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“This isn’t funny,” I growled.

His blond eyebrows went up. “Do I look like I’m laughing?”

“Fergus—”

“So skeptical.” He looked at the ceiling, and he seemed to address some kind of higher power when he asked, “What have I ever done to deserve such suspicion?” Before I could reply, he smiled at me and switched to Gaelic. “Go smell her if you don’t believe me.”

My heart sped up. Slowly, I turned my gaze to the vampire. Was he serious? Was she…

“Ours,” he said softly. He couldn’t read thoughts—neither of us possessed that ability—but after three centuries together we didn’t really need it.

And it hit me.

He wouldn’t lie about something like this. Which meant my fated female was steps away.

My feet carried me forward before I realized I was moving. As I approached the bed, the vampire regarded me with a pair of wide blue eyes.

Her scent reached my nose before I reached her, and I stumbled.

Fergus’s warm hand landed on my shoulder before I could fall.

“It’s all right,” he murmured in Gaelic as he steadied me. He squeezed my bicep. “Come on. In all things, we go together.”

I looked at him sharply.

He gazed back with open affection.

“You remember that,” I said, my voice gone scratchy.

“‘Course I do. You think I’d forget our first night together?” Gaze still on mine, he tipped his head toward the bed. “It’s another night of firsts for us. Our wait is over.”

Too fucking right it is. With excitement coursing through my veins, I went to the bed and looked down at our female. Her scent swirled around me—a heady combination of incense and something feminine and delicate that made my cock spring to attention.

But there was something else, too. I inhaled deeply and frowned, struggling to puzzle it out.

Her gaze darted between Fergus and me. “Please,” she said, her voice low and melodious and flavored with the Slavic accent common to vampires. “I’m not what you think I am.”

“Oh yes, you are,” I said, my dick growing harder by the second. She was a sumptuous little doll—all ivory skin and sweetly rounded curves. And that hair like fire. How fucking appropriate. “MATE,” my beast roared, urging me to hike up her heavy skirts to see if her legs were as shapely as the rest of her. To spread her thighs wide and bury my aching cock in her heat. She belonged to me—me and Fergus.

Fate had given us a vampire for a mate.

And yet…there it was again. There was something off about her scent.

I sat on the edge of the bed. “You’re not entirely a vampire, are you?”

She started to shrink back, then seemed to steel herself—at least as much as she could in her position. “I’m a dhampir.” She lifted her chin ever so slightly. “My mother was human.”

“That’s it,” Fergus said on an exhalation. “I wondered why she smelled different.”

She bristled. “I don’t smell.”

“It’s nothing bad, lass.” He winked at her. “To us, you smell irresistible.”

She stared at him like he’d just sprouted horns.

Dhampir. It had been decades since I’d heard of one being alive. “What’s your name?” As I spoke, I realized I had a dozen other questions. Namely, what the hell was she doing in the Highlands alone in the middle of the night?

She hesitated. “Untie me and I’ll tell you.”