Chapter 3 #2
He was hoping to shock her, but she only pointed the gun at his head.
He could almost wish that she’d pull the trigger; he was so confused as to what to do now.
She was here. His mate after all these centuries, and he didn’t have any idea what he was supposed to do about it.
If he took her back to Brew’s house, where he was staying, there would be no end to the teasing that he was going to get.
And they’d be hard on him, too. All he’d wanted to do was to end his life, and now he had a mate for all time.
Life sucked right now, and he was going to make sure that she knew that he had no use for one such as herself.
“I’ll take care of you and make sure that you’re safe, but I’m not going to fall in love with you.
” She said she didn’t want anything from him.
“Well, that’s too bad. You’re here now, and that’s the way it goes.
If you didn’t want to find me, you should have stayed away.
Now we’re stuck with each other for all time, and there is nothing either of us can do about it. ”
“I can just leave you.” She looked ready to bolt, and he put his hand on the gun she had. “Take it. Perhaps it would be a better way for you to go than to have someone remove your head.” He explained to her about why he was having his head removed.
“So you see, now that Yosef isn’t going to do the deed for me—after years and years of promises, you’ll have to abide by my rules and live out your life with me.
” She turned on her heel and headed deeper into the woods.
He was fine with that. He needed to think and couldn’t do that with her standing around smelling like fresh flowers and sunshine.
“Damn it all to fuck and back, I do not want a mate.”
“Then turn her over to her mother.” He looked at his friend.
“She’ll gladly kill her off for you. Because the first time she asks her to use her magic for her and Tabby refuses, she’s going to kill her.
All you need to do is find the woman in town looking for her, and you won’t have a mate anymore. ”
“I can’t do that.” Yosef shrugged and asked him why not. It wasn’t as if he wanted her at all. “I don’t want her, but I don’t want her dead either. Where did she go just now?”
“She’s living in a cabin not far from here.
Conri set her up in it when he found her in the woods.
She’s been working for him, too, so that she can buy herself food when she wants it.
” He said that he’d take care of her needs.
“Yet you don’t want her. Make up your mind, friend, or she will.
I don’t think she’s above finding a way to leave you now that you’ve found her, either.
Since you never touched her, you don’t have any contact with her.
She’s out there and could be hurt by someone, and you’d have no way of knowing. ”
“You’re enjoying this entirely too much if you ask me.” He said that he was actually. “Don’t you feel the least bit sorry for me? I have a mate in my life, and I don’t want one. What am I supposed to do with her now that she’s found me? I have no idea what, as a mate, she’d even want from me.”
“It’s doubtful that she’d want a thing from you after the way you treated her.
” He said he was confused and angry. “And you took it out on her. She had no more idea that she was going to be your mate than I did. I had hoped. I like the young woman, but if you’re going to continue to treat her like you have been, I’ll gladly remove your head so that she doesn’t have to suffer at your hand anymore. ”
“How can I be making her suffer? I only just found out what she is to me.” He said that she’d left him instead of staying with him when he could be hurt by him. “You knew all along that you were never going to end my life. Admit it. You planted her in these woods so that I’d think she was my mate.”
“Had I thought about it, I might well have, but my only plan was to let her stop you from killing yourself when there were witnesses. It worked out better than I could have planned.” He was still laughing when he made his way back to the house.
He’d be telling them, too, what had happened, and they’d all get a kick out of it.
He was going to have to do something, or Calla would hate him worse than she did before.
Sirous had no idea why it was so important that Calla not hate him.
It was in the same manner that he didn’t want Tabitha to hate him.
Damn it, nothing was going the way that he wanted it to.
Looking for her was easy. Convincing her that he wasn’t going to harm her was another thing altogether. She was in the house that she had hidden out in, and he couldn’t get her to allow him in. Damn it, life was going to be harder just because he’d found his mate. And he didn’t want one.
~*~
Tabby liked that the big vampire couldn’t come into her house.
That didn’t stop him from yelling at the door for her to come and allow him in.
But she could ignore that for now while she was thinking.
There was no way that the vamp could be her mate.
She didn’t want a mate any more than he did, apparently, and now she was going to have to do what he told her.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
She knew of a few mated couples. The one that she remembered most was the lion couple that lived down the street from her mother and her when she was a child.
They fought all the time and made up just as frequently.
If they weren’t fighting, they were making love.
Even at a young age, she knew that that was what they were doing.
Her mother had had lovers in and out of their place all her life, and she knew that none of them were her uncles.
It was her mother’s way of getting back at her father when he’d left them.
She didn’t even know who he was, much less being able to pick him out of a lineup.
The things that her mother had said about him made her think that she might well have been better off going with him.
Mother was such a liar that she knew that if only a quarter of what she said about him was true, he was a saint compared to what she was.
Then her mother had found out what she could do.
It was quite by accident that she let it slip that she knew the races.
One of the men who had been staying with them had bet on the ponies, and she watched them on television with him.
Every time he would place a bet, she’d make one in her head.
For every time he was wrong, she was right, and she told the man so.
That was the first time that she got beaten by her mother when she gave him the winning horse names instead of her.
The man, she couldn’t remember his name, had been killed two weeks later when he tried to kidnap her from her mother.
It was all over the papers about how he’d failed, and there was never any mention of how she could see the races.
Her mom kept that little tidbit to herself.
Over the next ten years, she would be in and out of the hospital.
She would only bet as much money as she had left over from some of the winnings.
Her mother never knew how to save for a rainy day.
It was a rainy day every day for her when he mother wanted more cash.
After a while, she could see the lottery numbers too, but kept that to herself.
By the time she was sixteen, not only had she moved out of the house with her mother, but she’d won enough money to keep her one step ahead of her when she was looking for her too.
A couple of times, it was close, but she was able to keep out of her hands until the last year.
Her mother had hired someone to find her.
It was a bear shifter that she’d given him some of her things so that he could track her.
And so long as he didn’t hurt her mind or face, he could do whatever he wanted to her when he found her.
Christ, that was a nightmare just keeping herself alive long enough to get away again.
He was big and mean and sort of stupid, too.
When he’d cage her in something, he would take away her food and water, too; she’d be able to get away by using some of her magic that seemed to grow the older she got.
It wasn’t long before she could keep herself away from the bear when she needed to and out of harm’s way.
She’d been hiding on other people’s property since then and knew that her mother wouldn’t come and get her.
The bear was just too stupid to look beyond the streets where she lived up until recently.
“I would like to have a conversation with you that doesn’t have me screaming through the door at you.
” She’d forgotten about the vampire and was glad that she’d remembered that he couldn’t get in unless she invited him.
“Of course, that would be the only rule that you could remember about my kind. There are a lot of other ones that are out there, too, did you know that?”
“I don’t know squat. And neither do you if you think I’m going to be all right with letting you in and around me.
I like you not being able to come into my house.
” He cursed then. In several different languages, if she didn’t miss her bet.
“Such a potty mouth you have. You kiss your momma with that mouth?”
He called her childish. “Let me in and I promise not to hurt you. I also promise to take care of you and the situation with your mother. I know what sort of person she is, and she’s lucky that I’m not going to be out to kill her anytime soon.
” She went to the door and opened it. “You only have to say that I’m welcome to enter, and that will allow me to come in and talk to you.
I believe the wolves out here are having fun at my expense. They’re laughing at me.”