“My family must be so worried about me,” Willow said as she stared out the window to the street below. She sat in the large chair with a comfy pink cushion beside Declan in Cheryl’s craft room. Hugging the knees she’d drawn up against her chest, she rested her chin on top of one of them.
“You’ll see them again,” Declan said from the chair beside her.
“I know. I hate the idea of them worrying about me. I hope Brian doesn’t come looking for us. He shouldn’t be caught up in this. If something ever happened to him, Abby wouldn’t survive it.”
“The double-edged sword of matehood. The bond makes you stronger, but it also makes you more vulnerable.”
In the dark, his eyes were a vivid silver that pierced her heart and left her slightly shaken while they held hers. Was he beginning to suspect the same thing as she was, between them, or was he only making a statement?
She shouldn’t be thinking about what transpired between them in the bathroom earlier, but suddenly, it was all that was on her mind. They’d stood on the precipice of something good, and now she might never know what could have been between them.
She didn’t know if it was matehood or not; it was too soon to tell, but the possibility was taking root. Mates or not, she could never deny her intense reaction to him or that she liked him, a lot. He was sometimes annoyingly enigmatic, but he was kind, brave, and willing to lay down his life for others, and she admired him for it.
Returning her attention to the window, she studied the quiet street. For most of the night, Declan moved throughout the different rooms while he watched over the backyard, while she remained focused on the road.
His room options narrowed when the others went to bed, but he continued to prowl through the house. He’d joined her only minutes ago, when the sun started to rise.
“Do you think you’ll ever meet your mate?” she inquired.
“I pity her if I do,” he muttered and then cursed himself for saying it.
Over the years, he had considered the possibility of meeting his mate, and each time he’d hoped the woman would run as fast as she could from him. And now, he was sitting beside the woman he desired more than anything else in his entire life. He didn’t want her to run, but he hoped she would.
If she were his mate, she would learn the worst parts of his history; it was inevitable. And when she did, she might curse the fate handed to her. He didn’t know if he could handle her rejection. It might be the thing that finally pushed him over the edge.
Willow almost snorted with laughter, except nothing about this was funny. She was wondering if he might be her mate, and he was pitying her because of it. “You seem like a decent guy to me.”
His silver eyes were unrelenting when they met hers. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“Then enlighten me; what makes you such a monster?”
Declan’s hands clenched around the arms of his chair. “There are some things I’d prefer you didn’t know.”
“I’m a member of the Alliance and a purebred vampire. I’ve been through and seen a lot of shit; there’s nothing you could tell me that I haven’t heard or experienced before.”
Declan’s chuckle trailed off as a Savage loped across one of the side yards before disappearing into the woods. The ones who couldn’t take the sun at all were going into hiding for the day, but that didn’t mean they could make it out of this town.
With the roads blocked, the woods were their only option, and that’s where the Savages were hiding. And they wouldn’t make it past the roadblocks. Any of the Savages who could tolerate the day would be on guard there.
“Just for the record, I don’t think you’re a monster,” she said.
She thought he was frustrating and too tough on himself, but she didn’t tell him that.
“How do you think they knew we were in this town?” Willow asked. At least he might answer this question. “Do you think they have someone like Elyse under their control again?”
“No. Elyse requires blood to find whoever she’s searching for, and they don’t have our blood.”
“Maybe someone like Brian.” She wasn’t entirely sure how her brother-in-law’s ability worked, but he could track people too.
“It’s a possibility,” Declan said. “I think it’s more likely we never completely lost them, and one of them followed us through the woods. If they had someone like Brian, they would be here already.”
“True,” Willow said as she turned her attention back to the window. “Why only one of them?”
“Because if it had been any more than one, they would have attacked us.”
Willow shuddered when she realized a Savage was watching and stalking them the entire time. It had seen them kissing and listened to their conversations.
“You think one of them followed us all the way here?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then it would know we were with Gus.”
“I thought about it a lot while I was patrolling the house, and I think I’ve figured it out. It was daytime, and we were in the middle of that field when we encountered Gus and his family. The camp was on the edge of the field, far away from the woods we exited. I don’t think the Savage who followed us was able to track us once we entered that field.”
“Wouldn’t they have still seen us leave with Gus? His old pickup is pretty memorable; once they saw it, they would know what to look for and ask around about.”
“From the second we left the woods until we left the camp was maybe only an hour. However, by the time we got to Gus’s house, the phones were already down. I think once it couldn’t follow us anymore, it broke off in search of a town to call in backup and keep us trapped here. Their first stop would be the police station. From there, they could take control of everything fast, and they did.”
Willow rubbed at her eyes as she tried to process everything he’d revealed. She was exhausted; she’d give anything for a few hours of sleep, but she was afraid to take her eyes off the window.
“How did we miss one of them following us?” she asked.
Declan had been questioning and kicking himself in the ass about that same thing. He could only come up with one explanation. “I think it was a turned hunter.”
Willow stiffened as she recalled the hunter by the waterfall, his cruel smile, white-blue eyes, and the sword at his side. It could have been any other turned hunter who followed them, but she couldn’t shake his image from her mind.
A turned Hunter would be far stronger, better trained, and faster than a human turned vamp who was forced to become a Savage. A turned hunter would have more patience and would hold off on attacking them until it saw the perfect opportunity… like trapping them in a town.
It might also have orders to bring them back alive, or at least one of them, and that would explain its patience in tracking them.
“Shit,” Willow said again.
That about sums it up, Declan thought as he stared out the window. The fact he hadn’t sensed another’s emotions in the woods told him the hunter stayed pretty far back from them. It had tracked them using all the techniques they trained hunters with.
Of course, he could be wrong about how the Savages knew they were in this town, but he didn’t think so. If they had another vampire with an ability like Elyse’s or Brian’s, they would already be in captivity. Instead, the Savages were using humans to help trap and locate them.
“We have to get out of this town,” Willow said.
“We will.”
Another Savage sprinted across the street and into the woods as smoke started trailing from it. “They're not very discreet,” she muttered.
“They don’t have to be if they’re controlling the town. I don’t think there’s much of a population here. It won’t be difficult for them to change their memories afterward.”
“Or they could be planning on killing them or turning them into Savages.”
“Or that.”
Willow shook her head as the possibility squeezed her chest until it felt like an elephant was sitting on her. “Even if we beat the demons, the battle with the Savages will never end.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Do you ever get tired of it?”
“Do you?”
She held his gaze as she spoke. “I get tired of the killing. I’ll do it; I’ll do whatever is necessary to survive and protect others, but I don’t like it. And these Savages…” Her voice trailed off as she turned to stare out the window again.
“Many of them didn’t choose this life,” Declan guessed.
“Yes.”
“They could still leave them; they could go somewhere else and try to take back their lives.”
“Can they? Especially if they’re a human who has never known anything other than blood and death since becoming a vampire. Can they take back their lives? Can the hunters fight what has become of them? Or the turned vamps who lived peaceful lives until the Savages turned them? Can they fight it?”
“Killean does.”
“Yes, but Killean has Simone; would he still fight it without her?”
“I don’t know,” Declan admitted. He’d like to think so, Killean was his friend, and he had a lot of faith in him, but he knew Killean still grappled with the repercussions of what he did to save Simone.
“You’re a lot older than me, do you ever get tired of it?” she asked again.
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “Not the killing and fighting.” He required that to help keep him sane, but… “It was a lot easier to kill Savages in the old days when you knew they were vampires who gave in and chose their life. Now…” He shrugged as he held his hands out before him. “Things are different now. They’re not so black and white.”
“Were they ever completely black and white?”
“No.” He was an excellent example of that. He’d crossed the line, but through years of hard work, he’d come out of it stronger. However, if it weren’t for Ronan, he would be one of the monsters he hunted. “But there was no guilt then.”
“You feel guilty about killing them now?”
“Not often, but sometimes I recall they didn’t ask for this. And then I remind myself that it’s necessary. Do you feel guilty?”
“Sometimes.”
He studied her as she stared pensively out the window. “Do you regret joining the Alliance.”
“Never,” she said. “This is where I belong, even if we don’t make it out alive. I’d just prefer it if things were more black and white sometimes.”
“So would I.”
She yawned and rubbed at her eyes.
“You should get some rest,” Declan said. “I’ll keep watch.”
Willow rested her cheek on her knee and studied the sharp planes of his face. From the side, his nose was a straight blade, and his cheekbones looked like they were carved from marble.
He was magnificent, and her fingers itched to run over him again. She was exhausted, but she could sleep when she was dead. Which, with the way things were going, could be any minute now. When he sensed her attention, his head turned toward her, and his eyes met hers; she saw his need for her shimmering within them.
He should get up and leave, but Declan found himself riveted on her while she watched him. He shifted in the chair as his hands dug into the ends of the arms, and his erection pressed against his jeans.
Leave. Get away from her. She deserves better. But he remained in the seat.
Willow made things come alive in a way they never had before. He’d been around others whose emotions were so extreme they became something else inside him. Usually, when that happened, it was overwhelming, unpleasant, and he loathed every second of it.
With Willow, he craved more, and he was willing to let go of his restraint to have it. And that was the most dangerous thing for both of them.