Behind them, Mack Sutton stepped out of Arcane and looked at his phone again for like the tenth time in two minutes. The text was still there. Hey, can you meet me at my house? I have something for you. From Lilly. Her house. The place she slept, changed clothes, took showers. His mind went into the gutter, but he manfully wrestled it back into line. Nothing like that. No way. Couldn’t be. Although their late night texting had gone from flirtatious to something a bit more.

Turning away from the hill, he followed the map app on his phone, heading across town, her place, just past Pearl Street. Humming to himself, he picked up his step, smiling as he looked west toward the lake, the sun shining on the big mountains across it.

Chapter 17

“The Tribunal is now in session,” Mausya said. “We will begin by hearing from our esteemed Elder Senka about the suborbital kinetic asteroid bombing of New Hampshire.”

“What’s the question? I had nothing to do with it,” Senka said.

“Exactly my point. You relinquished any and all control of your granddaughter and her abomination of a mate and they bombed this planet with a rock from space,” Mausya said. “While leaving the Coven and taking a significant portion of Darkkin Coven members with them. Then they exposed vampires to the world. How did that decision work out?”

“Oh, it happened on my watch and so it’s my fault, is that the angle? Nothing to do with you trying to rile the Conclave into killing Tanya’s Chosen, right? ” Senka asked with a nod. “Tanya dear, any insight for the Tribunal?”

“New Hampshire was all Chris, but I would have thought the whole thing was crystal clear,” Tanya said from her place with Lydia and Galina.

“As a warning? To anyone who wanted to abduct his goddaughter?” Lison asked.

“Kind of the mother of all warnings, don’t you think?” Tanya said. “It backed off would-be kidnappers, the US government, and every one of you, didn’t it? And yeah we broke off. If you recall, I had to personally duel a number of your peers to halt the idea of chasing down my Chosen. And when he left the region to allow me time to sort you all out, he was injured by yet another vampire.”

“And then he became highly visible to the public and the human governments. And during all that, you brought attention to your corporation and, by extension, the Coven. Lawsuits, protests, millions of written words condemning your dangerous actions,” Sun said.