“Lanny!” he
didn’t cheer when Lanny approached him where he sat overlooking the iced-over
pond, but it was a near thing. He smiled so wide it made his face look
impossibly narrower, canines glinting in the sunlight. He patted the empty
patch of bench beside him and said, “Come! Join me.”
Today’s
absurd, I’m-a-free-man-learning-how-this-century-works outfit consisted of black,
paint-flecked skinny jeans, Docs, and an eye-wateringly orange Browning hoodie,
complete with camo logo, beneath his unzipped coat. Someone had braided his
hair all fancy.
“Hey,” Lanny
said, hanging back, hands in his pockets, searching for an entourage. Val
appeared to be alone, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.
Good not to have an audience for his question, he decided, but perhaps a bad
omen for his planned quick exit. “You got a sec?”
Val frowned,
briefly. He was still learning their idioms. Speaking fluent English didn’t
mean he understood contemporary slang. But before Lanny could explain, he
nodded and said, “I have several.” His grin afterward said he thought he’d been
clever.
He had been.
That didn’t mean Lanny felt super comfortable sitting down next to him.
That was a sudden revelation.
Lanny was man
enough to acknowledge that he was, and had always been, an overconfident
asshole. His cockiness had gotten him into trouble all his life, but it had
powered him through his turning and fledgling vampire stage, too. In the
whirlwind of meeting an honest to God prince, then facing off from a whole
hospital full of zombie vamps—he was still workshopping a real term for the
monsters they’d faced at the Ingraham Institute—he hadn’t paused to evaluate
the vibes Prince Valerian gave him. The answer, it turned out, was far more
intimidating than expected.
Lanny sat as
far away as was possible on the bench, which wasn’t far enough, really.
Val chuckled.
“Afraid I’ll bite?” He grinned again, and Lanny wondered why his fangs looked
so much sharper and more threatening than his own in the mirror.
