Documents had been filed alphabetically in the drawer, and as I looked through the drawer, a recorder caught my eye. I clicked it on, and sat it on the desk while I continued to look through the drawers. It wasn’t until my mother’s voice filled the room that I choked on tears.
Emma shows restraint, but she’s still young. The Elders have asked that she be brought in to be tested. Her blood showed promise, and yet she’s not like us. As if her father’s DNA has tainted the strain. Dagan wishes to see if she worth saving.
I’ve already taken steps to prevent them from becoming infected in the event the virus reaches here. I’ve begun preparations to leave; Dagan has suggested that it’s time. I do hate leaving them, but Emma is only a child in her mind, her father has refused to acknowledge what she is and spoils her as if she’s a regular kid.
Grayson shows no signs of being one of us; he’s slow and even at his tender age, he should show the signs. It is my hope that Emma will become what is needed by the time I return. The virus should harden her. It should force her to adjust and defend her brother. If not, it will be a sign that I have failed us and my directive.
I stopped the recording with trembling hands. How had my mom known about the virus? She’d been buried over ten years before it had even surfaced. Or had she? My heart was about to burst from my chest as I pushed the recorder into my pocket and pulled open the second drawer and pushed the files out of the way, I found more tapes. I opened my bag and dropped several of them into it, before opening the last drawer.
Inside of it was info on the bunker and a manila envelope with my name on it in my father’s sloppy handwriting. I looked from the envelope to the bag now full of tapes. I decided to read the letter or whatever was in the thing later. Right now I needed to find the damn layout and everything Dad had done to the shelter.
I had finished packing my bag when I walked out of the office and into the front room. Jaeden was sitting in a darkened corner; I felt him before I actually saw him. I stopped and looked at him silently. Had he heard the recording? Did he know?
“Emma,” he whispered as he leaned his long frame into the light. His eyes took me in and narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said but even I could hear how troubled I sounded.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked as he stood up and moved towards me.
“No,” I replied, feeling my heart race at his nearness. I hated that he had this effect on my body. “Ever find something that makes you question everything you’ve ever known?” I blurted it out and felt the tears pooling in my eyes.
“No,” he said smoothly. He watched me as I felt my world crumbling beneath my feet. Just the small bit I’d listened to was disturbing, and I wasn’t sure how to process it. I felt as if my entire life had been turned upside down and torn apart.
What had she meant by what she’d said about me becoming what is needed? What the hell was needed? Had she known about Rh Viridae or was she referring to a different virus? Worse yet, her words hinted that there was a vaccine to the virus she was talking about. I felt sickened by her words. I wanted to stop thinking about it, but her words seemed to be playing on repeat inside of my head.
I turned to Jaeden and fought the urge to claim his lips. One kiss, one single kiss from him could end the turmoil playing in my mind. “Kiss me,” I whispered and watched as he stepped closer, but didn’t make a move to kiss me.
“Emma, are you trying to use me to forget about whatever happened?” he asked and for a brief moment, I thought I caught a flash of pain in his eyes. It was brief, so brief, that I had to have imagined it.
“And if I was?” I asked, feeling bolder now because the need to empty my mind was immense.
“You’d regret it, later. I want you, Emma, but not this way. Not to be used because you wish to forget something.”
I glared at him, and closed the gap between us. His mouth was ready the moment mine touched it. His hands wrapped around me and lifted me up and against him. He pushed me against the wall, and I moaned against his hot, demanding mouth.
I moved my hips like a slut in a whorehouse who wanted to get paid. His hands held the back of my head as he deepened the kiss. We were so lost in the kiss that we failed to notice when Addy walked in on us, or even when she cleared her throat.
Jaeden was the first to break the kiss, which pulled a regretful moan from my lips. “Get out, Addy,” I growled, fully intending to finish what I’d started.
I’d decimate this house. I’d do it in every room, except Grayson’s. I wanted to stop being the responsible one, and just forget what I’d heard, and what my parents may or may not have been involved in or known about.
“Emma,” she growled right back. “I get the whole want-to-fuck-the-Adonis-looking-male, but there’s sorta a pile of dead bodies in my house!” I turned and took in her wide eyed look of shock.
I closed my eyes. “There are dead bodies everywhere,” I sighed.
“These ones are moving!” she snapped. “Get the fuck out of Hussyland and get over whatever the hell is going on with you. You need to come see this shit!”
“If they’re dead, they can’t move.” Unless they were vampires, like the man I still had my legs wrapped around, with a protruding cock pressed against my happy place.
“Yeah, I thought the same thing…right up until one asked me to end his pain,” she said.
Jaeden’s turbulent blue and green eyes smiled at me. As if he wasn’t bothered at all by being interrupted. I could have screamed, but the knowledge of undead bodies was feeding my curiosity bug.
“Lead the way, Addy,” I said as I dropped my legs from around Jaeden’s waist. Once she was out of earshot, he growled and pulled me against his tall, hard frame.
“This isn’t over, Emma; you’ve awoken a beast, and he’s fucking hungry…” He slapped my ass and I barely managed to keep from yelping. “I’m going to fuck you soon, hard, and for hours. By the time you leave my bed, you’ll know who you belong to. You’ll never question it again.” I glanced up in confusion at his curious choice of words.
“Are you back to that kinky shit again?”
“Absolutely,” he smirked.
Chapter 18
At Addy’s house there wasn’t just a pile of bodies, these people seemed to be between life and death. They had pulses, but barely. Some could talk, while others only moaned and made eerie sounds that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Each body had a single bite mark, which looked infected.
“Animal bites?” I asked Addy as I examined a girl who didn’t look a day over sixteen. She had dirty blonde hair, and huge brown eyes. She had tears running down her face, as she rocked in a fetal position on the floor of Addy’s bedroom.
“You remember that one werewolf movie we watched? Mmm, what was it called…An America Werewolf in Paris? It almost looks like those kind of bite marks….or am I just fantasizing at like the worst possible time? Totes, right?”
“Totally, Addy…the word is totally, not totes,” I mumbled distractedly.
“Emma, those straight-up look like wolf bites, right?” she continued.
“That’s because that’s exactly what they are,” Lachlan said grimly as he strolled into the room and looked down at the girl.
“But werewolves don’t exist,” she argued.
I almost laughed at the irony of her telling a genuine werewolf that he didn’t exist. Would she freak out? I hadn’t, but it still felt more like a dream than reality to me. I could feel the heat of the vampire’s eyes on me, as well as the posturing between the two. I chanced a peek at Jaeden, and then Lachlan.
Both seemed to be fully aware of my arousal, and the state of wetness in my panties. Could Lachlan smell as well Jaeden, and did he guess at what had gone down between us? Was this really my life? Discovering newly changed werewolves, and then lying by omission about it to my best friend?
“Lachlan’s a werewolf, and Jaeden’s a vampire,” I blurted it out and smiled as she sighed dreamily. Whelp, that was off my chest.
“Oh em Gee! You’re Bella!” she screamed excitedly with a disbelieving look in her eyes as she laughed. “Wait, you didn’t like Twilight. Does Jaeden sparkle? Does his dick sparkle? Does Lachlan like doggie style more than any other style?” She laughed some more, until she realized we were all watching her waiting for it to fully sink in. “Oh my God, Emma! You bitch! Wait, you’re not a bitch right? You’re still you, no running around on all fours or sucking down O positive?”
I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t like Twilight, they needed to buy a clue…I’m not a werewolf, and no, I don’t suck down bags of blood.”
“Oh fucking hell! You’re all serious!? Is that how you got healed and didn’t die?” She looked floored. It was sinking in, and with it, I knew the way her wheels inside her mind were turning. “You could have fucked a vampire and you didn’t?”
“It’s not as simple as that,” I said as I leveled her with an irritated look. It was my best shut-the-hell-up look.
“Why not? I’d jump on it!” she admitted.