Chapter 36
Chapter thirty-six
Cora
It was nearly midnight when Cora finally cried uncle, admitting she was a little too cold and a lot too tired to stay at the falls any longer. The drive back up to the compound was quiet, but the silence wasn’t awkward so much as contemplative. Both of them seemingly lost in thought.
She tried to force her brain toward safer subjects, but it kept bouncing back to Saiden and their discussion about mates. The reverence in his tone when he spoke about them. The longing and sadness that practically emanated from his body.
The conversation had sparked something in Cora that she couldn’t quite put her finger on when they’d been laying in the clearing.
Something that bothered her, and the feeling had only grown as the night wore on.
As he told her more about his cousins and his early life in Sicily.
As she told him about the first short film she ever made, and how she learned the hard way that fake blood can dye your skin.
Whatever they talked about, that feeling was still there in the background, demanding she pay more attention.
It kept pestering her like an itch that needed to be scratched yet some doctor had said ‘whatever you do, don’t scratch it.
’ Knowing she shouldn’t examine the feeling just made it tug harder.
Saiden expertly navigated the dark forest roads with an ease that spoke of a lifetime spent making the drive.
He kept the headlights off, telling her he could see just fine and didn’t want to blind any woodland creatures.
It was such a considerate thought, so at odds with what she thought a vampire’s nature should be.
Cast almost completely into darkness and with no other conversation to focus on, Cora mistakenly let her thoughts wander back to the moment when she told Saiden that she hoped he found his mate. The moment when he’d responded with, “I hope so too.”
The unrelenting feeling she’d been fighting so hard to ignore flared to life once more, forcing her to accept it for what it was.
Jealousy.
But that was even more absurd than the fact that vampires existed to begin with.
They had sex one time. Or maybe five times.
She never understood how people counted that.
Did the multiple orgasms he’d overwhelmed her with earlier each count as their own time?
Or was it more like one movie but broken up into different scenes?
Wow. Her brain was really struggling to think of literally anything except the reason why she was jealous.
She cared about him. At some point during all the kidnapping and soulful confessions, she’d started to think of him as something more than a vampire. She’d started to think of him as just a guy. A guy she might like to date. A guy she could maybe even love one day if so many things were different.
She forced the sigh to stay locked inside her throat and not escape out into the wild where Saiden might ask what she was thinking about. There simply was no future between them in any capacity. Even if she wasn’t dying, she was still human and would never be anything but human.
Which meant as soon as she spoke to Marquin, Saiden would be wiped from her mind forever.
That thought threw a smothering blanket of sadness on the flaming jealousy burning in her stomach.
She didn’t want to forget Saiden, even though she should.
After all, if they couldn’t be together, then wouldn’t it be better to Eternal Sunshine his obscenely tight ass from her mind?
Her brain begged for a razor to cut out every trace of him, yet her heart vehemently denied that request. If she was going to die soon, then she wanted to keep the memory of this experience. Wanted something to clutch onto and revisit when things started to get bad.
Of course, the likelihood of Marquin approving that request was so laughable it deserved its own Netflix special.
Cora was still struggling with her emotions when Saiden guided the Aston Martin up to the main gate. He stopped the car, waved at the camera, then sat back, waiting for someone to let him in.
A minute went by and nothing happened.
Cora glanced over at Saiden who now sported a rather deep frown. He was lucky vampires didn’t need to worry about Botox with how prominent those ridges became when he was stressed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nobody’s opening up,” Saiden observed warily, a tight edge to his tone.
“Maybe they’re on a break or going to the bathroom.”
He shook his head. “No. Anytime Baylin isn’t monitoring, he turns the tablet over to one of our human security teams. Even if they were otherwise occupied, they would have it nearby to check any motion notifications. Something’s wrong.”
“Oh, come on, Saiden,” Cora scoffed. “I get that being a vampire means you take security seriously, but humans do have to use the restroom sometimes. Plus, it’s the middle of the night. They probably didn’t expect anyone back.”
The muscles in his back bunched, and the longer they waited, the more his concern started to bleed over into her.
Cora swept her eyes over the ground outside the window, but there was nothing to see save for an ominous pitch black nothing.
The only light around was the faint red blinking just below the camera.
Another minute passed, and that light too went out.
“Shit,” Saiden cursed, pushing open the car door. He stalked over to an electric panel beside the gate and pulled it open. He jabbed at a few buttons until a mechanical whirring cut through the hauntingly silent night. Slowly, the gate started to slide open.
“If you had a code why not use it from the start?” she asked when he returned.
“It’s an emergency override,” he replied, easing the car forward down the drive. “If you open the gate using that code, then it won’t shut again. It’s a manual fail safe in case something goes horribly wrong. The doors open, and the system locks them so our human employees can’t be trapped inside.”
A tremor ran through Cora’s body. She placed a hand on Saiden’s arm and looked up at him. “We’re not in any danger here, are we?”
His expression gave nothing away, no hint of the severity of the situation beyond that touch of concern carving deep frown lines.
“Nothing immediate,” he replied. “I would know if that were the case. There might be a valid reason for everything, but I wouldn’t be good at my job if I didn’t take every potential threat seriously. ”
“Okay,” she said, sinking back into the seat, her heart beating faster than a hummingbird’s. She should have asked more questions about his threat awareness ability. Like whether or not it included people around him.
Saiden pulled the car up to the main building and cut the engine. The entire place was dark, not a single flicker of light in sight. Maybe it was all just a power outage?
Yeah, right, like she hadn’t seen enough horror movies to recognize the wide-open front door for what it really was.
“Saiden, what’s going on,” she asked, trying to hide the wobble of fear in her voice. She was a horror film director, damnit. She ate fear for breakfast.
His eyes darted from the home to the grounds just beyond. “I’m not sure,” he replied.
She wondered just how much more he could see with his vamp vision. Whatever he saw, he clearly didn’t like because he handed her the keys.
“Listen to me, Cora. I want you to lock the doors and keep the engine running. If you hear anything other than me telling you it’s safe, I want you to get out of here. Drive into town, and hide somewhere near a lot of people. I’ll come find you when everything is clear.”
She blinked at him. “How will you know where I am?”
“I can smell you a mile away, Cora. I’ll find you. I said you were safe with me, and I meant it.” He paused for a second as if debating, then leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was fast and intense and over before Cora even knew what happened.
Then Saiden was gone, vanished into the night.
She stared out into the dark around her, wondering if she should be worried that she might never see him again.
Cora raised a finger to her swollen lips, still able to feel him there, and allowed his last words to run through her mind.
I said you were safe with me.
Only she wasn’t with him now.
It was that thought that was still rolling through her brain a minute later when the car door was yanked open, and something clubbed her over the head.
Shit, she thought as an inky blackness rolled over her vision.
Why do I never remember to lock the doors?