Then she screamed as loud as she could and put her foot down on the accelerator. She continued to scream until she’d passed the Lauderville city limits.
Chapter 2
Aiden filled up the Harley and parked in front of the small diner that sat next to the gas station. The two run-down buildings were sitting in a cleared patch of forest next to the highway. The forest loomed darkly on three sides, the lights from the gas station and diner reaching a scant few feet into the tree line.
Stepping inside the diner, he found himself to be its lone customer. Smiling at the elderly waitress, he decided coffee would have to do as a pick-me-up. The waitress, Michele, looked to be about seventy and was as frail as a bird. Even if she hadn’t been thinking constantly about the pain from her arthritis, Aiden wouldn’t have taken any of her blood for fear of killing the poor old woman.
“What can I get for ya tonight, mister?” Michele asked.
“Coffee, black please, Michele.” He sat at the table closest to the window and severed the connection to her thoughts. He had no desire to hear her run through her litany of illnesses as she walked slowly toward him.
Aiden had had a millennium to study mankind, and really, there were few surprises anymore. He knew that was why he’d become so fond of the cats. They’d been a huge surprise. A true joy to his jaded soul. They’d reignited a desire for his mate that hadn’t burned so brightly in some five hundred years.
As Michele finally reached his table with the coffee, he thanked her and stretched his mind out in search of a healthy donor. There was only one person close and Aiden stiffened as he noted that they seemed to be in worse state than “young” Michele. Their thoughts were jumbled and erratic, but the overriding thought was to “keep driving.”
Aiden wondered if the person was on drugs, their thoughts were so sluggish and jumbled. There were no other cars on the road so she alone would die when she succumbed to the lethargy that would inevitably drag her under. Aiden had realized centuries ago that he couldn’t save people from themselves, so he pulled free of her mind and left her to control her own destiny. He sipped his surprisingly good coffee and thought again about where in Europe he’d begin the search for his mate.
* * * *
Kaitlyn saw the red gas pump symbol flashing on the dashboard as she continued down the highway. She was barely able to stay awake. She’d never been this tired before. Blessed with good genetics, she’d never even been sick a day in her life, so the way she felt now was completely unfamiliar to her.
She didn’t know if it was safe to stop. She’d been driving for four hours and was desperate to be further away from Lauderville before she stopped. She had to keep driving. She needed to get to her father in San Diego. She couldn’t stop until she was safe with him. He’d never let anything happen to her.
When she saw the gas station appear out of the gloom, she looked again at the flashing red icon on her dash. Fuel. Holy fuck, what is wrong with me? I won’t reach San Diego without gas. She pulled up to the pump and tried to open her door. Her grip was weak and she barely managed to grasp the handle.
Drugged. She felt like she’d been drugged. She couldn’t think straight. Looking to the trees behind the gas station, she knew what she had to do. It was a miracle she’d even made it this far. She needed time to heal. She couldn’t keep driving. She could barely even stay awake now. If she kept going, she’d risk killing someone.
Abandoning the idea of filling her tank, she started the car and drove slowly to the adjoining diner. The place was empty apart from a solitary motorbike. The trees called to her. She just needed to sleep. She needed time to heal from the attack. Maybe vampires are poisonous? Fuck, have they poisoned me as well as violating me?
She struggled from the car and locked the door. The attack in the mayor’s office replayed in her mind, the horror enabling her to summon the strength to walk into the trees.
* * * *
Aiden saw the small blue Mazda pull up to the gas station. So she made it. He’d have bet money that she’d have crashed into a tree miles ago. She sat in her car at the fuel pump and didn’t get out. He wondered if she was too drunk to even walk. Curiosity won out and he reached out to touch her mind.
He stood up so fast he knocked over his chair. “Fucking hell". This woman remembered being fed on by a vampire. Her car moved away from the pump and parked next to the diner. What he heard next chilled his already-cool blood. She hadn’t just been fed on. She had been preyed upon by not one, but four vampires. She’d heard the command to forget the attack, but she clearly hadn’t. Her horror and helplessness was there in her thoughts as well.
The attack in itself was brutal and abhorrent to Aiden, the fact that she had somehow remembered it even more disturbing. In the seconds it took for Aiden to hear the attack replayed in her mind, the woman had vanished.
Her car was still there, but she had disappeared into the trees. Dropping a ten-dollar bill on the table, he righted his chair and stepped outside. He had to determine if he needed to intervene for the sake of his race. His kind couldn’t have a human shouting “vampires exist” to the tabloids, especially not one who had actually encountered one as she had.
As he closed the door behind him, he fell to his knees. His entire body reverberated with recognition. Mate. After more than a thousand years of life, here she was. How could he have ever thought it was a scent he would need to search for? Merely being in the same place was all that was required. It consumed him. It assailed him with its demand for her.
If the impact of her scent hadn’t been enough to bring him to his knees, his mind replaying everything he’d heard from his mate’s mind in the last ten minutes would have been. He had sat there, indifferent to the possibility that she may kill herself while driving.
As he pulled himself to his feet, he became suffused with rage. Vampires had fed on his mate. My mate. One of them had wanted to use his mind control to sexually assault her. Aiden decided then and there that that particular vampire would meet his end in a way so slow and painful that he’d regret his very conception.
As Aiden scanned the trees for her thoughts, he found he could no longer hear her. She couldn’t have gone far in her condition. They will all cease to exist. He pulled himself from his rage and followed her wonderful scent. He knew she was close, the silence of her thoughts indicating she had finally succumbed to the effects of her attack and passed out.
His mind nearly exploded with all the things he was trying to think through. How could she accept a vampire mate after her attack? How was she able to remember her attack? Had the vampires been drawn to her because she was his mate?
Then all thought simply stopped as he beheld the sight before him.
“Fucking hell. My mate cannot be a shifter.”
Starkly contrasting to the thick layer of snow on the ground lay the most magnificent panther he’d ever laid eyes on. Her green eyes were open and luminous. Her pain bombarded him, her one thought piercing his heart. “My mate doesn’t want me.”
What had he done?
Chapter 3
When Kaitlyn had finally felt she was far enough away from the diner, she’d reached to her cat for help. For the first time ever she’d found it a struggle to shift. The normally instinctive act had been such a strain on her weakened body that she’d been afraid her heart would stop from the effort. She hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep until her cat shuddered so violently her eyes snapped open.
There in front of her stood a man of incredible beauty. He was tall and lithe, his hair dark, his skin palest bronze. But the scent coming from him was what had made her cat shudder. It had called to her, shaken her awake with its sensual and compelling allure. She tingled all over and wanted to leap into his arms. She had found her mate.
Then he’d spoken and her heart had shattered.
She could do nothing but stare at him as she felt the life drain from her. Rejection incensed her cat, but it made the woman give-in to the darkness seeping throu
gh her body. She would just let her broken heart stop beating.
Her mate’s enthralling eyes glowed red and his jaw tightened. “Don’t stop fighting, my mate.” He looked so angry. So fierce. So other. He was not human, of that she was certain.
She drew his scent deep inside her, but all she felt was the awareness of her mate. Arousal and warmth stirred her body despite the suffering his rejection was causing. He didn’t smell like a human, let alone a shifter. He was something she’d never encountered before. Something that knew about the existence of shifters and didn’t want a panther as a mate.
“That’s not it. It’s simply impossible that you are my mate.”
“Well, that just makes it so much better. Wait. You can hear me, can’t you”? At his nod, Kaitlyn knew what he was. Her weakened state and the shock of her mate’s sudden appearance had made her mind sluggish. She’d seen creatures with glowing red eyes who by all appearances were human, not five hours ago.
She was young by shifter standards, only twenty-three, but the utter despair of the inevitable centuries of loneliness a mate-less existence promised pressed down on her soul. She was the chosen mate to a creature that didn’t, or couldn’t, want her. She no longer had the strength to fight the fatigue that pervaded her body. She closed her eyes to the heartbreaking sight of her beautiful mate and let her cat die.
* * * *
“No, my mate.” Aiden fell to his knees beside the magnificent form of his mate’s panther. “Impossible or not, fate has chosen us as mates. I will find a way for you to be avenged for the horror my race has subjected you to.”
Stretching his hand toward her, he was surprised to see it was shaking. “May I touch you?” He was met by silence. He touched the thick black coat of his mate and knew she was close to death. “Fuck.”
She had slipped unconscious between the space of two heartbeats. If she were merely suffering from the blood loss of her attack, shifting should have sped up her recovery. It clearly had not. Her heart beat slowly, the battle it was waging weakening it so greatly he feared each beat would be its last.
With all of his supernatural abilities he could do nothing but listen as his mates heart slowed. He had never felt so useless or helpless. What the fuck do I do with a dying panther?
Reaching for his phone the instant his mind hit upon the answer, he begged his mate to hold on to life, help was still several hours away.
* * * *
Jason growled into Bethany’s neck as his mobile buzzed on the nightstand. He was completely content laying here with his arms around his beautiful mate.
“We won’t get back to sleep until you fucking answer it,” Samson said sleepily.
Jason reluctantly unwrapped himself from Bethany’s warm body and rolled over to answer the call. “What?”
“I assume it is the hour of day that explains your manner, not my call,” said Finn. The Alpha’s tone had Jason rising from the bed and leaving the room at preternatural speed.
“What do you need, Alpha?” Jason prayed that nothing was wrong with Finn’s mate or cub. The pride had been subjected to enough pain and suffering over the past month, they didn’t need any more.
“Our unusual friend, Aiden, has just called for our assistance. It seems he has found his mate and his surprise at her being a shifter was apparently perceived as a rejection.”
Jason cringed at the recollection of how his own rejection of Bethany had come close to killing her. “Can’t he explain that it wasn’t?”
“I wouldn’t be waking you at two in the morning if the solution was that simple, Jason. From what Aiden could glean from her thoughts before she passed out, she was attacked by vampires last evening.”
“What is her condition?” Jason had never encountered anyone who’d been attacked by a vampire, but he imagined blood loss would be the main concern for Aiden’s mate.
“Her heartbeat is apparently slow and weak. She is shifted, but still shows no improvement. He is in Northern Wyoming. I’ll send him to my cousin Sean, in Pine Falls. I would ask you to meet him there, please. “
“I’ll leave immediately. Just text me the address.”
Jason went back into his room and dressed quietly. By the time he’d gathered all the medical supplies he may need, Samson was waiting for him in the kitchen.
“I heard. Be careful, the vampires that attacked his mate may be after her,” Samson said.
“Shit. I hadn’t even thought of that. I’ll mention it to Aiden and you can tell Finn in the morning.”
Jason climbed into his truck and programmed his GPS for the journey. He hated to leave Bethany, but was glad that his brothers were there to keep her safe, yet another advantage of sharing a mate with his brothers Michael and Samson.
The vampire is mated to a shifter. Life is certainly never dull anymore. A tingle of dread crept down his spine as he drove onto the highway. Dull would be nice for a change.
Chapter 4
Sean was asleep when his cell phone woke him. As a teacher, he was rarely woken for work emergencies, but as a pride enforcer, he was often awakened for things pertaining to the safety of his small pride of mountain lions and other assorted shifters.
“Marland,” he said, certain the call would be pride-related.
“Sean, its Finn. I have a favor to ask you.”
Sean was wide awake by the time Finn had finished explaining his version of a favor. He dressed after ending the call with his cousin and went to prepare a bed for the injured panther. He was finding it hard to process the revelation his cousin had just shared with him. “Vampires.” Putting on a fresh pot of coffee, he shook his head. “I need coffee even if the vampire doesn’t.”
On his third cup he heard the deep rumble of a bike coming up the long winding drive to his ranch house. He had been expecting a vampire, but a vampire on a Harley was yet another surprise to him.
He opened the door not knowing what he’d find. What he got had him running down to meet the vampire at full speed.
His body was on fire. His canines had fully erupted and his growl was louder than the bike’s engine. He knew from the burning in his eyes that they were blazing with the amber of his cat. It wanted him to shift and hunt down the vampires who had hurt this woman. But he also couldn’t leave her side until Jason Reed arrived and told him she wouldn’t die. Hell, if she needed more blood, she could have his. He’d open a vein without hesitation for his mate.
His body ached to touch the rich black fur of her stunning coat, it shone as the light from the kitchen reflected on the gleaming black strands. She was magnificent. Her scent, rich and fruity, teased his mind and body to full arousal as he drank in the sight and smell of her.
The man holding his mate nestled in his arms stared at him with a stunned expression, before shaking his head.
“You’re Aiden?” Sean asked slowly, finding his voice at last. “She has two mates?”
“It’s freezing out here and I can barely hear her heartbeat. We can wonder at the capriciousness of fate at a later time.”
Sean reached for the panther in Aiden’s arms, not at all sure the vampire would relinquish her. His cat wanted to feel her and the man needed the reassurance that she was real, that she was alive. Strangely, neither part of him felt any sort of possessive rage toward the man currently holding her. That realization brought with it the chilling acceptance that he shared his mate with a vampire.
* * * *
Aiden handed the unusually small panther over to her other mate. Her other mate. Well, wasn’t today just full of surprises? The look on Sean Marland’s face showed Aiden everything he’d done wrong when he’d first laid eyes on his mate.
He hadn’t looked upon her with the same reverence and wonder that Sean was now. He didn’t take her in his arms like she was the most precious thing ever created, like Sean did. No, he’d spoken words that his mate had easily misconstrued as a rejection, and she’d slipped into unconsciousness with those words ringing in her small furry ears.
; Sean carried Kaitlyn into the house and went straight upstairs to a generically beige room. Aiden remained close on his heels. The bed was clean and turned down, the room heated. “How long until Finn’s doctor arrives?” Aiden asked. He stood at the foot of the bed and watched the shifter gently place Kaitlyn in the center.
“He should be here in two hours. He called and told me to have you hold her until he arrives.”
Aiden raised his eyebrow, but immediately shucked off his shoes and then removed his jacket.
“Doc didn’t say why exactly,” Sean said, similarly removing his boots. “He just said that her mate must hold her, that it was important for her healing.”
Aiden climbed into bed beside his panther and looked to Sean for help. “I have no experience with this.” He moved a little closer to her, but didn’t know what to do with his hands. “The ride here was my first experience of holding one of your kind while they were shifted.”
“Then you’re in for a steep learning curve,” Sean said, as he pulled his shirt over his head. “We are very tactile. Skin-on-skin works best.”
Aiden drew his T-shirt over his head, then looked questioningly at Sean as the huge shifter removed his jeans.
“I’m going to shift. She will need to feel my cat and me around her.”
His shift was swift and quite beautiful. Aiden’s enhanced vision enabled him to see the entire shift despite its speed. Bones lengthened and shortened to accommodate his other nature and when Sean jumped onto the bed, he was a massive cougar, his eyes blazed as he curled around one half of the ball of black fur that was Kaitlyn.
“I need to tell you that I’m able to communicate with you while you’re shifted, as well as hear your thoughts when you’re not.” Aiden decided that full disclosure was going to be best. He hadn’t done that with Kaitlyn and her pain was still a bleeding wound on his heart.
A Thousand Years Dead [Pine Falls 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 2