just you.”
Pietro tried hard not to let himself be hurt by the offhand comment. “He’s your…boyfriend?”
“Ex,” Claire said with immediate authority. “Very much my ex-boyfriend. Permanently ex. Which is what he’s so mad about.”
Pietro held in the sigh of relief that filled him at that knowledge.
“So he had one of his guys tail me and then decided to try and scare me some more into going back with him. That’s when you arrived…”
He recognized the way Claire left off, her voice growing suddenly suspicious as she realized something.
Here it comes, he thought to himself, wondering which way it would go.
“Wait a minute,” she said, coming to a halt so abruptly that Pietro ended up a half step in front of her, despite having expected it. “How did you find me, Pietro?”
“Um,” he said, wondering what route to take.
Should he tell her the truth right from the start? Just reveal his hand and hope that she believed him enough to let him do what was necessary? Or should he try to play it off as nothing, keeping the situation light and relaxed.
He decided to go with the second option. Judging from what she’d been saying about Pete, Claire’s evening had already been stressful enough. She didn’t need him adding to that by throwing a supernatural threat at her. Nor did he need her being aware that it was his fault it was after her.
“Dragon hearing,” he said. “I left the bar not long after you. I heard the confrontation in the distance and came at a run. We can move pretty fast if we need to.”
Claire stared at him. “Bullshit,” she said quietly. “You’re lying to me Pietro. I don’t like that. Tell me the truth please. Did you stalk me?”
He saw her tense, preparing to back away from him. The only way he was going to be able to convince her then was to tell her the truth. The entire truth, regardless of how little she might actually want to hear it. He couldn’t fool this woman, lying to her made him too uncomfortable. She could see right through him.
“Would you accept that a Vampire Hunter, one of their elite, broke into this world from another dimension earlier tonight? That it attacked me and, during the scuffle, it read my mind and got a picture of you. That I then scoured town all evening in an attempt to find you so that I could protect you from it?”
Silence hung in the air as the seconds ticked past. Pietro’s heart began to speed up. Had he messed up by telling her the truth? It was imperative that Claire was on his side. It would make his commitment to protecting her that much easier, without him having to skulk around in the shadows and try to avoid detection.
The blank look he was receiving from her wasn’t promising though, and Pietro was preparing himself for the inevitable blowup and being told to get lost. It’s not like he would blame her for such a reaction either. Here he was, showing up on a random street to fight off her ex-boyfriend, after she’d made it clear she had no interest in him.
To someone from the outside, it would very easily look like he was stalking her, that he was following her everywhere she went. His only hope was that she would recognize the truth coming from him as easily as she might recognize the fact that he’d not told the truth the first time around.
“Holy crap,” she breathed after a full minute. “You’re being serious, aren’t you?”
Pietro nodded, letting that sink in for a bit before he asked his next question.
“So, given that knowledge, will you let me walk you home?”
Chapter Eight
Claire
“I suppose I did ask for the truth, didn’t I?” she said in a daze of thoughts and confusion, worry and fear.
A vampire? After her? It seemed preposterous, and a few weeks ago she would have laughed and walked away, or perhaps even called the police, suspecting Pietro of being delusional.
Things were different now though. Dragons were here. They existed, and there was concrete proof of it. Why shouldn’t other creatures of myth and lore exist? Why would it ever be limited to just the dragons? There was no reason for that.
“I am definitely not ready to know everything that’s out there,” she said when Pietro still hadn’t responded. “Dragons were one thing, but I mean, there’s video evidence, and Lilly is in love with one. That’s tangible. In a way. Sort of.