“No, he wasn’t,” Bennett said, setting her wine on the nightstand. “By then, they all knew about me, and unlike Concepcion and Simeon, Yannick was rather tickled Max had taken me under his wing. By then, like Max, Yannick had accepted what he’d become, yet he had no desire to rule the world or the covens or anything else for that matter. He just wanted to raise his horses and enjoy life.”

“And he’s still around?”

“Yes, yes, very much so,” Bennett said, nodding. “He has stables all over the world, and he’s still doing what he loves to do. I can’t tell you how many prestigious races his horses have won, but it probably numbers in the hundreds. He’s quite an amazing man.”

“It sounds like you really like him.”

“I do. At least I do now.”

“Now?”

“He and I had settled in his library that night, sipping our drinks and having a pleasant conversation for nearly an hour before a storm rolled in. In a matter of minutes, the house was literally vibrating from the thunder, and the lightning was so bloody loud you couldn’t help but cringe when it lit up the sky. Suddenly, one of his servants came rushing in, yelling that the stables were on fire, and Yannick launched out of his chair like he’d been shot from a cannon. I didn’t think twice about following him, and by the time I reached the front door, it seemed like everyone in the house was there, too.

“We ran out into the blinding rain and raced to the stables. The roof was on fire, and the horses were whinnying and snorting and making an awful racket. Yannick shouted over the storm that we needed to get the horses into the barn. I’d never been there before, so I tried my best to help where I could, opening the stalls and waving my arms to get the horses to move. Luckily, there was fencing around the property, so once the animals ran from the stables, it basically funneled them toward the barn.

“To say the rain was coming down in buckets is putting it mildly, and by the time the horses had galloped from the stables to the barn, the ground was nothing but churned up mud, so thick you had to fight to get free of it. I was in the middle of having such a fight when another bolt of lightning split the sky at the exact same moment when Yannick was trying to bolt the door to the barn. The horses stampeded in an instant. I saw Yannick get knocked to the side, and all the others dove out of the way, but calf-deep in mud, I couldn’t move.