“You were suggesting like that?” I checked.
“Something milder actually so we could maybe get more out of them,” she drawled when I hit send. She held her hands up in surrender when I turned on her. “But I get it. You won’t risk Aurora and what you can have for a new life.”
“No, not ever. Always remember that,” I warned her, not caring that darkness filled her eyes as well.
Just to make my point, I shattered Connor’s knees and ankles while she watched. She might be scary too, but… We recognized our own.
And she should never doubt that keeping me as a friend was better for her.
22
Aurora
I wasn’t a fan of Creed keeping secrets from me, but I knew enough to know it was about the deal he made to help the government handle situations in NYC. So I could be a bit patient with that.
A bit.
As long as things with him and his lion kept getting better. It had been a few more days since his follow-up appointment and I was meeting that lion shifter’s mate. The one who was a doctor and his mate was a vampire. I figured after my support group was as good of a time as any.
But hopefully this went better than my meeting. I was sure a reporter had joined the group because we had a new member and she was a bit too fixated on me. I would have to bring it up to my security and maybe even Creed. It seemed paranoid but… Maybe not.
“Thank you for taking the time to meet with me,” I said after Kathryn introduced herself to me.
“Thank you for offering to buy me a nice lunch for my trouble and snagging us reservations at such a hot spot,” she replied graciously. “I always try to get out more, but with a toddler it just gets overwhelming.”
I knew it wasn’t about the money being the mate of a successful doctor, and I was fairly sure she had some business of her own, but it was showing that I was willing to appreciate her. I took in the signs of exhaustion and assessed her.
“I remember how hard it was even if centuries ago,” I told her gently. “Do you have any support here?”
She flinched and went to brush me off but then sighed. “My family cut me off completely when I fell for a shifter. My mate doesn’t know it’s completely and how vampires are forever.” She cleared her throat and reached for the water already placed at her setting. “It’s been difficult uprooting and being transplanted all the way to Atlanta of all places.”
It was something to bring up with Ellie and maybe her people later.
“It is, but now you know someone and I love babies.” I cleared my throat when she gave me a suspicious look. “I understand if you can’t move past my sins and—”
“What you did to survive centuries ago isn’t for me to judge, and I certainly don’t know a fraction of the story,” she said firmly. “I’m just shocked because I didn’t grow up around helpful vampires.”
So few of us did.
“Hopefully, more of us can help change that,” I said gently and then asked her how things were going with her young baby. I nodded as she let the floodgates open. We ordered and she was still going on about how it was just never enough between the baby needing milk and blood from her by the time our salads arrived.
“But I still want to seem sexy and feminine to my mate,” she admitted. “That’s why I hesitated to speak with you. I felt like such a fraud being someone to counsel you when I feel so…”
Lost. Fake. Insecure.
All of the above.
But it did give me an idea on how to help and to change a bit of our business model. There were different needs for new mothers—especially new vampire mothers.
“Your mate is a good man. He spoke like a proud papa and didn’t care at all that his firstborn wasn’t a lion,” I told her gently. “Simply a healthy baby and his mate was a miracle. I know how to help, sweet girl.”
“I was supposed to help you,” she rasped, looking beside herself.
“No one said you still couldn’t,” I reminded her with a chuckle. “I will have many questions being mated to a powerful lion.”
She snorted and then apologized. “He’s more than powerful, Aurora. Even my mate said he was a whole other level.”
I accepted that and listened to her advice as we ate. All of it was helpful, but I also gave her a few suggestions as well since the magics had noted how I’d bonded well with Creed’s lion. It gave me a few ideas, and after texting Creed that I was adding a few stops to my day, I swung by where my cousins were staying.
