“Why didn’t you wake me?” she cried, pushing out into the sunshine.
“Because I wasn’t awake either. Magnus woke me up just moments ago to warn me that it was growing late.”
“Dear God, I need to shower, change, make sure I have everything packed and—I didn’t even get a proper visit with Matias. He’ll be annoyed with me. I—Dammit, I wanted to call Kira and be sure she is still returning with us. Bloody hell, I hope there’s room for everyone on the plane. She’s bringing her bodyguards, you know.”
“Nay, I didn’t know. But . . .” Scotty let his words die and slowed to a halt as Beth reached the back door and slipped inside. She was still rattling off things she had to do when the door closed behind her.
“So much for talking,” he muttered to himself and then gave a start when a wet nose pressed into his palm.
“Piper likes you,” Matias commented, making his presence known.
Scotty petted the Doberman and found it oddly soothing.
“I take it you sorted out everything with Beth?” Matias asked after a brief silence.
Scotty shook his head. “I meant to, but we just . . .” He waved vaguely toward the garage.
“Ah,” Matias said, sounding disappointed. “So, she hasn’t heard and accepted your explanation for why you had not claimed her?”
“Yet.” Scotty stressed the word. “I had not claimed her yet. I was always going to claim her eventually.”
Matias eyed him dubiously. “Are you sure about that?”
“Of course,” he said firmly, and then added, “When we met she was traumatized by her experiences and her turn. I was just waiting for her to heal.”
“Are you sure you were not waiting to see if she would finally fall completely apart and you could have the three-on-one mind wipe performed on her?” Matias asked quietly. “A clean slate. No memories of her days in the brothel, so you could forget about that yourself?”
“That wasn’t—” Scotty frowned. “They are bad memories for her. I thought only to ease her suffering.”
“Oh, sí, of course.” Matias didn’t sound as if he believed him, and then he said, “When she told me about your wanting to perform the mind wipe on her, I did wonder . . .”
“What?” Scotty asked warily when Matias fell silent.
“I wondered what would have happened if you had managed to convince Dree to let you perform the three-on-one,” he admitted. “Would Beth have still been a possible life mate for you? Or would the removal of those memories of her past have changed her personality so that you were no longer suitable to be life mates? We are all shaped by our experiences, after all.”
“So you are a Rogue Hunter in the UK? How did you become one?”
Beth smiled faintly as Kira leaned toward Odilia with obvious interest. Other than the fact that Kira was a blonde and Odilia had long dark hair that was a blend of chestnut, umber, hickory and chocolate, the women were very similar. They were both beautiful, both stood about nine inches taller than her and both outweighed her by a good twenty pounds. Beth wasn’t surprised that Kira would be interested in the other woman’s experiences.
A laugh from the back of the plane drew her gaze, and Beth watched Scotty interacting with the men. He, Donny, Magnus, and Rickart had taken up positions leaning against the wall by the bathrooms when they’d boarded. Kira had shown up with all four of her bodyguards, and as Beth had feared, there weren’t enough seats on the plane for everyone. That being the case, the men had left the seats for the women. There would have been just enough seats if Scotty’s people hadn’t appeared on the scene, but now there was one seat going empty because none of the men would lay claim to it.
Rather like her, Beth thought suddenly. She was an unclaimed seat. Only there was only one man who should claim her, and he wasn’t interested. At least, he hadn’t said he was claiming her, or even asked if she would let him during all those hours in the garage. They’d just screwed like frantic bunnies until they ran out of time. Some women might have seen that as his staking a claim, but Beth wasn’t foolish enough to do so. Thanks to her life as a mortal, she’d had a lot of men in her bed, and watched just as many leave it. Sex—even wild, passionate sex—was not a declaration of anything. It was just sex.
“Please, tell me. Da?”
Beth glanced to Kira and shook her head with a small smile. Somehow the girl managed to make her plea sound like a royal command. That was a skill, and one Odilia apparently responded to, because she complied.
“I was turned in 1852 when a rogue immortal invaded our home one night while we were sleeping. I was ten,” the woman said, gaining Beth’s full attention as she realized that they were contemporaries of a sort. Beth might have been turned forty years later than Odilia, but she had also been forty years older. They had been born the same year. And the year Odilia had been turned was the year Beth’s father had sold her to a brothel.
“He roused the whole house,” Odilia continued. “And then he killed every living soul one after another—my parents, my sisters, and every last servant. He left me for last, and attacked me just as viciously as the others so that at first I felt sure I should soon join them. However, at the last moment he forced his blood on me and then left me lying in my own blood and that of my loved ones, to turn while he just walked out the door and disappeared—poof.” Odilia snapped her fingers to illustrate how quickly he’d left her life. “I woke up after several days of excruciating pain and wandered outside in search of help. Fortunately, Scotty and Magnus found me before I did anything that could make me rogue too.
“Of course, I couldn’t return to my home or my old life. I needed to be taught how to feed without harming my host, and how to hide what I was. Scotty took me in and helped me through my transition. He became my guardian. And then later, when I showed interest in becoming a hunter, he trained me to be one. I have been on his team ever since,” Odilia ended simply.
“This rogue was a monster,” Kira said, sitting back in her seat, her eyes wide. “I thought my father the only monster, but it seems there are worse monsters out there even than him.”
“Many, many monsters,” Beth said solemnly. “That is why Rogue Hunters are needed.”
Kira glanced to her, curiosity filling her expression. “And you, Beth? How were you turned? It was a rogue too, da?”
“Da,” she murmured and then said, “Oddly enough, it is a story very similar to Odilia’s.” Beth smiled at the other woman as she said that and received a tight smile in return. She’d found the woman a little standoffish since coming in from the garage that morning. At the time, Beth hadn’t known if it was just the hunter’s personality or if she’d taken an instant dislike to her for some reason. Now Beth wondered if perhaps the woman disapproved of what she and Scotty had got up to in the garage. Or perhaps Odilia didn’t think she was good enough for Scotty. He had basically adopted the other woman as a child and raised her. She supposed the woman could be protective of him and not think Beth good enough for the man who was like a father to her. But then, how else would Odilia feel? Scotty apparently didn’t think her good enough either . . . well, for anything but sex.
Pushing these thoughts away as unproductive, Beth explained, “As with Odilia’s family, a rogue entered our home one night and attacked each of us in turn. Only, he turned every one of us. Like her, we were left lying in our own blood to turn. But once those dark days were over, he hadn’t disappeared. He was there to tell us that we were his now, and that he expected us to lure men to the house to murder and rob them.”
“Did you do it?” Kira asked, wide-eyed.
Beth shook her head. “I couldn’t. I fled to find a friend for help, Alexandrina Argenis. She had been in our lives for many years by then, and we all knew that she was an immortal and what that meant, so I knew she could help. Unfortunately, by the time I found her I was in a bad way. She took care of me and helped me recover. Once I was cogent enough to recall the women at the house, I told her and we returned at once, but by then two weeks had passed and it was too late. They’d gone mad under this rogue’s abuses and had been attacking mortals, feeding off and killing them since my leaving. They were beyond help and immediately attacked us. As with Odilia, Scotty and his men saved us, but we did not stay with him. Drina was immortal-born. She took me to her family in Spain to help me through the transition. I was adopted into her family, and we trained together to become Rogue Hunters.”