Please don’t let me be too late.
Chapter forty-seven
Saiden
Blood no longer pumped through Saiden’s veins. The only thing inside him was pure ice. Or at least that’s how it felt when Bianca waved a hand, and he whipped around in time to see Cora emerge from the office at the back of the warehouse.
No. Not her. It wasn’t possible. His mate was safe at the compound, protected by nearly his entire cadre, all of whom would do anything to keep her from harm.
It had to be a nightmare. He crashed the Porsche and was currently lying half dead and hallucinating on the side of I-5 somewhere.
That was the only logical scenario because it simply couldn’t be the love of his life walking hesitantly toward him. He’d scanned the warehouse. There’s no way he wouldn’t have heard her heart beating. Or smelled her delicious strawberry scent. A scent that now mingled with his own fresh bread aroma, reminding him of their first and only date and the strawberry pie they never got to share.
If the circumstances had been different, he would have spent an hour just drinking her in. She’d been beautiful as a human, but as a vampire she was radiant. Glowing with a self-assurance and vibrancythat made her seem so alive that nobody would ever believe she was undead.
She was incredible, and perfect, and definitelynotsupposed to be here.
“Cora?” he croaked out.
“I’m sorry, Saiden,” his mate whispered when she moved past him to gaze at Bianca. “I thought I could help.”
A crack splintered through his heart. “But how? Why didn’t I smell you?”
Bianca’s smile stretched so wide that she looked like a demented doll with her inhuman grin. “Oh, didn’t I tell you why I picked this place? The previous owner hated that his office was right next to the assembly lines, so he soundproofed it and installed an isolated air system. That combined with all the security cameras made this a perfect home. It’s a shame I’m going to have to burn it down soon to hide your bodies, but we all have to make sacrifices.”
Cora kept her blank eyes glued to Bianca’s face, and it broke Saiden’s heart to see her so submissive.
“Cora, love,” Bianca sang out and wiggled her fingers as if encouraging an errant child to return home. “Come closer.”
Saiden watched Cora move like a puppet, drawn by the lure of Bianca’s voice. Something broke inside him, and the growl that escaped was nothing short of feral.
He took a step forward to pounce on Bianca, but halted when the blonde vamp said, “Cora, dear, won’t you protect me?”
It made him sick to see his mate step in front of Bianca, shielding her from attack.
He stared at the back of Cora’s head, and his brain cycled through his options at top speed. He was faster than either of them. He could draw the knife from his belt and sink it into Bianca’s flesh before theycould stop him. Problem was he had to get the heart. Stabbing her neck or anywhere else would do little more than piss her off, giving her a chance to escape and heal. It had to be a killing blow. Had to be the heart. The only problem was that a far more important heart was currently standing in front of Bianca’s.
“You know I won’t let you leave here with her,” he snarled when Bianca slid one hand around Cora’s waist, pulling his mate tighter to her chest in what looked like a lovers embrace.
“Of course you will. Sure, you could blow us all up, but then your precious Cora would die too. No, I think you’ll do exactly what I want because there’s always a chance that Cora lives this way. A chance that someday she escapes me, or one of your cadre swoops in to save her. Hope, Saiden. That’s your downfall. You have hope.”
Still holding Cora in a death grip with one hand, Bianca slid the long fingers of her other hand into Cora’s hair. She twisted and toyed with the strands, like a cat playing with a bit of string. “My hope died the day that my sire told me his little secret. How he had lied to me. See, I only agreed to let him turn me because I’d spent my mortal life alone, and he promised me a big family. Told me how we could travel the world, finding others who wanted to become vampires. They would become our new family. My children. Eight years he strung me along until finally he was forced to confess. There would be no big family for us. I could choose one person to turn, and that was it.”
Bianca released Cora’s hair and slid her hand down the side of Cora’s cheek.
Saiden wanted to leap forward and snap every one of Bianca’s fingers off for daring to touch his mate. But those sharp nails were too close to Cora’s jugular, and he wasn’t going to have a repeat of the other night.
He would wait for his moment.
“Needless to say,” Bianca continued, her evil villain monologue starting to bore him. “I might have reacted a bit irrationally when I stripped all the skin from his body and roasted him over the hearth. But you know what they say, hell hath no fury like a vampire scorned. And since I was already doomed by your precious Coalition because of that little mistake, I figured that meant I was free. Free to turn whoever I wanted. Free to surround myself with the love of my own devoted family.”
Her voice turned cold then, and the look she gave Saiden over Cora’s shoulder would have been terrifying if her face wasn’t framed with the cutest blond curls. He wondered how many enforcers she’d killed because they underestimated her.
“I kept things reasonable for almost a century,” Bianca droned on. “I only turned one or two a year at most. Then I met someone who opened my eyes. Showed me that I didn’t need to bow to the Coalition’s unnecessary rules. Perhaps I increased a bit in recent years due to their tutelage, but I have never been unreasonable. The trouble is, people like you just won’t leave me in peace. I let my children kill no more than a couple of humans a month and always in a larger city. But every time I start to build my family, one of you has to show up and ruin everything. Now does that sound fair? What do you think, Cora?”
“No, Bianca,” Cora responded as if on a dreamy autopilot.
Her hypnotized voice hit him harder than when she kneed him in the balls, and he ached to grab her, to scream at her to turn around. Just once before he died he wanted to look into her gorgeous golden eyes. He wanted her to see how sorry he was that he’d gotten her into this mess.
