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“Etta will be going. I’d like the opportunity to help keep her safe.”
“Before the bikers fucked everything up, back when they were handling security, they’d fixed it so the boyfriends and husbands weren’t part of the security team.” He gave the tiniest of smiles. “The women threatened to not cooperate with security if they were being watched by their men.” The smile faded. “After everything went to shit, we each watched our own woman because we didn’t trust anyone else to do it. Me, Mordecai, Aaron, Ranger, Travis, Jayce, Josef, and more — we formed our own unit and worked well together.”
“But you’ve found a way around it again, so there are people you trust?”
He nodded. “The Fabulosa Trio will be leading the next security team. Kelsey is going, but she doesn’t get to go out without monitors, so she has to be okay with her men watching over her. Etta will keep an eye on her as well, I’m sure. We’re providing some single Drake men, Cora has a few single wolves, and Marco is providing Evan and a few other single eagles. Also, one of the owl shifters who watches Kirsten when she’s away from Homewood will be on her exclusively. If you have someone you want to put exclusively on Etta, and she agrees to it, we can certainly arrange that.”
“Even if it’s a Slayer?”
“I hope you can find someone who is not a slayer.”
I’d talk to Marco about it. Perhaps Venom, or another vampire Etta trusted to have her back could watch over her. The Fabulosa Trio had taken a liking to her, so she’d probably be safe with their oversight, but I’d feel better if she had a specific, high-powered, security-conscious supernatural watching over her.
“It can’t be Jayce because Moira will be there,” he said. “Josef won’t be included either. Venom could work. For that matter, Evan would be a good choice.”
I shook my head. “Not Evan. I need someone who can protect her from a Slayer, and you have to know our best bet for that is another Slayer.”
“You think friends of your parents might come after her?”
“I think my parents’ friends might not be able to resist attacking a group of drunk, high-powered supernatural women. If they’re focused on me and Etta, they’ll find out about the outing, and…” I shrugged. “I can bring a few Slayers in to make sure we can handle them, but I’d feel better if I was in the mix.”
“Have you talked to Marco about this?”
“Not yet. Things were too hectic to try to squeeze an outing between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so they’re waiting until after the first of the year. We have some time, but I figured you or Aaron are most likely in charge of overall security, so it made sense to start with you.”
He narrowed his eyes, likely unhappy that I knew as much about the plans as I did, but he merely said, “We’ll walk down and have a conversation after we eat.”
* * * *
Etta
I sat quietly while the men discussed security, not because I’m a woman and I was letting the menfolk handle it, but because I can learn the most by shutting my mouth and listening. Ideas were being batted around, but this wasn’t when decisions would be made. Speaking up now gave me nothing, but tossing an idea in at a later date might very well give me points amongst the town’s powerful supernaturals. No doubt, there would be bigger meetings later, and Marco would make sure I was included.
So I listened and learned, and discovered the Slayer Council was in danger of dividing in two. Ryan didn’t tell us that, but I picked up the undercurrents of it, and I absolutely knew this was something I needed to tell the Concilio leadership. Our pacts with the Slayers keep supernaturals alive, and if the extremist faction of Slayers were going off on their own, something would have to be done on our end to keep our people safe. Not just vampires, but the predatory shifters as well. Hell, possibly even the prey shifters, because some slayers felt that anyone not a human or slayer was a monster. Never mind slayers have to kill to stay young — have to take in the energy of the supernatural they kill in order to keep from aging.
When Ryan and I were finally alone, he pulled me into his arms and I soaked in his heat. If he were human, I’d have to monitor his body temperature and move away before I leached too much of his heat away. I could relax longer with a powerful shapeshifter, but I had no idea how to gauge it with a slayer. It was one of the things I wanted to ask Augustus, but this little respite wasn’t going to last long, so I relaxed in his arms and drank in his heat and warmth.
Within a few moments, he released me and put his hands on either side of my face, his expression serious but happy. Possibly a tad bit triumphant?
“Can you sense it?” he asked. “Sense the difference?”
I started to be a little snarky, but then I recognized what he was talking about. “You’re at peace. All of you is at peace with all of the rest of you.” That wasn’t exactly it, but it was as close as I could get off the top of my head. “That wasn’t the case, before.”
He nodded. “I needed to know who’d come out on top if we fought. Who’d live and who’d die. Slayers know, based on power, whether we can come up against a particular vampire, but our powers are so close, it would’ve come down to skill and the luck of the draw. Just like with our chess games and likely our ping-pong games if we’d kept going — I might be better one time, and you might be better another, but my inner Slayer wasn’t okay with that. He needed to know, absolutely.”
“And he doesn’t anymore?”
“No. Fighting side-by-side with you, and watching you take my mother down as if it were nothing? Maybe I’d win, maybe you’d win, but either way, we’d both lose. It’s enough of an answer for him, for me.” He settled in his skin even more. “I’m in love with you, Isabella Cosetta Giada Falconetto.”
No one had called me by that name in centuries. I doubted anyone alive, other than Marco, even knew it, but Ryan had dug it up from somewhere. It seemed impossible that he’d found it, but I didn’t jump straight to worrying what else he might have found.
“I’m not that person anymore. She was human. Weak.” Happy.
“And yet, you’ve held onto the Ella and Etta form in most of your incarnations.”
I met his gaze without worry of one of our inner monsters going rogue. We were okay. I could feel it in every cell of my body. “I don’t know what love is, if I’m honest, but I feel something for you. My soul reaches out to yours, and I think it’s possible I tried to feed you some of what I got from the owl, earlier. If so, I apologize, but it was as if my inner Vampire wanted to make sure you were topped off.”
He smiled. “I felt it. Thank you for explaining. I wondered if it was my imagination, and I’m happy to know it wasn’t.” He kissed my forehead. “No more competitions against each other. Same side. You and me against the world. Always.”
