Chapter 9

Dax

She was beautiful, my new mate. Beautiful, powerful, funny, and extremely frustrating. Probably the most frustrating thing about her was that she didn’t want to believe we were fated mates, but those walls of hers were a problem too. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get her to let me in.

Yes, she was frustrating, but at least she wasn’t Tallia. Tallia was beautiful, but she was also annoying and manipulative. She was a total brat. I only agreed to be mated with her because the family insisted.

Was there a time when I had affections and feelings for Tallia? Yes, but I never loved her, not really. She was my mentor, and we had chemistry, which is probably why the family thought it would be a good match, but that was all we had.

Being forced to leave the family was difficult, but I’d make the same choice every time just to get away from her. And now I’ve found my true mate, my fated mate.

I stroked her hair as I watched her sleep. Last night she had fallen asleep in my arms as she settled herself. That’s when I moved her into her bed and tucked her in. I did leave for a few minutes to get a change of clothes, and she was still sleeping soundly when I got back.

I grabbed a blanket out of the basket in the living room and spent the rest of the night laying on top of the covers next to her in the bed.

Vampires can sleep, but they don’t need nearly as much as other beings, a couple hours at most. I spent most of the night watching her; she must have been having a bad dream at one point because she began to mutter and whimper in her sleep.

Now in the early hours of the morning, I sat up in the bed, stroking her soft curls as the sun began to rise.

Last night, she had been so freaked out by this man who was already dead; it was as though she still believed she was in danger. From everything I’ve observed about her, she seems to have some PTSD from something, but what?

She left her coven. It’s highly unusual for a witch to leave a coven without joining another. And to move to the opposite end of the country from them… maybe she was running from something too. Or someone.

If it was a person she was running from, that might explain why she is still afraid. It hadn’t escaped my notice that the man’s ID was that of a private investigator. Was she afraid someone was looking for her?

I had to find out more about her past. I wanted her to talk to me, but I knew I would need something to give her a nudge. And in the mean time, I would make sure whatever it is she’s worried about can’t touch her. I refuse to let anything hurt her, even her own mind.

So that left me with one option: get my own private investigator to dig into her past. I wouldn’t leave her side until I knew for sure she was safe.

The trouble was, I didn’t have much money left since I left the family. They had always provided; they gave all of us a credit card with a high limit, and a savings account that they added to periodically. I had to drain the account when I left, and I couldn’t use the credit card anymore, lest they find me. It afforded me the Nissan paid upfront in cash, a small studio apartment paid up to a five year lease, and a new last name with the documents to go with it. I had invested what was left, hoping it would continue to grow and be enough for my needs, but as much as it had grown, it was beginning to dwindle.

I may be able to… convince an acquaintance to do some research for me. I needed to know her last name though.

I slipped out of the bed, found her wallet, checked her ID, and slipped back into the bed all in a fraction of a second, and without a sound.

I loved the speed of being a vampire when I could run long distances, but in short ranges like this, it was extremely difficult to control. It took me a while to stop running into things back when Tallia first began to mentor me. That was… over two hundred years ago. I was a slave brought over to Europe from… I couldn’t actually remember. Maps weren’t very good back then, not that my people had very much geographical knowledge outside of our territory. The truth was, I didn’t remember much from my human life. I have a few vague memories leading up to when I was found by Tallia and the family turned me, but the rest was almost all a blank. I couldn’t remember my family or if I had one. I remembered a small village, but that was all I could recall from my early human years.

About an hour later, Marianna began to stir awake. She rolled over to find me looking at her.

“Good morning Beautiful,” I greeted her.

She took note of the fact that I was fully dressed and sitting on top of the covers as well as that she had her pajamas on still, and then mumbled, “Good morning,” before rolling onto her back.

“How did you sleep?” Not that I didn’t already know the answer.

She turned her head towards me “I slept alright. How did you sleep? Do vampires sleep?”

“We do, but we only need a couple hours a day, much less than other beings.”

“So how were your two hours?” she asked in a teasing voice.

“Next to my mate, better than usual,” I smiled.

“Um thanks for staying with me last night by the way,” she sat up on the bed.

“Of course,” I tucked her hair behind her ear. “Do you work today?”

“No I’m off today,” she said.

“Excellent,” I grinned. I could keep her here for half an hour while I visit my acquaintance. “I’ll make you coffee, and then I’ll go pick up some breakfast for us. Will you be okay here by yourself if I leave for half an hour?”

“It’ll take that long for the coffee to wake me up, I’ll be fine.”

I nodded. “Do you still want the special french toast from that little cafe down the street? I noticed you order that from there frequently.”

“Stalker,” she mumbled. “Go make my coffee.”

I laughed as she threw a pillow at me that I easily dodged as I got up to go make the coffee.

When I left to go find my acquaintance, she was sitting on her couch, sipping her coffee while she watched her show.