I fucking missed her.
"Tell me about your day until you fall asleep. Mine was shitty," I said.
She spent twenty minutes catching me up on the lunch she'd had with her whole family at Kat's cafe, in which Darius acted as their barista and somehow managed to talk not one butseventy-sixpeople into making small, silly bargains with him while they were there.
I wished I'd been there with her.
Just watching her talk was fucking captivating.
When she started dozing off, I stayed on the phone, watching her fall asleep and feeling the gentle tug of her dreams as she did. Rather than slipping into them, I just stared at the woman.
Mywoman
It took me a good twenty minutes with the distance between us, but I took the time to solidify my shadows around her, adding everything I had to the magic curling around my mate so shewould sleep as well as possible. If I couldn't be there to ease the price of her magic completely, I could at least help in that way.
When I finally forced myself to go back to the meeting, I muted my phone but left the call on, so I could peek at my sleeping female whenever I wanted to.
Between the paperwork, financial issues, and demons being demons, the transition from one king or queen to another was always a mess.
It was particularly bad this time, but my mood was significantly better every time I saw Merrily’s sleeping face.
I toldthe vampires in no uncertain terms the next morning that I needed to see my mate and was leaving early in the afternoon to do so.
They all knew who she was, so they feigned support.
The plan went to shit about a half an hour before I was supposed to head out.
Two of the guys who were on the shortlist to become the next vampire royal showed up, already in the middle of a tense, verbal fight. I tried to talk them down, but my usual charm failed me.
Probably because I was fucking pissed that I'd been away from Merrily for so long.
There was a brawl, which turned into a real fight, and we ended up at one of my MMA gyms for a hell of a lot longer than we should've.
When one of the vamps took things too far, we had to take him to a holding cell at the police station while another group rushed the other vampire to the nearest hospital.
I met them at the hospital to make sure the bastard was fine afterward, before going back to the office building with a group of vamps.
My reminder about Merrily going to bed went off just as I reached the door of my borrowed office to look for my car keys.
I dropped my forehead against the thick wood with a quiet thud, misery rolling through me like a fucking river.
Merrily's mind brushed up against mine through the bond, and my misery shifted to guilt.
I forced myself into the office, striding to the desk and looking for the keysunderstacks of paperwork.
"Are you okay?"she asked me.
"Trying to be. I sound like a broken record at this point, but I'm sorry."
"I heard about the fight. The pictures made it look pretty rough. Need meto kill someone for you?"
"Nah. In some ways, it made things easier by wiping two guys off the list of potential leaders."
"Alright. You're not heading home yet, are you?"
"No, I just got back to the office they've loaned me while we figure this shit out. I was about to grab my keys and head home."
"Don't bother."
