Page 31 of A House of Fangs & Deceit

The future heartbreaker.

A different mask for every occasion.

I excelled at determining which one would work best and continued to add more to my collection, but being myself was another matter.

I barely remembered how to do that when I was alone, and I certainly didn’t know how to do it around others.

Alaric and Samara were the same age as me and both hadgrown up in this house and had a bitter rivalry. They fought over literally everything. Including me.

Alaric had been the first one to get past my defenses and see the real me, something he still held over Sam’s head, much to my annoyance. The only reason he’d “won” the friend card first was because Sam was my first serious crush and I struggled with how to act around her. I thought that she would like me more if I wore the charming mask all the time.

It was years before I let her start to see through the cracks and get a peek at the real me. Even then, I still held back so much.

Like how devastated I was when she left for Drudonia and how I counted the days until she would come back for various House events. The last thing I wanted was her pity over how fucked-up I really was.

But when she left for Drudonia, it was a rude awakening to the reality of my situation.

My crush had turned into something so much more than that, but I knew Sam and I couldn’t be together. She’d agreed to the marriage between her and Demetri when she was fourteen years old, a month before I’d arrived, and from everything I’d observed, she was happy about it.

I knew that Sam had the option to break off the arrangement before they wed when she turned twenty-one, and I’d secretly hoped that she would.

But I’d been too scared to ever say something to her about it.

There were a lot of things I could handle in life, but a rejection from Sam wasn’t one of them.

Samara had thrown herself into preparing for the marriage even as she supported Carmilla at House Harker however she could.

I knew she had a crush on me, but she never gave any hints that it was anything more than that. So I kept my true feelingsto myself and pretended to only miss her as a friend and nothing more even as it shredded my fucking soul in two.

While I hoped that someday Alaric and Sam would figure out a way to hash out their differences and at least become civil towards each other, it seemed unlikely. Though, with Sam back at House Harker, and our… evolving friendship… my role as peacekeeper between the two of them was about to get a lot more complicated.

Alaric zeroed in on my silence, and he scrutinized me further. His green eyes wholly focused on me as he thought about what could possibly cause me to hesitate.

“Fuck,” he ground out, crossing one arm across his stomach while the other rubbed at his face. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“Are you asking me to lie to you?” I asked in a teasing tone even though I couldn’t hold back my wince. Shit. He was going to be so pissed.

The turquoise cracks woven through Alaric’s light green eyes spread for a second as his temper flared before retreating. Apparently, he wasn’t in the mood to be teased about this. Even when Samara wasn’t in his presence, shestillsomehow managed to be one of the few people who could get my friend to lose control.

“Why her?” His voice was even, if a little flatter than usual. The tightness across his face still betrayed him, though. Alaric was beyond pissed about this turn of events.

He would just have to fucking deal with it.

“Don’t act so surprised.” I shrugged. “You know her and I have always had a complicated friendship. We couldn’t do anything about it before, but now she’s back, and things are different.”

“She’s still married to the Heir of another House!” Alaric threw his hands in the air. “You’re thinking with your dick and not your head!”

“Please, we both know that marriage is over and was probably a mistake to begin with. Marvina is going to rule House Laurent until her last dying breath, and given that she’s fourth generation, we have no idea when that’s going to be.” I arched an eyebrow, daring him to tell me I was wrong, but he just shook his head and looked away. I smiled victoriously.

The first generation of Moroi, Velesians, and Furies had burned fast and bright. Most hadn’t lived more than twenty years after their transformation from being human, but every generation since then lived a little longer.

Those who belonged to the fourth generation were well over eighty years old now but still looked as if they were in their mid-to-late thirties or forties. Their aging had slowed drastically, and we assumed that our generation would be the same. How long we all would live was anyone’s guess.

“Besides,” I continued, “we both know that prick is probably balls deep in someone who is very muchnothis wife right now.”

“It’s still a complication that House Harker doesn’t need,” Alaric argued, refusing to let this go.

“No, it’s a complication thatyoudon’t need right now.” I gave him a flat look. “But you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

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