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The stopwatch on her phone told her it had been six minutes and twelve seconds since Nero had gone over the wall. She still didn’t know what she should do, but she was sure something was very wrong.
She might not be a shifter, but she was a Half-Blood, for fuck’s sake.
She had instincts too.
SIXTEEN
NERO
Nerohatedthis.
He hated leaving his mate behind, parked in his truck like a sitting duck with very little to protect her but her fangs.
Did she evenhavefangs?
He should probably know this, but he had no idea.
And he had left her out there with no protection. He called himself a mate? A good wolf? He huffed out a breath before sniffing the air. He was only here to spend time with Valentine.
The sooner he discovered if her sister was there and … if she was … how to get her out of there, the sooner he could take Val back home. Where she was safe.
Where he could sit her down and have a rational conversation with her about their future. About what they were … could be … to each other.
His paws padded against the manicured grass, and he cursed rich people for not allowing bushes and other kinds of unruly shrubs that could hide his sneaking form. The house wasn’t actually a house. It was a damn castle or the closest thing to one Nero had ever come close to seeing.
The wolves in his family were wealthy, but they preferred to live surrounded by nature. Not monstrous houses meant to make you forget nature even existed. Wolves used their wealth to help nature. They needed it to survive and thrive, unlike these vamps.
Closer to the house, there were big stone urns in which tall and bushy trees grew. God forbid they grew roots. Nope. The trees were inplanters. He rolled his eyes despite the fact he could easily hide behind them.
There was no one monitoring the outside … no guards, no hounds, nothing. It could be a good sign. It could also be because everyone there was a vampire, and they couldn’t exactly do rounds in the sunlight.
Butthere weren’t any cameras either.
That struck Nero as odd.
Shouldn’t there be cameras everywhere? Recording every little corner of the property, especially in the sunlight? But no. Either these vampires were dumb, or they weren’t there at all.
He was just about to turn back and warn Valentine that the house was empty when he heard it.
A sob.
A heartbreaking sob.
He looked up and spotted an opened window a few stories above the ground level. Unless he could suddenly grow wings, there was no way he could get up there to see if the crying person was Lilliane Longborn.
He listened carefully, thinking he might be able to hear a clue.
The crying continued in earnest, and Nero felt bad for whoever it was. A perusal of his surroundings told him there wasn’t much he could do. Not in his wolf form, anyway.
Taking a hell of a chance, he shifted into his human form and scaled up the house using the brick as footholds as he inched his way up. It was four stories high, and there was every chance the ivy on which he climbed wouldn’t be able to hold his weight.
This was for his mate, though.
Valentine wanted her sister back. If not in her life, then at least to know she was okay. That she was where she wanted to be. That she was being treated fairly.
Obviously, if that crying was Lilliane, she wasn’t too happy.
Nero climbed and climbed until he could peek through the open window. It was an enormous bedroom with a four-poster bed and a silver-embroidered comforter. It was like the swankiest hotel room he’d ever seen, but it was completely devoid of any proof someone lived there. Permanently. Almost cold in its lavishness.
