Hoofprint Press: #TeaserTuesday 8/20

A longer look at the scene I posted tidbits of on Twitter yesterday.

Val's back, baby!!!

(Raw, unedited text, as usual)

Golden Eagle, Sons of Rome Book Four

They ate, and drank, and talked, and, slowly, the tension bled out of all of them.

Lanny laughed at something Jamie said, and the way he threw his head back with the motion left Trina smiling, pink-cheeked. Nikita gave Sasha’s thigh a reassuring squeeze, and pressed their shoulders together, and things were okay. They were okay.

“Allow me to get the next round,” Dante said, dramatic, nose in the air and arm gesturing elegantly.

Lanny threw a balled-up napkin at him. “You fucking better.”

The napkin bounced off Dante’s forehead and a grin threatened. “I shall return.” He wriggled through the ever-increasing crowd toward the bar, since their server hadn’t been able to get by their table again.

“Like hell can he carry that many drinks,” Lanny said. He made a distasteful butler joke that had Jamie and Trina groaning.

Sasha didn’t hear the particulars of it.

Above the crush of bodies, and perfume, and food, and hops, and the antique wood perfume of the place, he caught another scent: vampire.

A fresh wave of adrenaline flooded his tired body, and he sat bolt upright. Nikita’s hand clamped down like a vise: he’d smelled them, too.

There were two. Male and female. And the male was…familiar, almost. Something…

A boisterous group of twenty-something boys barreled through the pub, slopping beer and shouting to their friends already seated. In their wake, they left a rare opening in the crowd. That was when Sasha saw him: standing just three paces from their table.

His tall, slender build was highlighted by skinny jeans and a black leather jacket. He wore his golden hair in one long braid that draped over his shoulder. Sasha had never seen him like this, in modern clothes. But there was no mistaking his face; the twinkling blue eyes and the sharp smile and the beautiful bone structure.

“Val!”

Given the fugue he’d only just emerged from, Nikita wasn’t convinced that the Wallachian prince walking up to their table wasn’t a hallucination.

It looked like Val, despite the clothes, and despite the fact that he had to pause to let someone pass, and was clearly corporeal, which he’d never been before. And Sasha had shouted “Val!” across the room like a kid who’d just spotted Santa Claus.

He himself had even caught the scent of a vampire – two, actually.

But.

Surely not…

There was no way…

But there he was, drawing to a halt, beaming, laughing. Opening his arms. “Hello, sweetheart. Fancy running into you here.”

Sasha slid out of the booth.

Nikita made a lunging grab for him, but he was still a little untethered, and Sasha had always been quicker. He scrambled after him, tripping, because he couldn’t tear his eyes away from what was unfolding:

“Val, you’re really here!” Sasha said, and stepped into the offered embrace; let Prince Valerian of Wallachia fold arms around him and hug him tightly, almost reverently.

“I’m really here.” Val cupped the back of Sasha’s head, briefly, and in just a low, pained murmur, said, in Russian, “How good it is to see you, my little White Wolf.”

Someone was snarling, and it took Nikita a belated moment to realize it was him.

Val – his eyes shut tight, his face a mask of anguish – opened them, and smiled at Nikita over Sasha’s shoulder. He kissed Sasha’s cheek – Nikita’s snarl deepened – and eased him back, so they at least weren’t touching. “Oh no. I’ve made him jealous. Let your mate touch you, so he knows I’m not trying to steal you away.” He gave Sasha conspiratorial wink and let his hands fall away.

“Captain,” he addressed Nikita, all courtly charm and grace. His posture and his expression and his voice were at such odds with his clothes as to make the whole picture ludicrous. “You have my deepest congratulations. It’s about fucking time.”

Nikita looped an arm around Sasha’s waist and pulled him in flush; bared all his teeth at the other vampire, fangs threatening to prick his lower lip.

Val laughed, delighted. “Making up for lost time? Really now, hush. I am very much spoken for.” He lifted a hand, palm-up, out to the side in unmistakable invitation. He turned his head, his chin tucked, his expression going soft. “Darling,” he said, in an entirely different sort of voice.

A hand slid into his, and a woman stepped forward – a vampire.

Nikita had been so wildly, stupidly territorial that he hadn’t even noticed her. She could have attacked him from the side and gotten the drop on him, and he wouldn’t have even been able to defend himself.

Not that she looked about to do any such thing. She had an athletic build, detectable even beneath a long jacket and jeans, but she held herself uncertainly. Nervous, her eyes a little wide, nostrils flared as she breathed in the tangle of scents around them. Her hair was a darker shade of gold than Val’s, worn in loose waves over her shoulder, spangled with rain drops that glittered in the light.

Val drew her up beside him, and Nikita could smell the way their scents mingled. Lovers. Mates.

“This is Mia,” Val said, transferring her hand to his other hand, and putting a steadying arm around her back. There was no other explanation necessary, not between immortals. She was his, and he was hers, and that was very much that.

It eased some of Nikita’s initial worry…and made him feel like twice the idiot.

“Um,” Trina said from the table, and, great, he’d had an audience for his little display.

Val turned immediately, he and Mia pivoting as a unit. It left Val’s entire right side exposed, vulnerable to an attack from Nikita. One he didn’t expect. One that Nikita, no matter how little he trusted the prince, couldn’t execute in good conscience.

For one thing, it would disappoint Sasha.

And for another, Val was the only reason they’d escaped the Virginia branch unscathed.