Page 74 of Don't Bite the Director
Mate.
Saiden was her mate.
She’d gone through more emotions than a daytime soap opera when Raven had told her. Shock and confusion had quickly bled into anger that Saiden kept that little factoid from her, but after talking with the other vamp for a few minutes, the flames of her anger were quickly washed away by a tidal wave of sorrow.
It was all too much. Cora had only just begun to accept her future as a vampire, but to add the whole concept of a mate on top of that? They should all be thankful she wasn’t catatonic.
Mate.
It was just a word. Just four little letters strung together to form one syllable that had seared itself into her brain. She’d just met Saiden, andyet she couldn’t deny the attraction between them. The spark. Not to mention the fact that she slept like a baby kitten in his presence, and having sex with him felt like a spiritual awakening.
She couldn’t change the fact that she was a vampire now, and she’d long ago learned to accept that her life would never be normal. She could, however, do something about the fact that she was staring down the barrel of an eternity spent alone.
Which is why when Tressa had burst in to inform them of Saiden’s insane plan, the first thing Cora did was ask where to find this Baylin who called himself Saiden’s brother.
“How dare you?” she demanded again, her vision tinged blood red.
The tired-looking male slumped in the computer chair didn’t look like a vampire to Cora. He looked like an alcoholic with his flushed face and bottle of Jack Daniels clenched tightly in one hand. She spied two more empties behind him as well. Exactly how drunk was he?
“You two really are mates,” the inebriated vampire muttered with a thick Irish brogue before taking another swig. “Neither one of you eejits knows how to knock.”
Cora’s jaw dropped. Was he really sassing her? Now?
“How could you let him go?” she growled. “You’re supposed to be his brother, and you let him run off to get killed. Alone.”
A tear tried to squeeze itself out, but she shoved it back where it belonged. She was done crying. If she was forced to live forever, she was damn well doing it with Saiden at her side. She couldn’t deny that she was still pissed at him, mate or not, but he wasn’t getting off that easy. He had some serious making-up to do. A lifetime’s worth, in fact. Maybe more than one.
“I din’t let him do anythin’, cailín. He went off all doolally with that nutter plan on his own.”
Cora blinked. Was he speaking English under that accent?
“You want to try that again for those of us raised on this side of the pond?” she barked, her patience long since frayed to a handful of very fine threads.
Baylin spun around in his chair and glared at her. Or at least that’s what she thought he was doing. With as much alcohol as he’d imbibed, it came off more constipated moose than menacing.
“I said, Saiden is captaining his own vessel now. He doesn’t want a first mate, he doesn’t want a crew, he just wants to sail into the storm and go down with the feckin’ ship.”
Okay, that was better. She at least got the overall gist of what he was saying.
“And you’re telling me that with all the fancy gadgets in here you had no way to stop him? Bullshit!”
While Raven had been comforting her after learning about Saiden’s death sentence, he had apparently been telling the rest of the family about his revenge plan. And not a damn one of them stopped him. Baylin even helped.
Stomping over to his chair, Cora grabbed the whiskey bottle and slammed it down behind her. The glass shattered on the floor, and she enjoyed how loud it sounded to her. She wanted to break more things. If her world was going to fall apart, then it deserved the right soundtrack.
“You could have prevented all of this,” she lashed out. “You’re the one who solved Bianca’s clue for him. You’re the one who told him where to go so he could walk right into her trap. He would still be here if it weren’t for you.”
“No, he wouldn’t be!” Baylin shouted, jumping to his feet and forcing her to take a step back. “Saiden ain’t no gobshite, Cora. He’s smart. Wicked smart. If I hadn’t given him the answer, he would have sussed it out before he reached the front gate. It wasn’t exactlycomplicated to figure out that it was the Hydra Warehouse.”
She neglected to inform him that she wouldn’t have gotten it save for Tressa filling her in. But in reality, how many people knew what Sacramento’s slogan was? Not to mention knowing that a many-headed monster was called a hydra. Cora made monster movies but not, you know,monstermovies.
“It doesn’t matter,” she gritted out. “You could have stalled him. Given him the wrong address.”
“That’s a gas,” Baylin scoffed. “Saiden’s ancient, but he still knows how to use Google Maps.”
“You could have done something!” she screamed in his face, cursing her new vamp senses when the whiskey smell wafting off him burned her nose like she just huffed straight from the bottle. “Instead you did nothing. You let him go off to die.”
“Me?” Baylin asked quietly, a low rage simmering in his eyes. “What about you? Do you know why he ran off to sacrifice himself for revenge? Because of you! He loved you, and you rejected him. It broke his heart when you said that you wanted nothing to do with him. So you can shut yer gob with that judgey shite because all of this is just as muchyour fault.”
