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“The vampires and their mates are waiting in a light-tight van until the sun has fully set, but yes.”
“Good.”
Romeo had been with Midas when he’d greeted the leaders of the other supernatural groups as they’d arrived for the ceremony and party that would follow. While the ceremony would be outside, the party was in a heated tent at the back of the property, where they’d eat and dance before Midas and Maya left for their honeymoon.
Romeo grabbed the kitchen’s sliding door and opened it, stepping out first and then closing it after Midas joined him on the deck. Tilly, Maya’s aunt, was waiting on the deck.
Romeo smiled at her and hustled down the steps to the snow-covered ground, then walked along the aisle runner to the red rose covered arch where Dell, the elder who was going to perform the mating and marriage ceremonies, stood.
Midas stopped to let Tilly off in the front row, where she would be sitting with Maya’s friend Lulu the wiccan as well as the four wiccan Corners. Behind the females were the leaders of the bear den, dragon nest, white lion pride, falcon nest, and wolf pack. As the sun set completely, the big orange ball dipped behind the trees and blanketed the backyard in darkness. Torches were lit along the perimeter of the yard and soft music played from nearby speakers.
Mishka and his mate Harmony, along with tigress Aeryn and her mate Merrix and tiger hybrid Cyrus and his mate Cella, made their way to their seats now that it was safe to be out of the light-tight van.
Everyone stood as Maya walked around the corner, escorted by two tiger elders. Midas purred softly and Romeo smiled.
Someday that would be him, anxious to join with his mate in front of the ambush and spend the rest of his life ensuring she knew she was the most important person on the planet to him.
He hoped that day would come quickly.
ChapterFour
Ashley made her way through the trees around Whisper Creek as the sun dipped behind the trees and she could finally get close to the tiger king’s home. All afternoon she’d been in and around the town, on foot and by car, and the one thing she’d noticed was that there was a very large number of vehicles parked on either side of the street where the king’s house was.
Which meant that something big was going on.
She’d only received dossiers for the tigers and wolves from Brent, but she knew from her own research that Northern Ohio was home to a variety of shifters who were all allies of each other. It was quite unique. Most shifter groups stuck to their own kind and stayed far away from each other’s territory, but Northern Ohio shifters also supported a wiccan coven and a vampire coven.
Wiccans she could understand, as they were generally gracious with their magic and protection for those they were friends with, but the vampires? Shifters usually steered clear of the permanently fanged because a few hundred years ago, vampires had kept shifters in blood dungeons, breeding them and bleeding them dry for years on end.
Shifters had long memories and the hate between shifter groups and vampires was well known. Except, apparently, in Cleveland.
She’d recalled hearing from people in Humans Against Shifters that Brent had once been part of an anti-vampire group called The First Church of Humanity, close friends to the leader Jason Finnegan. They’d parted ways, with Jason heading off to focus on killing vampires and Brent choosing to go after shifters. But their friendship had remained over the years and Brent had been called to Cleveland to help Jason take out the vampires.
The last she’d heard, Jason was in the loony bin, his brain turned to Swiss cheese by the bite of a baby hellhound.
Not that she cared about Jason. Or the vampires.
She only cared about getting rid of shifters, by any means necessary.
She could hear music and she paused, leaning carefully around the trunk of a large tree until she could see the flicker of torches.
She quietly hummed in surprise.
The entire backyard of the king’s home was filled with people, and he was standing underneath a flower-filled arch wearing nothing but dark pants.
He was good looking. For a shifter.
Too bad he needed to skip on into the afterlife.
She wore earbuds that enhanced her hearing, allowing her to hear things from a distance as if she were right in the midst of the conversation. Ducking to the next tree, she drew a few feet closer and settled alongside another large tree.
Wearing all-black, she was virtually hidden in the darkness, and she’d used a special spray to mask her scent, making her blend in with the woods. She’d watched the patrols around town during the day. Several tigers walked the perimeter of the woods around the king’s home every hour, while others walked around the entire town and also patrolled in the neighborhoods and around the businesses on the main street.
While the patrols were fairly regular, she couldn’t yet see a way to get Brent’s army of anti-shifters in without tripping the alarms. She’d seen motion-sensitive cameras and floodlights on various trees around and within the woods.
She was adept at avoiding detection, but it had taken her ages to get to the king’s house because of how many freaking cameras there were.
It was possible they could have one of their tech guys disable the cameras or spoof them with innocuous video so they could sneak in. They’d done that with security cameras around the wolf pack they’d successfully taken out, thanks in part to her willingness to go on a date with the alpha and draw him into a false sense of security when it came to her. A fatal mistake on his part, to be sure.
