal ultra-fast.”
“Have you ever seen anything like him?” Casimir asks. “He requires my blood to live but can’t drink any other blood.”
“I have not. See, Yorick, why can’t you be interesting like this?” Atticus asks, making a jab at him for absolutely no reason but to be mean.
“Why is everyone so mean to me?” Yorick cries. “Cyrus. Comfort me.”
“No.”
“Ezio?”
“I’d prefer not,” Ezio says, but Yorick gives him no choice as he falls against him and forces Ezio to hold him.
“Can you think of a way to get the silver out of him?” Casimir asks.
“I don’t even understand why it’s in him. Ah, well. So what are you here for? To annoy me, it seems. Finally came to take revenge for what I did to you? Is that why you’ve teamed up with Borick?”
“I told you on the phone,” I say.
“Yes, you did, but it was horribly boring. I have much better things to do.” He sighs and stops to look at Cyrus who quickly slips behind Ezio, snapping Atticus’s attention off him. And with that, he heads back to his throne and sips from his wineglass. “Johnny, go get them something to drink.”
“Of course, sir,” the man who’d opened the door says as he scurries off. The room is clearly not set up for company to be comfortable, so we’re left standing as he lounges and stares at us.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 30

CASIMIR
“The masked man who’s come to you in the past, do you know where he is?” I ask.
Atticus looks absolutely bored of us now that he’s done harassing Yorick and tasting Julian’s blood. “And if I do?”
“Can you tell us?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’m going to kill him,” I growl.
“Oh? How violent.”
“He has tracked me down, threatened to kill the ones I love, abducted Julian, harassed me, killed vampires who did nothing wrong at all, and you expect me to allow him to live? He has absolutely no care for anyone other than himself.”
“Well, we do all know how good the Warden was at destroying people.”
“It’s been hundreds of years.”
“Oh, but you killing the man he loved was the icing on that cake,” Atticus says. “You see, the Warden had absolutely demolished this man, but the one hope he had—the one thing that kept him from breaking—was the man he loved… until you killed him.”
“Who?” I demand, hating how this man can’t give me a straight answer. It’s why I always despised dealing with him.
“You honestly expect me to remember each and every one of you? You were the only fascinating one, and that’s because you were the best fighter and I knew you had it in you to kill the Warden,” he says.
“He goes by Giles, but what was his number?”
“You know, this man you seek really cared about you, Casimir. He actually wanted me to save you. He’d come to me in the dead of night and beg for me to save you and one other. Who was that one… fuck if I remember. The rest of you all looked the same.”
“Why me?” I ask, unable to comprehend who even cared about me enough to want him to save me. They were all absolute monsters.
The butler returns with six wineglasses of blood, handing one to each of us. Cyrus stares at his in confusion and Julian tries to pass his back, but the man won’t take it.
Atticus, who doesn’t seem to see why they don’t want the blood, gives them a wave. “Enjoy your drink while the rest of us enjoy the show. Casimir, if you’re really so curious, why don’t you ask the man yourself? He came running here a few hours before you arrived, begging me to help him kill you.”
I still at the words, realizing that maybe Yorick and I were wrong. Atticus might have more of a stake in this than either of us thought.
“Go on and kill each other for all I care,” he continues as he waves me toward a door a moment before he appears before me. “But I do think you owe it to him to go alone. Face what you both did, right?”
“No, you’re not going alone,” Julian says adamantly.
“I’ll keep watch over the rest of them while you get the answers you so desperately want,” Atticus offers, but the way he says it makes me uncertain whether he’s lying to me… whether this is some kind of trap. “But don’t forget everything you were taught.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?” I ask. “How do I know you’re not just separating me from them?”
“I guess you don’t,” he says as he gives my shoulder a smack before heading back to his chair.
“You’re not going alone,” Julian insists. “If you don’t want us involved, I… don’t agree, though I understand, but you’re not going alone.”
“Isn’t it a bit overkill, all of you going?” Atticus asks. “He’s just one guy.”
Delwyn scoffs. “He kept me locked in a fucking box and starved me for months, before killing the woman I loved,” he growls. “I’m going.”
“This might have been between him and me,” I start, “but he made it about so many more people when he began to kill and torture.”
“I’m not letting you go alone,” Julian says to me.
“How do we know this isn’t a trap or a setup?” Ezio asks.
“You don’t,” Atticus says simply as he gets up and heads deeper into the mansion as all of us—besides Gustov, who Johnny keeps with him—follow. “Please, I’m warning you now, keep the blood to a minimum. I like clean spaces.”
He pushes open a door and the scent of blood immediately hits me. It’s a large room without much in it besides the masked man who is resting against the far wall. He has a stake in his hand and blood pooled out around him. I have to assume he didn’t stab himself with the stake, so the only explanation is that Atticus already stabbed him.
“Did you kill him?” Julian asks.
“No, no. I just didn’t want him to run off after he heard you guys were coming. Honestly, this is already a pain in my ass, and I’d like you guys to stop playing cat and mouse and just end it,” he says as he walks over to the masked man and tips his head back. “Come on, now, you have company. Time to rise and shine.”
Atticus slides the man’s mask up enough that he can pour some blood into his mouth. “You lazy enough to be taking a nap now, are you?”
The vampire coughs before eagerly grabbing the wineglass, downing every last drop before he seems to realize that he’s not alone.
“Here, why don’t you take this stupid thing off,” Atticus says as he reaches for the mask, but the man smacks his hand away.
“Of course you’d work with them,” the masked man snarls.
Atticus waves him off, obviously not concerned. “I’m working for no one but myself. I was just listening to all of the destruction you’ve created and thought it would simply be a good idea to sit back and enjoy the show.” He plucks the glass of blood from Yorick and hands it over to the masked man, which he eagerly drinks. The second he’s done, Atticus grabs him and yanks him to his feet before sliding behind him.
“Why don’t you stop toying with Seven here, and face him if you hate him so much?” Atticus asks. “It’s really not a good look to be running around beating up others when he’s the man you want.”
“Because I know I won’t win,” he says as he faces me. “I know he’ll kill me. And I was fine with that. But I wanted to make him hurt first. Please, Atticus. Help me.”
“Oh, no, no. I have no interest in this. You pissed me off by threatening me, and do you see where that got you?” Atticus asks as he waves at the man’s bloody clothes.
“Giles was Nine’s name, wasn’t it?” I say, snagging his attention. “But you’re not Nine because Nine would never do all of this. I don’t care how many years have passed; he would still face me head-on to try his hardest to kill me. He was short-tempered, an asshole, and I’m guessing the man you were in love with. Am I right?”
The man watches me closely, only his eyes visible from behind the mask.
“I wondered again and again who the fuck you might be. I mean, all of the Masks would hate me, right? I killed them. I destroyed them. And clearly, I ruined your life. But as my brother, you have to understand how our lives were already ruined.”
“Mine wasn’t,” he says. “Not until you destroyed it.”
“Yeah… that’s what I’m starting to think. Because when Atticus said you begged him to free me and presumably Nine, I know there’s only one person who’d do that. But I’d already written him off as dead, isn’t that right, Five?”
“Don’t call me Five,” he growls as he throws the wineglass at me.
How funny is it that he thinks he’s gained the right to be called by his real name, but I have not? “You don’t fucking deserve to be called by your real name,” I snarl at him. “What I see before me is one of those monsters you were afraid of becoming. What the fuck happened to your humanity? What the fuck happened to the way you cared? The way you felt sympathy⁠—”
“It was all destroyed. You might have thought I was dead, but after Atticus here brought me back from the brink, the Warden kept a noose around my neck, tightening it until there was nothing left of me. I’d become the very monster I feared. But I was able to keep watching and helping and loving Giles from a distance, so I hung on. His love for me was the only thing that kept me alive, kept me from sinking down into that darkness I was so afraid of… until you killed him. I was barely hanging on at that point, and you tore it all away. I could fight through the Warden’s abuse. I could keep my head just above the water I was drowning in because of Giles! Only because of him!”
Does this explain Nine’s quick temper whenever Five pushed the Warden? Because he knew that every time he said something, he risked his very own life? It wasn’t rage Nine had felt when he walked into that room where Five had been held by Cecily but fear and anger… and was that the reason Nine did what he did at the very end?
I watch him closely, still so many unanswered questions in my mind. “Yet you never came to me? You never faced me to ask what happened that day, did you? You saw me as a monster and held that obsession for hundreds of years. What happened to you? What made you finally turn into the monster that the Warden would be so proud of?”
This does nothing but enrage Five. “Shut the fuck up! I am nothing like him.”
“Aren’t you?” I ask. “I’ve changed, brother, but so have you. While I’ve grown a heart and learned to love and draw myself out of the self-hatred I’d become so obsessed with, you’ve twisted yourself into the monster you were always afraid of.”
“ENOUGH,” he yells.
“And you know what’s hilarious? I didn’t even kill Nine, but I will gladly be the one to kill you now.”
He hesitates because he’s finally heard something that he’s interested in. “What do you mean, you didn’t kill Nine? I saw what you did! You killed them all.”
“No. Not all of them. The Warden had driven me to the brink. I was well aware that I was either going to step over that edge or drown where I stood. And what was the use of dying without taking some of them down with me? Maybe that was horrible of me, but there weren’t many of us left at that point. Any single one of them could have turned against that monster and joined me instead of fighting for him.”
“No… you killed him! I know you killed him! The cut was made with your sword. Your blades were the only curved ones. I could tell by the cut! I know you did it! Because you’ve turned your life around, you suddenly want to pretend you’re not the monster you’ve always been. I’ve watched you slaughter and kill⁠—”
“And I hate so much of myself every day for that. I hate so many parts of myself and never thought that I was capable of being forgiven—that I should always be alone and suffer for what I did. Nothing you say can make me hate myself even more,” I assure him.
Five shakes his head wildly. “Fuck you. You cannot stand here and act better than me. Act like I am the monster. That day I nearly died, if you’d have shown a fucking ounce of sympathy toward that child, we could have gotten him away. We could have helped him.”
I feel disbelief over the shit this man is spouting. “Are you talking about the same man you just tried killing last night? The same woman who you did kill?” I ask. “Why is it different now? Why do you not see any of this? Five… I know the years have changed me, but how did they change you so much?”
“I wish you’d just fucking shut up,” he growls as he draws his sword.
“Casimir,” Julian says, voice anxious, but I press him back.
I give Julian a kind smile, knowing it’s a lot to ask of him to give me all his trust, but I’m going to need it. “Please, he knows he can use you against me, so please just stay back… let me deal with this.”
Julian doesn’t seem convinced, but Ezio grabs him and gently pulls him back to the edge of the large room.
“Casimir isn’t foolish enough to risk his life because he knows he’d be risking yours as well,” Ezio assures him. “Put some faith in him.”
And with that, I turn to face Five as he pulls his mask off and flings it at me. With a swipe of my wakizashi, I cut it in two before rushing toward him. He lifts his sword, prepared to block my attack when I move to the left and he’s forced to scramble back to avoid me.
The issue is that every single move Five knows are moves that have been ingrained in my head for years. Watching him closely, I deflect the swing of his sword and realize that maybe knowing each other so well will hurt him more than me. He was never one of the Warden’s chosen, not only because he wasn’t ruthless enough but also because he wasn’t as good of a fighter. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad fighter. His skills stand high above the majority of fighters I’ve come across in my life—it’s because he was among some of the absolute best that his phenomenal skills were diminished.
I need to step in and drive the katana right into him… kill him… destroy him…
But there’s something about killing my final brother that makes me hesitate. My mind twists around to remind me of the desperation I’d felt that day… something I never want to feel again. I will never be proud of what I’ve done, and I will forever be faced with what I did, who I hurt, and those lives that were thrown away while I was under the Warden’s command.
They haunt my nights, and I know that it’ll never go away no matter what happens… but I thought it’d get better. I thought that as the years passed, I would be able to breathe again…
And then when Julian finally shows me that I can regain control over my nightmares, I find myself standing here, killing another brother.
Five’s sword slashes into my arm, reminding me that I’m not paying close enough attention to him. That I’m letting myself get distracted by my own insecurities.
I glance back at Julian and realize that I can’t let myself make a mistake because of this man who is so precious to me. He’s the reason that I can face the shit I’ve done… that I can open myself up to the idea of caring for others. He’s the reason that fucking chest doesn’t drop me to my knees. Because I have to live for him.
And I want to live because of him.
I will always have regrets in my life because of what the Warden did to me, but at the end of the day… there’s nothing I can do to change it.
Five lifts his sword and I easily drive it away. As I step into him, he tries to block it, but I’m faster than him as I kick him hard, sending him back. He recovers quickly, but it’s still not enough. Realizing this, he turns from me and moves toward Julian, but he’s not going to take him from me. He’s never going to touch him.
I drive the katana into his shoulder, slicing it open before knocking him to the floor. There, I force him down and step onto his neck to keep him there.
“Since you’re so fucking adamant about hating me for what I’ve done, allow me to tell you what happened.”
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 31

CASIMIR
Age Thirty-Two
I’m standing in the middle of the room looking at the blood all over my hands. The years have passed, but I don’t even recall what’s moved them on. It was just endless darkness that I’ve waded through, drowning, and smothering. I don’t even feel like I can breathe anymore.
And here I am in some godforsaken cabin. The Warden sent me in to protect them, protect these people who had orchestrated the slaughter of an entire hall of people, and here I stand among their bodies. How exhilarating. How… thrilling.
While my mind had begun wandering more and more lately, it was the other night that finally made something snap in me. Though the Warden had ordered us to execute an entire room of high-class people who’d been enjoying some dinner or a ball or whatever the party was, I’d become fixated on a boy who’d been sitting in a cupboard to read. And instead of letting the other Masks find him, I’d hidden him while the rest killed everyone in the hall. That lone act of defiance made me… excited. Here I am going against the Warden by saving a second child. Granted, it’s been more than ten years since the first one and things didn’t quite turn out well that time, but I’m not even sure how much I care this time.
Of course the Warden had no idea, and he’d even sent me off to bring the people who had orchestrated it all to him.
They were humans waiting in a cabin for us to save them… but the moment I saw them, I couldn’t stop myself from killing them all. They’d insisted on the Warden’s protection, and now they are merely corpses, unable to win a fight against someone like me.
My hands ball into tight fists as the smile on my face falls, the exhilaration of the events slowly fading since, after all, I just have to keep going back to him.
All I can do is kill… it’s all I’ve ever been able to do. And even in my act of defiance I’ve simply killed again…
Slowly standing, I push through the door and walk from the cabin to where my nightmare awaits me. He’s not far away, stationed in a temporary camp I was supposed to bring the people to. It’s funny that even now, with all of the power we hold in our hands, we continue to kneel before him. We continue to let him beat and scold us. It’s like any sense of worth or thoughts have been dragged out of us until we think that everything he does or says is all that matters.
I am a tool for this man to use.
But sometimes tools break.
The Warden never learned that in order to keep your tool nice and sharp, you needed to care for it. Instead, he used his tools too roughly, chipping and breaking them before tossing away the ones that didn’t work for him.
“Seven?” he asks as I walk up. “Where are they?”
“Who?” I ask, like I could possibly not know what he’s asking.
“What the hell do you mean who? They are very important people!”
Why does it feel so fucking good to toy with him? “Ah, them. They won’t be coming.”
“Warden, there’s something wrong with him,” Eleven says, sharp eyes scrutinizing me. “Look at his hands.” Eleven… always up the Warden’s fucking ass. Always worshiping him. Only a monster can love another monster. Four steps up behind me, prepared to grab me at the Warden’s command.
“Did you kill them?” the Warden snarls as he brings his wooden stick that he loves beating us with toward my face. I catch it in my hand, snapping it in half before driving the broken end right into Four’s heart, killing him instantly.
“I did… what are you going to do about it?” I ask, an uncontrollable ball of emotions rippling through me.
“Kill him!” the Warden screams out in rage as I rush forward, sliding behind him as I draw my wakizashi over the backs of his legs. With a cry, he drops to his knees, forced to watch the massacre that I’m about to inflict on all of his “children.”
Eleven screams, infuriated as he rushes to support the fallen man, allowing me to shift my attention to the others. Eleven and Nine will be the hardest to kill; I need to destroy the other Masks before Eleven returns and Nine reaches me, otherwise they’ll overwhelm me and I’ll lose this fight before it truly begins.
Four Masks at once are on me, and while I could win against any of them one-on-one, four against one is not forgiving. But I don’t even care if I die. I just want to stop. I just want to destroy this. I want to make the Warden hurt.
And more than anything, I want to free their broken minds from this absolute hell, and I’m afraid this is the only way. I manage to cut one down with ease before I find a sword wielded by Nineteen tearing through my arm, forcing me to drop my wakizashi.
Rage eats through me because now that I’m a monster, I’ll heal unless they make a killing blow. I rush forward and knock one of them back as I move toward Nineteen. With a scream of fury, the katana slices through his neck, his dead body dropping to the ground.
I can hear the Warden shrieking; he’s yelling, ordering them to cut me down, but then why are they falling one after another in sprays of blood? Two come at once, but as I bring up my katana to block, I realize I’ve made a mistake in my rage and have forgotten how silent Eleven can be until I look down and find the tip of his sword protruding from my chest.
He’s missed my heart by mere inches, but the wound leaves me torn open as he draws the blade back and brings it up quickly, and I know with a simple flick he’ll cut my head off. Turning to block it, blood fills my mouth and I stagger, missing the opportunity to stop him as I realize this is the end. I’ve fucked up, but hell… I took down many of them along the way. If only I had killed the Warden instead of taunting him, I would have died happy. But hopefully the man will never walk again.
The blade stops before it reaches my throat as I see Nine shove Eleven’s sword away from me, knocking it back. He turns quickly, stopping another blade aimed for him as he cuts the man’s abdomen open, spilling blood and intestines.
I don’t know why Nine is helping me, but I will take every bit of help that I can get because my body is growing weaker from the blood loss. There are too many of them, and they’re each as ruthless as the last, choosing to protect that monster while they attempt to slaughter me.
Moving quickly, I rush up as another Mask darts toward Nine. I drive him back, blocking his swings as I prove to him that even half dead, I am stronger than him. My sword tears into him, driving him to his knees as I turn just in time to see Eleven using my wakizashi to cut right through Nine’s neck.
I didn’t even get to ask him why he chose to help me, and in the end, helping me got him nowhere but closer to death.
I scream, rage filling me as I reach Eleven who tries to turn to face me, but with Nine’s dying breath, he drives a knife into Eleven’s foot, staking him to the ground. Eleven falters and with that, I destroy his heart.
Panting, I stagger and drop to my knees, blood freely running from wounds that won’t heal, every single one of my brothers lying upon the ground around me.
I look down at Nine who’d been so close to freedom…
If only I’d known, we could have done this together. We could have destroyed them… and both come out alive. But I was rash, I ran in fully expecting to die, and now here I kneel…
And they’re all dead.
All but one.
Using my katana, I push myself to my feet and slowly make my way over to the Warden.
With the back of his legs cut, he can’t get to his feet, so he’s forced to face the monster he has created. I pull my mask off and throw it before him.
“I want you to be able to look at my face as I kill you,” I say. “I want you to remember that I’m not just some mindless monster for you to manipulate and destroy.”
“You have twisted yourself into a monster!” he snarls.
I can’t stop the laugh that escapes me. I feel nearly delirious with joy, pain, rage… all of these emotions coursing through me.
But the one that hits me more than anything is a weird sense of peace.
“You’ve destroyed so many lives,” I say.
“Yet you’re the one who chose to kill your brothers!” he screams.
“They were already dead! Every last one of them, beaten and abused until there was no sense of life left in them, and you think I did that? No, I saved them. And I’m going to save more from ever becoming like them by killing you.”
The Warden hesitates before shaking his head. “No, please… don’t!” I’ve never heard the man beg before. It’s like it reduces this image I’ve built up of him to nothing more than a weak man groveling for his life.
“Did you ever stop when any of your ‘children’ begged for their lives?” I ask. “Did you ever hesitate?”
“Please!”
“Please is not enough,” I growl as I turn that blade he once taught me how to use on him.
I never expected that when I did, he’d be trying to crawl away from me, begging me to save him. How was it so easy to reduce this man to this state… and why couldn’t I mend my broken mind enough to do it sooner?
And as I stand over his body, the bodies of my brothers surrounding me, I find that suddenly, I have no idea what to do as I drop to my knees on the blood-soaked ground.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 32

CASIMIR
“Eleven killed Nine when Nine chose to help me,” I explain. “Looking back, if I’d known that Nine would have joined me, we could have worked together from the beginning. But he was so faithful to the Warden that I never thought he would.”
Five is staring at the floor he’s kneeling on, body shaking. A sob escapes him as he digs his nails into the rug.
He shakes his head wildly. “You just… move on like it’s nothing… but I don’t see how. Every time I sleep, my dreams are filled with the faces I killed. I’m drowning in blood but there’s no way out. There will never be a way out. But if I ended my nightmare… if I ended you…” He trails off before screaming. “I didn’t want to be a monster!”
“None of us did,” I say as I hold the katana wet with his blood; it’s biting into my hand, I grip it so tightly. “Nothing excuses what we’ve done… I still don’t know how we can ever find forgiveness, but hurting others isn’t the way. Killing people who aren’t even involved…”
“Are you going to kill me?” he asks.
And I find that no matter how much I’ve wanted to destroy this man who has tormented me and the ones I love, I don’t want to kill another one of my brothers. Is it my guilt over being incapable of saving him that day, or saving Nine later? Is it because I understand the pain he’s going through? Or is it because I’m not sure I ever thought I could forgive myself until I met Julian… and if I lost Julian… maybe I’d have ended up in the same situation as he did.
“I… don’t know. I guess… I will talk to the others… the people who had loved ones who were killed by you. The ones who are forced to suffer like you did when Nine… when Giles died.”
Five beats his hand against the floor. “No… I’m not… I… I…” He seems borderline manic, like he’s trying to figure out a way that he wasn’t the monster in this. Like he’s finally been forced to face what he’s done and now that he has… he doesn’t know how to understand the monster he’s become. “Casimir… what have I done?”
I turn my back to him, but when I glance up, I see the stake in Delwyn’s hand. His eyes are absolutely cold as he steps past me.
“I didn’t want to be a monster. I didn’t want to… I…” Five’s words are cut off as Delwyn reaches him, driving the stake into his chest.
I grab Julian and tuck him against me as Five stops talking. Maybe in death he can become Byran again. Maybe he’ll finally be able to shed that mask he’s been forced to live behind for so many years.
I can tell Julian doesn’t like Delwyn killing him. I’m not even sure Delwyn likes killing him, but Delwyn hurts and when you’re hurting it’s easier to make rash choices. Julian’s got a huge heart and it doesn’t matter what panic and fear Five forced him to feel, he wants to forgive him, he wants to fix him. He wants to help him.
But some actions can’t be fixed.
I guide Julian until we’re outside Atticus’s house, needing some fresh air and to be alone with him even if it’s just for a moment. I pull him close and kiss the side of his head. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes snap up to mine. “W-Why are you apologizing to me? You shouldn’t…” He draws quiet. “I guess… I don’t always know how to keep my emotions out of things, do I?”
“That’s what makes you so good, Julian. You keep me from allowing rage to consume me. You kept me from killing him because, even if it’s what I wanted in the moment, I would have regretted it.”
Julian sets his head against my shoulder, and I wrap my arms around him, needing to feel him.
“Hell, if I never met you and Ezio and Cyrus, I very much could have someday become like him. Maybe if Five would have met someone like you, he wouldn’t have done the things he did. You ground me, Julian. You make me feel and think… and make me look forward instead of constantly behind me.”
“I just…” His grip on me tightens. “I just don’t know how you can credit me for so much. Like how can I live up to this image you paint of me?”
“You don’t have to ‘live up’ to it. You, just being you, is all I ever need.”
The door to the house opens and Atticus steps out with everyone but Delwyn behind him. Even the butler has come to retrieve the cat out of the vehicle. “While I’d prefer to not see any of your faces again, I suppose you all need someplace to stay for the day… Borick can stand out in the front yard where the sun shines the brightest. The rest of you can come with me, I’ll show you to a room.”
Gustov is eager to greet us when we head back inside, having been with the butler to keep him out of the fight. Atticus leads us up the stairs of his mansion and waves to the entire second floor. “Pick a room. Do as you’d like. Just don’t annoy me. And then as soon as it’s night, please… kindly fuck off. And you, Borick, fuck off now.”
“Watch me go right into this room, eh?” Yorick taunts as he picks a room.
Atticus stares at Yorick as the sassy man pushes the door open.
Yorick is clearly baiting Atticus at this point. “This is now my room.”
“You are an irritation,” Atticus growls.
“Good… and fuck you,” he says as he flips him off with both hands, but before he can back into the room, Atticus grabs him and pins him against the wall. “I am your maker; you should respect me.”
Yorick laughs, literally laughs. “How cute.” And with a slap on Atticus’s face, he slips out from under him and disappears into his room before slamming the door inches from Atticus’s face.
Atticus growls as his fingers tighten into a fist. “Johnny! I need you to break the window to this room when Borick is sleeping! Let him fry,” he snarls as he storms off.
“They totally wanna do it,” Cyrus says.
“Uh-huh,” Julian mutters.
Ezio scrutinizes the spot where they’d been snarling at each other. “Do they? I don’t think they like each other…”
“It’s called hate sex,” Cyrus explains.
Ezio hesitates. “You mean that’s a thing we could be doing?”
Cyrus’s face scrunches up. “I don’t hate you that much.”
Ezio gasps. “Does that mean you like me?”
“I also don’t like you that much.” Then he tosses him the sweetest smile and disappears into a room.
Ezio groans. “Julian… give me some love advice.”
“I actually think you’re making progress! Somehow!” Julian states. “Two months ago, he’d scowl every time you spoke! This time he even tossed you a smile!”
Ezio is positively thrilled at this realization as he wanders off into the room next to Cyrus’s.
“Well, now that our entertainment is gone…” Julian says as he looks around. Even Gustov seems uncertain of what to do. “Should I check on Delwyn?”
I hesitate, not wanting to let him go, but maybe I should share him. “I suppose.”
“It’ll be quick,” he promises as we head downstairs, but when we reach the first floor, there’s no sign of where he’d gone. The butler, upon seeing us, informs us that Delwyn asked to be left alone, so we head back upstairs and pick an empty room.
“This… castle is quite something,” Julian says.
“It is, isn’t it?”
“Why don’t you take a shower to get this blood off you?”
“Yeah,” I agree, but I just feel weirdly listless as I stand here. Julian reaches out and takes my weapons from me, then sets them to the side before he grabs my wrist and pulls me into the bathroom.
He guides me inside to where he turns the shower on, then he starts to pull my clothes off like I’ve forgotten how to even undress myself. Maybe I have. My arms feel weighted… my body feels heavy and my brain foggy.
Even once he’s naked, I can’t seem to find a way to move my hands or feet until he takes my arm and draws me under the hot water. He washes the blood from me, gentle hands moving over me, scrubbing away the last drops of blood that still linger on my skin from the cut Five made.
By the time the shower is over, I still don’t know how to convince my limbs to move of their own accord, so he dries me and guides me over to the bed. Maybe sleep will solve this new issue I’ve acquired? Maybe it’ll reanimate me?
Once I find myself lying in the bed, he kneels on it before shifting. Then he flops down with his back against my bare chest, Gustov against my back.
The soft brush of Julian’s fur against my skin seems to reawake me, remind me that I’m not alone. I slide my arms around him and draw him tightly against me as I burrow my face in his fur. Ezio is right… hugging Julian in his wolf form can fix anything.
“How can you not think I’m a monster?” I whisper. “I killed all that was left of my family.”
“Your family lost their way… it sounds like Nine was the only one of your family willing to join you in a fight for what was right. The rest were never going to find it. They were only going to find more death… more pain… more suffering. I’m sorry you had to be the one to save them from that.”
Even the tears that wet Julian’s fur don’t seem to be enough, but I can’t stop them. I can’t stop the pain, but at least… I can finally face it.
“Casimir, what you did in the past might not have been right… but at that point in your life, it was the only thing you knew how to do. You spent nearly thirty years believing that killing was the only way through life. Maybe the person you are now would have done things differently… but just because you’ve changed doesn’t mean others have or could have. I think Five was proof of that.”
I nod, understanding what he’s saying, but struggling to find the words. Instead, I find a sense of peace relying on Julian unlike I’ve ever relied on anyone in my life. And for the first time in five hundred years, I cry for the brothers I lost.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 33

JULIAN
As the sun fades and the outside world becomes dark, I find myself watching Casimir. He didn’t sleep well and really only just recently fell asleep.
He shifts a little before opening his eyes. “Hmm…”
“Hmm…” I mutter back before reaching out and pushing his hair up a little. “Good… evening.”
Casimir smiles sleepily at me. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I really do. You cut away the parts of me that the Warden molded into a monster… you make me feel alive for the first time in hundreds of years. So thank you.”
I pull myself against him and squeeze him tight. “Good.”
“Now I want to get home,” he says as he kisses my forehead.
Once dressed and ready in brand-new clothes that the butler must have run off and purchased and washed—I try not to be creeped out by how well they fit… like did he measure us in our sleep?—the two of us head down to meet up with the others, only to find them at a large table. Atticus is at one end, glowering at Yorick who is at the other. There’s like ten feet between them but the vibe is still quite hostile. And even though the butler purchased Yorick the most mundane clothing, he has somehow made it look oddly sexy with the front torn open just enough to show his chest and the sleeves pushed up.
“They’ve been like this for hours. Watch,” Cyrus tells us. “What are your favorite colors?”
“The color of Borick’s blood,” Atticus says.
“The color of envy on Count Jerkula’s face because I’m so much prettier than him,” Yorick answers as he flicks his hair, making his earrings catch the light in the room.
“Oh fun,” I say. “Why exactly do you two hate each other?”
Atticus looks at me in a “Boy, would I love to tell you” way. “Oh, like anyone could enjoy this pompous and irritating man with his ‘Look at me, I’m so pretty and cute and all should adore me’ attitude while he literally stabs me in the back with a knife.”
“I’ve tried to kill multiple other people at this table, and I have been forgiven by all!” Yorick announces.
“Because they are brainless fools,” Atticus decides.
“And we’re heading out. Where’s Delwyn?” I ask.
“Delwyn has decided he’s going to stay here for a few days before coming back,” Ezio says.
When I go to check on him, I get turned away again, but I’m glad he at least has his cat and someplace to stay. I’m then ushered into the vehicle by Yorick who seems extremely pleased to be leaving the place. So pleased that he actually picks me up and crams me into the SUV, like he thinks wherever I go, the others will follow. Which… might not be all wrong.
The drive home is pretty uneventful. Beyond picking on Yorick, nothing much happens, and when we arrive at Casimir’s home, the others head off on their way, leaving the two of us home alone for the first time in a while.
“I have it,” I announce.
“You have what?” Casimir asks.
“How to make you feel better!”
“I feel fine! I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m badass. I would never use a wolf to dry my tears. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Watch me be manly.”
“Well, if I’m too busy watching you… you’re not watching me get naked.”
Casimir pauses, then whips around to face me. “I’m listening.”
“No you’re not, you’re gonna be begging.”
“Oh? I am?”
“You sure are. Beg me to see this ass bare.”
“Generally, I don’t have to say or do anything, and you’re showing it off to all of our friends, but I have to beg?” he asks, for some reason seeming to find an issue with this.
“I’m just… you know… feeling like you should work for this ass.”
“Fine, fine. Meet me in the bedroom,” he says, and then he’s gone.
Alright… interesting. Interesting.
I make my way up the stairs to see what exactly he has going on and find the bathroom door closed. I sit on the bed then decide I can do better than that and whip my pants off before returning to the bed… but like… is that sexy? Maybe I should be on my stomach so when he comes out of the bathroom, I can look back at him when he opens the door? Ah, sounds significantly better.
So I flop on my stomach, but now I look like I’m lounging and bored. Maybe a bit of ass cheek will do? I don’t exactly own a thong, so I pull the edges of my boxer briefs up so they’re up my ass crack. Now there’s just a wad of fabric bunched up there and I’m not confident this is attractive in the slightest.
This is how I come to be trying to dig my underwear out of my ass crack as Casimir steps out of the bathroom and freezes.
Since I was not expecting the absolute… attack that would be inflicted on my eyeballs when he stepped out, I also freeze.
“Oh. My. Holy. Fuck,” I whisper.
“I heard someone needed something cleaned, but instead, I find myself a sexy man who clearly needs help after his ass crack ate his underwear,” he says as he stands there in the maid outfit Ezio got him.
I mean… it’s one thing for me to wear it, I’m up for whatever, but to see the five-hundred-year-old vampire strut out in it is an immediate KO. I fall against the bed, trying my hardest not to laugh while also being wildly turned on.
“Oh my god… the beauty,” I whisper.
Casimir walks up to the bed, grabs my ankles, and yanks them toward him. “May I ask what is happening here?” He waves at my derriere that’s obviously struggling with all the cloth.
“Oh? That was me being sexy. Are you not significantly turned on?”
“It’s… like a masterpiece,” he says as he drums a little tune on my bare ass cheeks.
“It’s because I was waiting for you to remove them… with your teeth.”
“Oh?” he asks. “Don’t mind if I do.” He climbs up onto the bed with me, then pushes my shirt up and kisses a line down my back before he reaches my ass. “It’s… in there quite deep, I hope my teeth are strong enough to pull it out.”
“Allow the power of the maid to invigorate you,” I say as he bites the edge of my underwear and starts to pull.
“Oh shit. Your underwear is stuck on my fang, Julian.”
“Oh my god, no it’s not. Just take them off with your hands!”
“No! It is my duty as your stud to remove your underwear with my teeth! If I can’t do this for you, what use am I?” he asks.
“Stop! No!” I laughingly protest, but Casimir is determined and manages to proudly extract them from my ass crack with his teeth.
“The deed has been done.”
“Oh my god, don’t say it like that… It makes it sound like it was traumatizing!”
“My teeth got rather stuck at one point, but it’s fine. I… I will recover from this,” he says. “Look, your beautiful buns are already reviving me.” He gives my ass another smack.
“This is… not going well.”
“Would you also like to have your shirt removed with my teeth?”
“I would like to peruse your body for a moment,” I say as I grab for my phone, but Casimir snatches it up before I can.
“This will not be photographed,” he growls.
I gasp and clutch my heart. “You would deprive your fated mate of a simple maid picture? I will show no one! I will keep it to myself and only send it to my father.”
While he’d claimed that he was going to refuse me even a single picture, his entire expression shifts the moment I mention making my father miserable. “Oh, he’ll love that,” Casimir says as he immediately hands it off before striking a pose.
I’m laughing so hard that the first picture comes out shaky as fuck before I get the second.
“He will be pleased,” I comment, even though I’m pretty sure I can never send him this.
“Allow me to deliver it to him,” Casimir says, thrilled about the idea.
“I love that you are well aware that my father could spread this image around and make you a laughingstock among your peers and still⁠—”
“It’s worth it.”
I grin as I hold my hands out to him. “Come here, you ridiculous man,” I tell him as he climbs closer to me. “Fuck, you look fine with all that lace and frills accenting that fine ass.”
“And you will look even more fine out of this shirt that fits you eerily well… did that butler ask your size?”
“No, I’m convinced he snuck into the rooms while we slumbered and did full-body measurements of us. He also watched us while we slept for a bit and sang us little lullabies.”
Casimir nods, almost approvingly. “I wonder if my delivery lady would do the same.”
“Oh my god. Don’t torture her anymore,” I say as I grin at him.
“I haven’t tortured her. That was all you.” He returns my grin with a kiss.
I try to push those thoughts of me on the kitchen table away and focus on the handsome man before me. My hands slide up his bare thighs as my lips part against his. I absolutely love how he’s willing to just have fun. How he doesn’t mind putting on this ridiculous costume or… pulling my underwear out of my ass crack. He’s just ready to do whatever to make me smile and laugh.
Casimir’s always talking about being unsure how he could deserve me, but it’s me wondering how I could possibly deserve him.
He picks me up, scooting me farther onto the bed before straddling me.
“I have to say that outfit looks mighty fine on you,” I tell Casimir as he showers kisses down my neck before nipping me.
“Thank you. I might not be able to pull it off as well as maid Julian could, but I feel like it’s definitely a step up from the business suits you like on me so much.”
“It’s definitely something, alright,” I say with a grin.
Casimir nips my lips. “What do you want me to do to you now?”
“Hmmm… I wanna watch you touch yourself.”
“Oh?” he asks as he rocks back just enough to slide his hand under the maid skirt and pull his cock out so the band of the skirt sits against his thick cock. “You want to watch?”
“I could watch you do anything or nothing and still get turned on.”
“That’s… not healthy, Julian. Say I’m out there gnawing on that giraffe, and you’re gonna be turned on?”
I give him a look. “Do you understand that most sexy partners would just roll with it? They’d be like… ‘Oh… you like it when I touch myself?’ and you’re like nope, ‘You wanna watch me suck blood from a giraffe, you’re a pervert.’”
“Don’t turn this on me, you said anything. Just be glad I didn’t pick something worse like giving money to nuns or something!”
I sigh, wondering how I can be so horrifically unsexy in front of this man.
He’s just grinning away as he sits down on my waist, my cock against his ass as he strokes himself.
“I’m… having an issue…” I realize, loving the feel of my cock against him… hell, loving the view of him stroking himself. “After you… ‘disciplined’ me with that toy… I made a promise to myself… that I would make you beg.”
“Oh?” he asks as I lightly smack his hand off his cock, clearly changing my mind. “And what exactly does that mean?”
“That means… that you can’t touch yourself anymore,” I say toyingly as I run my finger over the head of his cock.
“I’m… not quite sure you’re going to get away with this when there’s so many fun things for me to touch,” he responds as he reaches behind him and strokes my cock in a way that makes it rub against his ass.
Fuuuuuck, he’s good.
But I’m better.
I thrust my hips up, knocking him off my waist as I hook his leg and shove him with my hip, rolling him onto his back.
“This… needs to come off,” I say as I slide the top of the maid outfit off him and fling it before reaching over to the dresser. “The issue with you is that you can break everything I tie you up with… but… that’s why I have to use something you just won’t break.” I reveal the doggy bandana that he loves far too much. “And while I tie you up,” I lean down and give him a quick kiss and a nip, “you’re going to suck my cock.”
“I… think I can handle that,” Casimir responds with a grin as he grabs my ass and jerks me forward so I’m basically straddling his face. His tongue trails around the head of my dick as I gather his hands up and push them above his head. He takes my cock in deeper as I wind the fabric around his wrists while pleasure ripples through me. As I make my final knot, he pulls off my cock and nips my thigh, and I nearly give in to him and let him fuck me and bite me right there.
“You’re good, but you’re not that good,” I say as I quickly back away before he can tempt me more. The grin on his face tells me that he’s confident that he is that good.
“Then why are you running?” he asks.
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t running. I was just… getting bored and wanted to speed things up a bit,” I taunt.
“Bored? You’re hilarious.”
“Thank you,” I say as I slide my hand down his chest and settle with his cock pressed against mine. I run my fingers down both our shafts, rubbing them against each other. “Oh nooooo. I forgot the lube… How ever will we have sex now?”
“Uh… by reaching over and getting it,” he answers as he nods at its current location in a drawer.
“Oh, but it’s so far away… if only you could get it for me.”
“Do I have telekinesis now or something? You tied me up in my favorite bandana that I love you wearing! I can’t rip it!”
I trail my fingers over his erection so softly that it makes him shiver, and I just love it. “Whatever will we do?”
“I got this. Let me be the man of your dreams,” he announces as he slides out from under me and swings his ass up, like he’s going to open the bedside table drawer with his feet and retrieve a bottle of lube also with his feet. What he does instead is show me how untalented he is as he knocks over the lamp, kicks everything off the table, and gives me a nice view of his ass that I at least get to smack.
“Stop! You’re making a freaking mess!”
“No! Don’t hinder me from showing you my true capabilities,” he says before flopping back down in defeat.
“Are you done?”
Casimir sighs. “I am done.”
“I don’t see the lube.”
“You… could spit on it?”
I start laughing. “This super makes up for my underwear mishap earlier. This was far more unsexy.”
“Look me in the eyes and tell me that my stunt of flexibility didn’t fill you with uncontrollable lust.”
I climb over his body, stopping to look him right in the eyes. “Lust has consumethed me.”
“I am pleased,” he says as I grab the lube from the drawer before popping it open. “Weak creature, resorting to fingers to grab that.”
“You little shit. You are being punished.”
“Ah, I forgot.”
I reach down and tug his skirt off and fling it so he’s fully naked beneath me. Then I drip the lube onto his cock with one hand as I rub my wet fingers on my other hand between my legs while he watches. “Tell me what you want.”
“Please let me watch you push your finger inside yourself.”
“Oh? You think you deserve to see that after that embarrassing stunt you just performed?”
“Yeah… yeah I do,” he says. “And I’ll tell you why… I look damn fine in this outfit.”
I have to laugh as I agree wholeheartedly. “You’re right, you do deserve it,” I tell him. His eyes fixate on me as I push a finger inside myself before adding another.
“You’re so fucking sexy,” he whispers.
“Tell me what you want.”
“There is no begging required from me. I will do anything you want because you are absolutely intoxicating. You are beautiful, sweet, and the kindest person I’ve ever met. I love that even when you’re scared or nervous, you will drop everything to run to someone’s aid. You care and you love so damn much.”
“I…” I hesitate. “I was being all… torturey to you… I thought I had control because I tied up your hands, and then you fucking sucker punched me with the feels…” I whisper.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I mean… Julian’s so… rawr… evil wolf. Fury wolf!”
I glower down at him. “I’m going to make you beg so fucking hard next time,” I growl as I reach up and pull his hands free. “So hard.”
“I’m already begging harder than I’ve ever begged before because I want you more than anything I’ve ever wanted. I don’t just want you… I need you.” Casimir winds me up in his arms, my back coming to rest against the bed as he settles between my legs. “You saved me… you taught me that it’s okay to love and care… how to look away from the past,” he says a moment before his lips capture mine.
His cock presses against me before he slowly sinks into me, making me moan as I grab on to him.
“You’re so fucking perfect,” he murmurs as he rocks his hips, driving deeper into me. He’s so thick… but it feels so fucking good.
“I love you,” is all I manage to mutter out. It’s like his words and his body have just whisked away everything I want to say… everything I could say. I’m enraptured by him as he moves inside me, kisses me… loves me.
“I love you too,” he says, hand stroking my cock. He’s so fucking perfect… how the hell did it take him five hundred years to figure this out? And how can he possibly claim it’s because of me?
Casimir drives himself deep inside me as he uses his fingernail to cut his neck. At first, I’m confused why he’d hurt himself until he pushes my face against him, and that sweet smell makes everything all the more exhilarating… oh, but the smell is nothing like the taste… Something about this scene is making the taste absolutely intoxicating. Is it the way his cock moves inside me or how his hands glide over me? It’s like my entire body is electrified. My fingers dig into his back as I swallow the blood with a moan.
The wound heals up too quickly, but I lick and suck the spot, savoring every last taste of it as I moan. The pleasure has taken hold of me, refusing to let me go as it builds and builds until I can’t take any more. My balls tighten, my body aching for release as I clutch tightly to him while his hand slides down my length, pulling me over the edge as my come hits his stomach. I can feel myself tightening around him as I orgasm, making him moan. His pace quickens as his hand trails over my cock while he comes deep inside me.
He kisses my lips, holding me close before slowly pulling out of me.
“I’m gonna make you beg for release next time,” I threaten.
Casimir gives me a sexy grin. “Uh-huh. Sounds fun.”
“And I’m setting you up on a dinner date with my father tomorrow as torture.”
Now that gets the reaction I’m wanting. “Why? I get tortured because I said nice things about you?” he asks as he grabs me, pulling me into his arms. “Unless your father is the dinner.”
I wrap my arms around him before feeling the scars on his back and hesitating. I know he doesn’t like to draw attention to them… so does he also not like my touch on them?
“It’s okay,” he says, voice soft and gentle.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Yes,” he assures me as he squeezes me tighter against him. I tuck myself into him, my fingers clutching on to his back. I can feel every raised mark left behind by that horrible man and truly hope that someday I can push the pain that he left behind away for good.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 34

JULIAN
“You sure you don’t mind running this up?” I ask Ezio as I hand him the cross-stitch that Cecily had done and the artwork I’d been working on while being held hostage. It was something I’d been drawing of Cecily and Delwyn sitting with each other. My hopes had been to use it against them… but I never finished.
Last night, Casimir took me to the house I’d been held in to gather these two items, and this time I finished the drawing of the two of them sitting together on the couch. Not to use it against him, but in the hopes of helping him cherish his memories of her. I put it in an envelope along with the cross-stitch and put a note on it explaining that I didn’t want him to open it until he was ready.
I wanted to deliver it myself but was told he just wanted to be alone. Maybe he’ll come back someday… or maybe I’ll never see him again. But at least he knows our door is always open (literally, Casimir never locks it and looks at me like I’m strange when I do).
“Nah, I had a few things that I needed to iron out… I am a detective, after all,” Ezio says.
Cyrus, who is also here, scoffs. He’d stopped by just to hang out, which pleases me. I’m glad he finally feels comfortable enough to willingly come over. When they’d walked in, I’d been in the process of painting something that wasn’t Gustov… for once. The only reason I can accomplish this is because Casimir is off doing something with one of his businesses.
“What are you working on?” Cyrus asks.
“Maybe a new project for my students,” I say as I use a dropper to pour different types of permanent ink into a tray. “I want to see if it looks good first, you know?”
Gustov comes over to the table to see what’s going on, so I give him a good pat then pick up a paintbrush a moment before I hear a thud.
Jumping, I slam my hand down as Yorick hits the window and beams at me… but the damage has already been done.
My hand has smacked the tray filled with extremely permanent inks, propelling it through the air. The blue, red, yellow, purple, and green all fly out of the tray… and land on Gustov.
My body freezes.
Ezio gasps.
Cyrus chokes.
Yorick squeals.
“What have you done?” Ezio whispers.
“It’s Yorick’s fault! He scared me instead of coming in like a normal person!” I cry as Yorick comes in to get a closer look at the deed. “Quick! Someone help!”
Cyrus grabs the napkins, but instead of blotting, he rubs, causing the ink to spread, mixing into weird colors that tint his red fur with a vengeance.
Cyrus jerks back and drops the napkin. “Oh, hell no… I do not want my fingerprints on this scene! Casimir doesn’t like me enough to not murder me.”
“He already wants an excuse to murder Yorick; tell him Yorick did it!” Ezio suggests as Yorick gasps.
“Let’s not murder Yorick!” Yorick whines.
“I’ll just… give him a bath, right? Maybe if I scrub hard enough, I can get it out.” And while my mouth is saying this, my mind is telling me that there’s no water that’s going to fix this.
“You can’t just bathe that ’do,” Ezio says. “That level of fluff requires bathing, blow drying, parting, and spritzing… we’ll all be dead by the time he even dries. Hell, he’ll probably need another bath from our blood.”
“Oh, holy mother of god,” Yorick mutters as he makes the sign of the cross. “I’m not even religious and I think God might be the only thing that can save this man. Julian… I liked knowing you.”
Gustov has no freaking idea what’s going on but is loving every minute of the attention.
“I have an idea!” I say as I hurry off and grab a pair of scissors. “We’ll just snip off the teeny-tiny ends where the ink has stained him. Casimir will never notice.”
I reach out with pure precision, clutching the fur as we all hold our breath while I make the snip… just as Gustov shakes and I cut out a large chunk.
“I’ll dig the holes. That way Casimir can just lay us in them,” Ezio says.
I grab him since he’s clearly planning on getting the shovel. “NO! He’s not going to be that mad. Ha ha… this can be fixed… ha ha. I’ll just snip a little bit to the side to even it out!”
“But what about the rest of the ink all over him?” Cyrus asks. “You’ve done nothing but gouge a chunk of fur out. You’ve actually made it more noticeable.”
I’m getting desperate now. “No! No, no, no! Guys… come on… we’re all smart men, we can do this. We’re going to be fine. Is it hot in here or is it just me? Ha ha…”
“I… I actually think I’m going to be quite ill,” Yorick says.
I gasp, an idea hitting me. “What if I get naked? What if we’re all naked? He’ll have to refrain from looking at the dog then, right?”
“What the fuck?” Cyrus asks.
“Ha… Cyrus… I’m panicking. Quick! Drop your pants!”
Ezio shakes his head. “We’ll tell him Gustov ran away. We’ll wait until the groomer is open tomorrow, the groomer will fix it, we’ll have to wait weeks for the hair to grow back out to the same length, and then we’ll be like ‘Oh wow, look, he finally came home!’”
“He would tear this damn city apart looking for him! He’d send out a global search party!” I say.
“Fuck… I guess we have to get naked,” Ezio grumbles.
Cyrus shakes his head wildly. “I’m not getting fucking naked.”
“I’m prepared!” Yorick exclaims as he tears open his shirt, making me realize how bad of an idea this is, but it’s what we’ve got.
“Don’t forget that he has despised Steve for less than this,” Ezio says.
“Nooooo. I don’t wanna be like Steve!”
Ezio freezes. “His car just pulled in.”
“Fuuuuuuuck,” I whisper. “Come on, guys. Have I ever asked anything of you all? I mean… maybe, but this time it’s like for realz realz… please strip.”
The three of them look at each other as I hear Casimir’s footsteps on the porch. And then… I watch in disbelief as Cyrus holds his hands out to Ezio. Ezio gives him a nod like he understands, and I realize that my friends really love me enough that they’re going to distract Casimir with some like Hollywood “Oh look, they’re kissing” scene as Ezio takes Cyrus into his arms and the three of them FUCKING DISAPEAR.
“WHAT THE HELL, GUYS?” I yell as I realize that Cyrus literally dove into Ezio’s arms knowing it was the only way he could vacate the building in the time it took Casimir to open the door, so as he steps in, I’m all alone with the painted dog.
I snatch Gustov up, smashing his back against my chest as I look Casimir right in the eyes.
“Julian…” He looks oddly suspicious.
“Wassssup, my lover?” I would throw in some cool hand signs to seal the deal, but my hands are full of dog.
Casimir stills. “What the fuck happened?”
“Happened? Whaaaa? Nothing. Actually… I need you to get something out of the bedroom for me… slowly.”
“This is suspicious.”
“Go on, now.”
Casimir stares at me. “Are you going to tell me what I’m getting?”
“Oh… uh… you’ll know it when you see it!”
I look behind him as I see my so-called friends staring through the window like they want to watch me get absolutely destroyed. Ezio even has a shovel in hand. Where the fuck did he get the shovel?
“You’re acting so weird… and what is this?” Casimir asks as he stoops down to reach for the chunk of fluff I’d cut out of Gustov that is innocently lying on the ground. I slam my foot down, accidentally smashing it onto his hand.
“A secret. But you must get me… that thing upstairs. The thing I most desire.”
“You… are acting odd, but fine. Fine…”
He pats Gustov on the head and as he pulls his hand away, I see he has ink on his fingers that I pretend not to notice. He heads for the stairs as I grab the art pad I’d been working on, throw it on the floor and smoosh Gustov’s feet into safe paint that’ll wash right out. I smack his paws down on the painting as he gets overly excited and breaks free from my hold. And with nothing else to do, I drop my clothes and shift.
I mean… who can get mad at this face?
Casimir freezes when he sees me doing my absolute hardest to throw him the “I’m a cute wolf, look at me” stare as I thump my tail as quickly as it’ll go.
He looks at me… then he looks at Gustov who is missing a chunk of fur, has a mishmash of colors, and is bounding around, then he eyes the painting on the floor.
“It was a burglar because you never lock the door.”
“Was it?”
“Yeah, see, right there!” I nod at the window, and boy do our friends disappear. I can hear their cars start before they speed out of the driveway. They’re actually gone so fast that the shovel hasn’t even had time to fall over.
“So you… spilled paint on the Great Gustov…”
“Not paint… permanent ink.”
“And then you tried cutting it out…”
“He moved.”
“But… I do love this painting,” he says as he picks it up off the floor. “The real question is… can I ever forgive you?”
I work the tail even harder as he sets the painting down and comes over to me. I fall against his thigh, giving him the best look I can muster.
“Fucking hell, you’re so cute,” Casimir tells me as he picks me up.
I shift and grab on to him. “Ezio was all mean and said that you were going to start treating me like you do Steve!”
“I bet Steve did this,” he says.
“He did!”
“I bet I need to fuck him up.”
“You do!”
Casimir shakes his head and carries me into the living room where he sinks down on the couch. “Sooooo that’s really not going to wash out, is it?”
“No… I’m really sorry.”
“It’s fine. I might just cry myself to sleep tonight, but besides that, I’m a big tough man, I can deal.”
“Sounds questionable, but that’s good.”
He grins at me. “It’s fine. You should have seen Gustov the first time I tried grooming him. Want to see?”
“I do,” I say as he pulls out his phone and whips out a picture that I was not expecting. It looks like he tried grooming him with a hedge trimmer. “What did you do to him?”
“Right? I just wanted to make it so if I got hungry later, it was easier to get to the throat.”
I laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”
Casimir smiles and kisses me.
“You doing okay?” I ask.
“I am… I’m just… glad it’s over. I feel guilty for those who got wound up in it, but I also needed to protect the ones I love. Revenge and guilt are nasty things.”
“They are. I’m glad you can finally breathe again. I know that things aren’t fixed… but I do hope that every day… every year, things get a little better.”
“Just being with you has fixed so much. I did talk to Atticus some while driving home. I wanted to know more about how Five was alive. He explained to me that he’d gone into the room after turning me, and while I had thought Five was already dead, he was still just barely alive. The Warden had Atticus change him, and instead of allowing him out with the others, he kept us separated. Finding out that Five and Nine were together, he used that to force Five to listen to him. I also wonder if he thought Nine would fail if the Warden killed Five. Nine was one of his top students… and he’d already lost so many of us that maybe he was afraid of losing Nine too and wanted to use Five against him?”
“He must have allowed them to see each other some?”
“Sounds like it… and maybe that’s how he kept them in line? But I guess at the end when I turned on the Warden, Nine took it as an opportunity for them both to go free. Sadly… it didn’t end up like that.”
“How long was Atticus with them?”
“Not long, he came and went, but I’m pretty sure he just found the Warden minorly interesting. After the others were killed, he said Five came to him. Five told him that I’d brutally killed the people who the Warden was working with before slaughtering all of them. Atticus allowed him to stay there a while, but he said he became obsessed with this idea of hunting me down, though he didn’t know my name. I kept to myself for hundreds of years, so maybe me moving here and becoming territory boss is what finally showed him that I was still alive and around.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
Casimir lifts my hand and kisses my wrist. “Let’s get back to how you’re going to repay me for what you’ve done to my dog.”
“By giving you sweet kisses?”
“Nope,” he says as he carries me upstairs. I’m foolish enough to think we’re heading for the bed until he drops me down on the ground in front of the hallway wall. He’s gone and then back within a minute, dropping all of my paint supplies before me.
“Mural Gustov,” he explains.
“Oh fuck,” I whisper as I glance over at the door that used to always be closed and locked. Today it’s standing open. “Fine. I need something to draw with, though. And maybe some clothes?”
“On it,” he says as he heads off.
As he does that, I look into the room and realize the chest is open and the masks are lying out on a table that hadn’t been in the room before. I hesitate before walking over to them.
I see the mask with the seven on it to the left and run my fingers over it, my mind drifting to a Casimir who is vastly different than the one I know today. A mindless man who has been forced to do everything he’s told… I can’t even picture them as being the same person.
Casimir steps up behind me.
“Sorry,” I tell him.
“I don’t mind,” he says as he sets his chin on my shoulder. He reaches around and picks up his mask. “I’ve been trying to think of what to do with the rest. I thought about destroying them… then I thought about burying them… but I might just keep them for now. I guess… I don’t have to hate them like I always have… I suppose they’re the only thing left of those I once called my brothers.”
He slides his own mask off the table, holding it before me, and I wonder what it’d feel like to be confined behind it…
I don’t think I’d have made it long… but if that was how I was raised… and forced…
Casimir tips his hand and the mask drops from his fingers, clattering onto the table as he wraps me up in his arms.
“Come along, there are much more important things to worry about… like my mural.”
“Are there?” I ask as I glance away from the mask he left behind.
He kisses my cheek. “Yes, like… should it just be a face or a full body? Side profile? Or front? I have enough walls in the house that we can do one of each!”
“No! Just… give me the pencil so I can think,” I say. I probably could sketch it out on paper first, but I’ve drawn this dog so many times that I’m not sure I need to. Instead, I sketch a little on the wall before glancing back at Casimir who is sitting on the floor, clearly not planning on going anywhere.
He sees me looking and gives me the absolute sweetest smile.
How the hell could anyone ever make him hide behind a mask?
“Don’t be so excited. I’ve never done a freaking mural before.”
“Anything you do is perfect,” Casimir says as Gustov sits down on his lap like he’s prepared to watch as well.
I can’t stop smiling as I turn back to the wall and think about all of the possibilities.