Posting a very short chapter today because the next bit might take me a while. It's going to be tricky and unpleasant to write - not to mention that I have to figure out how I want to approach it - so please be patient. I hope this is enough to tide you all over. Happy Friday!

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The next weeks were nothing but monotony, broken only by his final dealings with Hot Rain – for which he had had to contact Sookie again briefly – and the photo shoot for the Fangtasia calendar. The latter had proven to be more enjoyable than expected. Now he was busy with final arrangements for the summit. He hadn't occupied his usual place in the bar for some time, and some nights he wasn't there at all. It was on one of those nights that he called Pam and told her to arrange a meeting with Sookie on Friday evening. At last, the queen had given him more details to pass along to Sookie and the others who would be attending with the Area 5 delegation.

He had avoided thinking of Sookie as much as possible. As it turned out, however, it wasn't often possible. The knowledge of their relationship during his lost week was like the skeleton of a building. He knew some of the facts, but there were no walls, no roof, no door. Only unpainted beams and bent nails that formed a rough framework good enough for no one to occupy.

He missed her.

His cell phone started vibrating and inching over the wood on his desk, and the name PAM glowed blue on the screen. He looked away from his work and flipped the phone open. "All is arranged, I trust."

"Not even close," she replied, not bothering to disguise the glee in her voice. Pam was nothing if not sadistic.

He clenched the fist of his free hand. "Why not?"

"She has a date on Friday night."

"Don't fuck with me, Pam."

"I'm not!" she protested. "She told me she has a date. And she said to tell you that if you want to talk to her, you need to call her or visit her – and I quote – your ownself." A silence stretched between them for several seconds before she added, "And she said to thank you for the calendar."

He would need a new phone, he realized a split-second after he slammed his against the desk and heard the plastic casing crack. Fuck her. Fuck her. She was only a human. In several decades she would join all the others rotting in the ground. She was nothing.

He shook his head and laughed at himself. Bullshit.

If she wanted to see him in person, she would. On the night of her date.

* * *

She answered his knock promptly, all dressed up for her date, her face beaming… for someone else. She gasped when she saw him standing there instead.

"May I come in?" He knew he was pressing his lips into a thin line, but that was better than any alternatives he could think of at the moment. "I suppose you're expecting company."

Her nose flew up into the air with the disdainful expression he knew so well. "As a matter of fact, I am. And actually, I'd rather you stayed on that side of the doorsill." She backed away from the door, out of the reach of his arms.

Did she imagine that he would reach in, snatch her, and kidnap her? It only served to irritate him more. "You told Pam that you didn't want to come to Shreveport, so here I am, to find out why you don't answer my call." And to find out who your date is.

"I didn't have time," she told him with an apathetic shrug. "I'm going out tonight."

He looked her over again. Whoever this date was, she had taken time to get ready for him. She looked beautiful. "So I see. Who are you going out with?"

She crossed her arms. "Is that really any of your business?"

For a few seconds he stood there dumbly, taken aback by the question. The nerve of it… the lack of feeling… the outrage. It was taking more and more effort to bite back his anger. He met her eyes evenly. "Of course it is." She knew it was. She would have to be either heartless or blind not to know it.

"And that would be why?" she asked, lifting one eyebrow in defiance.

Did she really need to know that, or was she only trying to give him a difficult time? "You should be mine," he said with as much gentleness as he could muster under the circumstances. "I have slept with you, I have cared for you, I have…" He cast about for something more; he knew there was something more. "…Assisted you financially," he heard himself say. That wasn't it.

Her chest swelled, and he knew she was taking in the breath she needed for a tirade. He braced himself – not against the pain it might cause, but against his own fury. There was fire in her eyes.

"You paid me money you owed me for services rendered," she said, her voice icy. "You may have slept with me, but not recently, and you've shown no signs of wanting to do so again." Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "If you care for me, you're showing it in a mighty strange way. I never heard that total avoidance aside from orders coming from flunkies was a valid way to show caring."

Unable to help himself, he smiled a little at the thought of Pam's face if she could have heard this. "You're calling Pam a flunky?" Then it was as if her words sank in, every one of them untrue and skewed. "I do not have to hang around you to show you," he told her in a low voice. "I am Sheriff. You…" He realized that he had gotten himself entirely off the subject – the reason why she should be his – and onto the original subject of his phone call and visit. "You are in my retinue," he finished lamely.

She narrowed her eyes. "Your… retinue?" she hissed. "Well, up you and your retinue! You don't tell me what to do!"

His pent-up anger and frustration seemed to batter against every inch of his skin from the inside. He clenched his fists and released the tension by digging his nails into his palms. "You are obliged to go with me to the conference. That was why I called you to Shreveport… to talk to you about travel time and arrangements."

"I'm not obliged to go anywhere with you," she said, looking nonplussed. "You got outranked, buddy."

"Buddy?" he repeated. He felt his palms rehealing, only to press his nails into them again. Behind him, a car rolled down the gravel drive that he had paid for, carrying a man who wanted to steal Sookie. His fangs had extended. "Buddy?"

A car door, footsteps, and there was the man: the tiger, John Quinn. A shifter? A fucking shifter? A bastard with purple eyes and too much cologne. A bastard whose lips might very well be on Sookie's later tonight.

"Hello, Eric," said Quinn with a nod, then both men looked at the woman in front of them. "Sookie, you look good enough to eat."

She smiled at her date. "You look very nice, too."

Her heart had quickened; there was a new flush in her cheeks, and it wasn't anger. She wanted Quinn. Her desire for him was like a poison in Eric's blood, so strong he could almost taste it like gall in his mouth. Was this the man who had "outranked" him, then? Surely Sookie knew that a filthy shifter could never outrank a vampire – especially not a vampire sheriff.

"What have you been telling Sookie, Quinn?" he asked. He knew his voice sounded strained, but he hardly cared.

Quinn seemed as calm as if Eric had asked about the weather. "I've been telling Sookie that the queen requires Sookie's presence at the conference as part of her party, and that the queen's summons supercedes yours."

"Since when has the queen given orders through a shifter?" he scoffed.

"Since this shifter performed a valuable service for her in the line of business." Still relaxed. Eric wondered if the tiger would be so relaxed if his head was ripped off at the seams. "Mr. Cataliades suggested to Her Majesty that I might be helpful in a diplomatic capacity, and my partners were glad to give me extra time to perform any duties she might give me."

But no "diplomatic capacity" gave Quinn the right to take Sookie. Once again Eric's palms healed themselves, and once again he broke the skin with his nails. "This woman has been mine," he said slowly, glaring at Quinn, not trusting himself to meet Sookie's eyes. "And she will be mine."

"Babe, are you his or not?" Quinn asked.

Babe? As if she were a cheap fangbanging slut just old enough to order alcohol? He waited for Sookie's reaction, which promised to be a joy to watch. But she only smiled.

"Not," she said.

Quinn took the few steps inside her house to reach her – the steps that Eric could not take – and offered his arm, which she accepted. "Then let's go enjoy the show," he said.

She looked up at Eric as they walked through the door, but he turned away from her. He had no desire to see more of the defiance, amusement, and triumph in her eyes. There was no way to scour her from his blood. Even more maddening, there was nothing that could make him want to. Others may borrow her, but in the end, she was his.

No, said a laughing voice in his head. You are hers.