Page 47 of Cinderella and Her Vampires (Dirty Paranormal Fairytale Haremlan 5)

I glared at him. “Funny. I’m new here, remember?”

“What if we’re too late to cross over and get him?” Xavier asked. “What do you do if Brock is wrong, and Collin is just exceptionally clever about hiding?”

“We can’t sit around here and wait for something to happen,” Brock said. “Going there is the best chance we have a stopping a war.”

“You mean the one war you seemed hell-bent on making happen?” Xavier added.

“Pointing the fingers isn’t going to help matters,” Brock added.

“You can always stay here and keep an eye on things,” Silas said.

“You could always use me as bait,” I said, breaking through the tension. If it was one thing I had zero desire to be witness to, it was three vampires duking it out in front of me. In a room that suddenly felt so much smaller than before.

All eyes rested on me again. This time, I felt the weight of their thoughts within their gazes. I shrugged.

“It isn’t like we were coming up with other stellar ideas,” I muttered.

“No,” Brock said.

Silas held up his hand. “Wait a minute, my son. Using her as bait might be the thing we need. But we can only allow you to do so on one condition.”

“What condition is that?” I asked, not sure I really wanted to know the answer.

Silas settled his intense golden eyes on me once more. “You have to be marked by all three of us. That is the only way we would all be able to protect you.”

“What does that even mean?” I asked looking between the three of them.

“Marking her is completely out of the question,” Brock said. “We’re not going to put her in danger.”

“That is not your decision to make,” I snapped. “This is my life and my body. I have the only say in what happens to me.”

He shook his head. I ignored him, though it was different to see he had a serious side to him. I didn’t have time to process through the question of why he would even care so much about my well-being in the first place.

Xavier said, “Marking is where we take a few drops of your blood, and you take a few drops of ours. It’s sort of a symbol, not unlike an engagement ring, and is seen as a signal to all other vampires you’re off-limits.”

“I’ve already marked you,” Silas said.

I scoffed. “You did what? Who gave you permission?”

“Technically, you did. When you slept with me,” he said through a smirk.

I shook my head. “Talk about reading too far into consent.”

“I’ve marked her as well,” Xavier said.

“When?” I asked, settling my glare on him. Honestly, the audacity of these men.

“You were euphoric. You won’t remember,” Xavier said.

“That doesn’t make it okay,” I said. “Since when does sex mean, please drink of my blood and force yours on me as well… was the sex my stamp of approval?”

“You have a lot to learn about our world. You stumbled into our lives, remember? You broke into our home. What we did was a means to an end that just so happened to work in our favor in more ways than we initially thought of,” Silas snapped, leaning over his desk, staring down at me with his blazing golden eyes.

“You lost your choice when you came here,” Brock said. “Some could argue you made your choice simply by coming here.”

I glared at him. He shrugged.

To make matters worse, the other two agreed with him.

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