AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"His name's Harvard."
"Cute mutt; kind of runty, though. A new patient?"
Tess nodded. "Just came in last night. He wasn't doing too well, but I think he'll be feeling better soon. "
Ben smiled, but it seemed too tight for his face. "Working late again last night, Doc?"
"No. Not really."
He glanced away from her, and the smile turned a little sour.
"Ben, are we... okay? I tried to call you the other night, after the museum reception, to apologize. I left you a message, but you didn't call back."
"Yeah, I've been kind of busy."
"You look tired."
He shrugged. "Don't worry about me."
More than tired, Tess thought now. Ben looked strung out. There was an anxious energy about him, like he hadn't slept for the past two days. "What have you been up to lately? Are you working on another animal rescue or something?"
"Or something," he said, sliding a shuttered look at her. "Listen, I'd love to stay and chat, but I really have to go."
He pocketed the screwdriver in his loose jeans and started heading for the clinic's front door. Tess trailed after him, feeling a chill as an emotional distance that hadn't been there before now began to crack open between them.
Ben was lying to her, and not just about his purpose in being at the clinic.
"Thanks for fixing the table," she murmured to his fast-retreating back.
From within the opened door, Ben swiveled his head around to glance at her over his shoulder. His gaze raked her with its bleakness. "Yeah, sure. You take care, Doc."
An icy drizzle ticked against the glass of Elise's living-room window; overhead, the stone-gray afternoon sky was bleak. She parted the sheers of her second-floor private residence and stared out at the cold streets of the city below, at the clumps of people rushing to and fro in an effort to escape the weather.
Somewhere, her eighteen-year-old son was out there too. He'd been gone for more than a week now. One of the growing number of Breed youths who'd disappeared from their Darkhaven sanctuaries around the area. She prayed Cam was underground, safe in some manner of shelter, with others like him to give him comfort and support, until he found his way home.
She hoped that would be soon.
Thank God for Sterling and all he was doing to help make that return happen. Elise could hardly fathom the selflessness that made her brother-in-law devote himself completely to the task. She wished Quentin could see all that his younger sibling was doing for their family. He would be astonished; humbled, she was sure.
As for how Quentin would feel about her right now, Elise was loath to imagine.
His disappointment would be enormous. He might even hate her a little. Or a lot, if he knew that it was she who drove their son out into the night. If not for the argument she'd had with Camden, the ridiculous attempt to control him, maybe he wouldn't have gone. She was to blame for that, and how she wished she could call back those terrible few hours and erase them forever.
Regret was bitter in her throat as she gazed out to the world beyond her own. She felt so helpless, so useless in her warm, dry home.
Beneath her spacious living quarters in the Back Bay Darkhaven were Sterling's private apartments and underground shelter. He was Breed, so while there was even a hint of sun overhead, he was forced to remain indoors and out of the light, like all of his kind. That included Camden as well, for even though he was half hers--half human--he had his late father's vampire blood in him. His father's otherworldly strengths, and his weaknesses.
There would be no searching for Cam until dark, and to Elise, the waiting seemed an eternity.
She took up pacing in front of the window, wishing there was something she could do to help Sterling look for him and the other Darkhaven youths who'd gone missing along with Cam.
Even as a Breedmate, one of the rare females of the human species who were able to produce offspring with vampires--who were solely male--Elise was still fully Homo sapiens. Her skin could bear sunlight. She could walk among other humans without detection, although it had been many long years-- more than a century, in fact--since she had done so.
She'd been a ward of the Darkhavens since she was a little girl, brought there for her own safety and well-being when poverty destituted her parents in one of Boston's nineteenth-century slums. When she was of age, she'd become the Breedmate of Quentin Chase, her beloved. How she missed him, gone just five short years.
Now she might have lost Camden too.
No. She refused to think it. The pain was too great to consider that for even a second.
