Raff had been such an idiot to keep the man at a distance for so long. Everything Ves said and did proved a little more that Raff could trust him. Raff sent a grin his way and then hurled himself at his friends.
Chapter Sixteen
Ves
The past few days without his mate had been a careful balance between hunting him down to claim him again and being reassured by the bond thrumming between them. Raff was close and safe, but he wasn’t with Ves. They’d only just mated, and this should be the time for cementing their bond.
Ves had to constantly remind himself why he was standing back and not getting in the way of this time with Raff’s friends. Kourey and Bastien needed him. Ves would have him for the rest of their lives.
There was plenty to keep him busy. Moving an entire coven was not a simple thing, and he was moving two of them, one internationally, and combining them into one. Once he was sure things were secure where he was, he’d sent the Leeds Coven vampires home, with his thanks and promises to return the favour should their leader ever need anything. He bought them all first-class tickets and sent them home on a regular flight. A few of his own people went on the same flight, along with a handful of his newest coven members. That opened some space on the jet for their return journey, but he still had to decide who was going, who was staying, and make arrangements for transporting the entire contents of a massive chateau. Or most of it, anyway. They needed a new start, as Raff had said. Picking over their past while still in the place where so much damage had been done to them wouldn’t help anyone.
Daniel had been a huge help, as had Thomas. Eddie kept the people and their needs organised while Thomas and Daniel went about arranging for the things to be moved. Ves shuffled paperwork and liaised with Annette, Perry, and others back home via video chat. Ves didn’t know what he would have done without Daniel, Thomas, or Eddie. Or Jake.
Jake and his men patrolling, rather than alarm the people Mathieu had ruled over so ruthlessly, they seemed to reassure them. The blood they supplied, and then the extra stocks brought in, had everyone healthy again, and Ves made sure Annette laid in an excess at both Coven houses in the UK.
Near as he could tell, barring any further problems, it would take a month to get everyone moved to the UK, and then another couple of months before they were all in the new house outside Whithowe. Some of them wanted to go there straight away and help with the new building. They wanted to be active in their own fresh start. But first he had to get himself, most of the shifters, Raff, and Raff’s friends back home.
After checking in with Raff, Ves had Daniel do the electronic paperwork for getting Bastien and Kourey into the UK, before he started work on the same for the rest of the coven. They had valid passports, thank the gods, and wonder of wonders, they were both in the chateau. When they’d run all those years ago, they’d had to go quickly and hadn’t been able to grab them. Getting to England without them had apparently been interesting. But it meant that they were there now.
Only one of the vehicles was big enough to carry all five of the friends, plus a couple of men to guard them. Not that they expected any trouble, but he wanted them to feel as safe as possible on the trip to the airfield. It would have been quicker to run, but they had luggage, and Kourey wasn’t up to it anyway.
Kourey walked out the main doors of the chateau sandwiched between Bastien and Freddie. Raff was in front of them, backing slowly toward the SUV, and Andre walked behind them, his hand on the small of Kourey’s back. Still, his eyes were wide and terrified, flicking from side to side, and his breath came in fast, jerky pants through flared nostrils.
“Come on, keep walking. One foot in front of the other. You can do it. That’s it. Just keep your eyes on me. Keep walking. You’re nearly there.” Progress was slow, but Raff kept up his litany of encouragement every step of the way until they all climbed into the car, and Kourey could bury his face in Raff’s shoulder, like if he pretended hard enough, it would all go away. Ves hoped he didn’t pretend too hard. Raff wouldn’t want his friend to disappear back into his own head again.
“I’ll see you at the airfield,” Ves said to them all, eyes locked onto his mate, before closing the car door. He popped his comm unit in his ear and heard Raff’s voice continuing to murmur at Kourey in a soothing hum. Their cars would be within sight all the way, but he wasn’t losing track of what was going on inside the other car for anything.
Freddie wanted to stay with Kourey as long as he could, but when they got to the rented hangar where the plane was stored, he had to go through the preflight checks. As he didn’t have a copilot and they weren’t at any of their usual fields, he had extra checks to do that could normally be done by other people. Having travelled with him many times, Ves oversaw stowing luggage and making sure it was secure and wouldn’t move around during the flight. Daniel and Jake assisted, having borrowed both Freddie and the jet on multiple occasions in their hunt for Michaelson.
“No. I don’t want it.”
“Are you sure? It would make the flight a lot easier on you,” Raff was asking when Ves mounted the steps to the plane. He hadn’t paid much attention to the voices within while stowing the baggage, but now he was. Kourey sounded angry and scared, and Raff was pleading with him.
“What’s going on in here?”
“I won’t take them,” Kourey stated defiantly.
“Okay. Um, take what?”
“Tranquillisers. I won’t. I can’t.”
“Raff?” Ves turned to his mate.
“Doc suggested it. Said if he was nervous to fly, it might make things easier on him.”
“No!” Kourey interrupted.
“Hey, easy. No one’s going to make you take anything. I just wanted to know what was going on,” Ves tried to reassure him. “You know Raff. He would never do anything against your wishes or to hurt you. He won’t make you. Nor will anyone else here.” Ves glanced around to push the message home. “Now, remembering that no one is going to make you…what’s your objection to them?”
“I…every time I’ve been drugged…when I woke up…something horrible was happening.” Kourey struggled for breath, or words, Ves wasn’t quite sure. “First when Mathieu took over and he was saying those things he wanted, right after he killed Raff’s parents. Then he killed ours. Then we escaped, and Michaelson drugged us and took us to that place. Then he…he kept drugging us and…doing things to us. Then…I woke up back here with him and he…and he…I can’t take them. Please!”
“Okay. Okay. God, Kourey, I didn’t think. I didn’t understand. I’m sorry,” Raff said, voice breaking.
“Why don’t the four of you go to the bedroom? It’s not strictly legal to take off or land with people in there, but I think Freddie’s allowed it before, and I doubt he’d mind. I’ll go up and let him know.” Ves ushered them all in the direction of the bedroom and made sure everyone else was ready for takeoff before making for the cockpit.
“I heard everything.” Freddie’s voice was small and sad. “It’s fine.”
“Are you okay?”
Freddie laughed, the sound as sad as his voice. “Those years after meeting and losing Sol. I thought I had it bad. Stuck in a wheelchair. My self-imposed exile, thinking I had to stay where I was if I was ever to find my mate, but long given up hope of doing so. I was so bitter thinking about all of them over here, happy. I didn’t want to reach out, let them know what happened to me because I couldn’t take their pity. I had no idea what they were all going through.”
“You couldn’t have known. If you’d gone back? If you’d tried? You’d have been in my brother’s not-so-tender care. And that’s the last thing any of them would have wanted. Knowing my brother, he wouldn’t have had any use for a crippled vampire. I’m sorry, Freddie. You know that’s never how I saw you, but he would have. He might have been briefly interested, but it wouldn’t have held him for long. You’d have been dead long before any of the others were brought back there. You’d never have met your mate, and you
wouldn’t be here for your friends now.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just hard to get my heart to accept it. Knowing Gui’s dead…”
“Gui?”
“Guillaume.” Freddie chuckled. “God, he hated that nickname. Said he ‘wasn’t clarified butter from India, thank you very much’. Didn’t mind it so much when we were young, but when international cuisine became more common, he hated it. Insisted on his full name at all times.”
“He sounds opinionated.”
“Oh, he was. You wouldn’t be able to tell if you just met him though. He seemed quiet until he got to know you. Him and Kourey were the same that way.” Freddie lowered his voice to a barely there whisper. “But while he could be a bossy son of a bitch, Kourey only ever wanted to please. That’s why it’s so damn heartbreaking to see him like this. Raff? He’s getting himself back. He always looked after all of us, made sure we were all okay. His father’s son. Andre hasn’t changed all that much at all. He would have been Raff’s second had Raff taken over running the coven after his father.”
“And you and Bastien? Where did you both fit in?” Ves was curious. He had never come across that many vampires so close in age from the same coven before.
“We fucked like bunnies,” Freddie said with a grin, and then looked so horrified Ves couldn’t help laughing. “Shit, don’t tell Sol. There’d never be anything between Bastien and me now that I’m mated. We weren’t like that really. We were friends with benefits, that’s all.”
“Lots of benefits by the sound of things.” Ves laughed. It was easy to laugh about it now his mate had accepted him. If he’d had to talk about sex before he and Raff sorted things out, it might have been a different story. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of saying a word. I’ll get back there and see how they’re getting on.”
“And I’ve got preflight stuff to finish up. It’ll only be another couple of minutes, and then we can get going.”
Ves peeked into the bedroom. Raff lifted his head a little and smiled at him, then scowled and smacked at Andre, who chuckled.
Everyone in the main cabin was seated and buckled in, so Ves called through to Freddie that they were all set, and a few minutes later they set off. Every vampire there pretended they couldn’t hear Kourey’s whimpers or smell the panic/run/escape scents clouding the air. The shifters aboard were all twitchy and jittery. Ves didn’t want to explain vampire pheromones, trapped by the recirculated air in the plane, were setting them off. He thought about saying something to Jake later, but he caught Butch frowning in the direction of the bedroom and suspected he wouldn’t need to bother. Butch was an odd one, and Ves had had too much to do to put much thought into him. He wondered what Butch’s story was and what had changed him from a regular shifter into whatever he was now.
When they got back to the UK and all piled into various cars, still parked haphazardly in the hangar’s small car park from their rushed arrival, Ves had to talk himself into waiting to have that word with the odd shifter. Instead, he focussed on making the trip back to the coven house as easy as possible for Kourey and Raff and the others.
“Oh, um. I…I wasn’t going to take him there.” Raff bit his lip. Kourey, Bastien, and Andre were in the car already, but Raff stood beside it, shifting from foot to foot. “I was going to go to Blue Gables.” Freddie was off to one side, with a phone plastered to his ear and pacing.
Ves thought about the AlphaSec headquarters. “I’ll support you, whichever way you decide. But are you sure that’s a good idea? It’s been done out very nicely, but it’s still underground. Wouldn’t that remind him of being in the cellar at the chateau?”
“Damn, I didn’t think of that.” Raff glanced back in the car window.
“If you want to bring him to the coven house, you can have the bedroom Eddie and I switch out in.”
“Thanks.” Raff kicked at the ground. “We’re not going to be alone for a while, huh?”
Ves stepped closer and cupped his face, lifting it so Raff had to look at him. “I can wait.”
“I don’t want to.”
“And you think I do? Raff, I can’t wait to be able to hold you every night. And more,” he added with a quirk of his lips. “But this is who we are. Leader and his mate. We have a lot of other people who depend on us. I’m proud of you, you know?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t want to wait. I don’t want to either. But you’re still looking after your friend because he needs you. Mathieu took you, and even right after he was gone, you were more intent on helping everyone else he hurt than seeing to your own needs. I just want to make sure you look after yourself, too. You need anything, ever, you just let me know. Okay?”
Raff nodded, pink but smiling.
Ves brushed their lips together softly. Raff inhaled and leaned into the kiss, hands coming to rest on Ves’s waist. His eyes were hazy when Ves pulled back a minute later.
“Fuck you, too,” Freddie shouted.
Ves snapped his head around to look at Freddie. He was stalking back to the car with an almighty scowl and flared nostrils. He shoved his phone in his pocket as he approached.
“Whoa, what’s wrong with you?” Raff asked.
“That bloody lion. He’s being a diva.”
“Who? Sol? That’s not like him,” Raff said. “Freddie, what’s going on?”
Freddie sagged. “Shit. I’m the one being a twat. I need to call him back. I haven’t really spoken to him in a few days. He only said he missed me. I blew up at him.”
Ves glanced at his mate, but Raff was smirking at Freddie. He leaned out a bit and tugged on the end of Freddie’s ponytailed hair. “Nice to see that temper of yours hasn’t gone anywhere, Red.” Freddie gave him a half-hearted glare. “Go see him. Spend the night with your mate. Come to the coven house tomorrow.” Then he looked at Ves. “Speaking of, has it got a name? Calling it ‘the coven house’ every time is getting old.”
“Uh, yeah. It’s kinda pretentious though. I’m trying to think of an alternative but haven’t come up with anything so far.”
Freddie walked away, pulling his phone out again, and Raff looked at Ves expectantly. Ves groaned. “Whithowe Heights Manor.”
Raff raised a single eyebrow. “Manor? They knew that place is nowhere close to your typical manor house, right? It’s not even on a hill or anything, so what’s with the Heights?”
“You’ve seen that place, right?” Ves shot back. Then added, “I’m not sure they had much knowledge about history or what constituted a manor house.”
“Or taste in general. Oh well, they get one out of three for naming. At least it’s near Whithowe.” Raff grinned.
“I’m hoping the end result will be a little better.”
“As long as you don’t do your bedroom out in gilt and mirrors.”
“Damn, busted.” Ves moved half a step closer. “And it’ll be our bedroom, Raff.” He could feel the heat from his mate’s body and heard his heart start to beat faster.
“You wouldn’t,” Raff breathed, pupils dilating at Ves’s last words. The scent of Raff’s arousal curled in the air, and Ves’s dick started hardening in response.
“Guess you’ll have to get involved in decorating it if you want a say.”
A loud and pointed cough drew both their attention. Freddie stood with one hand on a cocked hip and an amused expression. “Too many pheromones around here for me. I’m gonna take you up on your suggestion and go see my mate.”
“Okay. Go crawl in bed with him and get some sleep. We’ll see you tomorrow,” Raff told him.
“I’ll be getting something. Not sure there’ll be much sleeping involved.” Freddie gave Raff a salacious grin.
Raff laughed and tried to duck out from between Ves and the car. Ves pulled him back in and kissed his forehead before letting him go.
“Is everyone ready to go?” Jake strode up. The shifters and the rest of Ves’s people had made themselves scarce while Kourey got situated so as not to overwhelm him.
“I think so. If you’ll drop us all”—Ves motioned at himself, Raff, and the people in the car—“at the coven house, I’d be grateful. Freddie’s going back to the coven, but he’s got his own car with him anyway.”
Raff fake-coughed with a couple of words sounding suspiciously like ‘The Manor’ interspersed into the noise. Ves rolled his eyes at him.
“Ooh, way too late. It’s got a name now.” A thought seemed to strike him because he laughed. “And you’re its lord.”
“Really. Lord of the manor?”
“Can’t get out of it. Sorry.” Raff didn’t sound even a little bit sorry.
“You sound so sorry.”
“I do, don’t I?”
Jake looked very confused. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Freddie said a quick good-bye to Kourey and promised him that he’d see him the next day, and then they all piled into the cars and set off.
Ves was glad one of the ones the shifters had brought was big enough for him to travel with Raff and his friends. He didn’t think he could take two hours in a different car. It was going to be hard enough when he had to head back this way to the old coven house to manage things there, but he needed to see Raff safe first. Eddie was still in France, and Annette couldn’t go back to the old house just yet until Dori and Verain had a little more time to move past what had happened. And he still needed to have that talk with Annette. Ves groaned inwardly as he sat back and let the scent of his mate and his mate’s friends wash over him.
Chapter Seventeen
Raff
Pausing in his pacing, Raff checked out of the window again. He bounced a little on the balls of his feet.
“You know you’ll hear the car long before you can see it,” an amused voice said at the other end of the room.
Trusting His Vampire Lord Page 14