Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 93727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
“But they didn’t come back,” Gary said.
“No, they didn’t.” Dalton shook his head. “And then it happened again about six months later. Someone else mentioned that a Vampire they knew had vanished. There one day and gone the next. They’d assumed that their acquaintance had gone on a trip, but they never returned. The stories kept happening. Vampires and their mates disappearing into thin air. All newly mated, all quietly living their lives, suddenly gone.”
“How many?” I asked, my voice rough. My brother Ambrose had found a handful of small tokens hidden in the room where our brother Zeke had been held, so we knew there were others, but this sounded much bigger than any of us had imagined.
“Fifty-four,” Dalton replied quietly.
It felt like I’d been punched in the chest. That was far more than we’d heard of. More than I’d ever thought possible.
“Couples,” Rosemary clarified. “Fifty-four couples. One hundred eight, total.”
“One hundred nine,” Gary said. “When we add your brother. He was mated?”
“My brother’s mate is safe,” I replied, sick.
Gary’s nod seemed relieved.
“We didn’t put it together,” Dalton said apologetically. “As far as I knew, Zeke hadn’t been mated, so his death didn’t fit the pattern.”
My baby brother had known better than to report his mate to our government. There was no record of Charles. Unfortunately, the militia had discovered him anyway. I doubted Zeke had been able to hide his mating heat symptoms for long.
“Tell me the rest of it,” I ordered, pulling Rosemary tighter against me. Her heart beat steady and strong beneath my palm.
“We’ve kept things quiet,” Dalton said. “I didn’t want to get caught up in the bureaucratic bullshit that you know would come up. Between the treaties and the political posturing, we’d never get to the bottom of things. Even so, we’ve hit a wall. That’s why Rosemary was sent in. We’ve managed to track some of the soldiers, but we haven’t figured out who’s giving them orders.”
“Yet,” Ian said quietly, still petting the bulldog. “We haven’t found them yet.”
“Nowhere in this story have any of you convinced me why you thought it was acceptable to send my mate into the fucking lion’s den,” I reminded them. “Or why we’re still sitting here waiting for the militia to show up.”
“No one knows where we are,” Gary assured me with a quick shake of his head.
“Forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”
Gary looked pointedly at his daughter.
“I can explain all that,” Rosemary said with a sigh, unfolding her legs so she could climb off the couch. “Come on, let’s go outside.”
Chapter 3
Rosemary
It was a good thing that I knew what to expect when it came to mates, because I was having a hard time keeping my hands off Daniel. I should’ve been freaking out that I felt such a strong pull toward him. I didn’t even know him.
However, I’d seen the mating bond in action before.
No hesitation on my part would change the outcome. No second-guessing would make things any easier on either of us. When I had a few more moments to myself, I could panic and scream into the void about how unprepared I was to meet the person I’d spend the rest of my life with. I could shake my head in wonder that, out of all the human women in the world, I was one of the few who was connected to a Vampire for all eternity. I could fist pump a little that my mate looked like that.
But those moments would have to come later. We didn’t have time for them, and frankly, even spending the fifteen minutes apart while I was showering was painful. I’d seriously considered calling him in to sit on the toilet until I’d finished.
“Shoes,” Daniel ordered as I opened the front door.
“What?” I eyed him over my shoulder. God, he was handsome.
“Put some shoes on. You’re barefoot.”
I looked down at my feet.
“You’re going to hurt the bottoms of your feet if you go out running in the gravel again.”
“I didn’t plan on running in the gravel,” I countered.
He just looked at me.
Letting out a long-suffering woosh of air, I slid my feet into my dad’s old slippers and continued outside. The air was cold against my overheated skin, and I’d come to the realization on the couch that I wasn’t actually sick.
The mating bond was making me feel like garbage. It was the reason for the heat beneath my skin and the cramping in my belly and the pressure in my chest. If I’d been thinking more logically earlier, I would’ve put it together. To be honest, when Aunt Halle had explained the symptoms to my cousins, I hadn’t been paying much attention. It was one of the less fascinating parts of the mating bond, and I hadn’t thought it would ever apply to me.