5. Chance #2
“The evidence supports that conclusion,” I agreed.
She was so beautiful. Her makeup from the day before still shadowed her eyes, and it was hard to ignore the stitches on her forehead, but it didn’t seem to affect her attractiveness at all. Gods, it was hard to believe that this was the woman I’d been made for.
If I needed money, I would’ve played the lottery. My luck was obviously incredible.
“So I guess we need to see if we can stand each other,” Rena said, pulling me out of my daze.
“Of course we can.”
“We’ll see.”
“Do you think that we’d be mates if it would make us miserable?
” I asked curiously. I’d been taught since I was old enough to understand that my mate was the other half of my soul.
It didn’t matter what she looked like, or where she was from, or what her life had been before we met.
She was my perfect counterpart, end of story.
I couldn’t grasp the idea that we wouldn’t be a good match.
“I’d like a little more time to decide,” she replied, letting her arms fall from my waist. “You might have bad habits that are deal breakers for me.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, half kidding. “Because you’re nearly healed, and I think that means we can get down.”
“You’re way too old to use get down as a euphemism,” she said wryly, moving around me.
“I was trying to be delicate,” I argued as I followed her toward the door. “I should’ve just said fuck, huh? Rena?”
My brother Beau was standing just outside the doorway, grinning.
“Stop begging,” he said, reaching up to scratch his jaw. “It’s kind of sad.”
“Get bent,” I shot back. “What do you want?”
“Ambrose said he tried to talk to you, but you were busy. He sent me to get you.”
“Shit,” I mumbled. Turning, I lifted Rena into my arms. “Where’s he at?”
“Up in his rooms,” Beau said, leading the way. We crossed the house, and I took the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
“I’m not sure I’m as healed as you guys think,” Rena grunted. “Would you slow down? That hurts.”
I cursed and slowed. “Sorry, baby.”
“I could’ve stayed downstairs,” she said quietly.
“Nah, I like you where you’re at.”
Ambrose and Lucy were sitting on the couch when we entered his rooms. My dad was leaning against the counter with Mordecai. Beau headed straight for the table where Reese and Charlie were sitting.
I set Rena on her feet.
“What’s the word?” I asked, looking around at the grim faces.
“Talked to Danny,” Ambrose replied. “He’s on his way back.”
“Fuck,” I spat. “I was wrong? Was the warehouse empty?”
“No,” Ambrose said, shaking his head. “No, you were right.”
“Then why the hell are they headed back here? We’re supposed to be going out to meet them.”
“It was worse than we thought,” Ambrose said, clearing his throat. “We’ll need more Vampires.”
“How many?” I asked, pulling my phone out of my pocket. “We can call in our old teams. There has to be at least one available.”
“It won’t be enough.” He shook his head. “Let’s wait for Danny to get here before we make any decisions. He called on the way. They should be here in an hour.”
“That’s fucked,” I argued, opening up my contacts. Between Dalton’s guys and ours, we’d have enough manpower to do anything we needed to.
“Happ,” my father called. It was the tone he’d used when we were growing up that said to pay fucking attention.
“What could be that bad?” I asked. “And what about the house in Missouri? Did Ian check in?”
“The house was nothing,” my father replied. “They watched it all night. A human woman living there, no sign of anyone else. They took photos and are heading back tonight.”
I nodded. “All right, so then we don’t need two teams, just one. That frees up a lot more Vampires to hit the warehouse, right?”
“Happ,” Beau said, making me jolt. My father still called me by the childhood name, but no one else did. “We can’t just raid it. Danny said we’re going to need doctors.”
It took a few moments for the words to make sense. Then it felt as if the floor fell out from under me.
“Chance?” Rena called softly, lacing her fingers with mine.
Form after note after update came to mind, each worse than the last. I hadn’t wanted to read them the first time, but I’d had to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I’d blocked them out of my mind, tried to forget the specifics, but it hadn’t worked. They were almost worse the second time around.
My brothers were talking, but I could barely hear them past the ringing in my ears.
“Hey,” Rena said, her face filling my vision. “Look at me.”
“I’m looking,” I mumbled.
“Where’d you go?” she asked gently.
“Nowhere you want to be.”
“I think you should sit down.”
“I don’t need to sit down.”
“You look like you’re about to fall down.”
“I won’t do that either.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“Yes.”
“He’s usually worse, actually,” Ambrose said.
“Shut up.”
“What’s going on, Chance?” Rena asked. “It’s bad if you need doctors, right?”
“Yeah, baby,” I said, reaching out to smooth her hair back from her face. “It’s really fucking bad.”
“You keep calling me baby.”
“I can switch it up,” I offered. Gods, there was nothing I would’ve liked more than to take her back to my room and hole up for a few days—no, weeks. I wanted to map her body, find out what made her tick, get to know her inside and out.
I didn’t want to be dealing with any of this shit. I wished I’d never heard about it.
I wished my baby brother had never suspected that something was really, really wrong and chosen to look closer, getting himself murdered in the process.
I stretched my tight neck from side to side, trying to release some of the tension. “Sugar? Sweetheart? Darling? Love? Honey? Dear?”
“I think you’d need to use them in context for me to decide,” she joked. She was meeting me where I was, trying to lighten the mood. I appreciated it.
“Why don’t we separate for a while?” my father said, pushing off the counter. “We have some time. We can all meet in the parlor when Arne and Rosemary get back.”
I looked at Rena as the crowd started to part ways, but she was making a face at Reese across the room.
“Come on,” Reese ordered, dragging Beau along with her. “You guys can come over to our rooms.”
“Sure,” I griped. “We’d love that.”
Rena made some kind of chastising psst noise at me, but she was still holding my hand, so I didn’t bother taking offense. She could pretty much do whatever she wanted when she was touching me.
“How bad do you think it is?” Reese asked baldly the moment we’d entered Beau’s small living room. His rooms looked more like a one-bedroom apartment, while mine looked like office space for a workaholic who needed a sleeping area.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” Beau replied, wrapping his arm around her. “It’s probably worse. Ambrose said Danny sounded shaken.”
“He brought his mate into that shit,” I reminded them. “That may have something to do with how worked up he is.”
“Could be,” Beau conceded. “But the fact that he’s coming back here instead of telling us to get our asses there…” He shrugged.
“There’s no use speculating,” I said with a tired sigh. I’d stayed up long into the night watching Rena as she slept, worried that she’d hurt herself by flailing around. “We’ll find out everything when Danny gets here.”
“Well, you guys can hang here while we wait if you want,” Reese said, walking into the little kitchen. “Rena, you want a drink?”
“What do you have?” my mate asked, letting go of my hand as she followed her friend across the room.
“What about me?”
“What about you?” Reese shot back jokingly.
Though she still didn’t ask what I wanted to drink.
“Lucy and Charlie were pretty quiet,” Beau said as we sat down on opposite ends of the couch.
I nodded. “If there was a way I could shield Charles from this shit, I’d do it.”