Page 34 of Patrick’s Seduction (Scanguards Vampires #19)
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T he next hour passed in a flurry, and Fallon was glad for it. Patrick was busy with getting everybody organized in the search for Cameron. She watched him in fascination as he gave orders and answered questions. The Scanguards employees he worked with—all vampires and vampire hybrids—didn’t need many instructions as it turned out. They knew what to do. Like the cogs in a well-oiled machine, each used their unique skills to contribute to the mission.
She met the two gay vampires, Thomas and Eddie, who were in charge of anything to do with computers and technology. From what she gathered listening to their conversations, they were expert hackers who had no qualms about hacking into any system for the sake of justice. Several teams of hybrids were roaming the city and Marin County on surveillance missions, following any clue they received from traffic cameras. In addition, Thomas and Eddie fed them information they’d gathered from banking transactions linking to Cameron’s or his family’s credit and debit cards. Another group of IT geeks worked on mapping all properties and companies the Gallaghers owned, and where Cameron could possibly hide out.
Fallon sat on the sofa in Samson’s office, watching Patrick working the phones. She was glad to have a little while to herself to collect her thoughts. Striker’s claim that she and Patrick had unintentionally mated was something not easy to digest. For starters, she didn’t really know what it all meant. She’d always associated the word mating with, well, with making a baby. But it didn’t appear that Striker or Patrick had used that word in the same context. Patrick had said that he’d wanted to ask her after all this was over, so she could only assume it meant that he wanted to ask her to marry him. This would mean that mating was the same as getting married.
Her head was spinning, so many different emotions jumping around like in a kid’s bouncy castle. She tried to sort them so she could process them like she processed the results of her research studies. Oh God, she hadn’t even thought of work and her research projects in the last few days. She hadn’t missed it either, which was unusual for her. But who could blame her? Her entire world had upended in the last few days, and she had to figure out what this new world meant for her. What her future would look like. Which brought her back to Striker’s earlier words that she could become human again if Cameron died by the end of the full moon. It meant they had two nights left before her condition was permanent.
She should feel terrible about wanting somebody dead. But no such feeling rose in her. Instead, she felt that justice would only be done once Cameron was dead. Had the wolf inside her eradicated her humanity to the point where she couldn’t feel anything wrong with killing somebody?
“What’s wrong?”
Startled, Fallon looked up and saw Patrick standing only a couple of feet away from her. She met his eyes, and he sat down next to her.
“Does it make me evil to want Cameron dead?”
“No, Fallon! Don’t think that!” Patrick cupped her shoulders and drew her closer to him. “It’s not evil to want justice, even if that means killing somebody. He brought this on himself. We’ll take care of him, my colleagues and I.”
His voice sounded as if this was nothing new in his life.
“Have you ever killed somebody?”
He hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, to save my family and friends from bad people.” He sighed. “I don’t like killing. But sometimes, it’s the only way to eliminate a threat for good.”
“I understand.” She put her arms around him. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
“I’ll always tell you the truth,” he murmured.
“Then please tell me one more thing.” She had to be sure. “Are you really okay with us being mated? I know it wasn’t your choice.”
He smiled, and his eyes suddenly turned almost golden. “Oh, Fallon, I’ve wanted to make you mine since the moment I first saw you.”
She drew back a little, some of his words sending a chill down her spine, because she associated them with something bad. “To be yours?”
“Not the way Cameron meant it. Not like property. No. Never. I want to be with you for eternity, that’s what the blood bond means for vampires. I never want to touch another woman. I never want to drink another person’s blood—”
He suddenly stopped himself, and his forehead furrowed. “That can’t be…” He rubbed his temple.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
He locked eyes with her then. “When a vampire mates with a human or another supernatural creature—other than another vampire—he can only drink blood from his mate. If he drinks any other blood, it will make him sick, and he’ll eventually die. It makes the vampire or vampire hybrid dependent on his mate, in a way leveling the playing field. Like with my father and mother. He drinks only her blood. It gives her power over him. Not that she would ever abuse it, but he’ll do anything to make her happy.”
Not understanding what he was trying to explain to her, she asked, “What are you trying to say?”
“You drank my blood before we had sex, not during! We’re not mated, Fallon. I drank bottled human blood this morning while you had breakfast, remember? And I didn’t get sick.”
“Oh!” She suddenly felt deflated. Disappointed. But maybe it was better that way. Maybe this would give them both time to think about whether they really wanted this.
With his fingers underneath her chin, he tipped her face up, and suddenly, his face was only inches away from her. “Yes, unfortunately. However, the silver lining is that I’ll get my chance to ask you officially after all.”
Her heart beat excitedly—more than it should—because wasn’t that a question that she should contemplate for a while, particularly given her dating history? Wasn’t it unwise to tumble head-over-heels into a serious relationship? And eternity sounded not just serious, but, well, it meant forever. It should scare her that Patrick wanted this even though they barely knew each other. After all, they’d only met a little over three days ago. So, why did she feel as if she knew him? As if she could look into his soul and see that he had a pure heart, one that beat for her?
“Ask me what?” she whispered, unable to stop her lips from moving.
“Whether you want to be my blood-bonded mate.”
When she parted her lips to give him an answer, Patrick put his finger over them. “Don’t answer now. I like having something to look forward to.”
His lips brushed hers for just a second before the sound of the door opening startled them both.
“Patrick, we’ve got something.”
Thomas, the blond IT guy dressed in leather pants and a casual T-shirt, entered the room.
Patrick rose. “Let me hear it.”
“We think that William Gallagher called his son just after you guys left the property. The call lasted less than a minute.”
“Do you know what was spoken?”
“No. We didn’t have a tap on the Gallagher lines yet, but the number he called was a burner, and we must assume that it was Cameron’s, because his own phone has been disconnected. He probably trashed it, knowing that he could be traced that way.”
“Okay. Do we have a location for the burner?”
Thomas shook his head. “We’re working on it, but no luck so far. But Ryder just called in. He’s surveilling the access road that leads to the Gallagher estate. He saw an SUV passing, heading there.”
“But Cameron drives a sportscar,” Fallon interrupted.
Thomas looked at her. “He may have dumped it. If his father told him that vampires came for him, he wouldn’t be so careless as to use his own car to get around.”
“I agree,” Patrick said. “Have you sent drones up to verify it’s him?”
“No. Too risky in daylight. They’ll spot them, and he might run before we can get there with a team. I can’t send Ryder in there on his own. We don’t know how many other werewolves are there.”
Patrick nodded. “Alright. Then we’ll have to be a bit more clandestine. I think I have an idea how we can confirm that Cameron is there without alerting them to our presence.”