Chapter 6 #3
“Daniel, this is my family. The shortest one over there is Grant, and the other one is Seamus.”
“The pretty one,” Seamus added.
“And this is my Aunt Halle.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said with a nod.
The boys were on the far side of the table, still standing near the back door.
Halle was closer, but I knew better than to try to shake her hand.
Not only was it…impolite to touch another Vampire’s mate that wasn’t family, but it would also most likely be uncomfortable for the woman.
Halle nodded back while the boys offered hellos.
“Strange that the two of you never met before,” Dalton said, leaning back in his chair.
“I think the last time we spoke, you’d just met,” I offered, while Halle sat silently.
“Makes sense,” Dalton replied. “Boys, go outside and make yourselves useful.”
Grant and Seamus deflated, but neither of them said a word as they turned back toward the door.
“There’s an old dirt bike under the tarp in the barn,” Gary said. “Picked it up at an estate sale. You get it workin’, you can have it.”
“No shit?” Grant asked, grinning.
“No shit. Go see what you can do.”
“Damn, Pop,” Rosemary said as she walked toward the stove. “Just giving stuff away.”
“You’ve already got one,” he replied with a scoff. “And it’s in much better condition than the piece of shit in the garage.”
Dalton laughed. “At least it’ll keep them busy.”
“For the next year, probably,” Gary agreed.
Rosemary ladled some kind of soup into two bowls and brought me one of them.
“Thanks,” I said quietly.
They must’ve put an extra leaf in the table, because it was much bigger than it had been when I left.
Around it were folding chairs that I’d seen earlier in the day stacked against the side of the barn.
I sat down in one between Gary and Halle as Rosemary sat down across from me.
The empty bowls and glasses littering the table indicated that everyone else had already eaten.
Rosemary had waited for me to eat dinner.
“I doubt those two will stay away from the door for long, so we should probably jump right in,” Dalton said as I lifted a bite to my mouth.
It felt like Halle was staring a hole through the side of my face, but when I glanced at her, she was looking at her mate.
“I’ve brought over a file that has everything we know so far,” Dalton said, setting a USB drive down in the center of the table.
“It’s embarrassingly small. We’ve been tracking the disappearances and mapping them, but there doesn’t seem to be a pattern beyond the fact that every Vampire was newly mated.
Some came from large families. Some were loners.
Many of them quit administrative roles in Command.
Only a few had been on the teams, which we could take one of two ways.
Either they didn’t think that taking highly trained Vampires was worth the hassle, or, more likely, the pool was just a lot smaller.
There’ve only been fourteen team members who found their mates in the last ten years, and four of them were you and your brothers. ”
“Add Billy Finau to that list of fourteen if you haven’t already,” I replied, setting my spoon down.
“He showed up at our place, going on and on about how they’d taken his mate from a gas station and was desperate to get her back.
We knew we were on the militia’s radar, so we sent Charlie—my brother Zeke’s mate—into public, and they took the bait.
Nabbed him at the grocery store like we were hoping, and we followed them back to the garage where Rosemary was being held. ”
“You didn’t find Finau’s mate?” Dalton asked.
“She wasn’t there,” I replied. “And Finau disappeared. He took off while we were breaching the perimeter.”
“He knew she wasn’t there,” Gary said in understanding.
I nodded. “He was showing all the signs of the heat, so either they’re paying him very well to spend time away from his mate or they have her and they’re controlling him that way.”
“It’s not money,” Dalton replied. “I knew Finau well. The only thing that could make him turn on another Vampire would be his mate.”
“We would’ve helped him if he’d asked.” I let out a humorless chuckle. “We did help him when he asked. If he would’ve been straight with us, he might even have her back by now.”
“I’ll put out feelers and see if he’ll reach out,” Dalton said thoughtfully.
“You do that,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders.
“But if he does, keep me out of it. I’m grateful that the clusterfuck brought me to Rosemary.
” I looked up at my mate, but she was staring into her soup.
“But while we were putting our asses on the line to save Finau’s mate, my home was being overrun by humans.
He lured us out so they could get to my brothers’ mates.
It’s a fucking miracle that none of them were taken.
Billy Finau can go fuck himself with a bat covered in barbed wire. ”
“They weren’t taking any chances,” Rosemary added quietly. “They sent so many. You should’ve seen the piles of bodies. It must’ve been like a stampede toward the house.”
“But they held them off?” Gary asked.
I nodded. “They underestimated my brothers’ mates and my mother. By the time we made it back, things were mostly over, and Alice was treating the wounded.”
“How is Alice?” Halle asked. “Ian, Alice delivered you.”
“She’s well. Sven got a partial in the attack—”
Halle gasped.
“What’s a partial?” Rosemary asked.
“They nearly decapitated him,” Gary replied grimly.
“He hasn’t woken up yet,” I added. “But he’s alive, and he’s a tough old fucker. He’ll be okay.”
“Break it down from the very beginning,” Dalton ordered after a moment. “Tell me everything you can remember.”
“Do you think they’ll come for us next?” Halle asked softly.
“I’d like to be prepared if it comes to that,” Dalton replied, setting his hand over hers.
I spent the next two hours giving details that I hadn’t even realized I remembered, starting from the moment Billy Finau had come knocking.
Rosemary shot me a look when I didn’t mention Matthias or Josiah helping us in the woods, but she didn’t say a word to contradict me.
By the time I was done, Gary was rubbing at the silver scruff on his chin, and Halle had tucked herself against Dalton’s side.
Even Ian had left his place at the counter and sat down with us at the table.
“They didn’t have enough people to send while you were home,” Dalton said finally. “That’s something.”
“There had to have been at least fifty bodies,” Rosemary countered, looking at me for confirmation. “Right?”
“Fifty humans to six Vampires isn’t good odds,” I reminded her. No one had known that Matthias and Josiah had flown in too, making the humans’ odds even worse. “Plus, they had to have known that we had guards on the property. When you add those Vampires—”
“It would’ve been a bloodbath,” Gary mused.
“It was a bloodbath,” Rosemary said smugly. “I bet they won’t underestimate mates in the future.”
“They’ve been doing this a while,” Dalton reminded her. “What happened at the Boucher house was an anomaly. Most mates won’t have the skill set that the Boucher mates do. This won’t slow them down.”
“But it might make them pause before going after Rosemary,” Halle said hopefully. “Knowing that the others in that family didn’t go easily.”
“As far as anyone knows, Rosemary is Ian’s mate,” Dalton replied.
“Shit,” she whispered.
I curled my hands into fists against my thighs. Now wasn’t the time to tell them to fucking correct their bullshit announcement… or maybe it was.
“Command might have their bond on record, but the militia know—or at least suspect—she’s not his mate,” I argued. “That’s why they kept her for so long. They were watching for signs of the heat. When we got there, my brothers noticed straight off that she wasn’t showing any.”
“So, best case, they believe the mating notice was a lie,” Gary said grimly. “Worst case, they’re even more curious about her and searching high and low to get her back.”
“And if they get their hands on her again, they’ll find all the symptoms she didn’t have before. They’re not killing newly mated pairs for shits and giggles. They’re experimenting on them. To them, Rosemary would be a fucking prize.”
Ian’s fist hit the top of the table so hard, it reverberated around the room like a gunshot.
“Control it,” his father ordered.
“Sunflower, you know I can take care of myself,” Rosemary said soothingly. “Don’t stress.”
“Who the hell are these guys?” Ian spat. “Who the hell is helping them? How could any Vampire help them? Mates? They’re going after fucking mates? We protect mates. Always. Whether they’re ours or someone else’s. This is insane.”
The silence in the room when he was done speaking was absolute.
All of us felt that way, but especially Dalton and me. Gary, Rosemary, and Halle understood the mating bond and the fact that Vampires waited multiple lifetimes to find their own, but none of the humans could fully comprehend the millennia of instincts to protect them that were bred into our bones.
Mates were sacred. That knowledge was not only taught from the cradle but built into our genetic makeup.
When a Vampire could only procreate with the other half of their soul, that other half became absolutely imperative to the survival of our species.
We would die for them willingly. Kill for them easily.
Just the thought of another Vampire losing their mate was abhorrent. Losing our own was inconceivable. Physically and mentally debilitating. If someone had asked me before if I’d ever believe that another Vampire would do anything to put mates in jeopardy, I would’ve answered an unequivocal no.
But someone was passing on information. Somehow, the human militia was finding out about newly mated pairs when most humans didn’t even know what the mating bond entailed. We had a traitor in our midst.