Page 22 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

"Yes," Gideon says.

"You could let me finish the sentence."

"You'd take longer."

Elias speaks before I decide whether I like either of them. "We have a problem in Denver." He says it to Sebastian, not to me. "A donor coded out at a private clinic. The attending wrote anemia, then revised it twice. There's a photo on a nurse's phone we haven't reached."

"Buried?" Sebastian asks.

"In the process. There are more threads than there used to be. We have to be sure."

I'm following half of it, while my stomach turns. "Buried?" I repeat. "You mean someone died."

"Vampire fed without care," Elias says. "It's rarer than it was. Still, not rare enough."

A new voice cuts in from the doorway. "And it gets harder to cut when your name is attached, Sebastian."

The woman who says it is dressed like she bills by the minute — dark, precise, wearing a watch worth my whole year's salary. She sets a sealed legal packet near the table edge without opening it and her attention toward me is frank, uninterested.

"Amelia," Sebastian says. "My —"

"Millie. We're family, distantly, which for our kind means I'm the one who keeps him out of court." Her head tips. "You're the human."

"I'm the executive assistant," I say. "The human part is recent."

Almost a smile. "Good. You'll need that."

She pulls out a chair but doesn't sit. "Here's what he keeps under wraps. Under the old law, a human who knows what you know has no standing. You're not a person in that system. You're an exposure. Some clans will argue you should be — killed."

"Killed, why" I say.

"Don't make me explain it."

"I think you should."

Gideon and Elias trade a glance. Sebastian doesn't.

"Some will want you gone," Millie goes on. "Others'll want you kept. A known human mate is proof he can be reached. Leverage that walks on two legs and answers to a name." She finally turns to him. "You can't stop them from finding out she knows, Bash. That door's open, and it doesn't close."

The room keeps talking around me —she,the mate,the situation— like I'm a line item. Sebastian must have told them all about this bond thingymajig.

"I am here, ya know," I say. They stop. "I can hear all of you. I'm not a breach, or a scandal, or a clause in some damn old law. Discussing me in the third person isn't polite, and I don't appreciate it."

Sebastian moves into the space where their attention was. "She's right. Anyone who calls Jasmine a problem to be solved can do it elsewhere."

Gideon studies me with something that isn't warmth but might be the start of respect.

"For what it's worth," Gideon says, "I argued against you ever meeting him."

"I can tell."

"It's nothing personal."

"Of course it is. I'm THE person."

He almost laughs. Almost.

Elias' phone wakes. "The nurse in Denver just posted. I need to go."