My dad always sounded so happy to hear from me. He lived in Montana with my mom in a cabin they’d bought after he retired.
“I heard my wolf today.”
He paused. “Your wolf woke up?”
“I guess so. It was like everything was normal, then she was shoving my vamp aside and howling.”
“Did you get any words from her?” he asked curiously.
“Only one so far.Mine.”
“You found your mate?” he said incredulously.
I winced as I heard him yell across the house at full volume. “Susan! Marilee found her mate!”
My mother made a high pitched squealing sound, then they were both on the phone and I was on speaker.
“Listen, I’m on a job so I only have a few minutes,” I said. “I met a human named Hazel, I’m doing close protection for her while she’s visiting from Canada. For whatever reason, when I saw her my wolf woke up.”
“She was just waiting for you to find your mate,” Dad reassured me. “Now you won’t be able to get her to shut up.”
“Great, my vamp is chatty enough.”
I’m not chatty,the voice I’d been hearing in my head since childhood sounded sullen.I talk to you when it’s important.
Mine!
This came from my wolf, and when I looked up, Hazel was coming out of the bathroom wearing flannel pajamas and toweling her hair. She shouldn’t have looked sexy in oversized flannels, but damned if she didn’t.
“I’m so happy you found your mate,” my mother said. “I can’t wait to hear all about her.”
“It’s new Mom, I don’t even know her myself. But my real question is, how do I manage having two little demons inside me now? It’s disconcerting.”
“They’ll learn to get along,” Dad assured me. “That’s how it was for your cousin Minnie. Her inner beings worked it all out.”
I sighed deeply. “I hope so, because I need to focus on my assignment, not get distracted by vampire wolf politics.”
When I headed back into the hotel room the scent of soap and shampoo was heavy in the air. Hazel sat on the side of her bed, rubbing her long red hair with the towel to wring all the moisture out of it. I had a vision of her spread out on the bed beneath me, her dark red hair fanned around her head like a halo.
“What?”
I looked over at Hazel to find her watching me. “You look weird.”
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I was just thinking about something.”
“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything, but can I ask you some questions about the vampire thing?”
Vampire thingwas an interesting way to refer to my being a different species from her, but I understood that humans didn’t always have the words to describe the supernatural world that they mostly pretended didn’t exist.
“Sure,” I said, sitting on the loveseat.
When she didn’t say anything else I started talking. “How about I start with the truths and myths, then you can ask me any questions that you still have.”
“Okay, thank you.” Hazel seemed relieved.
“First, you should know it’s strictly forbidden for vampires to turn humans into vamps. It’s a crime punishable by death.”
“So you’re not going to bite me then?” she joked.
