Chapter Two
It’s happening.
Dori sat straight up from the couch she’d been dozing on. Finally, it was time. Her magic was telling her that the clock had just begun on her first project, and now there was only so much time she had to manipulate her clients into making all the right decisions—or the Happy Ever After they sought would slip out of their reach forever.
“Ma! I gotta go out,” she yelled towards the kitchen as she gathered her phone and shoved it into her purse.
“Where are you going? I thought we were going to make some popcorn and watch Game of Thrones?” Her mom frowned as she popped her head around the corner to look at her. “If you take off, I’m still watching it. I won’t be the only one at work tomorrow not knowing what happened!”
“Fine,” Dori sighed, throwing her hands up, “I’ll watch it when I get back—alone, like a leper. But you’d better make damned sure that you don’t accidentally hit delete after you watch it, Mom!”
“I told you, I didn’t do that on purpose! It’s just natural instinct to delete the shows on the PVR once you’ve watched them.”
“I can never get back those episodes of Penny Dreadful! I only watched them once, and now that the last season is done there’s no telling how long it’ll be before they replay the entire series.” She pouted, and this time it was her mom’s turn to roll her eyes.
“Why don’t you just stream them online?”
Dori gasped, her hand coming up to her throat in shock. “What am I, some kind of hipster who’s trying to stick it to the ‘man’ by refusing to pay for cable? Ew, Mom, shame on you. I’m not watching Eva Green on a seventeen-inch computer screen like an animal. She’s better than that—we both are.”
“Fine! I’ll wait exactly two hours … but if you’re not back by ten I’m watching it!”
“Cool.” Dori smiled and headed for the front door, “See ya at 9:55—and don’t forget to make fresh popcorn!”
****
Halle looked back over her shoulder towards the ground that was two floors below her. Perhaps she had miscalculated on her inherent feline abilities to “always land on her feet”. If she dropped from this height, she had a feeling that her curvy body might end up in a chalk outline on the pavement instead of making the sneaky getaway she’d intended. She was hanging from her second story bedroom window and, to be quite honest, was more than a little bit stuck.
Well, fuck me, she thought.
Just as she was contemplating whether or not to alert her father’s guards and call for help, the window at her knees opened up and strong arms pulled her back inside the house that used to be her safe haven.
“What in the hell are you doing out there, Halle?” Tavin said, as he put her down on the couch in the living room just in time for her father to storm into the room.
“For Goddess's sake, Halle, are you trying to get yourself killed?” her dad yelled as he shut the window behind them.
“I might as well die. You’re condemning me to a life of enslavement. A life without a true mating by agreeing to give me to that criminal!” she yelled back, furious at the announcement her father had made at dinner tonight.
Halle almost felt bad at her accusation when she saw the look of torment on her father’s face before he looked away. She knew it couldn’t have been easy for him to agree to the terms of the Coven Master’s request. The entire Briggs family knew that fateful day when the leader of the North American coven had just “happened” to be in the right place at the right time to rescue Halle’s father from a group of rogue vampires, that one day he’d come forward to claim the blood debt and they’d be powerless not to agree to whatever he asked of them.
In the paranormal community, Halle’s family was known for two things: her father was the alpha of the largest leopard pard on the west coast, and that the Briggs line was one of a few magical families that seemed to be able to procreate across species borders outside of a true mating.
This meant that Halle, being the only daughter of a very powerful man, with the eggs to match no less, was a pretty hot commodity. Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t because of who she was as a person. It was all about the uterus. Growing up she’d never even been allowed to date anyone who wasn’t preapproved by her parents, which left a pretty big gap in her social life experience. Between her father and her brother scaring the ever-living shit out of any boy who looked at her with interest, she was now about to be carted off to a strange vampire as a virgin bride.
She’d only seen the Coven Master Conrad Dair that once, at her parents’ party, and had been instantly creeped out by how intently he’d stared at her, like if he looked hard enough he could actually impregnate her right there in front of everyone. She knew that she would be a means to an end for him. He hadn’t even had a conversation with her and yet he wanted to marry her?
Yeah, right. Halle might have been inexperienced, but she wasn’t stupid. That leech wanted to turn her into his own little hybrid breeding machine, and she wasn’t going to have any of it.
“You know we would never accept this if we had any choice, Halle.” Her father’s tormented voice brought tears to her eyes. “But we cannot win in a war with the vampires, and his blood debt must be answered. I’m so sorry, darling. If I could go back, I would have accepted my fate and not taken his help when offered.”
That statement from her father had both of them tearing up. She didn’t want to marry a stranger, but she couldn’t wish her father had died that night. Halle knew she had to walk into the custody of Conrad’s guards tomorrow of her own free will, for her family and for the rest of their pard. She’d just have to come up with another way to foil her fiancé’s plans that would keep her family off the hook. How hard could that be?