Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Maxim
Wren is alive.
The SUV climbs out of the valley with Sebastian at the wheel. She’s fine and therefore my agitation decreases. Wren is in the back seat with me, luscious scent fills my lungs and her warm, lovely body is now so close.
I reach over and take her hand in mine, and she allows it.
A smile spreads across her beautiful features as she squeezes my hand in return. “I’m okay, remember?”
“I remember,” I huff. In fact, I am going to remember for the rest of my life. The sight of her car in that ditch will haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Thank you for finding me.”
I grunt in response.
“But…how did you two even know I was out there? I didn’t have any cell service, so I hadn’t called anyone. And I have to admit I was getting a little bit scared that bad things were going to happen before you both arrived so quickly.”
“We could feel you needed help, so we drove faster.”
Her brow furrows. “What? How is that possible?”
I shrug, not ready to tell her the details of how the Calling is making Sebastian and me more attuned to her.
“Okay. How about you answer my next question. Where have you guys been? I haven’t seen either of you since that night at the pub. A patron asked me a question and when I turned back you were gone. I don’t even have your cell number. I had to dig up your home address from Margit.”
I put my hand out. “Give me your cell.”
“Oh…” She lets go of my hand and rummages in her bag, taps on her screen and hands over her unlocked phone to me.
I start entering all my contact info as well as Sebastian’s. Wren will never have trouble contacting us ever again.
“We had to leave immediately because we got a text saying my brother was at our gate,” Sebastian responds from the front seat.
“The King?”
“No, my other brother, the Crown Prince.” Sebastian’s eyes flick to the mirror. “He’d driven from the capital because he’d learned that a Council emissary had crossed the border. He wanted to make sure they were not mistreating me.”
Wren is quiet for a moment. “Your brother drove through the night to stand up for you?”
“Yes.” I hand her back the cell phone. “Viktor is an honorable Krovenian. He is the best of us.”
She crooks an eyebrow. “So you left me standing there to rush out to see Sebastian’s brother?
That makes total sense. You had company and had to leave quickly.
But couldn’t you have tapped me on the shoulder and told me this as you left?
Or maybe tried to get in touch with me sooner?
It’s just…I found out all that new information about the two of you at the pub when that fancy Krovenian lady arrived and I’ve had so many questions.
I feel I’ve been left hanging, not knowing… ”
I squeeze her hand. “We thought you were angry at us and we didn’t want to make matters worse.”
Sebastian speaks up, “After the look on your face at the pub, we didn’t know what to say. We weren’t even sure that you still wanted to talk to us. We needed time to figure out how to explain in the right way. Also, Viktor ended up staying the night. He left at dawn to beat the pass.”
“We got here so quick because we were on the road already, coming to the pub to see you. We thought you were working tonight and we were going to talk to you.”
“And see if,” Sebastian interjects, “at the end of your shift, you’d like to come and see our compound and talk to us in private.”
She blinks. “Your compound?”
“Yes, that’s where we’re driving to right now,” I say. “Is that okay with you or would you rather go back home?”
Sebastian shakes his head. “The weather won’t permit that. It’s too dangerous now to drive back to the village. She needs to stay here with us until the storm passes and the roads clear.”
“Okay. I understand. The storm swept in at least six hours early. I took this trip because I thought I had plenty of time to go out and visit with you and return to the village, but that isn’t what happened.”
I frown, because I can tell that she looks uncomfortable. “We have a guest room you can use,” I tell her.
“We’re home,” Sebastian announces. “We can continue this conversation when we get inside.”
The wall comes out of the white ahead of us. Twelve feet of gray stone, six hundred years old, running left and right into the storm until it disappears. Sebastian thumbs the remote on the visor and the black steel gate swings inward on its own.
Wren leans forward between the seats. “Oooh, nice gate.”
Inside the wall, the drive curves through a cobblestone courtyard originally built for carriages.
The customs house is square, gray and three stories tall, with walls four feet thick and small windows.
A tower rises from the north corner. The front doors are oak, banded in black iron, tall enough to drive a cart through.
The steps up to them are worn into a dip in the middle from six centuries of boots.
“Oh my gosh,” she says softly. “You live in a castle.”
“Well, technically it’s an old customs house that we remodeled. Back in Krovenia I do live in an actual castle,” Sebastian explains. He pulls the SUV into the long stone building on the left, which is now a garage with three bays.
The car stops and the garage door rumbles closed behind us. Wren looks at the shiny truck parked nearby, the black sedan, fuel drums and the generator humming in the corner. “This isn’t a garage. This is a base.”
“It was a border post,” I confirm as Sebastian cuts the engine. “The entire structure has been remodeled for modernization so we can both live here and also run our security business out of this same location.”
“Your what?”
“Security firm,” Sebastian explains. “Ever since we left Krovenia we now provide specialized protection for humans.”
“You’re bodyguards?”
“Sometimes a human bodyguard isn’t enough.
A witness has to stay alive until a trial, maybe an heiress has a violent ex-husband who she learns is actually a mercenary, or a pipeline engineer needs out of the country before his employers find him.
” He shrugs. “We are the best and sometimes humans can afford the best.”
“Because you’re—what. Stronger?”
“Stronger and faster, with better hearing and reflexes. And we both served ten years under the Crown Prince on the eastern border. We’re stealth and always perform with one hundred percent accuracy.”
“You’re like super soldiers.”
“I suppose. But we’re just Krovenian.”
“All Krovenians are that strong?”
“Most of us, but it’s true that our skills are honed due to years of specialized training.”
She bites her lip. “Can anyone hire you?”
“No,” I respond. “We don’t work with cartels or oligarchs. We do not condone human criminals and refuse to work for these organizations.”
“So, you’re expensive and you’re picky.”
“We are very expensive,” Sebastian agrees. “And Maxim is very picky.”
I nod in agreement. “Can we show you our home?”
“I’d love to see your home.”
The three of us exit the vehicle. I take her bag, her coat and hold her hand again as I lead her into our home.
Wren walks with us through the side door from the garage and into a hallway. Sebastian holds the door open for us.
“We use this hallway to enter the house if we’ve arrived from the garage,” I explain, “which is probably the way we most often arrive. The main front entrance is mostly for guests. And here,” I point at two doors as we pass, “Are our offices, because we work from home, when we’re not out on assignment.
This one is mine and this is Sebastian’s.
” I find myself watching her face as she sees our home and Sebastian is just as nervous as I am.
Will Wren like this living arrangement to want to stay?
We are both hoping that she will want to take a chance on us, and start a mating with two banished Krovenians.
She will have to give up most of her prior life in order to take on the two of us, so her enjoying what we have to offer is crucial.
We continue down the hallway and move into the kitchen.
“Oh, this is nice,” she exclaims.
Sebastian grins. He is the one who led the remodeling of this particular room. “I am glad that you like it. I ordered all of the latest amenities. I enjoy cooking for the two of us.”
Wren steps forward and places her hand on the smooth quartz counter. “This is my dream kitchen. I like to cook too, but obviously, since I’ve been living and working at the pub, I haven’t been able to cook because I don’t have my own kitchen. I miss it.”
“We could cook here, together,” Sebastian rasps.
She smiles at him. “That would be nice.”
“Follow me,” I tell her. “I want to show you more.”
Wren nods and takes my hand again. The three of us continue on, into the great room at the front of the house. This is where I want to sit and talk with our female. There is much to discuss.
“That is the grand staircase, which will take us up into the bedrooms. This is where there is also a guest room.” I set down her bag and coat on a nearby chair. “But for now, we can all rest here, in this room.”
“Wow.” She lets go of my hand and turns in a full circle.
The grand entrance and the adjoining great room are two stories of stone with black roof beams. The hearth at the far end is tall enough for a human to stand in upright.
Two large windows were built into the front wall, which show shadowy images of the white storm raging outside.
“This is bigger than anywhere I’ve ever lived. This is bigger than anywhere anyone I know has ever lived. I love this. You’ve done a wonderful job, keeping all that is old and at the same time adding modern additions.”
Sebastian crosses his arms. “It was a big job. We only recently finished having the bathrooms remodeled too.”
I smile, enjoying her enthusiasm. “Take a seat,” I say. “I will start a fire.”
Soon, the three of us are comfortably seated around the crackling fireplace. And Sebastian has brought all of us mugs of hot coffee.
He takes a sip, looks out the window and frowns. “You drove into that on tires without chains, into a no signal zone. It was not a good choice, Wren. You put yourself in a dangerous situation.”
She sighs. “I know it looks bad, but I really did check the forecast twice. It said the storm wasn’t supposed to arrive until late tonight. I should’ve had time to arrive, talk to you and leave with no problem.”
“It was wrong because it was a human forecast.”
“Well, it’s the only forecast I have, Sebastian,” she points out.
“We told you it was coming early,” I say.
Wren sighs and puts her mug down on the hearth stone with a click.
It’s obvious she is not sorry. “You two sat in my section every night for three weeks and then a woman in diamonds walks in and calls you Your Highness. And then you’re gone without a word.
I don’t have your number. I don’t have anything.
So I came to talk to you myself.” She looks at Sebastian, then at me. “So talk.”
We’re both speechless for a moment. She drove into a blizzard to make us answer for ourselves.
She crosses her arms. “Okay, I’ll start. Why did you both let me believe for so long that you were Border Patrol?”
“Because it was the best weeks of my life,” Sebastian admits. “Having you like us because we were simply males you enjoyed. I could be certain it wasn’t because of our wealth or status.” And then, because he cannot help himself, a grin splits his face. “You thought we were border guards.”
“You tip like border guards.”
“We tip like princes.”
“Nobility,” I correct.
She throws her hands up. “Well, I didn’t know that.
” Wren is fighting a smile and losing. She looks at the fire for a moment, then looks back and her face has gone serious again.
“I’ve been attracted to you since the first night.
” She says it fast, the way you pull a splinter.
“Both of you. Both. At the same time. Not one or the other. Both. And I thought there was something wrong with me, because that’s not normal.
And I thought if I ever said it out loud I’d start a fight between the two of you. ”
“It does not start a fight,” I say.
“How do you know?”
“Because we’ve had three weeks to have that fight,” Sebastian answers. “And we didn’t.”
“That first night we saw you in the pub we both knew at the same time that you were the one, for the both of us.”
She stares at us. “Both of you, at the same…”
“The same second.”
She bites at her lip. “Is that—do you do this? Is this a Krovenian thing?”
“No,” we say. Together.
“Hold on, have you two ever shared a girlfriend before?”
“No,” Sebastian says. “Of course not.”
“Never? Not once?”
“Never,” I say.
“Are you two…um…boyfriends?”
“No,” I explain. “Sebastian and I are not sexually interested in each other. We both thought we’d individually find our female mate through the Blood Calling. We are both surprised to discover we have a Blood Calling for the same female.”
“I’m not interested in Maxim as my mate,” Sebastian growls. “I am only interested in you, and your pleasure. But I am willing to share you with Maxim.”
“Same,” I answer. “We have already talked this through. We will be sharing in your pleasure and promise to not overdrink your blood.”
Her mouth drops open.