ng. And he sure as hell didn’t want that kind of intimacy with another woman. His difficult marriage had finished off any desire to pursue another relationship.
Now that his stomach had settled into a series of dull cramps instead of the knife-like pangs he’d been experiencing, he headed to the door. Time to resume his duties as Mastyr of Swanicott and kick some Invictus wraith-pair butt.
He gave a shout to the bar-owner, a lovely troll named Heather, bidding her good-night. The entire room shouted back, a friendly well-wishing that made him smile.
He pushed the door open and a string of bells jingled, an odd sound for a place full of tattoos and hardass.
Outside, the air was cool and fresh. He took a deep breath, his gaze moving in a swift arc over the dark green house opposite, the red and gold autumn forest on either side, then up and down the street.
He saw no sign of the Invictus, no tell-tale red wind in the trees that would announce their presence.
All clear.
The Elf Lords Hideaway was located way off the main drag of a small town called Barker’s Bend, not far from the beach. There was a row of houses to the north of the bar and a three-office strip center to the south. The latter was a sad affair housing a tattoo parlor, a hair salon that advertised something called glitter nails, and a liquor store that was robbed about once a week.
After a moment of taking it all in, he relaxed a little.
Harleys were lined up one after the other in front of the bar. He’d owned at least a dozen in the last couple of years alone and now rode a Valkyrie just to mix things up. Though vampires might be good at flying, sometimes there was nothing better than wheels on the road.
He never kept his bikes long, not so much by design as happenstance. He rode everywhere, but when he was called away by his Communication Center to do battle, he often had to fly off, leaving his motorcycle wherever he happened to be.
His realm had an abundance of sneaky forest gremlins and those bastards didn’t hesitate to steal anything not chained to a cement slab, including his abandoned bikes.
Mounting his street-facing Valkyrie, he was about to fire her up when a chill ran across his shoulders. He had a sudden and profound sensation he was being watched.
Letting his arms fall to his sides, he once more extended his senses and made another pass visually up and down the street.
His gaze became stuck on the small house opposite, with dark green shingles on the exterior walls. No lights were on and he saw no one moving around inside. But he would swear someone was there, watching him.
A breeze rustled the fall leaves, whipping a few up into the air then bringing them down to roll along the street. He loved this time of year. The air was crisp and clean. Rains came often now, adding the occasional snow flurry, reminding the inhabitants winter was on the way.
Finally, he turned the key. The deep rumble of the machine, with vibrations that got his juices flowing, eased him all over.
Just before he took off, however, a familiar sensation crept over him. Besides the sense that he was being watched, his gut told him that forces in his realm were winding up for a show-down. And he asked the question that had been on his mind since returning to Swanicott: Was his enemy, Margetta, the Ancient Fae, already in his realm?
~
Olivia Hart, half-human, half-shifter, stood on the porch of her small Swanicott home, sniffing the air. She knew full well Mastyr Zane had just had sex and that the same woman had fed him as well.
Some aberrant part of her growled at the thought of the unknown female having her paws all over the man. But her rational mind repressed the odd, possessive sensation; Zane belonged to no woman and hadn’t since the supposed attack on his wife a few years back.
Though there was absolutely no reason why she should have a claim on him, she growled anyway.
Apparently, the shifter part of her had long since decided Zane was her pack, a man she needed to protect, a man she belonged to. So, it was hard not to feel a need to rip his donors to shreds, especially when they’d spread their legs for him.
At least he looked a lot better than when he’d gone into the Elf Lords Hideaway, but still not great. He had a constant pained expression between his brows because of his chronic blood starvation. Most mastyr vampires did. It was a terrible curse for these men that when each gained a phenomenal amount of power, their ability to be satiated by the average woman’s blood, disappeared.
And how they suffered.
He kept looking her direction while revving his bike, but she knew he couldn’t see her. She wore her cloaking frequency, or at least that’s what she called it. She couldn’t remember exactly when she’d discovered she could hide herself from the world around her, but that day had given her some of the first peace she’d known in her twenty-seven years.
Growing up in a small New England town, and constantly sprouting fur, had been a difficult experience. The Nine Realms had only become known to the States three decades prior, around which time some damn Realm shifter had shown up, taken her mother for a joy ride, and Olivia had been the result.
She hadn’t truly understood how different she was until it was time to attend public school.
She’d been so excited at first because she wanted to be with other kids, have lots of friends. And though some of the children had quickly gotten past her fur, most of their parents were horrified by her half-breed DNA and prevented the attachments. She essentially grew up without friends and as the years advanced, the taunts became increasingly cruel.
She’d lived a very isolated life in Maine and as a teen, boyfriends had been few and far between. She would have moved to Swanicott sooner, but by her early twenties, her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. Olivia had stuck with her for years, taking care of her for a long time until finally her beloved parent had left the earth.