“Regardless, she’s with four men, Teagan. Four men who have come here determined to kill us. You. Me. The men in the monastery. She’s leading them right to them. We are going to have to stop them.”
“I didn’t know you were different when I met you, Andre, and she won’t, either. We can casually meet them on the trail and say we’ve been camping for our honeymoon. Because we’ve just gotten married, it will seem natural for us to want to be alone, even in the daylight hours.” Teagan stepped close, putting her hand on his chest and looking up at him.
His heart did a slow somersault when he looked down into her eyes. He would give her the world if he could. He wanted to give her this. They’d be walking right into the enemy’s camp. He had no doubt that he would have done that on his own, but to bring Teagan along was sheer madness.
“It is dangerous, sívamet. These people have killed many of us. They find our sleeping places and murder us when we have no way to fight them. They kill the innocent. I doubt they’ve ever killed a real vampire in their lives. Your grandmother is the one leading them to us, abusing a special gift.”
“But she doesn’t know that’s what she’s doing,” Teagan insisted. “She’s funny and smart and loves to be snarky, but she wouldn’t kill an innocent person. She just doesn’t know.”
“Teagan.” He said her name gently. Lovingly.
She shook her head. “Don’t. She’s my grandmother, Andre.”
She blinked up at him with her dark, chocolate eyes and those luscious eyelashes that never failed to catch his notice. She was pulling out all the stops, and because she was the world to him, he knew he was susceptible. Still. It was dangerous.
“Even if you were to convince her, Teagan—and I am not saying I will allow you to take that risk—her friends will not care one way or the other. I have seen their kind many times. They will not tolerate different. I am different. You are different. The ancients up in the monastery are different. And they will not come at us at night. They know better. They will strike during the day, when we are vulnerable.”
Andre knew he wasn’t convincing her. She loved her Grandma Trixie and she wasn’t going to back down over the issue. He took her hand and brought the tips of her fingers to the warmth of his mouth.
“Csitri.” Again he used his voice on her. Soft. Mesmerizing. Loving. Pure silk and velvet with the rasp that always shook her. She wasn’t immune to his voice.
“She’s my grandmother. She raised me. Imagine how you would feel, Andre, if you had to even think about killing someone you loved.”
He closed his eyes briefly. He had destroyed several people he cared for. Friends he’d grown up with. Friends who had lost the fight against the darkness in them—darkness Teagan had saved him from.
“You cannot ever be blinded by love, Teagan. By anything. We will be in danger every moment we are in the company of humans. Unless you can feel the threat, such as we do now, because they are in that mode, you could be right next to a member of the society and not know it.”
“She isn’t evil.”
“I did not, at any time, say your grandmother was evil, Teagan.” He framed her face with both hands, tipping her head up so she was forced to meet his eyes. “You love her. You want her safe. I will move heaven and earth to accomplish that for you. But, csitri, you have to get what I am saying to you or I cannot have you anywhere near those people. They are dangerous. They would kill you without even thinking twice about it. I have to know you are with me. Me. Your lifemate. Not your grandmother.”
“Can’t I be with both of you?” she asked in a small voice.
He ran his finger down her soft, mocha skin. Beautiful skin. His beautiful empath. “No, sívamet. Not this time. This time we have to go into this situation with the knowledge that things could go wrong. If that happens, I have to know I can trust you to have my back—that no matter how difficult, you can accept my decisions.”
Her eyes searched his. He liked that about Teagan. She thought things out for herself. She liked to chatter when she was nervous, something he found he liked far too much, but she was always serious when it was called for. She knew what he meant. She knew her grandmother could be facing a death sentence and he wouldn’t hesitate if she stayed with the members of the fanatical society. Still . . . She bit her lip. It was her grandmother. The woman who had raised her.
Trixie had a difficult life. She had her only child at fifteen. A child raising a child. She loved her daughter with all her heart and poured every waking minute into seeing to her care and education. She wanted her daughter to have everything that she didn’t have. She’d named her daughter Sherise and loved her more than anything else. When Sherise fell in love in high school and repeated Trixie’s downfall, getting pregnant at sixteen, Trixie loved her through it. Fortunately, Sherise’s man loved Sherise and stuck by her, marrying her. They moved in with Trixie.
Teagan bit her lip nervously. Her grandmother was an extraordinary woman, quite brilliant, and had she had the chance for a good education, in a different place, Teagan knew she would have excelled. As it was, she excelled at making a family. She worked hard until she had enough money to move Sherise, her husband, Terence, the baby and herself into another, much better part of the city. She worked so they could continue their educations.
Sherise had three daughters eighteen months apart. Terence got his education, a good job as an accountant and they happily raised their girls until he grew fatigued and sick. He died of cancer when he was barely twenty-four years of age. Sherise and her three daughters moved right back in with Trixie and she never once protested having to help her daughter raise more babies.
“Teagan.”
Teagan closed her eyes. She could barely resist Andre’s voice. Not when he said her name like that. A silk and velvet rasp she felt caressing her skin. She leaned into him and pressed her lips to his flat belly, right over his belly button. She loved him. Pure and simple, she loved him.
“I showed you what my grandmother did for her family in my memories. My mother didn’t go near other men for years. And then she met Charles at a place where she worked. He was Caucasian, but it didn’t matter to her. She thought they fell in love. She got pregnant with me. After so many years of not being with a man, she finally chose one and he left her the moment he found out.”
She stared at Andre’s hard chest. She didn’t want to look into his eyes. She knew, when it came to matters of safety, he was implacable. Still, it was her grandmother, and she had to try to make him understand. “She died in my grandmother’s arms, Andre. Giving birth to me. She died. My grandmother’s only child.”
She traced circles on his chest. “She took us all in. My sisters and me. I was a newborn baby. My father was Caucasian.” She finally lifted her eyes to him. “She loved me, Andre, in spite of the fact that her only daughter, her only child, died giving birth to me. I took away her beloved daughter, but she loved me anyway. She’s all about family. She loved my sisters. And once again, she worked her butt off so we could have educations. She wanted us to have choices she never had. She gave that to us.”
She was desperate for him to understand. “If you have to do it, you could separate her from them. Take her somewhere safe, like our cave, to give me a chance to explain the difference. She couldn’t possibly hurt me with you close by.”
She felt Andre take a deep breath and she knew she had convinced him. He nodded his head. “But, seriously, Teagan. You know me. If I tell you to do something, you do it with no questions.”
That was a total warning and she knew he meant it. She nodded her head, because if she didn’t, he wouldn’t drop it. She knew him now, inside and out, and there were certain things he didn’t give an inch on. In his mind he was making a great concession even taking her along, so she had to give him something back.