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Years later
Cora
My life was perfect while Marco was still living in New York. I was Alpha werewolf of a healthy personal pack as well as more than twenty thousand other wolves spread out over seven states, best friends with a woman who’d become something close to a demigoddess in recent years but was still the same old Kirsten despite her new powers, and with a vampire boyfriend-of-sorts who lived eight hundred miles away.
For years, Kirsten had teleported me to Marco when the vampire and I’d both had time for a tryst. Usually five or six times a month, which was plenty. More than plenty. There wasn’t enough time to miss him because I saw him so often.
But now he was moving to Chattanooga, where he’d be the new Master Vampire, and I had no idea if this was going to fuck everything up or make it better.
Either way, in the short term, it was going to complicate the fuck out of my life.
But we were doing this. I’d prepared a super-secure suite for him in the underground of Homewood, and had negotiated with six of our security staff who were willing to be food for a vampire for extra pay.
And he’d purchased a home on Signal Mountain, not quite two miles away as the crow flies, though more than twenty miles by car because it meant going down one mountain and up another. But my vampire could fly, and we were in the middle of nowhere — no homes and few roads between the two houses. Plus, he could vibrate at a frequency humans can’t focus on and cameras can’t pick up.
I sat on the sofa we’d put into Marco’s suite, and I looked up to see Nathan in the hallway, looking in. He hadn’t been in the room for months, not since we’d decreed this would be Marco’s space. This, above all else, told me he didn’t have a problem with me practically moving the Master Vampire into our home. Kirsten, my best friend, is in a relationship with Nathan and Mordecai, and while they both have to maintain another residence for political reasons, they spend a great deal of time living in this one.
Politically, Nathan is king of the lions, but in this house, he’s mostly just my best friend’s boyfriend. I respect his position, as he respects mine, but we can usually set our respective roles aside so we can simply be housemates.
“At first glance,” I told Nathan, “the idea of an Alpha Wolf over multiple states basically sharing a home with the Amakhosi sounds ludicrous, but we haven’t had the first problem.”
“You and I have Kirsten between us, and I respect the fact this is the wolves’ home. My pride has its own running grounds, as the coterie will have their own spaces. The estate belongs to you and Kirsten. I have ownership over our private living quarters, but not the rest.” He leaned against the far wall of the hallway. “Plus, you and I have been friends for years. Work friends, employer and employee, but still, I’ve lost count of how many missions we’ve gone on together, how many times we’ve had each other’s back, trusted we’d all come back alive because of our teamwork and professionalism.”
He was right about our years working together for Drake Security giving us a shared history, but it was more than that. The four of us worked, sharing this home, sharing Kirsten, in a way. She and I were bound at the soul. I’d seen it, going inside us and looking with whatever my inner eye is called, and I’d felt the loss of it when a vampire tried to fuck with it, but it hadn’t been gone, just off kilter.
And Kirsten is bound to her men, which gives me a connection to them I don’t completely understand. If Marco and I become bound together, how would that work?
I looked at the monitor set into the wall with curtains around it so it looked like a window overlooking the pool, because a vampire’s room can’t have an actual window. I met Nathan’s gaze again, and said, “God of old, the Harlequin, King of the Lions, and Alpha Wolf, all mostly sharing a home. It works, though it shouldn’t. Are we asking for trouble, adding a Master Vampire?”
“The negotiations are that he’ll be here less than forty-nine percent of the time, so no one can say it’s his primary residence, and so we can be truthful when we say the same.”
But that was to be renegotiated three months in, once we had the lay of the land. If Marco flew across the gorge to his home on Signal Mountain before dawn, he was stuck there until the sun went down. However, if he bedded down here, when he rose around two or three in the afternoon, I could spend time with him underground.
I blew out a breath and looked around. Customs dictated that I decorated the room for him. Officially, he was a guest in our home. If he’d picked out and purchased his own furniture, it would imply he was a resident, rather than a guest.
But no pressure, being asked to furnish and decorate a room for someone else.
I’d cheated, though. Matty was handling the interior decorating needs for the coterie mansion and for several offices, and I’d asked for his help with Marco’s suite.
“You love him,” Nathan said from the hallway. “That isn’t a guarantee everything will work out, but it’s a damned good starting place.”
I rolled my eyes, closed them, breathed in, blew the breath out, and opened my eyes. The cat was right, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. “We kind of had the best of both worlds, before. We saw each other often, but without the outside world interfering. We’ve been seen at enough social gatherings, the supernatural world knows we have something going on, and I’m certain our scents probably scream it as well, but we’ve had the luxury of just being us, without politics, mostly.”
“And now you have to figure out how you run your separate empires while joining your lives.”
“Fuck, this is going to complicate my life.”
“This kind of love doesn’t come along every day. Let it happen. See where it goes. You have the support of everyone who lives here. We all want to see you happy.
* * * *
Marco
I walked through the Chattanooga coterie house and spoke with everyone I came to — security, flock, vampires, sentient property of vampires, and mates of vampires.
It took me five hours to traverse from the lowest basement to the top floor, and then I made my way to the second-floor office. Patience was sitting at my desk, working on a laptop, and I motioned for her to stay where she was.
I took one of the guest chairs and asked, “What do I need to know?”
