Chapter Four
Tuesday, Lucas worked the dayshift with the FRU so he and Burnett were together, staking out a mischievous Fae who was using his power of persuasion to swindle elderly humans out of their life savings.
Sitting in the passenger seat of Burnett’s Mustang, Lucas, in an all-around shitty mood, remained quiet.
His phone beeped with a text. Pulling it out, he found himself hoping and half expecting it would be Kylie. Sooner or later, she had to come to her senses. He understood her being upset about his schedule. He was just as upset.
He looked at his phone’s screen. It wasn’t Kylie. It was Chantel, the Council’s secretary, informing him that he needed to be present for yet another meeting at five p.m.
This was just freaking fabulous. No doubt it would only add fuel to Kylie’s farfetched assumptions. Not that he would tell her about this. He’d already said too much. Stuck his foot so far into his mouth that he’d bruised his liver. Or was it his heart?
He even considered being the one to apologize first, but he couldn’t. She wasn’t talking to him. He pressed back into the seat, his shoulders now rock hard.
“Everything okay?” Burnett asked.
The two-word question told Lucas that Kylie had been talking to Holiday. Or maybe it wasn’t the question, but Burnett’s trespassing tone—as if he was stepping on private property. The vampire wasn’t normally a trespasser.
Lucas knew Kylie and Holiday were close, but he preferred to keep his dirty laundry in his own basket.
“I’d be better if Kylie wasn’t going around telling everyone about our problems.”
Burnett had the decency to look guilty. “Girls talk.”
“And now you’ve gotten your marching orders to set me straight, right?”
The vampire flinched. “I don’t take marching orders. But yes, Holiday mentioned Kylie spoke with her.”
Lucas pressed his palms down his legs. “And you feel you need to address this with me?”
“I’m never one to meddle, and if you prefer not to hear my thoughts, I’ll keep them to myself.”
“Thank you.” Lucas went back to mulling over his problems.
Burnett went back to staring at the home where William Walton lived.
“I’m sorry.” Lucas exhaled through his teeth. “It’s just frustrating.”
“Any problem with a woman is,” Burnett said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, but this one . . . It’s ridiculous.” Lucas blurted out. “She’s upset that the Council has been requiring so much of my time. And now she’s got it in her head that they are plotting to come between us.”
“And you don’t agree?” Burnett asked.
“That they are taking too much of my time, yeah. That they are plotting to break us up, no.”
His boss and part owner of Shadow Falls leaned back in his seat and stretched out his legs. “I thought it was clear that they preferred you to find a were mate.”
“Prefer, yes. But if the Council has a problem, they deal with it. They don’t conspire or concoct underhanded plans.”
“Yet Kylie doesn’t seem the type to jump to unmerited assumptions.”
“I know. Which is why I’m waiting for her to come to her senses.”
“Was that her texting?” Burnett fidgeted with the steering wheel almost as if playing nonchalant. Which he was, but why was it bothering Lucas now?
“No. It was the Council.”
The vampire glanced his way. His left eyebrow arched up. “They need to see you again?” The look on Burnett’s face said it all.
“Not you, too.” Lucas moaned.
Burnett shifted in his seat and stared out the window. “Holiday says they’re also sending you on a two-week sabbatical tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” He said in lieu of saying, “So what?”
“And you don’t find this suspicious?”
“They’re being difficult. They don’t agree with my ideas on certain issues, so they’re hoping some time with my inner wolf will change my mind.”
“Will it?”
“No,” Lucas said.
“But you’re going to do it?”
“Yes, because I have their word that afterwards they’ll listen to my reasoning.”
Burnett started rolling up his cuffs, another indifferent–looking move that felt off. “Do these issues have anything to do with mixed relationships?”
Lucas’s shoulders hardened to the point his tendons in his neck felt stretched. “Yes, but it’s always the main issue. That doesn’t mean . . . You just don’t know how the Council works.”
“No, but I know how you work.” He shouldered back in his seat as if the car was too small.
Lucas stared at him. “What’s that mean?”
“Just that I know if they told you that you had to break up with Kylie to retain your place on the Council, you’d tell them they could kiss your ass.”
“Exactly. So why can’t Kylie see that?”
“But they haven’t told you that,” he said, as if that was supposed to mean something.
“And your point is?” Lucas’s tone lost a bit of patience.
“That they know how you work, too. They know if they gave you the ultimatum you would choose Kylie. So they haven’t forced your hand.” He gave the steering wheel another pass with his palm. “At least not verbally. They have other ways to get what they want.”
“So you’ve bought in to Kylie’s conspiracy theory?”
“I haven’t bought in to anything. This is my own logic talking. One that perhaps you refuse to see because then the ultimatum would be real. And I don’t think you want to have to choose. They know that, too. So they are making that choice for you. Or should I say, they are forcing Kylie to put the ultimatum out there. Making her the bad guy.”
“That’s ridiculous. Kylie is as important to me as Holiday is to you. There is no competition between her and the Council. Down deep she knows that.”
“And yet how often have you allowed the Council to intrude on your time? Time that you’d have spent with Kylie.”
“I told you, it’s just a rough patch. It won’t always be like this.”
Burnett shrugged, not so much as if he agreed with Lucas, but as if to say, “Believe what you want.”
And Lucas would. Non weres just didn’t understand the Council.
Burnett settled back in his seat and went back to staring out the window. “Here he is!” The vampire popped his knuckles and slowly eased forward, his eyes never moving from the man parking a new Mustang.
“At least he has nice taste in cars,” Burnett muttered.
Lucas watched the perp walking to the house. He waited for Burnett to tell him the plan.
The misbehaving fae, looking a bit too confident, glided up the walkway. Burnett pressed a hand onto his thigh and looked at Lucas. “I can tell by looking at him that he’s going to run.”
“Then I’ll catch him.” Lucas’s mood was conducive to a hard run and maybe even a fight.
• • •
Lucas had gotten what he wanted. He’d chased the guy for two blocks just to draw it out. Not that it helped his mood. Now after practically no sleep, he moved in the predawn air. The sun threatened to rise, but the night’s darkness clung to trees. Insects played their morning chorus. A few owls called to the night as if trying to beat the sunrise.
He hadn’t gotten home until almost one in the morning. The time with the Council grew so tiring that both Kylie’s and Burnett’s belief that the calls were ploys almost seemed possible. Almost.
During a meeting break, deciding to be the bigger person, he’d texted Kylie. Want to talk to you before I go. Miss you.
She hadn’t texted back. Damn, that stung.
Somewhere around three in the morning, after tossing and turning, he made up his mind that he wasn’t leaving without seeing her. At four, he gave up trying to sleep and started there.
He got to the turn-off to her cabin. A skunk, followed by four baby skunks, pranced across the path. Their nose-to-butt positions and coordinated pace created a black and white chain. The mother glared at him and hissed. In unison, all the babies did the same.
“Not a lover of skunk meat,” he said and let the creatures pass.
He moved up to Kylie’s window as he did so often, and put his thumbs under the lip of the window to push it open. It didn’t move. Was it really locked?
She never locked her bedroom window. And to do so could only mean one thing. She didn’t want him entering. Didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want to see him. Didn’t want to say goodbye.
Since when had she become so irrational? Angry, he shot around the cabin to the front door. Grabbing the knob, he found it was locked, too.
Not wanting to believe it, he gave it another try. Still locked. His fury faded, and concern took up residence in chest. Was she that mad? Sure, this time away from her was inconvenient, but it wasn’t so bad that it would affect what they had. They were life mates, and they were in this for forever.
Right?
When the thread of doubt wrapped around his heart and started choking the life out of what he believed to be true, he became even more determined to see her.
He could not, would not leave until he spoke with her.
He looked to the right and saw Miranda’s window was opened an inch.
As far as he was concerned, that was an invitation.
When he lifted it, he heard her bedroom door whoosh open. Had some heard him? He pulled himself up. Miranda sat up in her bed, sleepy-eyed and not overly concerned and just a bit guilty. Had she left the window open on purpose?
Della, however, looked slightly more than disturbed.
The vampire with sensitive hearing stood in the doorway in her signature pissed-off pose. Leaning more weight on her right leg, she had one hand placed high on her hip. Her chin, angled up a quarter of inch higher than normal, sent a don’t-mess-with-me message. Even worse were her eyes, a potentially dangerous lime-green color, typical for vampires in attack mode.
“You’ve got balls,” Della said.
“Yup. Two of them,” he grumbled and walked right past her, only slightly worried the vamp would turn on him.
She didn’t. “Good thing I kind of like you,” she hissed to his back.
He walked up to Kylie’s door, praying it wasn’t locked. But if it was, he was knocking.
It wasn’t. He pushed it open and walked in.
She rested on her side, and her soft breaths came and went in even intervals. Her hair, long and blond, lay scattered on the pillow. When she slept she looked younger, and his mind took him back eleven years to when he’d lived beside her for a brief time. He’d climbed into her window back then too. She hadn’t known it then, but he’d loved watching her sleep. Loved trying to figure out just what kind of supernatural she was. Wondering why he even cared. Until then, until her, he hadn’t liked girls, but he sure as heck liked her.
She shifted slightly. Her eyes remained closed, lost to slumber. Just seeing her, he became lost as well. Lost in everything he felt for her, lost in fear of losing that everything. How the hell had things gone so bonkers, so fast?
How could she sleep when this thing between them kept him awake? Taking another step, he paused just to study her again. He’d never met anyone more precious, more touchable, more honorable.
Or smarter.
Too smart to believe . . . Or was he the fool?
Could she be right? Could the Council be doing this to just rip them apart? His doubts tap-danced on his conscience. Pushing that thought aside to be analyzed during his commune with nature, he moved in. The only real truth that mattered was Kylie and him.
He lowered himself onto her bed, keeping his moves stealthy—something weres did naturally. She stirred. He studied her pattern. She was chameleon now. She’d told him that she preferred to sleep in chameleon mode.
Her ability to turn into any supernatural was amazing, but she never abandoned her true self. She was as proud of her chameleon heritage as he was of his werewolf culture.
He leaned down and pressed his hand against her cheek. “Hey.”
Instead of rousing slowly as he’d imagined, she shot up, a gasp leaving her throat. Her baby blues blinked at him, then she glanced at the window.
“I used Miranda’s,” he confessed and frowned that Kylie had felt the need to lock him out. “I know you’re mad, but . . . you can’t be that mad. You can’t refuse to see me. We’re meant to be together, you know that.”
“I don’t think your council would agree.” The words came out raw, and hearing them added a heavy weight to his heart.
Were things that bad? “I don’t care what they agree with,” he said. “I love you. And when this vision quest is over there are going to be some changes. I promise you.”
Her eyes brightened, from hope or hurt he didn’t know. His chest cavity shrunk. His sore heart throbbed, bumped against his sharp ribs, slammed against his conscience, and tried to mess with his life plan. The weight in his chest tripled.
No. No. No. He refused to accept that. They were life mates. They would be together. Nothing was going to change that.
“I promise things are going to get better.” He went to touch her again, and she flinched.
“You promised me we would go hiking all day last Sunday. You promised me that we’d be together for the holidays. Why should I believe this promise? Answer me, Lucas. Because I can’t answer it, and it’s killing me.”