Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [577]
“You will stay.” Yakut’s smile chilled her to the bone. “Tread carefully, Renata. I wouldn’t want you doing anything stupid either.”
She swallowed the sudden lump of cold unease in her throat. “I’m sorry?”
“You will be,” he answered, his grip tightening on her arm. “Your emotions betray you, beauty. I can feel the rise in your heart rate, the spike of adrenaline that’s running through your veins even now. I felt the change in you from the moment the warrior entered the room. I felt it earlier as well. Care to tell me where you were tonight?”
“Training,” she replied, quickly but firmly. Giving him no reason to doubt her, since it was essentially the truth. “Before you sent Lex to call for me, I was outside, running through my training exercises in the old kennel. It was a taxing workout. If you felt anything from me, that’s all it was.”
A long silence stretched, and still that hard grip stayed latched onto her wrist. “You know how much I value loyalty, don’t you, Renata?”
She managed a brief nod.
“I value it as much as you value the life of that child sleeping in the other room,” he said coldly. “I think it would destroy you if she should end up in the boneyard.”
Renata’s blood seemed to freeze in her veins at the threat. She stared up into the evil eyes of a monster—one who grinned at her now with sick pleasure.
“Like I said, dear Renata. Tread very carefully.”
CHAPTER
Nine
The city of Montreal, named for the broad mount that afforded such a royal view of the Saint Lawrence River and the valley below, glittered like a bowl of gemstones under the crescent sliver of the moon. Elegant skyscrapers. Gothic church spires. Verdant parkways, and, in the distance, a shimmering ribbon of water that nestled the city in its protective embrace. It truly was a spectacular view.
No wonder the leader of the Montreal Darkhaven chose to settle his community near the summit of Mount Royal.
Standing on the baroque-style limestone balcony off the mansion’s second-floor drawing room made the old hunting lodge outside the city seem a thousand miles away. A thousand years away from this polite, civilized manner of living. Which, of course, it was.
The wait to meet with Edgar Fabien, the Breed male who oversaw the Montreal vampire population, seemed to take forever. Fabien was well known around the city and rumored to be very well connected, both within the Darkhavens and their policing arm known as the Enforcement Agency. He was the natural choice for a delicate situation like this.
Still, it was a gamble that the Darkhaven leader would be willing to cooperate. This unannounced late-night visit had been a spontaneous thing, and a very risky one at that.
Just by coming here, he was declaring himself an enemy of Sergei Yakut.
But he’d seen enough.
Endured enough.
The prince was sick and tired of licking his father’s boots. It was time for the tyrant king to fall.
Lex turned at the sound of footsteps approaching from within the drawing room. Fabien was a slim male, tall and meticulously dressed, as if he’d been born in his tailored suit and shiny leather loafers. His ash-blond hair was slicked back from his face with some kind of perfumed oil, and when he smiled at Lex in greeting, his thin lips and narrow birdlike facial features became even more severe.
“Alexei Yakut,” he said, coming out onto the balcony and offering Lex his hand. No fewer than three rings sparkled on his long fingers, gold and diamonds to rival the glitter of the city outside. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long. I’m afraid we’re not accustomed to receiving unannounced guests here at my personal residence.”
Lex gave him a tight nod and took his hand out of Fabien’s grasp. The Darkhaven leader’s private home wasn’t exactly going to turn up in any Montreal tour guides, but a few questions posed to the right people in town had led