“I came because I love you. I didn’t believe that you had found a mate.” He looked up at Aiden. “Mates. I just didn’t think it was even possible for something like you.”
Sean saw red and let his cat’s rage consume him.
* * * *
“Stop.” Kaitlyn had screamed the word ten times now, not a small, girly squeal, but a bellow of rage. Had her men gone insane?
“Will you please stop them?” She screamed to Aiden alone this time, but he just held her tight in his arms, her back pressed to his chest as her father and Sean continued to snarl, spit and wrestle each other.
“One of them is going to get hurt, Aiden.” She switched tactics and tried reason.
“They are not really trying to kill each other or Sean would have already succeeded. They’re doing the feline equivalent of a dominance display.”
“A pissing contest?” Kaitlyn had to trust that Aiden would know if that changed and relaxed a little. Sean was really the most beautiful cougar she had ever seen. He was a tall man, six foot seven or eight, and his cat was similarly big. She’d guess he stood five feet high at the shoulder. With a pale silver grey coat and black markings, he was lovely. So lovely. So angry.
Her father’s smaller panther was losing the fight. He had blood dripping slowly from his nose, and he was snarling at Sean from the corner he was backed into. His sides were heaving, whereas Sean stood tall and controlled, not a scratch marring his shining silver coat.
“I believe your father will choose his words more clearly around Sean in the future,” Aiden said. “Why don’t we go and make coffee while Sean finds something for your father to wear.”
“Good idea.” Kaitlyn had no desire to see her father butt-naked when he shifted back. Sean, on the other hand…
“I’ve already told him how much you like all those muscles.”
Kaitlyn elbowed Aiden in the stomach and felt her cheeks heat as he kissed the top of her head. “So unfair to use your powers against me.” He set her down near a chair and prepared the coffee.
By the time Sean and her father walked into the kitchen, both she and Aiden were seated at the big table, sipping their hot coffee. Sean walked straight to Kaitlyn and picked her up. He kissed her quickly, then sat in her chair with her on his lap. Her father looked at her with sadness and shame in his eyes. Is he that ashamed of me?
“I need to tell you that I’m sorry, Kaitlyn,” Ray said. He moved over to the table and sat down heavily in the chair opposite. “For not telling you everything.”
Sean’s growl vibrated through her body. She grasped his arms where they wrapped around her middle. She didn’t want him to attack her father again.
“And I’m sorry for my cruel words.” The look he gave her was sorrowful. “Your mother hurt me very badly. But that’s no reason to take it out on you.”
“Then why did you? I’ve never done anything to warrant your anger.” She was so angry and hurt that she began to shake with the force of her inner turmoil. Sean held her tighter, and it felt good to have him surrounding her. It helped to soothe the hurt her father’s words had inflicted. Aiden clasped one of her hands in his, the silent show of support calming her.
“Honestly,” Ray said, shaking his head, “I think I was jealous.”
“Jealous?” Kaitlyn couldn’t conceive of a single reason why he’d be jealous of her.
“I saw how much your two mates loved you and it hurt that your mother hadn’t loved me like that. I’d always told myself that it must have been because vampires were cold and incapable of love, but your vampire’s obvious devotion showed me that wasn’t the case. She just couldn’t love me.”
She had nothing to say to that. She’d never met her mother, so could neither agree with his assessment nor reassure him that it wasn’t true. Kaitlyn felt like she was going to fly apart, she had so many differing emotions bottled up inside her. “You were wrong to take that out on me.”
“I know that, Kaitlyn. I’m sorry.” Her father looked it, too. She was angry at him for all the lies, angry at the vampires who’d attacked her and happier than she’d ever dreamed possible. She took a calming breath and tried to stop her emotions from overwhelming her.
“Thank you for letting me tell her myself,” Ray said. He’d directed that at Aiden, who simply nodded at Ray. Aiden’s mouth was set in hard line, his jaw moving slightly as he ground his teeth together.
“Thank you for not killing my father,” Kaitlyn said. When she looked at him, it brought one particular emotion into sharp focus, helping to ground her. She smiled at her vampire mate and knew he would hear her next thought. “I think I like you now. You know? Like, like you.” She smiled wider as his cool demeanor slipped for a second and he almost smiled.
“Don’t get too happy. I may still kill him.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it softly. She felt the tips of his fangs lightly score her flesh, the feeling making her shiver with pleasure. He then licked her hand and rested it on his thigh.
She looked at the back of her hand and saw no mark there, but she was sure he’d just tasted her blood. “And it was more delicious than I even imagined,” Aiden whispered, confirming her suspicions.
“I may still kill him,” Sean said. His words broke her out of her momentary daze. Aiden was lethal in so many ways. She shuddered as he caressed his thumb over the spot he’d just bitten. Lethal.
“Can we please stop thinking about murdering my father? I’d like to hear about my mother first.” She may still be furious with him, but she knew she wouldn’t always feel that way. He was her family and she’d forgive him eventually.
Sean told her father to help himself to coffee. He made it quite clear he wasn’t ready to let Kaitlyn go just yet. When her father sat back at the table with his coffee, he looked more composed.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything, Dad. All you ever told me about my mother was that she left and that I was better off not being tainted by her.” The word he’d used now took on new significance. He still felt great pain at her mother leaving him. She gripped her mates tighter. She couldn’t lose them. She’d die.
“It will never happen, Kaitlyn. I feel the same for you.” Aiden’s reassurance eased the tightness that had built up in her chest. She’d been on the verge of a panic attack at just the thought of losing her mates.
“I still think that. She’s a woman with no heart. But she was my mate.”
“She must have loved you at some stage.” Kaitlyn didn’t know how to word this tactfully. “I mean, you made me.”
Her father’s laugh was brittle. “We fucked once, Kaitlyn.” Sean and Aiden both growled. “I’m not trying to be crude. The day we met we talked for an hour or so, about vampires and shifters, and then we did what nature intended. The mating musk did its job. She was drawn to me. But she left immediately after and I found no scent that would enable me track her.”
“You looked for her, though?” Kaitlyn may have been a hopeless romantic, but she hoped her father hadn’t just let his mate walk away.
“Oh, I looked. I scoured the country for nine whole months, stopping only to sleep. We’d mated. She was my life.”
“Nine months?” Sean asked. “So you found her when Kaitlyn was nearly due?”
“No, she found me. I was in Alaska searching for her when she just appeared in front of me with a baby in her arms.” His smile was genuine. “I couldn’t scent that you were a panther, but I knew you were mine. You were the most beautiful baby ever born.”
Kaitlyn felt the tears fill and overflow her eyes. But she needed to hear it all. She needed to know what happened to her mother. “Then what happened?”
“She told me she couldn’t take you into her coven as they’d kill you for being an abomination.” Kaitlyn couldn’t contain her gasp as pain squeezed her heart. Sean squeezed her tight. Aiden held her hand over his heart. “A miracle. That’s what you are.”
“She thought that?” The words came out as a rasp. Sh
e could hardly breathe through the pain of her mother’s total rejection.
“I nearly ripped her heart out when she spoke those words, but she stopped me. She loved you, but she just couldn’t have you in her world. She told me you would never be accepted in the shifter world, either. She didn’t know if you’d need blood to sustain you.”
“Why didn’t she stay with you?” Kaitlyn could see why she’d been raised alone now. It was sad, but her father had done it to protect her. But she couldn’t understand why her mother couldn’t have been there, too.
“She didn’t say. I’ve just told you everything she said. She was with me for a total of two minutes, and then she left. I’ve never seen her again.”
“You stopped looking for her?” Aiden asked. “Didn’t you feel any need to find her?” He sounded incredulous, and it eased the pain in Kaitlyn’s heart. Aiden would never stop looking for her. He gazed down at her then. “If you left me, I would find you and always watch over you. Even if you didn’t want me as a mate, I’d always be near you.”
“He wouldn’t be alone,” Sean whispered in her ear.
“We met in Venezuela, where I was living with my leap. She found me in Alaska. I assumed she was capable of finding me, should she wish it. We moved around all Kaitlyn’s life to keep her from being noticed as different by other shifters.”
Kaitlyn scented the loneliness and pain coming from her father. Her mother had mated him and then left. They mated for life, which meant he’d be alone until he died. Or until she did.
“Do vampires mate for life?” her father said softly.
“They do,” Aiden said. “She is still alive, or you’d be dead.”
“So they are both just alone now, forever?” She looked at Aiden and saw his brows were creased.
“I think there is much more to this than we know. Vampires are as fiercely protective of their young as cats are. There must have been a compelling reason for her to leave Kaitlyn with you, Ray. I also believe she’s stayed away for Kaitlyn’s safety, not because she doesn’t love you.”
“I don’t know if I’d have survived,” Sean said. “To have half of your soul missing like that.”
“I survived for Kaitlyn,” Ray said. His shoulders slumped and he looked suddenly older to Kaitlyn, older and sadder than she’d ever seen him.
Kaitlyn had to know one final thing about her mother. “What was her name?”
Her father closed his eyes. He scented of great pain. “Isabelle.”
Chapter 13
Councilor Paul Dixon had waited for nightfall before heading to the woman’s home. He was pleased it was winter and the days were short, because the wait for darkness had been almost unbearable. Not that daylight bothered vampires, as the movies always maintained, he just didn’t want any witnesses to the kidnapping.
Selwyn had been wise to choose him for this job. Simon was reckless, and John, well, he’d probably have fucked her while draining her. He was a cruel bastard. No, he would keep the girl alive to bring her to Selwyn. A sip or two wouldn’t kill her. He shuddered in anticipation of feeling so wild and alive again.
Then Selwyn could keep John on a leash and they’d all get to share her blood. Share it for a long, long time. He wanted to repeat that exquisite high her blood had provided over and over again. Hell, he’d be happy to feel like that for eternity. Nothing had ever felt so amazing and he knew he’d never tire of it.
The fact that they’d all experienced the same high had their heads spinning with the possibilities this woman’s blood offered. Selwyn had taken it a step further than his coven, which was why he was their leader. He saw her as an opportunity for making money, and more importantly, for power. With this woman’s blood, they could become the strongest coven in the country. Maybe even the world.
Paul ran right up to the door of Kaitlyn Winter’s apartment. His speed made him invisible to humans and the hallway was dark. No lights were on and he heard no sounds from inside.
Wrenching on the door, the lock broke, the noise loud in the cold night air. He did a sweep of the entire apartment in seconds. She wasn’t there, nor was her car. He was about to settle himself into an armchair in the shabby living room to wait for her when he noticed the light flashing on her answering machine. The number forty-eight flashed every second.
He felt the cold trickle of unease run down his back as he pushed the button to play the messages.
“Kaitlyn, where are you? We were supposed to meet for drinks after work.” It announced the time of recording as eight p.m. Friday.
“Kaitlyn, it’s me again. Where are you? Answer your cell.” Nine p.m. Friday.
And so the messages, from the same unnamed woman, continued until the last message twenty minutes earlier. “If I don’t hear from you in the morning, I’m calling the police. Where are you, dammit?”
Their precious package had not been home since Friday. He didn’t know why she’d fled, nor did it matter. Wherever she was, they’d find her. They’d tasted her blood and they wanted more. There wasn’t a place on earth she could hide from them.
Chapter 14
Over a meal that Sean had cooked for them, Aiden had quizzed Ray Winter on everything he’d discovered about vampires in the years since he’d encountered his mate. He’d learnt nothing at all, except that Kaitlyn carried no shifter scent and that she didn’t need to ingest blood in order to survive. Ray knew nothing that would explain why the Mayor of Lauderville and his coven had attacked Kaitlyn as they had.
“When she applied for the job, she went for an interview and then came back home,” Ray said. “She didn’t hear that she’d been successful for another three weeks.”
“That doesn’t sound like they suspected she was a hybrid,” Sean said. He finished stacking the dishwasher and came to join them at the table.
“No, it doesn’t,” Aiden said. “Perhaps she was just unlucky to have stumbled into their coven. She heard them say they intended to feed from her again.”
Ray slammed his fist down on the table. “I was happy she’d gotten a better job. Shit, I helped her move there.”
“None of that matters,” Aiden said quietly. “When she doesn’t show up for work tomorrow, they’re going to know something has happened and come looking for her. They can’t afford not to in their prominent positions.”
“I know you’ll keep me safe,” Kaitlyn said. She entered the kitchen, having donned a warm sweater for their trip to meet Caleb and the other members of the pride at the tavern in town.
“That we will, baby.” Sean swept Kaitlyn up into his arms and kissed her as they walked out the door.
“He’s an enthusiastic fellow,” Ray mumbled, following them outside.
If they hadn’t known she was a hybrid when they hired her, they would now know she wasn’t completely human.
Aiden had only had the smallest taste of her blood, and it had tasted like nothing he’d ever come across. The rich berry scent of her called to him as his mate, but that scent didn’t carry into her blood. No, her blood was different. Her blood was liquid life.
The essence of a thousand life-forces flowed through her veins. He had felt the surge of vitality that just two drops had given him. Those four men had nearly drained her. They knew she was special and would come for her for that reason alone.
Ray talked about his brief time with Kaitlyn’s mother on the drive to town, and Aiden heard in her thoughts that Kaitlyn felt great sorrow for her father, but was no longer angry with him. She was a kind and forgiving person, as he’d experienced firsthand. Ray had kept her heritage a secret to protect her, and Aiden couldn’t hate him for that. He was keeping secrets for the same reason right now.
* * * *
The Outpost Tavern was a huge bar, with a stage area for live performances and a massive dance floor. The place was completely devoid of humans tonight, Aiden scented only shifters.
“Sean,” said a striking woman, who looked to be in her mid-fifties. “Introduce us to your mate.” The woman was
bouncing on the spot, her eyes bright amber with her happiness.
“Mom, Pops, this is Kaitlyn Winters.” Aiden smiled as Kaitlyn was swept off her feet by a huge older man and crushed in a bear hug.
“Good to finally meet you, Kaitlyn.” Aiden was about to wrest her from the embrace when Sean’s dad put her back on her feet. “Call me Geoffrey, and my wife Barbara.”
“Thank you.” Kaitlyn managed, before Sean’s mom ran forward and hugged her, too.
“I don’t see any mating mark, Sean,” Barbara said, sweeping aside Kaitlyn’s hair and looking at her neck. “I’m not getting any younger, you know? I want to be able to bounce some grandchildren on my knee before arthritis sets in.”
Sean removed Kaitlyn from his mother’s clutches and tucked her against his side. “Mom, you’re embarrassing Kaitlyn and we don’t get arthritis.” Sean smiled broadly down at Kaitlyn. Aiden didn’t need to read his mind to see how deeply he loved their mate.
Aiden walked over and wrapped his arm around Kaitlyn’s other side. May as well “beard the lioness in her den.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Marland…” Aiden was crushed against a hard chest, his back resoundingly slapped.
“It’s good to meet you, son. Can I call you son? We’re so happy you’ve both found your mate.” Aiden heard the man sniff. “Call me Geoff or Pop, whatever you like, Aiden. Welcome to the family.” Cats really are an extraordinary race.
Geoffrey was pushed aside, so Sean’s mother could embrace him. They then stepped quickly back as Caleb approached. Sean introduced Kaitlyn’s father to Caleb and his parents before Caleb called the meeting to order.
Caleb was concise and succinct as he explained to his mixed pride about the existence of vampires. The room filled with exclamations of disbelief and shouts of denial. Once Caleb had silenced everyone with a roar that shook the whole building, he went on to deliver the equally shocking news that vampires also had the ability to mate with shifters.
A Thousand Years Dead [Pine Falls 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 7