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He lifted his gaze. Lines of stress bracketed his eyes. “Mother, I need to be alone with my mate. Thank you for seeing her home.”
Adriel stood and touched her hand. “I’m not far if you need a friend.”
“Thank you.”
He watched his mother leave the property and then she was gone, moving too fast for either of them to track. He turned back to Delilah and scowled. “Get in the house.”
Her spine stiffened. “I’m sorry. You must have me confused with a St. Bernard. Did you just give me an order?”
“I need to speak to you privately.” He pointed toward the door. “Inside.”
She scoffed. “Well, I don’t know if I feel like going inside. Are you going to put me in a crate?”
He pressed his lips together. “We need to discuss your actions today. I’m in no mood for games. Move.”
“Move?” She practically choked on the word. “Why are you talking to me like that?”
“Because you disobeyed me,” he snapped. “You deliberately ignored every order I gave when you carelessly helped those people. You put yourself and The Order at risk. There are consequences for such crimes. Can you grasp that? Do you understand the situation you put us in? I’m your mate, but I’m also an elder. I have a duty to uphold our laws, and the last thing I need is another disobedient female with my name.”
“Well, lucky for you, I don’t have your name.”
“You’re still my mate. Your behavior reflects on both of us.”
“My behavior?”
“You had no right to touch that mortal child!”
“He would have died, Christian!”
“Then he would have died. Mortals are fragile by design. We cannot interfere with God’s plan.”
“This isn’t about God. This is about an innocent baby that almost lost its life today, but didn’t. That child is alive because of me.”
“There were witnesses!” he roared. “They saw you! Don’t you see? Our blood could save all of them, but the minute they realize that, our entire race would be endangered. They are not our allies. They’re greedy. They would capture us and bleed us dry if it ensured their own advancement. Is that what you want? For them to hunt us, tear us from our homes, rip our families apart? Do you have any idea how dangerous your actions were today?” He threw two phones onto the porch and she flinched.
Weak from healing so many animals and losing blood, she bent to pick them up. Her first thought should have been her salvation. It was the first time she held a phone in more than a week. She could call someone to come get her. But instead, she thought about The Order.
“They took video?”
“Yes.”
“Did you erase it?”
“I don’t know how.”
Her hands shook as she activated the devices. The unfamiliar settings were different from her own, so she had to search for the camera app. Once she found it, she located the video.
“Holy shit!” The voice of the man recording said. “Look at her fucking eyes! What the fuck…”
“Dude, she’s got fangs!”
Delilah winced as the camera zoomed in. She looked horrifying. She knew she was saving the baby, but it looked much worse on video.
She deleted the clip and made sure the recently deleted folder was empty. “It’s gone.”
“It’s a phone, Delilah. How do we know they didn’t send it to others?”
Her heart dropped. Fingers shaking, she opened up the text messages and checked for recent threads. “There’s nothing in texts.” She checked the email. That was also clean. Her stomach pinched when she slid through the apps and saw how many social media platforms there were. “This is going to take a minute.”
She dropped into the rocking chair, her body shaking with tension and her vision blurring. He was right. Her actions put them all at risk. She hadn’t considered how quickly a video like that could go viral.
Her shame grew when she considered the unwritten rule about not photographing the Amish. The Order had done everything in their power to ensure the safety of hundreds of immortals trying to live peacefully, and she’d put them all in jeopardy within one week.
As she worked her way through each social media app, searching for any traces of uploaded footage, a tear dripped onto the screen. She deserved to feel terrible. She deserved Christian’s fury and more.
“It’s clean,” she said, handing him back the phone only to have him give her the other one. This one had a video of her running, her speed alarming, and probably what caused them to video her in the first place while they waited for the EMTs.
By the time she scrubbed both phones it had started to rain. She had questions but sensed Christian’s reluctance to speak any more about the victims of the accident.
Had he erased their memories? Was the baby going to be okay? What if she gave him too much blood? What if they ran blood tests at the hospital and found traces of her blood in little Ethan’s labs?
