LOGINChapter 48CHRISTIANAHe still looked. But the edge had gone out of it, the desperate quality, the barely managed longing of a man trying to appear neutral and failing. He looked at her the way he looked at the other doctors now, with professional attention rather than the other kind.I felt the difference and it was considerable.There was a meeting, the third day of their visit, where Annalisa raised a question about the access protocol for some of the medical records required for the paediatric cases. She presented it clearly and the reasoning was sound and three of the doctors were nodding before she had finished.Antonio looked at me."As the Luna of this pack," he said, and the phrase came out with a weight it had not carried before, a naturalness that I felt in my sternum, "the final overlay on access arrangements runs through Christiana. She would need to approve the expanded protocol."Annalisa looked at him.Something moved in her face that she managed quickly, a brief recal
Chapter 47 CHRISTIANA The vial sat in the back of my wardrobe for two days before I used it. I had not planned to wait that long. When I came back from the outer edges of the territory that night, with the glass warm in my coat pocket and the witch's voice still sitting in the back of my head, I had been certain. Certain in the way that came from having made a decision after a long time of not making it, the particular clarity of someone who had crossed a line and was not going back over it. But I put it in the wardrobe and I went to bed and in the morning the certainty had developed edges that the night had smoothed over. I left it another day. On the third morning I woke up and lay in bed and thought about the corridor. Antonio's voice when he talked to her. The offer he had made without hesitation, the throne, a title for her child, everything arranged in two minutes that he had been withholding from me for three years. The way he had looked at me when I asked him directly if
Chapter 46ANNALISA"Yes," Dominic said.Advisor Brenn, who had been quiet until this point, spoke up with the slightly stunned quality of someone who was doing the math in real time. "Overlord of the Crimson Valley, I should say. Forgive me, Alpha Vael, I did not expect—" He stopped and started again with more composure. "We were not aware you were part of the visiting delegation.""I'm here with Dr. Voss," Dominic said. He said it simply, without elaboration, which was the most effective way to say it because the simplicity itself carried the implication that the two facts, him being here and him being with me, were not separate things that required individual explanation but one single thing that explained itself.Councilor Drey looked between us.I could see the question forming and I answered it before it fully arrived."Dominic is my partner," I said.I said it in the tone of someone providing a straightforward piece of information. Not a performance, not a declaration, just a f
Chapter 45ANNALISAI saw him before he saw me.That gave me approximately three seconds to arrange myself, which was enough time to mentally prepare myself. I was walking beside Dominic in the corridor of an estate I had been invited to for legitimate professional reasons and I had nothing to adjust or manage or make presentable because i was not caring for whether my actions would hurt Antonio anymore i cared for Christina's pricky attitude towards me.I was already exactly what I was.Antonio was coming from the direction of the east wing with a small group around him, three men in the formal attire of people who had arrived for official business, advisors or visiting officials of some kind, as they were coming towards us.Then he looked up.Our eyes met for a half second before he adjusted his expression into the controlled version, the one he wore when he was being watched and knew it, where he had to remain professional. His gaze moved briefly to Dominic beside me and then back
Chapter 44ANNALISAThe second day in Greenwood territory started earlier than the first.I was up before six, dressed and at the small desk in our room by half past, going through the notes I had made the previous evening before the corridor had happened and derailed the last part of my night. I had lain awake longer than I wanted to after we got back from the cafeteria, not thinking about Antonio, or trying not to, which amounted to the same thing in practice.What I had landed on, somewhere around two in the morning when the ceiling had stopped offering anything useful, was a decision.Antonio was preparing to mate Christiana.The invitations were out. The date was fixed. The fittings were arranged and the planners were on the grounds and the entire estate was moving with the particular momentum of something that had been decided and was now simply being executed. He had stood in a corridor and said things to me and the ceremony was still happening regardless of what he said to me
Chapter 43CHRISTIANAIt was a small structure set back from a narrow road, unremarkable from the outside, the kind of building that looked like it was simply there and had always been there and saw no reason to explain itself.I got out of the car.The door opened before I knocked.She was older than I had expected, small and contained in the way of something that had compressed itself into a very dense form over a long time. Her eyes were the part that stopped me, they bore into mine,, like they were capable of seeing my soul.I came in.The interior was warm and smelled of things I could not identify individually, layered and complex, not unpleasant but not entirely comfortable either.I told her what I wanted without the preamble of pretending I was there for something else, because I had the sense that preamble would have been insulting to both of us. I needed something that would make a person more compliant. More manageable. Something that would take the edge off resistance wit







