I stayed put. No telling what was going on out there, and I didn’t want to be part of it. Not yet, anyway. I might be okay with Forge’s end result, but his methods were nothing I had to see in person. Knowing he was watching out for me was enough.
I waited for what seemed like forever, before Forge softly knocked on the door. “Selena?”
I ran to unlock it, wondering why, exactly, I was running, and then I inhaled Forge’s rich scent as he caught me in his arms. It was one of those magical, movie-star moments, until it wasn’t, as I head-butted him square in the nose.
“Oof,” he grunted. Since I smashed up against him, I felt his breath go out in a whoosh.
I slid out of his arms and down his body as both of his hands went to his nose. “Shit, that fucking hurt. I’m bleeding.” So much blood was pouring between his fingers that I left him and ran down the hall to get a towel from the kitchen.
By the time I got back, Forge had already stopped bleeding and I was left holding a handful of towels. “Ultra-fast coagulation,” he explained, although the front of his shirt was soaked. He saw my eyes stray to the stain, and chuckled. “Don’t worry; that’s not mine. It’s Dobson’s.”
Okay, the suspense was killing me. “Is he…” Dead? Half-dead? Alive?
“He’ll never bother you again.” Hearing the firm assurance in Forge’s voice made that panicky, restless feeling fade. “What I don’t know is how he gained access to the house in the first place. Or how he knew our schedule.”
The squeamish feeling rushed right back through me.
“He knew when we’d be home,” Forge pointed out pragmatically while my mind was scrambling around trying to figure out if I was happy that Dobson was dead. Jury was still out, although I was warming up to the idea.
“Maybe he followed us home?”
“Doubtful,” Forge said, striding to the computer. “I upgraded the security this past week. Cameras throughout the property, including the road.” He clicked the mouse, then a few keys and a grid of camera views came up on the screen. “I’ll run this back, until… Ah, there you are, you little pissant.”
I didn’t know what Forge was looking at, because I couldn’t see a thing except trees and darkness.
“I’ll slow it down for you.” He hit a button, and all of a sudden, Dobson materialized out of thin air, just like he had moments ago. “We move too quickly for a human to see. He beat us home by a few minutes.”
I watched the Range Rover come up the drive, then stop at the front door. That sick feeling crept through me again as I watched myself get out, acting like I didn’t have a care in the world.
“How do you know he just didn’t follow us here?” I asked, watching Forge and I disappear through the door. “I mean, if he’s really that fast…”
He was flipping through camera angles quicker than I could track, his eyes missing nothing, as he stopped on one screen that showed the intersection halfway between the distillery and here.
“There’s no sight of him there. Not so much as a blip.” He fast-forwarded back to where Dobson appeared in the backyard. “He knew exactly when we’d be pulling up the driveway.”
“Maybe it’s just a coincidence. He could have guessed…”
“Selena,” Forge said softly, pulling me closer to the screen, until I was pressed into him. “He was waiting for us, which means…”
I looked up at him, my stomach sinking. “I know what it means. There’s someone at L&F who sold me out.”
Sadly, that wasn’t our only problem.
“There’s something I have to tell you, Forge. In between the Scottish bloodbath and the plane ride home…I guess I forgot.” How I’d forgotten something this momentous, I didn’t know, but I’d been attacked, mentally assaulted and lied to, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, apparently, my brain had stopped working.
“The Elder wasn’t just after you.” I sighed, knowing exactly where this was going to lead. “He knew about me. He wasn’t surprised to see me at Assembly—he expected me. Factor in the mysterious note that sent me to find you…and I have a feeling we’ve both been set up.”
Even as his eyes began to glow, I warned him, “But don’t, for one minute, think I’m staying locked up in here, Forge. I’m not a princess, and you don’t have a tower high enough to keep me in.”
24
The next few days were a stress-fest.
Forge didn’t leave my side, while I looked at everyone at the company like they’d grow fangs and jump out of a dark corner, and didn’t get a damn thing accomplished.
I didn’t ask Forge what he’d done with Dobson’s body, and he didn’t feel the need to tell me.
He’d just returned from patrolling the perimeter, also known as the aging barns and the parking lot, on the lookout for a pack of rabid vampires heading to kidnap me. I tapped my pencil hard enough on my desk that it broke into pieces, one of them flying behind the filing cabinets.
Calm down, Selena. I made a circuit of the building and grounds, and there’s no sign of vampires.
If there was, would you even tell me?
We were in our respective offices, ever since I’d kicked him out of mine, in order to put some distance between us. While I appreciated his protective fervor, he was driving me absolutely crazy.
We decided to tell the truth.
Yes, we did. But sometimes…people keep things from other people, just because it might upset them.
Not this time.
Promise?
What was the point of being in separate offices if all we did was think back and forth? I tossed the broken half-pencil in the wastebasket. Worse yet, being in Forge’s head was starting to feel natural to me, and I didn’t want it to be. I wanted it to continue being strange and foreign so I could
