Hard Bitten - Chloe Neill [130]
I stood alone, glad of their affection. Love bloomed like amaranth, I thought, finding a new place to seed even as others were taken away.
A week passed, and the House and its vampires still grieved. But even in grief, life went on.
Malik took up residence in Ethan’s office. He didn’t change the decor, but he did station himself behind Ethan’s desk. I heard rumblings in the halls about the choice, but I didn’t begrudge him the office. After all, the House was a business that he needed to run, at least until the receiver arrived.
Luc was promoted from Guard Captain to Second. He seemed more suited for security and safety than executive officer or would-be vice president, but he handled the promotion with dignity.
Tate’s deputy mayor took over for the city’s fallen playboy, who was facing indictment for his involvement with drugs, raves, and Celina.
Navarre House mourned her loss. The death of Celina, as a former Master and the namesake of the House, was treated with similar pomp and circumstance.
I got no specific rebuke from the GP for being the tool of her demise, but I assumed the receiver would have thoughts on that, as well.
The drama had no apparent end.
Through all of it, I stayed in my room. The House was virtually silent; I hadn’t heard laughter in a week. We were a family without a father. Malik was undoubtedly competent and capable, but Ethan, as Master, had turned most of us. We were biologically tied to him.
Bound to him.
Exhausted by him.
I spent my nights doing little more than bobbing in the sea of conflicting emotions. No appetite for blood or friendship, no appetite for politics or strategy, no interest in anything that went on in the House beyond my own emotions and the memories that stoked them.
My days were even worse.
As the sun rose, my mind ached for oblivion and my body ached for rest. But I couldn’t stop the thoughts that circled, over and over, in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. And because I grieved, because I mourned, I didn’t want to. Events and moments replayed in my mind—from my first sight of him on the first floor of Cadogan House to the first time he beat me in a fight; from the expressions on his face when I’d taken blood from him to the fury in his expression when he’d nearly fought a shifter to keep me from presumed harm.
The moments replayed like a filmstrip. A filmstrip I couldn’t, however exhausted, turn off.
I couldn’t face Malik. I don’t know what he’d known before following Ethan onto campus that night, but I couldn’t imagine he didn’t wonder about the strangeness of the task—or its origin. I wouldn’t deny him the right to run the House as he saw fit, but I wasn’t ready to make declarations of his authority over me. Not without more information. Not without some assurance that he hadn’t been part of the team who’d sold me to the highest bidder. My anger became a comfort, because at least it wasn’t grief.
For seven nights, Mallory slept on the floor of my room, loath to leave my side. I was hardly capable of acknowledging her existence, much less anything else. But on the eighth night, she’d apparently had enough.
When the sun slipped below the horizon, she flipped on the lights and ripped the blanket off the bed.
I sat up, blinking back spots. “What the hell?”
“You’ve had your week of lying around. It’s time to get back to your life.”
I lay down again and faced the wall. “I’m not ready.”
The bed dipped beside me, and she put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re ready. You’re grieving, and you’re angry, but you’re ready. Lindsey said the House is down another guard since Luc took over as Second. You should be down there helping out.”
“I’m not ready,” I protested, ignoring her logic. “And I’m not angry.”
She made a sound of incredulity. “You’re not? You should be. You should be pissed right now. Pissed that Ethan was in cahoots with your father.”
“You don’t know that.” I said the words by habit. By now, I was too numb and exhausted with grief and