Chapter 14 Sebastian
Sebastian
Kayla had already gone upstairs, still ignoring me, still quiet and so much smaller than she usually was, all curled in on herself and pale.
I couldn’t just leave things between us like that, though.
I’d caused her initial unhappiness. I needed to fix it and I still wanted her close.
Perhaps when I’d put my own wrong right, I could help with her apartment, too.
The urge to comfort her was an instinct I couldn’t deny.
And the connection between us still existed, whether she acknowledged it or not.
She’d always be my mate, no matter how she felt about me.
Her bedroom door clicked quietly shut, and it sounded so final — vampire hearing was both a blessing and a curse. The sound made my mind up for me, and I took the stairs two at a time, my steps silent on the carpeted treads.
Fear spiked through me that my mate might reject me completely.
She was so angry…I’d fucking made her so angry.
This could be more than her simply needing space while she figured things out.
What if she never forgave me? What would I do if that happened?
It would be worse than any exile. I’d be a mated vampire without my mate and I would eventually go crazy.
Hopefully, I could convince Kayla. I could bring her back to me. I’d made a terrible mistake but I could fix it. I snorted disgust at myself. After all my years of life, I should have learned not make so many mistakes…Only I just kept making worse and worse ones.
I arrived outside Kayla’s door and paused. After lifting my hand, I paused again before I tapped haltingly on the door. What the hell was I doing? I didn’t need to be hesitant in my own house, with my own mate.
I knocked louder, and Kayla sighed inside.
“Who is it?” She didn’t move and she didn’t open the door. She probably already knew it was me.
“Sebastian.” Speaking my own name wasn’t any sort of a win. I wanted to hear it on her lips, preferably as I pleasured her and her fingers twined in my hair, but I could bear to say it if she’d just open the door.
“Go away, Sebastian.” She no longer sounded as angry. Simply resigned.
“Can I talk to you?” I kept my voice low. Nic and Leia were somewhere nearby, and they could probably hear everything, anyway, but I preferred the illusion that I wasn’t broadcasting my failure to the entire house.
“Not interested.” Kayla’s voice was curt, but something rustled as she moved, and I held my breath that she might open the door so I could see her.
But the door remained closed. I rested my fist against it before dropping my forehead against the wood, too. “Please, Kayla,” I whispered. “I fucked up. I know I did.” Regret laced my blood, filling me with its bitter whisper.
“I need some space to think about everything.” She sounded so sad, and I wanted to gather her into my arms and take all that sadness away.
I wanted to protect her from the world and all the things she’d learned and seen today.
The truth I’d kept to myself was bad enough, but she was also dealing with the loss of her home, in what looked like a deliberate act.
It was my duty as her mate to make her world safe and comfortable again.
To provide her home. I was her home. Always me.
“Please, Sebastian.” Her small voice was right the other side of the door and my chest squeezed at her plea.
“Okay. Okay, I’ll go.” I stepped away. “But I really don’t want to leave you.”
She didn’t say anything else, though, so I returned downstairs.
I hadn’t expected the highs and lows of having a mate.
The things I’d convinced myself I felt for Leia paled to insignificance now.
Every feeling I had regarding Kayla was magnified, and right now I was more miserable than I’d ever been.
I was also in the mood to kill and maim on her behalf. If she wouldn’t let me in, I could still take care of her in the way most familiar to vampires…
Stalking into my office, I was the very image of the caricature dark, brooding vampire. I could even imagine the black cloak swirling at my ankles. If I could have turned into a bat and escaped from a belfry window, I probably would have.
Kyle rarely seemed to sleep, but I had no idea where he was.
I grabbed my cell phone and texted him to come to my office.
He’d hate the summons, but he’d understand when he got here.
As much as he feigned disinterest and lack of care, he liked Kayla, and he’d want to find whoever had trashed her home, too.
He was very good at making people pay. Made me glad we weren’t on opposing sides.
When he arrived at my office, his face was tight with the annoyance I’d anticipated at my text.
“It’s an emergency.” I cut off his complaints before they started.
I knew he didn’t just want to be an errand boy for me here in New Orleans, and he really wasn’t, but this was too important to ignore, and it would take all of us working together to keep Kayla safe.
A shudder ran through me. Her safety was my utmost concern—thank God she’d been at my home when hers was attacked.
Kayla’s safety was even more important than Nic’s good standing in New Orleans. I sobered slightly at that thought.
Kyle dropped onto the sofa and stretched his arms along the back, his legs out long in front of him and crossed at the ankles, taking up all the space. His entire posture told me it had better be an emergency, and I quashed my amusement at his predictability.
“Someone trashed Kayla’s place. Trashed it and seemed to try to burn the evidence.”
He sat up straight, becoming tense and watchful. “What?”
I nodded. Good. I needed him angry about this. Someone had targeted my mate, and I needed his help to fix whatever situation was brewing. “We need to find out who was at Kayla’s apartment and if they were looking for something in particular.”
It hadn’t been immediately obvious from the mess they’d left the apartment in—they could have just been trying to scare her.
But Kayla had headed straight for that hiding place under the bed, so maybe there was more to the break-in than just scaring or targeting my mate or trying to get to Nic and me.
Maybe Kayla had enemies of her own in New Orleans, or perhaps she had items of value I wasn’t aware of.
Kyle scratched the side of his chin. “Something’s also going on with the vampire captains from Nic’s meeting that I haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of. Temple is feeding back as many updates as he can manage, but we haven’t learned what we need to yet.”
“Hmm? You think the vampire captains would be interested in Kayla?” They hadn’t seemed to pay a whole lot of attention to her at the meeting, but maybe they hadn’t been interested enough in her.
Possibly I should have expected a few more curious stares and comments. She’d been the only human in the room, after all. They should have at least wondered about her. Had ignoring her been a deliberate ploy to put us at ease and misdirect us?
What if she was valuable to them in some way? She’d worked in New Orleans, for Francois, for a while. She had to be known here and within this vampire community. The desire to know burned in my gut. If she was valuable to them or if she had something they wanted, I had to find out.
Kayla grew more interesting the more I pondered the issue. She was clearly a woman with secrets, including a whole box full of them that she’d rescued and brought back here. I needed to know what they were.
Now that I knew Kyle was open to helping me, I sat in the chair opposite him, ready to discuss the best strategy for tracking down the culprits who’d attacked and destroyed Kayla’s home. Between the two of us, we could come up with a plan to keep her safe. I had no doubt about that.
I stood at the foot of the stairs the next evening, having spent the day consciously allowing Kayla the space she’d requested.
But now it was time for her to head to the club, and I didn’t want her walking.
Neither did I want Andrews driving her when I was right here, ready to do anything she asked of me.
Kyle was out gathering more intel on the vampire captains and their activities, and I wanted Kayla as close to me as possible while everything was still so unknown.
I cleared my throat and paced a little more, my head buzzing with too many thoughts as I tried to ignore the anxiety caused by waiting for Kayla and what her reaction to seeing me might be.
She appeared at the top of the stairs and huffed when she saw me, but her heart rate picked up, betraying her excitement, and I bit back a grin.
“You again.” It wasn’t even phrased as a question. She’d simply made a dismissive statement.
This time, I allowed my grin to show. “Always me,” I agreed. “For hundreds of years, always me.”
“What do you want?” She hadn’t moved to start her descent to the hallway.
“To take you to Nightfall. I don’t want you walking there alone.” I lifted my gaze so it met hers.
Relief flitted across her features so quickly I might have missed it if I hadn’t been focused on her.
She shrugged. “Well, there’s Kyle or Andrews.”
“Not tonight.” I stepped closer to the stairs and held my hand out. “Tonight, the privilege of protecting my mate falls to me.”
She sighed again and began to walk toward me. “I could drive myself if I had a car.”
It was my turn to shrug. “And deprive me of your company?”
Her brief amusement hurriedly turned into a cough as she swept through the front door ahead of me.
We didn’t talk on the way to the club, but she at least sat beside me, and the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. When we arrived, the doormen immediately stood back, their heads bowed.
“Regent.” They didn’t even make eye contact, their subservience very clear.
I was used to it from being a Dupont in Baton Rouge but Kayla shrank against me a little as more staff stopped and bowed their heads as we walked by. I held her close as we moved through the crowd.