Daphne nodded, her eyes sad.
“Can you take care of her for a second?” I asked Dallan, who nodded and held his arms out so that I could transfer my mate to him before approaching Ambrose.
“How is he doing?” I asked, kneeling down next to Effie.
“He’ll live,” Effie answered brusquely as she prodded at the wound making Ambrose wince in pain. “But the bolt sliced through his vocal chords, so those will take time to heal. A silent Ambrose might be an improvement though, so I say we should keep him this way.”
Ambrose shot her a dry look as if to say‘ha-ha, very funny.’
“Thank you,” I told him, leaning in close so he could see my face better. “Thank you for not leaving her alone and protecting her when I couldn’t. I’ll return the favor one day.”
The elf’s dark eyes swam with emotion before he nodded and looked away, seemingly embarrassed by the praise.
“All right, everyone, once the human authorities get here to deal with these assholes we’ll get loaded up and head home!” Dallan barked as the sounds of sirens echoed in the distance.
Daphne reached for me as I approached again, the tenseness in her shoulders melting away as soon as she was in my arms again.
“Let’s go home,” she murmured, burying her face in the crook of my neck as she let her eyes flutter shut.
“You got it, dragonfly,” I said, relief over having her back in my arms again almost palpable as we climbed back up into Magnus’s saddle.
* * *
Three weeks later…
“She always meant for you to have this place,” Hal, the head groundskeeper of Daphne’s mother’s estate explained. “So, when you never came back after getting married I started to get worried.”
It had taken Daphne three weeks to completely heal and start to put together the pieces of the life she’d left behind on the East coast.
Thankfully, she seemed to heal much faster than normal humans did now that we were bonded, and Effie had sped up the process even more with her potions. The tree nymph seemed to be taking Daphne’s kidnapping the hardest, throwing herself into her work and hardly leaving her apartment except for when my mate or Dallan managed to drag her out.
I was pretty sure Effie’s father had said something to her before he left, but she wouldn’t tell us what it was.
“I didn’t even know it was still owned by me,” Daphne said as she walked next to Hal, her arm tucked in the crook of the old man’s elbow.
“Well that ex-husband of yours made it nearly impossible for me to contact you at all,” Hal muttered with a frown. “He blew through every year or so, trying to see what he could filch to sell and I’m sorry to say that I didn’t have enough staff to keep everything safe.”
“You’ve done more than enough, Hal,” Daphne assured him, shooting me a soft smile over her shoulder before turning back to Hal. “And I hope you and your children stay on as caretakers of this place for as long as you like. My mother thought of you all as her family.”
The man seemed to sag with relief, like he hadn’t been sure whether or not Daphne would come in and kick them out of the home they’d lived in for nearly thirty-five years.
The rest of the real estate portfolio, and the stocks would be sold off as Daphne had no desire to manage any of it. She’d already made the decision to donate a large chunk of her inherited fortune to various charities helping women out of situations of domestic violence and also animal sanctuaries that desperately needed the money.
When we’d discussed it, she’d told me that she’d basically written the money off a long time ago, but if we ever had children she wanted them to be able to one day play on the estate we were currently walking through.
It was an idyllic place, buried deep in the mountains of western Massachusetts, like something out of a fairytale. It wasn’t as large as some mansions, but it still boasted several bedrooms, bathrooms, and a full stable.
I wouldn’t have blamed her if she asked me to move from Port Haven to here, as it held so many fond memories of her childhood and her mother. But Daphne had set me straight about that as soon as I brought it up.
“Port Haven is my home now, no matter how much I love the Mass house, I love it here more,” she’d told me firmly, smiling fondly at my small kitchen which we were eating breakfast in as we discussed our future. “It’s the place I met you. No other place could hold a candle to it.”
So I’d just raised my hands in surrender and let her take the lead. We’d flown out to Massachusetts a few days ago so she could show me everything about her childhood.
I’d spent very little time on the East Coast since immigrating to the United States in 1925. The West had always been more monster friendly, after all, but one thing that the East coast had on the West was their autumn. I would never forget how the world seemed to explode into a million shades of red, yellow, and orange around us.
For his part, Mike was still in the hospital with a broken back and legs. He was lucky to be alive, but would most likely need to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. I didn’t feel bad for him, especially once Daphne told me the real reason behind his kidnapping of her. Frankly, the bastard was lucky I didn’t break into his hospital room and crush his skull like a watermelon.
There would be a trial for him and the other hunters. The supernatural side of the government was pissed that they had attacked me within the limits of a classified sanctuary, not to mention kidnapping Ambrose. Elves were a hyper protected class, even in supernatural society and that meant retribution was in order.
