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Please Lord, let her be okay.
"I thought you were going to have company for this trip," Dylan said, hoping by some miracle there had been a change of plans and Rio's friends had stayed behind. "What happened to the other guys who were supposed to come with you?"
"I dropped them off in the city. They didn't need to be here with us. They'll report back to me when they're finished."
"When they're finished terrorizing a bunch of innocent people, you mean? How do you know your vampire buddies won't decide to take a little blood donation along with the memories they're going to steal?"
"They have a specific mission, and they'll adhere to it."
She looked into the smoky topaz eyes staring back at her in the mirror. "Just like you, right?"
"Just like me." He got out of the vehicle and came to the back to grab her backpack and messenger bag from the seat beside her. "Come on, Dylan. We don't have a lot of time to wrap this up."
When she didn't move, he reached in and startled her with a gentle stroke of her cheek. "Come on. Let's get inside now. Everything's going to be all right."
She climbed out of the leather seat and walked up the concrete steps with him to her building's front door. Rio handed her the keys from out of her bag. Dylan turned the entryway lock and stepped inside the stale-smelling, robin's egg blue vestibule, feeling like she hadn't been home in ten years.
"My apartment's on the second floor," she murmured, but then Rio probably already knew that. He followed close behind her as the two of them climbed the stairs up to her hole-in-the-wall place at the back of the common hallway.
She unlocked the door and Rio walked in ahead of her, keeping her in back of him as though he were accustomed to entering dangerous places and doing it at the front of the line. He was a warrior, all right. If his cautious demeanor and immense size didn't confirm it, the big gun he was concealing in the back waistband of his black cargo pants would have done so in spades. She watched as he checked out the place, pausing next to a computer workstation that sat on a small writing desk in the corner.
"Am I going to find anything on this machine that shouldn't be there?" he asked as he turned it on and the monitor lit him up in a pale blue light.
"That computer is old. I hardly ever use it."
"You won't mind if I check," he said, not really a question when he was already bringing up files and having a look at what they contained. He wouldn't find anything but some of her earliest articles and old correspondence.
"Do you have a lot of enemies?" Dylan asked, trailing over to him.
"We have enough."
"I'm not one of them, you know." She flipped on a light, more for her benefit than his, since he obviously didn't mind the dark. "I'm not going to tell anyone about what you've told me, or what I've seen these past several days. None of it, I swear to you. And not because you're going to take those memories away from me either. I would keep your secrets safe, Rio. I just want you to know that."
"It's not that simple," he said, facing her now. "It wouldn't be safe. Not for you, or for us. Our world protects its own, but there are dangers and we can't be everywhere. Letting someone outside the vampire nation carry information about us could be catastrophic. Occasionally it is done, even though it's ill-advised. A human here or there has been trusted with the truth, but it's rare in the extreme. Personally I've never seen it work out well in the end. Someone always gets hurt."
"I can take care of myself."
He chuckled, but there was little humor in it. "I have no doubt. But this is different, Dylan. You're not just a human. You're a Breedmate, and that will always mean you're different. You can bond with a male of my kind through blood and you can live forever. Well, something close to forever."
"You mean like Tess and her mate?"
Rio nodded. "Like them, yes. But to be a part of the Breed's world, you would have to cut your ties to the human one. You'd have to leave them behind."
"I can't do that," she said, her brain automatically shutting down the idea of leaving her mom. "My family is here."
"The Breed is your family too. They would care for you as family, Dylan. You could make a very nice life for yourself in the Darkhavens."
She couldn't help but notice that he was talking about all of this from a comfortable distance, keeping himself totally out of the equation. Part of her wondered if it would be so easy to turn him down if he were asking her personally to join his world.
But he wasn't doing that at all. And Dylan's choice, easy or not, would have been the same regardless of what he was offering her.
She shook her head. "My life is here, with my mom. She's always been there for me, and I can't leave her. I wouldn't. Not now. Not ever."
And she needed to find a way to get to her soon, she thought, weathering Rio's steady, measuring gaze. She didn't want to wait until he decided to start scrubbing her memory now that she'd opted out of the vampire lottery.
"I...um...I've got to use the bathroom," she murmured. "I hope you don't think you're going to stand guard over me while I go?"
Rio's eyes narrowed slightly, but he gave a slow shake of his head. "Go on. But don't take long."
