Chapter 2
Daniel
Rosemary was too calm.
She’d followed me out of the garage she’d been held in too easily.
She handled a weapon like she’d been born with one in her hand.
At no point had she complained, hesitated, or behaved as if she was scared.
It didn’t make any sense. I was missing something.
Hearing her voice had felt like the final piece of a puzzle falling into place. Stepping into that room and seeing her face had felt like the pinnacle moment of my life. There she was. The woman I’d been waiting a century for. My mate. The other half of me.
She was a mess. Her hair was a rat’s nest. Her clothes were dirty. She smelled.
She was also perfect. My height, muscular and strong, long brown hair, and hazel eyes that missed nothing.
Pouty lips. If I could’ve chosen what she looked like, I wouldn’t have imagined anything different.
She carried herself like she was used to commanding every room, unwilling to make herself smaller for the benefit of others.
Her confidence hadn’t been shaken even after being held for days in a broken-down garage. I liked that.
She was also lying through her teeth.
“Lying about what?” Rosemary asked, staring out the front windshield. Her voice didn’t shake. Her expression didn’t change.
“Not sure yet,” I replied, switching lanes. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“I haven’t lied to you.”
“I find that very hard to believe.”
“Not sure what to tell you.”
I glanced over at her profile, and something twinged in my chest. I reached up to press the heel of my hand there. Gods, she was beautiful.
“Take the next exit.”
I nodded as I changed lanes. I wondered where we were headed. She’d said she wanted to go home, but it made little sense that she’d show me where she lived.
She’d been kidnapped, seen multiple dead bodies, shot a man, and she hadn’t once asked to call the police. I wrestled with the urge to pull the car over and grill her for information. Who the hell was she, really?
“Left at the next intersection,” she ordered as we pulled off the freeway.
“You realize that you’re going to have to come clean, right?” I asked, following her directions.
Gods, I wanted to reach for her. It felt like everything was spinning.
Euphoria that I’d finally found my mate was juxtaposed with the reality that she had something to do with the humans that were targeting Vampires and their mates.
We’d found her in one of their hideouts, and she’d come out swinging.
I didn’t believe that she’d been with them—the universe couldn’t be that cruel—but she was involved somehow.
She’d immediately recognized that she was my mate.
My head throbbed.
“Now, right,” she said, pointing.
I turned onto a two-lane road and slowed as we rounded a curve.
We were headed into a less populated area, leaving streetlights behind, and for a moment, I wondered if she was leading me into an ambush of some sort.
My gaze shifted toward the dash where she’d stored my pistol, and I discarded the idea.
“I need a shower,” she mumbled. “Then we can deal with”—she waved her hand around—“whatever.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out. I’d left our home, prioritizing my mate above the mess I’d left behind, and while I knew everyone would believe I’d done the right thing, guilt still lay heavy on my shoulders.
“Still have your head?” my brother Chance asked when I answered it.
“For the moment.”
“Where’d she take you?”
“Track me,” I replied vaguely. “How’s it going there?”
“We didn’t lose anyone,” Chance said with a sigh. “Lucy isn’t great, but Ambrose is with her. Mom’s going to be down for a while.”
“Matthias?”
“He’ll be fine.”
Chance hesitated, and my gut clenched.
“What?” I barked.
“Uncle Sven hasn’t woken up.”
“At all?”
“It was a partial,” Chance said quietly. I could hear him moving. “He’s alive, though.”
“Shit.”
“You know they have to take our entire head,” Chance reminded me. “He’ll be fine. Oh, and Dad’s awake.”
“How’s that going?”
“He’s surprisingly calm.”
“So not tearing down the house with his bare hands?”
“Not yet, anyway.”
“What about Reese?” I asked. I hadn’t seen my brother Beau’s mate at the house. There was a very good chance that they’d been together long enough that her immortality had locked in already, but it was impossible to know for sure.
“She and Aunt Alice are fine. Did you know she could shoot?”
“What?”
“Oh, yeah,” Chance said in amusement. “Little sister is a damn sharpshooter. She took out all those men in the yard with a rifle.”
“No shit?”
“She’s got nothin’ on Lucy, though.” Chance laughed darkly.
“What do you mean?” Our oldest brother’s mate was fierce, but not especially intimidating.
Rosemary pointed to the right, and I slowed to take the turn.
“She took out almost as many with a pistol in the front room,” Chance said. “We found her unconscious on top of a guy twice her size. She took him out right before she passed the fuck out from blood loss.”
“Gods,” I breathed.
“Snapped his neck.”
“What?” I barked incredulously.
“Moral of the story—don’t fuck with Lucy.” Chance hummed. “Or Charlie.”
I huffed in agreement. Ambrose’s mate Lucy was Charlie’s sister.
It was unheard of that Vampires in the same family mated a pair of siblings, but when we’d gone searching for Zeke’s mate, Charlie, Ambrose had taken one look at Lucy and known instantly.
In a twisted way, it made sense. The Gods had known that one of the Franklin siblings could never live forever without the other.
Charlie would never survive immortality without his sister by his side.
“All good here,” Chance said. “Mostly. Take care of your shit. I just wanted to check in.”
“Appreciate it.”
“You weren’t even thinking of your poor family, were you?” my brother accused, laughter in his voice. “Mating heat strikes again.”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m just fucking with you. We’re good, Danny boy. Let us know that you’re not dead when you come up for air.” He hung up without saying goodbye.
“Love you too,” I muttered under my breath, dropping my phone on the dash.
“Everything okay?” Rosemary asked as we made our way through the woods. We were in the middle of nowhere.
“Everyone’s accounted for,” I replied.
“That’s good.”
“No questions?” I pressed. “You’re not curious what the hell you stepped into?”
Rosemary pressed her lips together and seemed to straighten.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked, keeping my tone as light as I could make it.
“Turn right at this driveway,” she said instead of answering the question.
The long gravel road was pitted with holes, and I had to slow to a crawl as we jerked and jostled from side to side. At the end was a small house, more of a cabin, really. Almost every window was lit.
The hair on my neck prickled as I parked out front and followed Rosemary out of the car. Something wasn’t right.
“Come on in,” she griped as I followed her up the steps to the small porch. She threw open the front door and called out, “I’m home!”
My hand had already reached for the pistol at the small of my back when the sound of scrambling paws reached us. Following closely behind was the sound of wheels squeaking across the floor.
I dropped my arm as an old gray bulldog came running into the room, his tongue hanging so far out of his mouth it nearly reached the hardwood.
“Hey, Thunder,” Rosemary said tiredly, crouching down to catch him before he ran into her legs.
“Where the hell have you been?” a voice barked as an older man in a wheelchair appeared in the doorway.
“Hey, Pop,” Rosemary said, rising back up with a groan.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked me.
“Pop, this is my mate, Daniel Boucher. Daniel, this is my father, Gary Whitlock.”
“Well… shit,” the man said, his shoulders dropping.
“Yeah,” Rosemary said, lifting her arms and then letting them fall. “Surprise.”
“Good to meet you,” I said, stepping around my mate to shake her father’s hand.
“Your mate is a Boucher?” Gary said, looking over at his daughter, his eyebrows raised.
She gave a short nod, and her father scoffed.
“What am I missing?” I asked, looking between them. It seemed as if they were having a full conversation without saying a word.
“I need a shower,” Rosemary announced. “Pop, you’ll entertain Daniel, right?”
“Rosemary—” I couldn’t stand the idea of her out of my sight.
“Go on, Flower,” her dad ordered with a jerk of his head. “You stink.”
“Well aware,” she mumbled as she walked toward him and kissed the top of his head as she passed. “And I’m starving.”
My heart raced as she disappeared from view, and I barely kept myself from following her. If her father hadn’t been blocking most of the hallway, I probably would’ve. I stared in the direction she’d gone, my mind racing.
What the hell had I walked into?
“Sure you got questions,” Gary said, turning his wheelchair around. “Come on. We can talk while I make her somethin’ to eat.”
I followed him into the kitchen. The house was clean but clearly lived in.
The floors were scratched from years of use, the door jams were gouged at the height of Gary’s wheelchair footrests, and there were random knick-knacks and framed photos everywhere.
Inside the kitchen was an entire row of well-worn cookbooks.
Almost every one of them had little notes peeking out of the top.
“Can I get you somethin’ to drink?” Gary asked as he moved toward the fridge. “We’ve got beer, milk, and water.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Don’t keep hard stuff in the house.”
“No thanks,” I replied cautiously. I couldn’t figure him out. The man was as calm as if I’d just brought his daughter home from a date, but from everything Rosemary had said—she’d been missing for a week. What kind of father didn’t care that his daughter had disappeared?
And why the hell hadn’t he reacted when she’d told him we were mates?