Page 22 of Veradel
“What?” I ask with a cocked eyebrow. “There was only one cave?”
“We slept on a flat expanse of rock beneath the stars, thank you very much,” Vivian huffs, then smiles. “Most beautiful night of my life. We talked until we both drifted off… and then we shared a traumatic experience later on when we found our way back to the town and every single werewolf chewed us out for about ten hours straight.”
“Had Lucan and Soren made it back?” I ask, trying to imagine the scene she’s painting as if I’d been there, too. As if I actually belong.
“Of course. They were about as smug as you’d expect. Back then though, Lucan didn’t have all this weight on his shoulders. No one depended on him. Then we got older, Lucan’s father, Warren, died, and Lucan took his place. We grew up quickly. Responsibilities shifted. But Merrick and I have always been bonded in a way I can’t explain since that night.”
Lost in thought for a moment with a far-away smile, Vivian finishes braiding my hair down my back. When she’s done, she swivels my chair around and grins. “Not that there are many options in our pack. Only two or three bloodlines, so Merrick’s one of the only werewolves whoisn’tmy cousin.”
“Lucan is?” I ask, eyebrow raised.
“Yeah. Second, technically. And Soren’s my first.”
As Vivian fusses with the waves of hair that frame my face, a question bursts from my mouth before I can stop it.
“Do I have to worry about the ones not related to him?”
It sounds childish, but Lucan is hundreds of years old. Surely, he’s made a connection with another female before he met me. And even after he met me, what if he never thought he’d see me in the flesh and continued to have other relations, believing there would always be a Wall between us? I chew on my lip nervously, and Vivian sighs.
“We’re friends, okay? So I would never lie to you,” she says. “Lucan’s our alpha, and he’s definitely not a virgin angel.”
“Your what?”
“Virgin angel?” she asks, eyebrows pinched.
“No.” I flush. “The other word you just said.”
“Oh.Alpha.” Vivian looks relieved that she doesn’t have to explain what a virgin is. “It means he’s the leader of our pack. That, combined with his stunning looks I hear enough about—which he gets from my side of the family, by the way—and the few females he’snotrelated to throw themselves at him.”
My heart feels like it grows bristles sharp enough to puncture my lungs. “Right,” I say.
But Vivian calmly cleans my face and picks up a tube of some substance that matches my skin tone. “Werewolves have very good hearing, just so you know,” she says, glancing at my chest, where the necklace still lays against my sternum without a connection to Lucan and my heartbeat thumps erratically. “You have nothing to worry about. He’s always been too obsessed with bringing down the Wall. And then ever since you found that necklace, he’s been too obsessed withyou.”
I try hard to keep the idiotic, immature smile off my face as Vivian applies something to it with a brush. But this is what it must feel like to fall. To care who the person you love is thinking about. To care if they feel the same way as you do. It feels dangerous and messy, yes, but I can only hope it’ll be more rewarding than any partner the Guardians could have assigned me to.
“Close your eyes,” she instructs me.
They flutter closed to the sound of her little containers snapping open. For a minute, we’re both silent while she brushes something across my eyelids, but my own awkwardness builds again.
To keep myself from blurting out any more questions that completely give myself away, I ask, “What else are werewolves really good at?”
“Everything,” she says with a smile in her voice as she switches to my cheeks. “Along with our hearing, our sense of smell is amazing. We’re exceptionally strong and fast. Great at sex, of course. And best of all, we’re loyal. Unlike your Guardians.”
My eyes fly open. I shake my head slightly, but Vivian fusses at me to stay still.
“They’re not my Guardians anymore,” I insist.
“Regardless,” she says, pulling out a black tube that she opens and paints over my eyelashes. “We’re just as superior as them in every way. Maybe more so. If they hadn’t had the element of surprise, we’d have won that damn war. It’s the only way they managed to kill our king, and they would have succeeded in killing all of us if Taika hadn’t helped our ancestors escape.”
I try to open my mouth, but Vivian taps my lips. “No talking while I apply lipstick,” she says before dragging a red waxy stick across my upper and bottom lip.
She steps back, admiring my face with a tilt of her head. Reaching up, she adjusts a piece of my hair.
“Anyway,” she adds, beaming at whatever she did to my face with her makeup. “Next time it won’t be an ambush.”
Then she spins me back around to face the mirror, and my gasp echoes through the room.
“Vivian…” My voice trails off. With my mouth hanging open, I’m speechless.
