Annette weighed on his mind. He wasn’t sure what had really driven him to interfere the way he had with her. She’d tried to run off twice more, but he’d dragged her back both times. The others working there had shot him grateful looks every time he forced her to get on with it. He guessed before he’d arrived, she’d been disrupting their work fairly successfully. She carried a wisp of Ves’s scent, making it hard to be around her without thinking of the man.
When all his attention hadn’t been eaten up by making sure she was doing what she was supposed to be, or thinking about Ves, he had been heavily aware of the looks the other vampires were sending his way. Rather than blame or hate, which he had expected after running out on his mating with their leader, there was only curiosity and a strange sort of longing. He and Andre would have been members of their coven, and he was curious about them, too, but he didn’t know where the longing came from. He could scent no arousal, no want aimed at him. So, what had the longing been about?
Whatever the reason, something else bugged him, as well. He might have been basically babysitting Annette, but he’d been active. He’d felt as though he were doing something. The night shifts at Blue Gables were necessary, but they could be done by anyone. The recent shake-up at AlphaSec had left him twitchy and unsettled. His job was unaffected, but it hardly required him specifically so he wasn’t really needed there. He guessed it had shown him how comfortable he had gotten in his safe little corner of the pack. He wanted to do something more. Either something physical or with other people, not just checking computer screens and doing rounds of a quiet building at night while everyone slept. He wanted to feel useful, and honestly, he missed being around other vampires. Andre was his best friend, and with Freddie back in their lives, it was something, but it wasn’t quite the same as living in a coven full of his own people. What he was going to do about it, though, he had no idea.
Chapter Six
Ves
“Boss man? Hi. Uh, you didn’t say you were coming up to check on things.”
If Ves had to pick a word to describe his second in that moment, he would have chosen shifty. “Eddie. Everything all right?” Maybe panicked would have been a better word. He narrowed his eyes at the man.
“Of course?” Eddie cleared his throat and tried again, making the words sound less like a question. “Of course. Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Mmm-hmmm.” Ves tilted his head, scenting the air, keeping his eyes on his second.
Disturbed earth, stone dust, paint, sawdust, various oils and metals, and other scents he associated with construction. Eight vampires from his coven, not counting Eddie or Annette, four shifters present, plus another few whose scents were fading from previous shifts. The heavy, rusty smell of old blood from Freddie’s accident, laced with the panic and stress of the people who had found him, including Ves’s mate Raff. But layered over everything was the stronger, much more recent scent of the man. Raff had been here. A lot. And recently. The need to see Raff constantly burned through his veins, but at his mate’s scent, it ramped up, clawing at his guts and lengthened his fangs. His mate was here, in his place, with his people. With a shudder, Ves forced his fangs to retract. He glared at Eddie. His mate was here, and his second, the man he trusted to support him and have at his back for everything, hadn’t said a word.
“Boss—”
Ves held a hand up, stalling Eddie in his verbal tracks. “He’s here. He’s here right now.”
“I—yes. Boss, I’m—”
Ves stopped him again. “Not another word. You, I’ll deal with later.” With that, he scented the air again and headed into the building to find his mate.
His mate was here. Ves couldn’t stop the words circling around and around in his brain. They repeated over and over like a war drum, stirring his blood and calling him to arms. He walked past Emeric, Hedley, and Grace, vampires from his coven, who were taking up old floor tile along a long corridor. Domin and Silas were both prying up pieces of spike-covered wood from either side of another corridor which still smelled of musty carpet. All of them tried to say things, but he didn’t register a word. Claudie must have stopped whatever she was doing to speak to him when she scented him coming but thought better when she caught the look on his face because all she did was hover in a doorway and watch him stalk past.
“Come on, princess, we’re nearly halfway done.”
“Oh, fuck off. Have you seen these blisters?”
“The ones that heal before you finish talking? Yeah, they’re awful. Keep going.”
Ves heard his sister and his mate long before he entered the room. The bickering continued, distracting the pair of them and hopefully preventing them from realising he was here. Claudie had scented him coming, but neither Raff nor Annette did.
“My shoulders hurt,” Annette whined. Up a ladder, she held a stripper in one hand and was using it to scrape up a truly hideous wallpaper.
Are those flamingos? Long curls of the paper lay on the floor around the base of her ladder and around where his mate stood a few meters farther along the left-hand wall of the huge room.
“They’ll toughen up. So will you.”
“No.” Annette flung the stripper away. It embedded itself two inches deep into the still paper-covered far wall by one corner and wavered a moment before stilling. Annette jumped down from her ladder and made to walk out the far doors, shouting as she went. “I’m done. You can’t make me do this.”
Ves was about to intervene, but Raff was in front of her in a flash. “Wanna bet?” If he looked over Annette’s shoulder, he’d see Ves, but his gaze was on her and Ves was frozen, watching the pair.
Annette growled and launched herself at Raff. Ves lurched forward half a step—no one should be trying to hurt his mate—but stopped, one foot midair, watching in astonishment. Raff had her pinned in less time than Ves’s half step had taken. Another growl rumbled in Annette’s chest. She flipped over, throwing Raff off, and then jumped at him, only to be pinned again.
“Haven’t we done this a few times already, princess? Think you’ll get me this time? Haven’t you learned yet?”
“Get off me,” she snarled.
“You gonna get back to work?”
She screamed in frustration and then the fight went out of her. “Fine. Whatever.”
She realised before Raff did that they had an audience. While Raff climbed off her, she stiffened, and then her gaze shot straight to Ves. He hurriedly put his foot back on the ground.
“Sylvestre!” Her outraged yell might as well have gone right to Raff’s spine because he snapped up straight as if hit by lightning. “Have you seen how they’re treating me here? What they’re making me do?”
Raff turned slowly to look at Ves.
“Looks like they’re making you do exactly what I sent you up for. Work. I’m kind of impressed they managed to make you do it, though.”
“You’ve got to be joking! I hurt everywhere. I’m covered in dirt and things I don’t want to think about. And I stink!”
“You really do.” He could smell both from where he stood. Sweat, tiny particles of old wallpaper paste, and something musty from the floor they’d rolled around on.
Annette growled. “He attacked me!”
Raff started and opened his mouth to object, but Ves got there first. “Nice try, but I got here before you attacked him. He was defending himself.”
“But I—”
“Even if he hadn’t been”—Ves overrode whatever objection she tried to throw at him—“he’s only making you do what I sent you here for, and he has my backing and my gratitude. Annette, you’ve never worked a day in your life, and it’s time you learned how.”
“But—”
“No. I don’t care. I’ve been too soft on you and let you get away with far too much for far too long. You know why I sent you away from the coven. You’ve got to leave mated couples alone. Dori’s pregnant—she could have killed you for interfering in her mating, and there wouldn’t have been a d
amn thing I could do about it. Verain isn’t interested and never will be. You’re lucky he came to me and told me what was going on and didn’t just let Dori pull your limbs off and start beating you with them. It had gone far enough when we got to the pair of you. Enough, Annette.” Suddenly, Ves felt incredibly tired. “Just get on with it. I’m up here for a few days. I’ll see you later.”
Ves turned to leave. He wanted nothing more than to stay, to be near his mate and to breathe in his scent. But he didn’t want to force his presence on Raff. Raff didn’t want him. Ves didn’t know if he ever would.
“Wait.” Footsteps hurried up close behind Ves and Raff’s scent grew stronger.
Ves stopped but didn’t face him. “What is it?” Contrary to accepted myths about his species, vampires had hearts that worked perfectly well, and Ves’s was both pounding and aching.
Raff slid by him so he could look Ves in the eyes. He was biting his lip, and his golden-brown eyes were bright and searching as he looked at Ves. “Thank you. She’s your sister. You didn’t have to back me up.”
“I didn’t do it because you’re my…” He paused, swallowing the word. “I did it because you were right.”
“Dorian’s pregnant? Are she and Verain all right?”
“They’ll be okay. I didn’t realise you knew them.”
“I met them when Andre and I…when we came to the coven. Only briefly. She was nice. I’m glad they’re all right.” Raff looked at him. The walls were still up behind his eyes, but his guarded expression had lost its spiky edge.
Ves’s fingers ached to brush Raff’s hair back from his face, to touch him. “They’ve been trying to have another baby for a long time. Dori’s worse than a bear-shifter with cubs. Annette couldn’t have picked a worse couple to try to mess with or a worse time to do it.”
A smile flitted briefly onto Raff’s face, startling Ves with how it lit Raff up. His eyes sparkled and brought out honey tones in his irises. “Vampire females can be pretty fierce when pregnant.”
“It’s been decades since we had a baby in the coven. It’ll be good to have a young one running around.”
“I heard another family’s applied to join, with a young boy.”
“Yeah. They’ve come over from France. From a coven a city over from where ours was at one point in the eighteen hundreds. Obviously, both have moved many times since then, but they remembered us, and they’ve been having trouble with a coven near their current location—some arsehole that’s in charge there throwing his weight around.”
“Where is it?”
“The coven they’re moving from? Toulouse.”
Raff paled. “I-I’ve got to go. Got to get back.” Raff turned and ran back down the corridor to the room he’d been working in when Ves found him and Annette.
What the hell? What did I say? Ves stared after his mate in bafflement at his abrupt departure. The small talk had been killing him, but at least he’d been close to Raff. He wished he knew what it was that he’d said to send his mate running.
With a heavy heart, Ves went off to look at the lodge, which had been the first part to be worked on, so his people would have somewhere to stay while they got to work on the main building.
“Hi, Ves.”
This time, Ves stopped. “Hi, Claudie. How are things going up here? You getting on okay?”
“Yeah.” Good job he was a vampire. Claudie never spoke very loudly. “Are my parents coming up soon? They shouldn’t. The air here, it wouldn’t be good for Mum. Not until we’ve got the damp cleared out, all the old musty stuff is gone, and any painting and staining is finished.” It figured the one thing Claudie spoke up about would be to do with looking out for someone else’s welfare.
“You don’t need to worry. Dori’s not going to risk the baby for anything. She’ll be one of the last to move up here and not until the refurbishment’s complete. You’re keeping in touch, though, right?”
“Yes. But I miss them. Video chat isn’t the same.”
“You know you can go visit them anytime you want, don’t you?”
“I guess. Raff said that, too.”
“He did?” Claudie was so painfully shy, Ves was surprised Raff’d been able to have a conversation with her.
“He’s nice.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.”
“It’ll work out, Ves. I know it will.” Claudie looked at him anxiously with wide eyes.
“I hope so, little one. Now, what have they got you doing?”
She stood back and pointed into the room. She showed him the carpet she had half pulled up and torn out and the piles of it under the open window. When he stuck his head out the window to look, he saw bigger piles at measured intervals all along the wall. “Did you do all that?” She nodded. “You’re doing a really good job, sweetie.” As the current youngest in the coven, everyone had a soft spot for Claudie.
Claudie went red and ducked her head, but she was smiling. “The faster we get done, the faster the whole coven can get moved up here.”
“What are you going to do then? Do you want to go back to what you were doing before?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“This place is a lot bigger.” A natural caretaker, Claudie had been helping around the coven house since long before she left school. “Everyone could pitch in more, and you could do some online courses if you wanted.”
“I know.”
“It’s up to you. When you decide, you just let me know, okay?” Claudie nodded. “I have to go look at the lodge now. Would you like to come and show me around?”
“Okay.”
Ves hadn’t seen the lodge on his earlier visits, but he’d been told it hadn’t been in as bad condition as the main house or any of the outer outbuildings, which was why it had been chosen to house his people while the rest of the work was done. When he set eyes on the place for the first time he understood why. It was a far older building than the main house—probably an old Tudor manor house that had been folded into the estate when land had been bought to put up the main house. As such, it was a solid building that had obviously withstood the passing of a lot of years. Ves sent a prayer of thanks up that the idiot who had had the larger estate house built back in the eighties hadn’t had the place razed.
Claudie pointed out the new metal shutters and the two-step entry system, which would both come into play during sunlit hours. He’d had the same system installed at the old coven house, so he was familiar with how it worked already. Like an upright filing cabinet only one door would open at a time, preventing any young ones being hurt by stray rays of sunlight. She took him around the main floor first, showing him the sanded and stained wooden floors where carpet had been stripped out, the basic furniture that had been bought until the place was refurbished properly after the main house was completed, the sizeable kitchen with double fridges, hidden blood chiller cabinet, and two sets of ovens and hobs, and the bedrooms with bunk beds borrowed from the wolf pack. One of the bedrooms was set aside with two separate beds rather than the bunks in the others. That one was for him and Eddie. There wouldn’t be many nights they would have to share it, Claudie told him in an earnest voice, as they were switching out between the old coven house and the newer one. Ves grinned inwardly. He didn’t mind sharing with his second, but he bet his sister hated having to share living quarters.
“Hey, Claudie, I know Annette had a hissy fit this evening, but is she mostly behaving herself? Or is that wishful thinking?”
Claudie chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. “Um…”
“Oh dear. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have sent her up here, should I?”
“No, No that’s not it. She has tried her best to get up to her usual…things, but Raff won’t let her. She’s not actually been any trouble at all. Not for lack of trying though.”
Ves was at a loss for words. Yes, he’d been pissed that his mate had been at the house and his second hadn’t told him about it, but it hadn’t really occurred to him to ask why Raff had been t
here in the first place. “He’s here that much?”
She snorted. “He doesn’t leave. Except to sleep. Well, some of the time to sleep. He stays here half the time.”
“He does?” The thought of his mate sleeping here, surrounded by Ves’s people, was comforting.
“Yeah. I think he’s appointed himself her babysitter or something on top of the job he talked Sol into giving him.”
“Sol? I thought Sol worked for Allan?”
“Oh, he does, but he got a promotion. He was already project manager or whatever they call it in construction, but he’s now got hiring and firing rights and some other stuff.”
“And he hired Raff?”
Claudie nodded, and then frowned anxiously. “Should he not have? It’s nice having him here.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m just surprised. I thought Raff and Andre both worked for Jake at AlphaSec.” Raff was looking out for his coven and its members.
“I think Andre still does. He comes over quite a lot to see Raff. Or to watch over him, anyway. Raff, I don’t know. I guess he started a day or two after Annette arrived. They had this huge fight outside. I—damn it, I wasn’t supposed to tell you about that.”
“You weren’t supposed to tell me? Why?”
“Eddie didn’t…he didn’t want…”
“It’s okay, Claudie. He can tell me himself. Right, Eddie?” Ves could smell his second just inside the front door, downstairs. “Not like you to lurk in corners. Hang fire there, we’ll be right down.”
“All right.” Eddie’s voice was clearly audible to Ves, despite the words being spoken in ordinary tones.
Claudie was biting her lip again.
“Sweetie, you’re not in trouble. I’d have found out eventually anyway. Come on, let’s go down. You go on back to the main house. I need to have a meeting with Eddie anyway.”
Trusting His Vampire Lord Page 5