It wasn’t long before they started singing. It seemed that alcohol worked its magic on shifters as well. The quartette wasn’t bad. In fact, they were so good that I started to miss Erica. As a singer and a pianist, she would have known a lot better than I did how to make the most of this.
Raul and his brothers became too drunk to stay up, so they excused themselves for the night. Minutes later, Helena left, too, leaving me and Nora alone. Having taken every dish and glass to the kitchen, she invited me back outside for one last drink. I would have been crazy to pass on that. The night was a bit chilly, but it was a good chance to enjoy its stillness, without the brothers’ distracting mannerisms.
“So, Dr. Greenwell…” she said, squeezing a slice of lime into my gin with a soft smile, her eyes flashing with curiosity. “Did you have fun tonight?”
“Yes, I did,” I said, watching her pour some of the beverage into her own glass. “You’re all a little too loud for my personal taste at times, but you sure do know how to have fun. I wish some of the fundraisers I’ve attended werehalfas loud and fun as you were tonight. Then I wouldn’t have been bored out of my mind.”
She snorted in amusement.
“Been there, done that. Fundraisers are the humans’ way of pretending to care,” she said, raising her glass between us. “Cheers to you and my brother.”
“Cheers,” I said, clinking the rim of my glass against hers and taking a sip.
“He’s very fond of you,” Nora remarked as the drink moistened my lips. “And I’m starting to like you, too. I think it’ll be nice to have someone like you in the family.”
Gin shot out of my nostrils and my mouth as I banged my glass onto the table. “What?”
“Oh, crap…” She groaned, snapping her eyes shut. “Yeah, uhm, I screwed that up. Bad. I take it you guys haven’t talked about this?”
“Whatthis?”
“Mating,” she said, but the way she uttered the word made it both sound completely natural yet heavy, as if there was some hidden implication inside of it.
I swiped at the spilled gin that had pooled across the table, avoiding looking her in the eyes as I turned the subject over and over in my head.
“Well, you’re right that we haven’t talked about anything… longer term,” I confirmed her suspicion. “What is it like?”
“There is a ceremony, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Nora stated. “We dress in our favorite outfits, but we leave wedding dresses and suits to humans. Someone close to us is chosen as the minister and at some point, during the ceremony, we offer something close to our hearts to our mate. Last but not least, our vows are not just empty words that we forget when the going gets rough. We actuallymeanthem.”
“You’re very knowledgeable about human customs,” I said, choosing praise over debating the bomb she had dropped.
“I have a few human friends,” she said smiling but I didn’t miss the bitterness in her words and on her face. “They live in Miami.Both of them made the same mistake. They got married too young.”
I nodded and took a sip of the gin to give myself some time to think. I like him, sure, and he excites me. But is this love? Am I ready to commit to him? And the way she said they mean their vows; I’d be committingforever.
“Thanks for the information, Nora,” I said quickly and set my glass down on the table. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight.”
I walked away from her, my eyes focused on Raul’s cabin down the street. I had been heading in its direction; yet, in truth, I wanted to turn around and run towards the forest. Deep in the lush vegetation, I could take my fears, my frustration and give in to my desire to scream at the top of my lungs.
I couldn’t believe that Raul had already made plans for us. Plans that he had never brought up to me, which seemed like a pretty big outpoint, since those plans were for my entire future. And yet, it was clear that he had been discussing them with his sister while I had had no idea about them.
He had elected to keep me in the dark, as if I had no say in it. Anger was riding right over the deeper emotions, the ones that found his take-charge attitude thrilling. The ones that wanted a man to care for and to care for me. This was the modern world, after all, and I was and always have been an independent woman. What right did he have to be making plans for my future without so much as a “by your leave”?
Acting on my impulse, I stride into the wood. I’m going to let out that primal scream.
26
RAUL
“Iwork the nightshift tonight.”
Monica’s announcement was music to my ears. She had to leave for work earlier than my meeting with Helena. This meant that I didn’t have to tell her where we were going and why. Even thinking about that conversation had twisted my stomach into knots.
My girl wouldn’t have appreciated the notion of me setting off into the unknown. And there was no denying that’s what it was, unknown. I had only been to our destination once before when I was twelve. My dad had taken the whole family there for the annual funfair. Louisville had to have changed a lot in almost twenty years. Yes, it was a fishing town where nothing much happened, but it was still a human settlement, and those were prone to severe alterations over time.
Although the town did concern me, it was nothing compared to the foes I would be searching for. I had never crossed paths with a vampire in all my thirty-one years. Edward and Robert’s tales about them were my one and only source of knowledge.
Yet, it was a well-known secret amongst shifters that stories from the glorious past of the Dawson pack had been somewhat stretched. They had been passed on from generation to generation, enriched with elements which didn’t sound so believable.