Page 116 of The Monster and the Last Blood Match

He felt mostly annoyed.

He dusted off his button-up, rolled down the sleeves, and slid his arms into his bespoke suit jacket. His assistant appeared frantic as he swept past her with a dismissive, “I’m going out.”

Most of his assistants acted that way. They feared him. They had every right to fear him.

“Anderson,” Roland called as he passed him on his way to Harrington’s office. The obnoxious, meddling vampire leaned against his assistant’s desk—a new blond, since he kept going through them like feeder stock. “Give my regard to Penelope.”

Beckham waved his hand at the man as he continued down the hallway. He knocked once on Harrington’s closed door, ignoring Harrington’s own assistant before stepping inside. The vampire seated behind the desk was frail. As frail as a vampire could get. But no one should underestimate him.

He was easily the most fearsome, brilliant man Beckham had ever known. It was why he had followed him out of his blood craze into this new horizon. To the blood cure. Where he was no longer just a savage beast and could retain some of his faculties. It was only when he was in far too deep that he realized his error.

“Beckham,” Harrington said with a genial smile. “Come in, my boy.”

“I just wanted to stop in to let you know they found a match.”

Harrington’s eyes lit up. As if he thought that he meant a match for Harrington—the one thing he had been searching for all these long years. And they had…but Beckham was taking her for himself. Protecting her.

“For me,” he added as if it were an afterthought.

“I see,” Harrington said with a soft sigh. “And?”

“I’m going to collect her. I’ll be out of the office the rest of the afternoon.”

“Is this a change of heart?”

Beckham smirked. He knew he couldn’t lay it on thick. He’d been too opposed to the idea of having Permanent subjects in their homes for Harrington to be fooled by a flip-flop in position. Not only was it going to wreck Beckham’s life to have a Permanent subject, but it was certainly going to end up with a lot more people killed by the entitled vampire elite. But he had to give in just a little.

“I can see the appeal,” Beckham said. “You know how I am about privacy.”

“It will be for the better. Just wait and see.”

Beckham nodded. “I believe you, sir.”

“We’ll have a meeting after you return. Talk it over!”

“As you wish.”

Beckham backed out of the office. That was as obsequious as he could manage. He wasn’t much for pandering even before he’d been turned. He certainly didn’t fucking care for it now.

He exited the Visage building downtown and hopped into an awaiting town car. His driver pulled away without incident, and they were meandering through the heavy midtown traffic. It would take an hour to get to the hospital. A fucking hour.

“The goddamn warehouses,” he grumbled.

He spent the hour on his phone, alternating between acquiescence to what he was about to walk into and abject fury. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. And every thought about it made him more and more angry. Yet there wasn’t a thing that he could do about it.

He was proverbially fucked.

Visage ran the world. Beckham was a senior executive for the company that employed more people than any other company in the world. They employed them as blood donors. Because of the cure, each vampire was matched with the blood type that they had when they were human. Drinking exclusively that blood reduced vampires’ bestiality. They were still animals. Beckham didn’t believe they could ever be anything else. But it also let him function in society, hide in plain sight.

And on the other hand, there was Elle. The rebellion that wanted the end of Visage. That believed that the humans who were employed were little more than chattel. They were food. Nothing more. Nothing less. And they all deservedmore.A voice of reason in the depressing, deafening din that said that Visage would rule all and humans would fall under vampire rule.

He believed them.

Believed in them.

Which was why when they had asked him if they found a match for Harrington, if he would take the person in, he’d said yes. He could protect her, keep her out of reach.

There was no way to delete an entry in the system. If the match was found, then that person would inevitably find their way to Harrington. But they could change that match, and that was what had been done today.

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