So why is she out there on her own? Why isn’t she here with me right now, waiting in my bed? Why am I torturing myself like this?
Because he was Harlan Bounds and… he wasn’t fucking good enough for her.
His phone vibrated again. Snarling at the wall, he snatched it out of his pocket and held it to his ear.“What?”
It was the head of his small security force, a vampire soldier he had personally trained named Atticus Caldwell. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Bounds, but I thought you might want an update on your… on Miss North.”
Harlan’s spine snapped straight. The roots of his fangs pulsed with red hot aggression when he demanded, “What’s wrong?”
There was a curious note in Atticus’s cool voice when he answered, “Well, nothing as far as we can tell.”
Relief mingled with temper. “Then why are youcallingme?”
“I just thought you might want to know that her car’s still here.”
That drew him up short. “What? Why? She went home.”
“That’s what the sensors said, yeah, but about an hour and a half ago she came speeding back onto the estate, parked with markedly less skill than usual, and ran onto the grounds like Grim’s hounds were on her heels.” There was a slight pause, then, with obvious amusement, “If you’d like me to hunt her down and—”
“You fucking take one look at Zia and I’ll make your fangs into a pair of earrings for her, understood?” Harlan sucked in a breath through clenched teeth.Calm.“Where is she now?”
Atticusdefinitelyhid a laugh under a cough before he answered, “Wards say she’s in the rose garden. Gods know what she’s doing out there. There isn’t any light for her to work under.”
Harlan was already turning away from the garage. Breaking into a swift jog, he cursed himself for not thinking of her. Of course he should have had lights installed. He should have had them installed all over the estate. She was a witch, not a vampire, and if she was going to stay on the estate, she’d need certain accommodations—
Forcing that train of thought aside, he snapped, “Why didn’t you tell me immediately? She’s been out in the dark this whole time. What if she’s hurt?”
Why else would she stay past sundown, when she knew the gates closed? Certainly it wasn’t to seehim.He’d watched her skitter past the manor enough times to know that she was terrified of the very idea of him.
“She could have broken her ankle on the steps,” he raged, moving faster. The icy wind buffeted his sweat-slicked skin like a wave of pinpricks. “She could have hit her head, or dislocated a shoulder, or had a seizure, and you waited anhour and a fucking halfto tell me?”
“Boss, I’ve been calling you every five minutes since sundown.”
“Well, you should have fucking come and gotten me, then!” Harlan ripped the phone away from his ear and shoved it back into his pocket. Breaking into a full sprint, he charged down the most direct path through the dense trees to reach the garden.
Fear was a deep, dark pressure in his belly.
He’d seen the very worst the world had to offer without so much as a flinch. He’d killed and he maimed and he had been left for dead on more than one occasion.
And yet the idea of Zia — beautiful, soft Zia — suffering for even a moment made bile churn in his stomach.
It waswrong.Everything in him rebelled against the thought of her coming to harm, of her sitting alone in the dark and crying out for help while he ignorantly continued on with his night.
If she was yours, this wouldn’t have happened,the base part of him raged.If you took what you wanted, she would be safe in the manor right now, dressed in silk and your bite.
He ran faster, past the two circular fountains in the lawn and around the stout hedges.
The manor rose up in the darkness, perfectly visible to him in shades of blue and gray and violet. Harlan took the shortest route to the back — by running through the house.
Bursting out of the back door, he came to a sudden halt in the small landscaped sitting area attached to the kitchen to scan the patio. There was no sign of her, and the wind had swept away any lingering traces of her luscious scent.
Rose garden,he thought, vaulting over a decorative iron fence to land on the stone patio.Please be in the rose garden.
If she was hurt, he had a healer on call and could get her help in less than an hour. Everything would be fine. She would be fine. And after she was fixed up, he’d do whatever it took to convince her to give an old, worthless vampire a chance, because he was officially done denying the call of his anchor.
And I’ll have some fucking lights installed!
Instead of bothering with the long flight of bisected stairs down to the gardens, Harlan grasped the railing and swung his legs over to drop himself down onto the gravel path.
