Page 3 of Vein & Vow (The Bouchers #1)

Chapter 2

Beau

I t wasn’t possible. I staggered to my car, my hands trembling. It just wasn’t possible.

I’d been waiting so long. Two lifetimes. I’d been patient. I’d sacrificed.

All of this was wrong. She was rude. Dismissive, even of her boss. Full of herself. She dressed like a child. It looked like a strong wind could blow her over. Her lips…

I’d barely started the engine when a call came through the speakers.

“Yeah,” I rasped out.

“Was it you?” Chance asked dubiously.

“It’s all wrong,” I replied, the hoarseness of my voice giving me away. “It’s not right.”

“What do you mean, it’s not right?”

“She’s—no, it can’t be. Something’s wrong.”

“I’d say something’s right,” he argued, relief making his tone shift. “What’s she like? Where’d you meet her? Didn’t you have that appointment at the bank this morning?”

I stared out the windshield, stunned. “She’s wrong ,” I repeated. The past few minutes played on a loop. The conversation she’d been having when she came through the lobby. The stupid hat she’d been wearing at a jaunty angle. The wrinkle in her nose as she sang along to the music in her workroom. The way she’d argued with her boss. The sarcastic swagger as she’d called herself an artist. The way her eyes had traced over my face through the window. How those same eyes had widened in confusion when the heat rolled over her.

“You knew it wouldn’t be the same,” Chance said quietly. “Mordecai warned you it wouldn’t be.”

“I have to go,” I rasped. “I’m headed back to the house. We’ll talk then.”

“You’re leaving her?” he asked in disbelief.

I hung up without answering. I needed to get the fuck out of there. Pulling into traffic, I ignored the pit in my stomach that intensified as I got onto the freeway headed north. Half an hour later, I was pulled onto a side street, vomiting violently.

It would pass. I knew it would. I just had to wait it out.

* * *

EIGHTY-ONE YEARS EARLIER

“This is a fucking nightmare,” Zeke muttered as we picked our way through the rubble. “I don’t know why we’re not in Germany ending this.”

“You know exactly why,” I replied quietly, listening.

The treaty between our kind and humans had lasted a millennia for one reason—neither side crossed the line, ever. It was a solid truce by the time my brothers and I were born, but the elders remembered a time when the peace was a fragile thing, and they never let us forget it.

“We can alleviate suffering, but we cannot change the course of any war or conflict,” Zeke spat. “Which is bullshit, and you know it. How many times have we stepped in when asked, changing the course.”

“They have to ask.”

“Why the hell aren’t they asking?”

“No clue,” I breathed, looking over the destruction of the London street. There were people everywhere, calling out for family members and neighbors, the sounds of their fear grating along my skin.

“They’re so fragile,” Zeke whispered, striding forward.

I paused to listen for whatever he’d heard. There. Someone was weeping, mumbling words I couldn’t make out. It sounded like a woman, maybe a child. So quiet the humans around us would never hear her.

Zeke was already tossing pieces of stone and debris behind him when I joined him on the pile. The Luftwaffe had been hammering London for months, and the results were catastrophic. We’d spent the better part of our time in England searching for survivors in the mess they left behind.

America hadn’t joined the war, but anyone could see that their involvement was inevitable. The president was fooling himself if he believed that the mad Austrian would ever stop in Europe. The United States was unwilling to send troops, and for once, that included the Vampire legion who’d been guarding their shores since 1785. It was a mistake of massive proportions. Roosevelt was fully aware that our kind had flatly refused to support the Austrian. The Vampire Federation was morally opposed to demonizing any group the way the Nazis had, which made any alliance with them impossible. Vampires who had joined the Fuhrer were quickly and quietly erased from existence.

So we’d been forbidden from the fight, our hands tied. We had, however, been sent as a humanitarian force. I wasn’t happy about it, the awareness that I could be making a difference like a spider crawling over my skin, even as I slept. Only the knowledge that our brothers, Chance and Danny, were currently spying from different resistance cells in France and Poland kept me from breaking. I looked up at the sky. Nearly noon. My oldest brother Ambrose should be halfway to Switzerland with a group of children. We’d know in a few days if they’d made it.

“Why here?” Zeke asked under his breath. “We could be anywhere.”

“This is where we were sent,” I reminded him.

“To clear rubble?” He shook his head. “There are more dead bodies on this street than live ones.”

“I know,” I breathed, reaching for another piece of the crushed building. I could smell the bodies too, their stench mixed in with the scent of soot and garbage.

“Who are we saving? What difference are we making?”

“Patience,” I murmured. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“How many will be dead by then?” he hissed, straightening. “What is the point in all this?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“It’s insanity, Bjorn,” he barked, making me jerk in surprise. He hadn’t used my childhood name in years.

“Lower your voice,” I ordered again. The last thing we needed was to bring attention to ourselves. Our cover was excellent, our reasons for being in England mundane, but if anyone looked too closely, everything could go to hell. Our existence was a closely held secret within the top levels of many governments for good reason. Historically, the human population was anything but welcoming to anyone perceived as other. The human war we were in the middle of was living and dying proof of that.

“Please,” a weak voice called out. “Please, I’m in here!”

My entire body jolted with recognition, and Zeke’s gaze flashed to mine.

“No,” he whispered, fear filling his eyes.

We started in on the pile again, my knuckles bleeding as I clawed my way into it. The debris created a large mound as we tossed it behind us, every second feeling like an hour until large brown eyes and curly dark hair came into view.

It felt as if I’d been submerged for a lifetime, and I’d finally come up for air. Her face was covered in dust, and there was a long scratch down her cheek. Her nose was thin and upturned at the end, her lips a perfect cupid’s bow, and her eyelashes were long and clumped together with tears and grime.

She was mine. I’d been waiting my entire life for her, and here she was, on a random street in London, buried under hundreds of pounds of rubble.

“Are you hurt?” Zeke asked, pulling more debris away.

“I don’t think so,” she said, using her hands to shove at the opening. “Please get me out.”

“Well, we’ve gotten this far,” I said slowly as I grabbed a large piece of brick and yanked it away from her. “I don’t think we’ll stop now.”

She let out a little huff of laughter, and my stomach tightened into a knot. “Good news,” she murmured tearfully. I could smell her blood, but most of it had already dried. She wasn’t badly hurt. The scent still nearly brought me to my knees.

“Is anyone else with you?” Zeke asked, grunting comically as he jerked the last piece of rubble away.

“No,” she said, shaking as she made to stand up.

I’d just reached out to her when a deep voice from down the street made the woman turn.

“Millie,” he yelled.

“Alan,” she called back, her face crumpling. “Alan, I’m here!”

“Millie,” he yelled again, the anguish in his voice making it break.

Before Zeke or I could move, he was scrambling over the mess, reaching for the woman we’d uncovered.

“Sweetheart,” he said, his voice hoarse as he pulled her out of the hole. “Oh, my love.”

I staggered back.

“It happened so fast,” she said, crying as her hands framed his face, moved to his hair, and wrapped around his neck. “I was asleep.”

Zeke’s hand wrapped around the back of my arm, holding me in place.

“Thank God, you’re all right,” he said, kissing her cheeks. That upturned nose. The cupid’s bow I was already obsessed with.

“Steady,” Zeke murmured, too quiet for human ears to detect.

“You’re all right?” she—Millie—asked.

Her name was Millie. It fit her. Now that she was out of the hole, I could see her in her entirety. There wasn’t an angle anywhere. Every part of her was soft and sloped.

She was mine. My body tensed as I fought the urge to step forward and break the man’s neck.

“My darling,” she sobbed. “You’re not hurt?”

“No,” he whispered into her neck.

“I was so frightened,” she breathed, her dirty fingertips digging into his back.

We watched like a couple of voyeurs as they composed themselves and were still standing frozen as they turned toward us.

“Thank you,” the man said, keeping his arm around my mate as he reached out to shake our hands. “Thank you.”

Zeke shook his hand first. I forced myself to do the same.

“I’m Alan Davies,” he said. “And this is my wife, Millie.”

That’s when I noticed where the arm wrapped around her waist ended. His hand was placed protectively on her slightly curved stomach.

All the air left my lungs.

“Zeke and Beau Boucher,” Zeke said for both of us. I was glad of my brother’s presence. My entire body had locked as I forced myself to look away from my mate’s abdomen.

“Please, let me buy you dinner.”

“No need,” Zeke replied. “We’re just happy to do our part.”

“You’re Yanks?” Alan said in surprise.

Their voices faded in and out as I stood there, fighting every instinct I had. She was married. My mate was married to a human. It made my skin crawl. She was standing too close to him. Her hands were all over him, still moving as if to assure herself that he was really there. His hold was possessive. Loving. I fought the bile rising in my throat.

“We actually have an appointment,” I heard Zeke as if from far away.

I nodded, meeting Millie’s eyes for a moment before forcing my feet to move. Zeke no longer had a hand on my arm, but his presence beside me was bracing as I made myself walk away from her. My ears were ringing. Heat rolled over me, pulsing with every beat of my heart.

Zeke tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear him. Every step away from her was agony. My skin was on fire. My chest ached, and my stomach roiled with nausea.

By the time we got back to our lodgings, I was sweating.

“He’s already been called up,” Zeke said, pushing me until I’d dropped onto the sofa. “Didn’t you hear him? He’s leaving in a few days, and Millie is going somewhere in the country.”

“What?” I asked distractedly. She’d been so close, I could’ve touched her. Why hadn’t I reached her before that miserable human showed up?

“He’s shipping out in a couple of days, brother,” Zeke said, handing me a drink. “He’ll be gone. With the way this war is going, he won’t be back.”

That jolted me out of my stupor.

“He could.”

Zeke scoffed. “Doubtful.”

“She loves him.”

“She’ll forget him.”

I thought about the way she’d gazed at him, the adoration and relief in her expression.

“She won’t,” I said, throwing the drink back. It burned pleasantly. I’d need the entire bottle to keep me seated inside that small flat. “She’s carrying his child.”

“Many things could happen before ? —”

“Don’t say it,” I ordered sharply. The thought of my mate losing the man she loved and the child she carried was almost as bad as the fact that she had them.

Our mother had lost two children before she met our father. Even at her happiest, there was a shadow behind her eyes a hundred years later.

“You’ve found her,” Zeke said in awe, dropping to the chair across from me. “You’ve actually found her.”

“Too late,” I breathed, bracing my elbows on my knees.

“It’s not,” Zeke argued. “You wouldn’t have found her if it was impossible. That’s not how it works.”

“How the hell would you know?” I snapped.

“Have you ever heard of such a thing?” he asked, throwing his arm out. “You just have to be patient.”

I ground my teeth together. I didn’t have the capacity to argue with him, not then. I couldn’t stop thinking about her eyes. Deep brown. Like the coffee my father drank in the morning, not even a splash of cream. The small huff of laughter she’d let out when I spoke. I’d done that. I’d made her laugh. Me. The curve of her hips and shoulders, the fullness of her breasts, the small roundness of her belly. The bare feet, slender and delicate, that had curved carefully over the rocks.

Had Alan Davies picked her up after we’d left, or had he ignored her scratched feet and made her walk? They’d surely get infected. My hands clenched into fists.

“I think we should go over there for supper,” Zeke said after a few moments. “At least get to know them a little. Maybe she’s not as attached as she seemed. The man could be an awful husband.”

“No.”

“You know you want to.”

“It’s a bad idea,” I rasped, even as every part of me yearned to find her again.

The other half of my soul.

“I’m going,” Zeke said, watching me carefully. “You can stay here if you’d rather.”

He knew I’d never let him go alone.

* * *

By the time I pulled into the garage at our family estate, the shakes had stopped, and my stomach had mostly settled. It would be hours before I stopped sweating.

“Beaumont,” my mother called excitedly, her feet barely touching the cement as she raced for my car. “You found her.”

“No,” I said, putting up a hand to stop her. “No, something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?” she asked in confusion. “I can feel it.” She paused. “I can smell it.”

“She’s not right,” I said desperately, my words curt. “It’s not her.”

“It is…”

My chest tightened, distant memories mixing with new ones in a kaleidoscope of confusion. It could never be her.

“Bjorn,” my dad barked in rebuke from the doorway.

“Sorry, Mama,” I murmured.

“Come inside,” she ordered, waving off my apology.

I followed her numbly into the house.

“It’s her,” my father said flatly as I passed him. “I can smell it.”

“I already told him that, my love,” my mother admonished. “He knows.”

“It can’t be,” I argued. “She’s…” I shook my head. She was everything I’d never wanted. Her eyes were wrong. Her face was wrong. Her body was wrong. Her personality was appalling. She bounced when she walked. She was too short. She was too small.

“Tell us,” my father ordered, crossing his arms.

“She’s wrong ,” I replied. I didn’t know how else to explain it. My body told me that she was the one. It ached to get back in my car and race back to the bank. But my mind, my gut, said that a mistake had been made.

“What’s wrong with her?” my mom asked worriedly, chewing the inside of her cheek as she leaned against my father. “Is she ugly?”

“Yes,” I said quickly. “No.”

“Which is it?” my father asked.

“Looks are just window dressing,” my mother said before he’d even finished speaking. “They don’t matter. Not really. It’s what’s inside that counts. The bond?—”

“She’s not ugly.”

My parents stared at me.

“She’s not right .”

They continued to stare.

“Son,” my father said after a few minutes, his voice gentler than I’d heard since I was a child. “You knew she wouldn’t be exactly the same. You were warned back when?—”

“I know that,” I snapped.

“Mordecai told you?—”

“I know what Mordecai said.”

“It’s a blessing,” my mother reminded me quietly. “One you’ve been granted twice now.”

“I’ve waited before,” I said, a new wave of cold sweat dripping down my back as I thought of going through it all again. “I can do it once more.”

“You will not,” my father said sternly, glaring at me in admonishment. “How dare you defy the Gods again?”

“I’m not defying?—”

“Quiet,” he ordered. “Your brothers have waited as long as you. Ambrose even longer. To throw away this chance after doing it once before would be the height of entitlement. You made your mother a promise.”

“She’s not right .”

“Who are you to decide that?” he thundered, losing the leash on his temper. “Do you question the Gods?”

“Erik,” my mother murmured as my back snapped straight.

“You will complete this bond with the mate of your soul,” my father ordered, pointing at me as his eyes flashed. “As you should have done before.”

“Don’t speak of my mate,” I shot back, getting to my feet, his aggression fueling my own.

“Which one?” he asked nastily.

“Beaumont,” my mother snapped, holding up her hand as I moved away from the counter. “Not another step.”

“Your selfishness ends now,” my father growled.

“My selfishness ?” I argued in disbelief. “You believe it was selfish to allow my mate to live the life she’d chosen for herself?”

“If you’d allowed fate to unfold as it should’ve, you would’ve been living within your bond for the last eighty years,” he said flatly.

“This argument has grown tedious,” my mother said, her hand wrapping tightly around my father’s forearm. Her tone softened. “We urge you to give this considerable thought, Bjorn. You have been given a gift, one which our kind spend their entire lives waiting for. Don’t waste it.”

Without another word, she towed my father out of the room. Their low voices fell into an argument before they’d reached the other side of the house.

Pulling out my phone, I strode toward my wing of the house. I needed to change my clothes and find something to occupy my mind. I wished I could call Zeke. He remembered our time in London far better than I did. Fighting the bond had left spots in my memory that I was sure I’d never recover.

Someone had left a voicemail on my phone. I pushed play and set the phone on my bed as I began to strip out of my damp clothes.

“Hello, Mr. Boucher. This is Noah Miranda-Whittaker from Accord Blood Works. We met this morning.” A long pause. His voice lowered. “I’d like to apologize. It took me a few moments to understand the situation, and as such, I behaved inappropriately this morning. Reese Matthews is a close friend, more of an adopted child really, to me and my husband. Naturally, I’m very protective of her.” Another pause. “Please return my call at your earliest availability. Reese was feeling unwell and has gone home, but I will be in the office until five o’clock.”

The recording stopped abruptly, and I realized I was standing frozen, my shirt hanging limply around my neck.

Reese Matthews. Even her name was wrong.

I finished stripping as I strode toward the bathroom and hopped in the shower. By the time I was done, the achingly familiar sensation—like someone was yanking at a cord lodged in my chest—had started again in earnest. It was miserable, perhaps even worse than the first time.

Every molecule in my body was screaming. I loathed the idea of her, but she was mine. No matter how many times I told myself that she was wrong, that I just needed to stay the fuck away from her, I also knew that I couldn’t go through it again. The thought of it made panic pound through me.

I dressed quickly, the relief of my decision-making my movements swift and jerky.

Minutes later, I was in the car, waiting impatiently for the garage to open.

“Thank God,” I heard my mom mutter from the front porch as I drove away.

“One down,” my father replied.

It wasn’t hard to find where Reese Matthews lived. Once found, a Vampire’s soul match was like a beacon, always lighting the way home.