~ Dakota ~
Dakota woke with a start, bolting up in bed as her hands scrambled for a weapon. Almost immediately her breathing slowed as she realized she was safe and sound in her own home. She had several reoccurring bad dreams. One was of Alek shriveled and near death and another was of her son being abducted and killed just before she could get to him. Dakota was hunter, a modern day private detective and many would say she was the best in the republic. Her services were always in demand but she had known the devastating loss of not finding a person in time.
She slid out of bed and walked over to the large open window empting onto her upstairs balcony. As she walked out into the cool night air the white sheer curtains drug over her taunt weary body. She stood with both hands on the railing overlooking her posh estate and realized that all the money in the world could not keep her son safe. Life was random and unpredictable but there were things she could and did do to stack the cards in his favor.
Jared was only seventeen years old but already she had let him apprentice with her professionally. The skill set he was in the process of acquiring would help him maintain his own safety and the safety of those he loved like his little love mate Slelen Sharden. Selene was small and precious and Dakota found herself growing quite attached to the child.
Her son, Jared had also consented to have a tracking chip inserted under his skin to facilitate locating him if was ever lost or abducted. Dakota herself had one implanted as did most security conscious hunters. Modern technology was an advantage for hunters and most were very tech savvy.
Dakota sat down on a lounge chair and inhaled the crisp air deeply as she thought about how hunting had gone from a low status, poorly paid, thankless task to one of the most glamorous, high profile, well paid, respectable professions on planet earth in the course of her lifetime. Her cases were often profiled in news shows and fan web sites dedicated to tracking her success rates. She was extremely well known and kids had posters of her in her hunting leathers hanging in their rooms and school lockers. It felt strange to receive recognition primarily for hunting missing persons and solving crimes the police couldn’t manage.
The more she thought about it the more she realized people loved to root for an underdog and locating a missing person alive was always a long shot. She marveled at how adept she had become at snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in that regard. She was a damn good hunter and out of the dozens of cases she had taken over the years there had only been three she did not find alive and two of those involved people who were dead before she had even been brought into the case. She had an exceptionally good success rate and this is what people were willing to pay big bucks for. In the world of hunting the better you were the more you got paid. It was as simple as that.
However for Dakota, it was much more than money that drove her. She was a typical alpha female and it was all about pushing herself harder and faster and proving she was smarter than everyone else. She absolutely thrived on the fast pace and puzzling together clues in real time. She wasn’t particularly motivated by fame or wealth but for some reason she just had to know to know deep down inside that she was the best. She had absolutely no idea why that was so important to her but she was very aware it was the force that drove her to what some had described as single minded determination. Maybe it had something to do be with being abducted herself as an adolescent. It had been a harrowing experience for her but one that turned out to be the most important events of her life because she was rescued by Jared’s father.
One of her last hunts had been for a prominent local area business man, Alek Shardon. His hunt had been the longest and most stressful of her entire life and spending time with him afterwards had been very confusing. When the target had been acquired he was medically unstable and she spent two weeks living with him, fresh feeding him and in essence nursing him back to health. Somewhere along the way they had developed feelings for each other.
Hunting was difficult because in order to successfully resolve a case she often had to become intimately aquatinted with the target. Getting to know Alek had been a genuine pleasure because everything she learned told her he was spectacularly nice person. Then meeting him in person when he was injured and vulnerable and nursing him back to health had left her feeling conflicted.
Her attraction to him had been both intense and immediate, leading to some sexy love play that still haunted her dreams and filled her with hot desire. She had spent a lot of time thinking of him. She missed pretty much every single thing about him and most especially his company and his sense of humor. Somehow when they were together they just clicked.
She worried that it was the result of the hunting and all the sexy fresh feeding so she had asked for a two month cooling off period to give them both time to sort out if their feelings were real. The two months were now up and Dakota was in knots about seeing him again.
She realized her desire for him had not decreased but rather it had increased to the point of being almost unbearable. She worried that once the glamour of being rescued by a famous hunter wore off he would quickly forget her. She noticed that he never approached her and she thought that either he had long since forgotten about her or he was waiting the two months as she asked.
She had thought of calling him a time or two but realized he never dated human women and her showing ongoing interest would probably just make him feel conflicted and uncomfortable if come to find out he wasn’t interested in her. She was well aware of just how uncomfortable socially awkward situations made him so she decided to leave well enough alone.