City of Blood

23

My vision is blurry when my eyes open and I realize I'm still in my wolf form. I blink, trying to regain my consciousness so I can defend myself when I'm attacked since I know Ramsay got his creepy human traffickers to take me. A part of me still wants to think that Ramsay has some moral compass, but I can't trust him with the business he's in.

I see a white t-shirt, underwear, and a pair of sweatpants at the end of the bed, so I shift and put them on. It'll be easier to sneak around wherever I am if I'm not a massive wolf. Speaking of, I have no clue where I am. There are no familiar scents, but I was sleeping on a bed in what's definitely a bedroom so I must be in someone's house.

I open the door, slipping through it and sniffing the air. I freeze when Callum's scent hits my room and I move through the house silently, trying to find my mate. One door smells strongly of him, but when I open it, he's not inside the bedroom.

Gods, if they hurt him, then I'll push aside my fear of his judgment and kill everyone in a five mile radius to keep him safe. It's not his fault he's involved in this. Everything that's been going wrong in his life since we met has been tied to me... gods, he'd probably be better off without me.

I growl when I hear voices downstairs and make my way down them. I rush into the kitchen when Callum's scent hits my nose once again and I'm faced with Ramsay, the Irving bastard, another guy who looks vaguely familiar, and Callum is sitting at the kitchen table.

"Nice of you to join us," Irving says, holding a coffee mug.

I stand in front of the kitchen table, putting myself between Callum and the other three. It's aggressive of me and blatantly obvious that I'm trying to block my mate from them to protect him. I try to ignore the hurt that crosses Ramsay's face.

Irving takes a step toward us and I let out a warning growl. "Gods, relax. Would you like this mug of coffee?"

"So you can poison me?" I snap back. "I know who you are and what you do."

He laughs, which irritates me even more. "You think you know what I do. Why don't we sit down and have a conversation? You do owe me for getting you and your mate out of those woods. Samuel would've killed you if he saw what you did to his son."

Ramsay takes the mug from Irving and hands it to me. He also hands me what looks like an old, tattered napkin. "I thought I saw you two at the club that night when I arrived, so I went to check out your table later. Is it yours?" he asks.

I look at the napkin and recognize the napkin that Callum wrote on when we were eavesdropping on Ramsay's conversation at the club when we stalked him. I sit down at the kitchen table and hand it to Callum, and I watch his eyes flicker in recognition.

"Huh. Paper trail," Callum says, reading it.

I put the coffee mug on the kitchen table, refusing to drink from it. "Why would you join traffickers, Ramsay?"

Ramsay looks back at the other two vampires, who are both watching him with surprisingly kind expressions. He visibly relaxes and sits down beside me at the kitchen table, and we're joined by the other two men.

"Wait..." I say, trailing off and looking between the three. "Are you two fucking my brother?!"

Irving and the other guy look bewildered. "Gods, no!" Irving exclaims. "He's decades younger than us! We're his mentors and we keep him in the loop regarding what's going on in the vampiric world. Including what Samuel has done."

"You're human traffickers," Callum says, scowling at the three. "My aunt told me that."

"Helen Adler is your aunt, correct?" the vaguely familiar man says. He was there that night, claiming to be the one that invited Ramsay... gods, what was his name?