Wait, Am I A Zombie? [BOOK 3]

The woman would never meet modern beauty standards, but it was obvious she didn't even want to. Untouchable. Desirable. Deadly. She had this whole "accept or move" vibe going on that I respected the hell out of.

"Laportea," Zeno said, gliding forward and air-kissing the woman's cheeks. "You look well."

"Seven hundred years young." The woman smirked, turning a dark eye on me. "I can't imagine you relinquishing the throne."

"I met a contender." Zeno came back to me and pushed me forward. "Georgia Elaine Kent."

"Peaches," I corrected, extending my hand. She didn't take it. "We shake in the U.S. to say hello."

"I'm well aware."

"I'd appreciate if our first meeting was a friendly one."

Her brows shot up and Zeno growled beside me. Well it wasn't like they'd given me vampire etiquette courses, and even if they had a handshake was practically universal. She didn't shake, she was going on my nemesis list.

Long, cool fingers slipped into my hand, gripping tightly, fleetingly, before pulling back. "It's been decades since a woman with a backbone stepped forward to try for a throne." She nodded to the king's seat beside her and I sat. Zeno moved to a chaise on the other side of the queen, positioned so the person who sat there could talk to the royals. "It's a welcome change."

"Really?" I glanced at Laportea and Zeno as if to prove her wrong.

With an elegant wave of her hand, the vampiress gestured to Asia. "Accessories. All of them."

"The others?"

"Europeans are decent but can't keep it behind their skirts. They never last longer than a century; their libido's their end.

"The Americas bicker between themselves for territories because women often control small portions of borders. They try to usurp each other through underhanded methods. Very messy and untrustworthy.

"The Africans are decent. Fair, but ruthless when necessary. The relationships with their male counterparts are the closest to equal as you will see in our world."

Gold! I'd struck gossip gold. "Good to know," I said roundly, trying my best to play the coy card. "And your male opposite...?"

"Men who presume to rule alongside me have a way of... dying. The rigors of this life can be to difficult for that sex. It is why I prefer women." Her eyes flicked to Zeno and trailed up her body with a look that could have started a fire. Amazing it didn't. "So much stronger."

I'd never heard a word be sexed-up as much as that one. Didn't take a genius to know Laportea was waving a red thong in front of Zeno. Too bad that vamp queen was all about the D.

"At this moment," Australia's queen said quietly around a sip of blood.

Huh?

No way. Not possible. Zeno did not play for both teams.

"My sex life is neither a game nor your business," Zeno snapped with a bit of fang.

Cocking my head, I tried to wrap my head around it. It's not like I didn't know sexuality was fluid. Sure. But Zeno and Casper could barely keep their hands off each other.

"I am not so shallow as to care about superficial features like one's gender," Zeno dismissed. "There are things of vastly more import."

My eyes bulged. Gender wasn't important? I mean, that was like my one criteria. Got a dick? There's a 60 percent chance I'll wanna hop on it. Throw in age and personality to make up the other 40 percent.

I guess if you lived for centuries gender really was just meh. Dicks and vaginias started to blend together around the third century. After that it had to be deeper. Elemental.

Love?

Nah. Zeno ate the emotion for breakfast and shat it out before lunch.

What drew a person to another if not gender or looks?

Sameness.

Zeno was on her own level, power off the chart, dial trying to jump out of the red and create its own damn zone. Of course she needed someone right there, maybe past that to understand her, accept her.

Acceptance. Bane and I traded that quality like Pokemon cards. You grow fur and accidentally kill vamps with blood? That's fine, habibiti. You're an asshole who tells me jackshit and threatens my fantasy men with gruesome deaths? I got you, Bane.

"I didn't believe it," Laportea said slowly. "I thought your sire was controlling your actions."

"Huh?"

Zeno scoffed. "When has he ever?"

"You approve."

"I don't disapprove. But his reasoning, while roundabout, is solid."

"So it does tie back to your maker."

"You queens wanna—"

A heavy, rapid drum beat interrupted me. With vamp speed, Zeno grabbed my hand and flew across to Bane's tent where the man sat in his chair, ankle over his knee, fingers laced in his lap.

Gulping in air, I ducked and slapped my hands on my knees. "Little—wheeze—notice next—wheeze—time."

Zeno and Bane spoke in rapid fire Arabic and I was pissed I couldn't understand. MR-ing was a big no-no here. With the fast and loose way I played with my powers, er, they played with me, I didn't want to chance a shot to the head before I'd even gotten to play the queen game.

"English. Please."

Hands wrapped around my arms and I jumped as a tick took up residence in Bane's jaw. "Is there a reason you're manhandling my queen?"

On either side of me were burly Eastern European dudes with pale skin and buzz cuts. The black on black ensemble they wore with matching grim faces didn't give me the warm fuzzies. Just stamp "murder" across their foreheads why don't you.

LSM—left side murderer—growled at my thoughts and addressed Bane in thickly accented English, "She is treated the same as her contenders."

Bane unfurled from the chair, all sleek menace. While the two dumbasses holding me had to tattoo their occupations across their head, Bane didn't have that problem. No tattooing needed when your body language carried DEATH. All caps. Bolded.

"None of them are my wife."

I was released instantly.

"Peaches," Bane said gently, palm cupping the back of my head, his kiss searing my soul. It wasn't a goodbye. Not my husband. It was a winner's kiss, one that said, "when you come back I'll do what I'm doing to your mouth to another part of you."

Promises. Promises.

He drew back, red bleeding into the irises of his hooded eyes. "Don't break them."

Never.

Bane withdrew, moving back to his throne. Zeno sat beside him, but not in the queen's chair. Nope, she left that wide open and Bane casually placed his arm, hand palm up, on the other chair's plush armrest.

"Don't wish me luck," I said, turning away from them to the waiting vamps. Kicking off my slippers and shimmying out of my sleek gown for the more comfortable leggings and long sports bra beneath, I jammed my feet into a pair of waiting tennis shoes. "I don't need it."

Chapter Six: Come to Peaches Moment

For the first time in weeks I wished I was human. But not just any human. I wanted to be a legit monarch. Gimme the throne, crown, jewels, and sometimes adoring public. Let me open a hundred hospitals, kiss a thousand baby heads, shake hands until I got tendonitis in my wrists because even the most difficult task had zero, zilch, nada on vampire royalty tests.

Not like I was forgetting the assassinations and brutal power shifts when it came to human royals. I wasn't. The thing was though, the Romanovs, Pahlavis, and Windsors didn't have to break out of an escape room quickly filling with fire ants or find a special doll in a literal mountain of the same friggin' dolls in some BS version of a needle in a haystack queen edition.

"Why is it so hot?" I moaned, dragging my feet to the winner's mini-tent and tossing the gold necklace I'd swiped from one of the ninja's necks from the previous test onto the silver platter set in the center of the room.

Only one other vampire was there. Ishtar. Pretty sure that came from the badass goddess of war. That or a sex demon. My Charmed demons were getting mixed with my Angel ones.

Since none of my three other competitors had given me their names. I'd gone ahead and done the job myself. There was Ms. Puppet who looked to North Asia for every single thing. She'd completely ignored the various royals who stepped forward to introduce the tests, explain why they'd chosen them and why they were important. Nope. She'd had her eyes glued to the Asians, and when she didn't come back until seconds after the last grain of sand dropped the look on her face had chilled me to the bone. Even worse when two dainty looking servants had come and escorted her away from the tents, back to the planes.

Creepy.

The second one, I'd nicknamed Princess, was a Disney's Brave lookalike: all the curly red hair barely packed into two fishtail braids, and skin that the sun was just begging to burn. Short with absolutely no flesh on her, the girl surprised me by coming back at the last second from the escape room, bloody and worn the hell out.

But now it was just me and sex-demon-goddess Ishtar. Woman stepped up to the plate ready, all about winning, eyes saying she'd do anything and be anyone to get what she wanted. I tried to figure out what region she fell under, but couldn't figure it out. Had to be some kind of island or natives' people from the color of her skin and mass of thick hair secured in a bun at her nape.

Still, I wasn't honestly worried about any of these women. Hadn't been from the get go. See, none of them were Zeno. Zeno of the ice water to the face when you faint clan and subscriber to the "It's only a small pool of blood" doctrine. If I could survive her, I'm pretty sure the only thing that would get me would be the Apocalypse.

Nah. Zeno'd probably bitch slap the antichrist and kick his ass back to Hell.

"Goddamn, I wish we could have water," I moaned, collapsing into one of the chairs in the tent. My chin fell to my boobs, arms off the sides of my chair, and my legs stretched out in front of me, ankles turning my feet to the side.

Royals subscribed to the starvation diet for their contenders, and until the stupid tests were over, none of us gals were allowed blood or anything else. That was just one rule. One of many asinine rules that didn't seem really important in the grand scheme of choosing a fitting ruler. In fact, the entire thing reeked of horseshit and nonsense.

Middle of nowhere. I get that.

Tents as territories. Okay, yeah maybe.

Fighting off ninjas? Getting out of an escape room? Finding a stupid doll in a doll mountain? Nope. Ya lost me.

That wasn't right. I wasn't just lost, I was confused. About the test. About what queens did. About why I should even be queen.

It was amazing the clarity you got when fighting for your life for the shits and giggles of others.

Why am I doing this?

My motivation seemed strong at the beginning. Boiled down to a single finite point: because I married a king.

But that was human logic. Vampires didn't work like that and these titles were earned, fought over, not inherited. So I didn't become a queen by marrying Bane. I became a queen because he said I was and continued to say it as if driving the point home.

My eyes strayed to Bane's tent as the sand dwindled and we waited to see if Princess came back. It all started with Bane; this entire thing. I couldn't even imagine what my life would be like without him or the choices he'd made. For me.

That rubbed me all sorts of wrong.

Straightening in my chair, I cracked my neck. The sound grated on my nerves, furthering my irritation.

Why the hell am I doing this? I wasn't a vampire and I honestly didn't care about them either. Didn't mean I was going to go on a rampage, but I probably wasn't the right person to lead the bloodsuckers. That was Bane's domain. This was his world. I'd been trying to carve myself a place within it, but there would never be one.

"Can I go talk to my husband while we're waiting?" I asked East Asia's rulers, the sadists who'd planned the ninja style attack.

They looked at each other, speaking in hushed tones before the man turned back and nodded his head.

"Thanks." I saluted them and made my way over to Bane. No doubt the vamps had read my mind and thought seeing me duke it out with my husband would make for even more exciting drama.

Today on All My Peaches, we find our heroine in holey leggings and a ripped bra, angrily dragging her exhausted ass across uneven sand to confront her vampire husband about something she probably should have gotten the answer to long before she passed three completely irrelevant tests.

"Peaches," Bane's voice floated to me as I strode toward him, devoid of any emotion I could recognize. He stood, feet just barely on the carpet, skirting the edge, fingers wrapped round one of the poles holding the tent up.

I stopped a body's length from him, far out of his reach. It was so easy to ignore the issues between us when I was with Bane, wrapped up in him. Good sex, good conversation.

He was my rock: secure and comfortable.

Hard and unyielding.

"Why am I doing this?" He didn't have the answer, only I did. I knew that. But it all went back to Bane. All went back to his claim.

"This is your right. You've earned it, so take it."

"No. I haven't." There was nothing in my recent background that said, "Yup. That's a queen over there."

Anger was spiking my blood and I hated being angry. Any emotion that I felt I didn't have control over, that was forced on me, I was not down for. Didn't mean I only lived sunshiney, rainbow days, but I liked to follow the "don't sweat the small stuff" method of living. Kinda hard to do when nothing in my life followed the definition of small, and jagoffs kept thinking they could lead me by the nose.

The pack and Bane's lie-by-omission stunt flashed through my mind. Was this one of his protection things again? Where he didn't tell me stuff because I didn't ask? Bane always played the just enough game and I was sick of it. Sick. Sick. SICK. OF. IT.

"Why. Am. I. Here." I raised my hand before he could speak. "The truth this time, Bane." Or I walk.

"You can't leave me, hab—"

"I can and I will," I cut him off, ignoring his narrowed eyes and flared nostrils. "I'll walk right out of here, get on that plane, and disappear."

He leaned forward, upper half of his body all the way out of his territory. But not his feet. Those stayed firmly planted.

I waited, highly aware that an entire group of vampires waited too. Vampires that wouldn't hesitate to snatch my husband's throne. This wasn't a test of how important I was to Bane. I knew I was. I knew that Bane and me, we had something. And it had nothing to do with him being a vampire. Casper and Luther were vampires and I could go a clear day without thinking about them in any other context than friendship.

Bane and I had chemistry. Palpable. Explosive. It felt good to be near him, with him. He made me laugh. Made me cry. Made me feel safe. Made me feel jailed. Made me feel wanted. Made me feel wanted.

All the whys were converging on each other, replaying the last few weeks in slow, frame by frame motion. That was where I always screwed up: letting my emotions do the thinking. Feelings weren't objective, didn't present the best or smartest options. Brains were better. But my mind needed to puzzle stuff out, twist and spin it, and make it nice and digestible for Peaches, especially when it was confusing and difficult like now.

My brain was struggling with it, working overtime and throwing out tons of questions with very few answers.

Rubbing my temples, I asked, "Why did you ask me to drive you back to your hotel?"

His fingers tightened around the metal pole, bending it and causing a groan to echo in the open air. "I was tired."

I turned.

"Don't walk away from me!"

"Don't lie to me! Again," I snapped, whipping my head back. "Why?"

"Your scent," he squeezed the words out from between gritted teeth. "I'd never smelled anything like you before."

"Was that it?"

"Yes."

Forget kick in the balls that was a punch in the tit. Full force. In the back of my mind I'd always hoped if we ever had this conversation he would say "love at first sight" or "I saw the potential for greatness in you." Nope. I smelled. That was my call to fame: aroma.

Casper, Luther, the damn werewolves. Always on about it. The first thing they noticed, the only reason anyone paid me any mind. Most of my powers were invisible. Even the fur was gone and the hair could easily be explained away as a dye job.

"You wanted to fuck me." Incredulity twisted up my face and infected my voice. "That was it. Because of the whole sex scent."

"I never said I wanted to fuck you."

"Oh. Your dick inside me was a new form of hello. My bad."

Something popped in his jaw and red bled into his eyes as I waited for Bane to pull up his big boy pants and man the hell up. I'd womaned up hardcore. Days spent in gyms training to be less killable, hours-long sessions with Samantha to hone my MRing skills, horrible "can she or can't she" practices with Luther that tested the very limits of my body and patience.

I'd done all that, everything asked of me, because I knew it made me stronger, better. Maybe if I'd had that training Ariel never would have kidnapped me. Maybe she'd still be alive. A horrible piece of dog crap, but alive.

Exhaustion and guilt weighed on my shoulders as I stared at Bane. "Why am I here? Doing all this."

"Security. Fealty. You may be the last of your kind. I don't know if you were hunted down or you died out, but if it is the former then you need all the armor you can get. All the allies you can win. All the monsters you can control.

"Luther was right, habibiti. We're not omnipotent. I don't know what will happen tomorrow. But I do know that I will do everything in my power to keep you safe."

"Is that what you think you're doing?" From where I stood, beaten and bloody in the middle of a desert after hours of grueling tests only to figure out it all meant diddly-squat, "safe" wasn't the word I'd use.

"It's what I've always done."

Nope, not always. Always implied long term, months and years and a time frame immeasurable by days and hours. What was two weeks to a vampire who lived my life more times than the days we'd been together?

Not always.

Not even close.

"Could you have stopped the marriage?"

"It's never been done before."

"That's not what I asked."

His face shuttered, the words coming out completely removed. "I don't know."

He wouldn't have even tried. Damned if I didn't wish he had.

"Do I evade?" Bane started, the words bit off. "Yes. Do I manipulate? Yes. Do I lie? No."

"How are those things not worse than lying?"

"Because lying nullifies trust. It infects and destroys. Our relationship isn't built on a lie. It's not built on things that can't be repaired."

"Your logic is flawed, Bane," I said quietly, staring at the man I was slowly catching feelings for. Not anymore. Not now. "Manipulation is ten times worse than lying. It takes away choice."

"A teacher manipulates children to listen to their instruction. A doctor manipulates a patient to pick the medication they want. We manipulate people all the time to various degrees."

His expression opened, voice changing to take on so many emotions at once: pride, affection, admiration, and rationalization. "I manipulated you to expose the strength I saw underneath. You might consider it morally wrong, but I wish you could see the woman you've become from the choices you've made for yourself."

He really believed that.