Biting Cold: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES)

“Because all the men in this House are too busy whipping theirs out for comparison with Darius West and the shofet . And, more important, I stand Sentinel; it’s my job to protect this House. I did so.”
    “By bringing its enemy here ?”
    “Seth Tate is not our enemy. Dominic is.”
    “And Seth will lure him right into Cadogan House.”
    “There’s no evidence Dominic is looking for Seth. And we aren’t exactly kicking Dominic’s ass on our own. We need help. I’ll admit it was a risky move, but I evaluated that risk and made the best decision I could. Hearing him out was the only play I had, and I took it. Besides, you just invited him to make himself at home and you handed him a sorceress.”
    Ethan put his hands on his hips and looked away. My answer was perfectly rational, but that hadn’t mitigated his barely contained anger.
    “Tell me I’m wrong,” I quietly said. “If I made the wrong call, tell me I did.”
    He looked back at me, and there was something much worse than anger in his eyes. There was disappointment .
    “The rightness or wrongness of the call isn’t the point, Merit. It’s far beyond your authority as Sentinel.”
    “I did what I was called upon to do. There was nobody else to decide .”
    He blew out a breath. “He almost killed you. How can you be so lackadaisical about your life?”
    So that’s what this was about. Not about the decision—because he had to agree I was the only one available to make it—but because I’d put myself at risk. Once again, his desire to protect me was overwhelming his ability to make a good decision.
    “Seth isn’t Dominic!” I yelled, goose bumps lifting on my arms from the prickle of magic I’d sent through the room. I imagined my eyes were silver, too, and guessed that every other vampire in the House would be able to feel our argument as the magic permeated the building.
    If that bothered them, too bad. I’d put my ass on the line, and I’d been right. I wasn’t going to apologize for making the decision—not when I was cleaning up the messes of so many other people who’d flat-out refused to act.
    “I was in that room with Dominic, Ethan. I’ve seen that shine of justice in his eyes. Dominic nearly killed me, and he was excited by it. He reveled in it. But that was yesterday. I can’t sit in a locked room for the rest of my life because he almost managed to kill me. Celina’s Rogue almost managed to kill me. Celina almost managed to kill me. Mallory almost managed to kill me. McKetrick almost managed to kill me. I’ve been a vampire less than a year and I’ve topped any number of hit lists. I can’t help that, and I’m not going to sit here waiting for it to happen again. Not when I can do something about it.
    “Seth isn’t Dominic,” I said. “And we need Seth. That makes the math easy for me. If you don’t think I’m making the right kinds of decisions as Sentinel, then you know what to do.”
    A thought occurred to me. Not one that he’d want to hear, certainly, but something that needed to be said. “Are you really mad at me, or is this because of Mallory?”
    “Does it matter?”
    I took a step closer to him. “Ethan, for God’s sake, if you’re angry at me, then be angry at me. But if this is Mallory, don’t push me away. Let me help you. We are partners—we have proved time and again that we are better together than we were apart. We have battled back angry shifters and crazy Masters and vampire saboteurs. We can manage a skinny little sorceress.”
    I saw the flicker of hope in his eyes, and I waited for him to grab on to it, but fear got the better of him, and he turned away again.
    “I need to get back to Darius,” he said. And as he walked out of the ballroom, I put my hands on my hips and stared up at the ceiling and wished for patience.

C HAPTER S EVENTEEN

    SHE’S GOT A WAY
    I stormed up the stairs to the third floor, fueled by my own indignation.
    Why did everything have to be his way? Why did he have to control every situation, even when that very control threatened to tear everything apart?
    Fear loomed in the back of my mind. Fear that I’d changed, and Ethan had changed, and who we’d become in the months he’d been gone was too different for us to find each other again.
    But I put it aside. I was Sentinel of the House, and since Kelley and Luc now had plenty of House guards, I was officially a full-time Sentinel again. I was going Sentineling, and my first stop was Mallory.