Callie wasn’t sure there was enough time in the world. She longed for her apartment, career, and friends in a way she hadn’t in days. In the motel, she could pretend it was only the two of them and forget about everything she’d lost, but those pretenses were crumbling away.
Lucien would return to his life, and she would be stuck here with no one and nothing of her past. She didn’t know if she was staying here or if they planned to send her somewhere else. She had no control over her life anymore, and she hated it.
“Am I staying here?” she asked.
“Yes,” Lucien said.
She didn’t know if she was relieved or terrified by that prospect.
“Come on,” Lucien said. “Let’s get settled.” He turned to Declan and Willow. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Declan said.
Lucien led Callie into the mansion and stopped to greet Baldric when the butler opened the door.
“Ronan called ahead to tell us a new guest was arriving,” Baldric said as his gaze settled on Callie. “My wife Marta purchased some clothes for you; they’re in Lucien’s room. If they don’t fit or they’re not to your liking, please let us know.”
Callie resisted gawking at the man as she tried to take in his words while also inspecting the sweeping staircase and marble floors. She’d never been in a mansion before. Not only was the inside as beautiful as the outside was ugly, but its vastness was overwhelming. Throw in a butler, and she felt like a tornado had picked her up and tossed her into Oz.
“Thank you,” she said when she finally found her voice again. “I’m sure they’re great.”
“Thank you, Baldric,” Lucien said to him.
Keeping his hand on Callie’s elbow, Lucien guided her up the stairs and to his room. Ronan wouldn’t have had another room set up for her; the bond between them wasn’t complete, but his king would know he wouldn’t separate from her.
However, he realized as they traversed the hall, she might prefer to have her own room. The idea didn’t sit well with him, and he wouldn’t be the one to broach the subject, but if she decided she’d prefer to be alone, he would have to let her go.
The possibility caused the demon in him to stir, and for the first time in a week, he felt instability working its way through his system again. Except, this time, it wasn’t because he was crazed from starvation. No, this time, it was because he wanted—no, needed to claim his mate.
He’d tasted her blood and possessed her body; it was only a matter of time before he turned her or he started to unravel. And that unraveling would come fast if he wasn’t careful.
Lucien released her to open the door to his room. He gave an elegant wave of his arm for her to enter. She hesitated before doing so, and when she did, he shut the door behind her.
Unlike the motel, self-consciousness crept in as she gazed around the masculine room. It was Lucien’s; she did not doubt it. On the ride here, she often wondered where she would stay and what would happen to her once they arrived. She’d worried he would put her somewhere and forget about her once he returned to his old life.
However, he seemed to have no intention of doing that. He wouldn’t have brought her to his room, and Baldric wouldn’t have put her things here if he did. Unless he planned to set her aside in another week or two.
She tried not to fidget as she took in the masculine room with its red comforter on the large, king-sized bed. Wood paneled the walls and a chestnut armoire sat against the wall to her left; a matching dresser sat behind her. A cream-colored, throw rug lay on top of the wood floor, and charcoal gray curtains covered the windows across from her.
No pictures adorned the walls or the nightstand beside the bed. There were no lamps, and the only illumination came from the recessed bulbs in the ceiling. To her right was a door that she suspected led into a bathroom, or at least she hoped it did.
She strode toward that door as her bladder reminded her it had been a while since their last stop. Reaching inside, she felt for a switch and flicked it on to discover the bathroom was as stark as the bedroom. Closing the door, she leaned against it as she took in the ivory walls, red towels, and the single toothbrush sitting on the sink beside a tube of toothpaste.
It was all so foreign and cold. She was here, with Lucien, but she felt utterly alone as she used the bathroom and washed her hands. When she turned the water off, she lifted her eyes to study her reflection in the mirror. She was far paler than normal, and her hands had a tremble that she couldn’t control.
She stood there as she gathered her courage to return to the bedroom. When she did, she discovered him sitting on the bed with his hands clasped between his legs and his head bowed. Something about him looked broken in a way she’d never seen before.
When Lucien lifted his head to take her in, he tried to quell the uneasiness churning in his gut. She exuded apprehension, and he sensed how much she didn’t like it here. What if she decided to leave?
He couldn’t let her go, she meant too much to him, but he couldn’t make her stay against her will. He couldn’t make her unhappy by forcing her to stay, but if she left, it would destroy him.
Callie stared into his black eyes. Since he helped her from the SUV, his eyes had shifted back to black and remained that way. He was more relaxed here than she’d ever seen him while she felt jumpier than she ever had.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
Callie twisted her hands in front of her. She had been ravenous before they arrived, but she was too anxious to eat. “No. What am I going to do here?”
He pondered her question before replying. “I hope you’re going to find a home here.”
She didn’t know how to take that, but then, she wasn’t sure how to handle anything right now. It was all so strange; she was a fish out of water, except that a bunch of trained killers surrounded the fish.
“I don’t think I belong here,” she whispered.
Lucien felt as if she’d punched him, and he inwardly recoiled from her words, but the only response he showed to them was a clenching of his hands. “You don’t think you belong with me?”
Callie blinked at his strange response. “With you?”
Lucien rose from the bed and paced over to the window. He pulled back the curtains to reveal his view of the garden below. Before Kadence arrived, the garden was overgrown and ugly.
But Kadence, Simone, and some of the others had pruned, weeded, and planted it into shape. Now, it was beautiful, with its vast array of colors, plants, birds, and butterflies flitting around.
Before, he’d never looked at it, but since Kadence’s arrival, he often found himself admiring his view of it. He tried to let its beauty soothe the demon within him, but it refused to be appeased by plants. It wanted blood; it wanted her.
He settled the curtain back into place and turned to face her. “Yes, with me.”
Callie’s heart hammered with excitement and apprehension. Despite their awful start, this past week had been some of the best days of her life. However… “I barely know you.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. Over their time in the hotel, they’d shared a lot of their history. She’d revealed a lot to him, and he knew her as well as some of her closest friends, only a whole lot more intimately.
“No, that’s not right,” she said. “I’ve come to know you fairly well, but we haven’t known each other for long.”
“Does that matter?”
“Yes!”
And then she took the time to really consider his question. Did it matter?
So what if they only met each other a little over a week ago? In that time, she’d come to know him better than her high school boyfriend and her college one. And she felt a whole lot more for him than she had for either of them. She’d considered herself in love with them, but those feelings were a pale comparison to the ones Lucien evoked in her.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
>
Lucien walked over to stand before her. Sensing her uncertainty, he rested his hands on her shoulders before pulling her close. He hugged her as she stood unmoving for a minute. Then her arms came around him, and her fingers bit into his back as she hugged him.
“Why don’t we take it one day at a time?” he suggested. “And see how it goes.”
And during those days and nights, he planned to make her so happy she wouldn’t want to leave.
Callie closed her eyes and listened to the reassuring beat of his heart as she held him. “I still have to go home for some of my things.”
Lucien wasn’t going to argue with her about it. “We’ll talk about it again in a week.”
“My rent is due soon; I have to get into my bank account so that I can pay him, and I need to let my boss know I’m not coming back. Though, I’m sure he’s figured that out.”
A new possibility occurred to her. “My friends and boss have probably reported me missing. The police could be looking for me.”
“The Savages probably already took care of that in case you turned up again. I’m sure they’ve gone to the police and buried your case. If you’d died like they planned, they wouldn’t have bothered, but since you survived, they’ll cover their tracks.”
That realization made nausea churn in her belly. “If my landlord has heard anything about me being a missing person, he’ll throw my stuff on the curb the second he doesn’t get his rent. I love my place, but the guy is an asshole, and I can’t let that happen. I have to get into my bank account and send him a check or something.”
“The Savages will be watching your accounts. They won’t be able to figure out where you are, but if they see you pay your landlord, they’ll keep an eye on your apartment.”
“That can’t happen,” she muttered.
“I’ll pay him.”
“I don’t want you to pay him. I have money; I just need to get to it.”
She still had most of the money from her father’s life insurance policy, and she’d saved some from her job over the years. She planned to buy a small farm where she would have plenty of room to rehabilitate injured wild animals and foster shelter animals.
She had a vivid image of her future home in mind, so she was saving up enough to buy the house of her dreams while making sure her mortgage payments were low enough to live out those dreams.
And now those dreams lay in broken pieces around her.
“You can pay me back,” he said. He would never take money from her, but he hoped to appease her unease with his words.
“You’ve been taking care of me since all this started; you shouldn’t have to.”
And she hated her continued reliance on him. She’d always been independent, and she missed her ability to take care of herself. However, she never could have seen this coming.
Lucien gripped her shoulders as he leaned back to stare down at her. “I don’t have to do it; I want to do it. I’ll make sure you don’t lose your place or your things, and we will get them for you.”
She bit her lip as her gaze traveled to the curtains. “Maybe we can have them mailed somewhere. I have some friends who would pack up some of my things and send them to me. It will be difficult trying to convince them that I’m okay enough to do it, but I’m sure I can think of something.”
“No,” Lucien said. “If the Savages are watching your place, you’ll only be putting your friends at risk.”
“Then I can hire a moving company!” she cried as the idea struck her. “They can ship it out.”
“And the Savages will learn the mailing address and be waiting there for someone to pick it up.”
“I hate them,” she muttered.
“So do I, but we will get your things for you, and until then, I will pay your rent.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Okay, but once I can access my money, I’ll repay you.”
“Don’t worry about that right now. Try to relax and enjoy yourself; you’re safe here.”
“Safe,” she breathed as the truth of the word sank in.
Then she laughed as she leaned into him.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“I’m safe in a place I don’t know, where I’m stared at by a bunch of strangers, and half of those strangers are vampires. It’s a little weird, and not where I thought my life was going a week ago.”
Lucien chuckled. “I didn’t see my life going this way either a week ago, but then, I was barely coherent a week ago.”
She couldn’t stop herself from laughing.
“Although,” he continued, “I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
His sweet words caused the last of her tension to fade away. He kissed the top of her head before moving lower to her temple and then her cheeks. When she lifted her mouth to his, their lips met, and everything was right in the world.
CHAPTER 28
Over the next week, Callie spent her days exploring the mansion while she wandered the grounds. She watched the hunters and vampires drill together, work out, and run around the compound. They were like everything she’d seen about boot camp, and they worked from morning to night.
And Lucien worked with them. She was glad he was doing so much better, but it made for lonely days, and she was running out of things to explore.
Lucien had yet to leave the compound, but others went out nightly to hunt Savages. She had no idea when he would go back to hunting, but she assumed it would be sooner rather than later. Over the week, he’d put more weight on as he regularly fed from the blood bags stored in a room off the gym.
He was so different from the man she first met that she almost couldn’t believe it was the same vampire. He was almost back to his full strength again, and once he was, he would go out with the others to hunt again. As happy as she was to see him doing so well, she dreaded the day he returned to putting himself in such danger.
Everyone at the compound was friendly to her, but she still felt out of place. She was the only human here unless she counted the children who arrived at the compound with Sister June and Duncan, but she didn’t. The children didn’t know vampires and hunters surrounded them; Lucien had told her the vampires altered their memories regularly to keep them safe.
There was also Elyse’s father, who was still human, but his daughter was here, and he’d found a place working with the head of security, Roland. She didn’t know if she’d ever find a home here. She also didn’t know if she wanted to stay. Before the Savages disrupted her life, she had a purpose. Now, she felt utterly lost.
On the morning of the seventh day, she meandered into the garden for what felt like the hundredth time. She strolled among the rows of plants and stopped to smell some newly blooming roses before continuing toward the fountain in the center.
It was there she discovered Kadence and Simone standing with their hands over their heads and their legs braced apart as they looked toward the sky. She’d taken a couple of yoga classes, but she couldn’t remember the name of this pose.
She started to retreat, but before she could, Kadence opened her eyes and spotted her. “Hi,” she greeted.
Callie smiled as Simone lowered her hands.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Callie apologized.
“You’re not interrupting,” Kadence said. “Would you like to join us?”
Callie hesitated and almost retreated, but she missed the company of others. Lucien spent most of his days training. He returned to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with her, and they spent their nights entwined in each other’s arms, but it wasn’t the same.
“I’m not very good at it,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Simone said. “It’s a big stress relief.”
“I could use that,” Callie said, and they chuckled.
They’d been friendly since she arrived, and considering she had no idea how long she was going to be here, she decided to make the best of it. She stepped off the end of the path and strolled over to join them.
&nb
sp; “I don’t have a mat,” she said.
“You won’t need one today,” Kadence said. “I’ll bring an extra one tomorrow that you can have.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I take them from the gym.”
“Do you do this every day?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a great way to start the day,” Simone said.
Callie had enjoyed the classes she took, but she never had the time to commit to it. Now, she had all the time in the world.
She stopped a few feet away from them, and they returned to the position she initially found them. Lifting her hands over her, she followed their movements. She was nowhere near as graceful as they were, and she almost fell over a couple of times, but by the end of the session, her body was a lot looser.
“You did great,” Kadence said as she rolled up her mat.
“Thanks,” Callie said. “I feel a lot better.”
“We do training exercises with the hunter women in the afternoon too, if you want to join us,” Simone offered. “Willow usually leads that group.”
“I’d like that a lot.” She didn’t know how long she would be here, but she might as well make friends and learn how to defend herself while here. “Those Savages….”
Her voice trailed off as she tried to think of the right word to describe them.
“Are horrible,” Kadence said.
“Yes, and must be stopped. I don’t know what I can do as a human, but I refuse to be as defenseless against them as I was last time.”
“We can help you with that,” Simone said she tucked her mat under her arm.
Callie fell into step beside Simone and Kadence as they returned to the mansion and descended into the gym. She’d been in the gym once before when Lucien gave her a tour of the place. It was empty then, but now it was full of vampires and hunters battering punching bags, sparring with weapons, jumping rope, or running on treadmills.
Her gaze roamed those gathered within as she searched for Lucien. When she spotted him, a smile tugged at her lips, as he and Declan circled each other on a mat.
Bound by Danger (The Alliance, Book 6) Page 16