Midnight Echoes: Part of the Immortal Ops Series World (Crimson Ops)

by Roth, Mandy M.

  There was a swooshing noise followed quickly by a booming male voice. One she knew well. “What the fuck happened? Meena? Baby girl?”

  “Daddy?” she asked, surprised he was there.

  “I summoned him,” said Bhaltair, making no move to set her down or hand her over to her father.

  Meena stayed pressed against Bhaltair but glanced over at her father, Stamatis. His eyes were wide as he stared at the carnage around them. The section of the library they stood in was like the aftermath of a war zone. The more she soaked it all in, the harder she cried.

  Her father snapped out of his stupor and reached for her. “Meena!”

  She whimpered but shoved herself tightly against Bhaltair, unwilling to leave the safety and comfort he provided.

  Her father, looking more like a badass biker than a secret operative, stepped closer. Worry etched his face as he came just shy of touching her broken arm.

  “Sweetie, this is broken and you’re bleeding,” he said, his voice deepening as he spoke. “What happened?”

  She continued to cry too hard to answer him, but as she glanced down at her injured leg, she realized that while it was still bleeding, it was doing so slowly, and from a wound that looked small compared to what it had been when it first happened, only moments ago. Had Bhaltair’s blood helped to heal her to some degree?

  Bhaltair cleared his throat. “She was attacked by a group of hybrids.”

  “While you were with her?” her father demanded, narrowing his gaze. He rivaled Bhaltair in size and strength. If the two went to blows, they’d both end up harmed. “How the hell could you let her be hurt?”

  “Daddy, no,” she managed. “This isn’t his fault. He asked me to trust his gut feeling and not come in here tonight. I thought he was being silly and overprotective. I should have listened to him. Now look at all the books that are destroyed because of me.”

  Her father looked puzzled. “Meena, you’re crying over books?”

  She nodded and cried harder.

  Bhaltair kissed her temple, the action drawing the attention of her father at once. Bhaltair didn’t seem to care. “Lass, I’m sure most can be repaired.”

  She perked. “Really?”

  Tossing his hands in the air, her father grumbled and then bent, examining the closest of the creature’s bodies. His face was ashen as he met Bhaltair’s gaze. “These things came after my daughter?”

  “Aye, Stamatis, I do nae think it was a random attack.”

  Her father, known more for being a cocky smartass than a man who shared his emotions, looked visibly shaken by the ordeal. “Bhaltair, thank you for protecting her. I’ll get her to Aine.”

  There was a commotion at the other end of the room and the librarian appeared, holding a rather medieval-looking weapon in one hand as she pointed at Whitney—her father’s best friend and fellow Paranormal Regulator—with her other hand. Whitney, a wolf shifter who stood well over six foot, and while sinewy, still managed to be packed full of muscle, looked scared of the tiny woman.

  The librarian jabbed him with the weapon. “You’ll be bringing that overdue book back, bucko.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Whitney replied, hurrying in their direction.

  The librarian cleared her throat, his gaze narrowing in on Bhaltair. “Vampire, I just got off the line with PSI. No alarm alert came through on their end. Someone disabled the system. The techs are working on it. And one of the two security men is dead. Found his body when I went to check the alarm system. The other is missing.”

  Meena gasped. The library didn’t have everyday, run-of-the-mill security. They had trained operatives. She twisted and stared down from Bhaltair’s arms at the creature near her father’s feet. These things had killed a PSI operative? The reality that they could have killed Bhaltair hit her hard.

  She reached for his chest—realizing a beat later, at the almost complete absence of pain, that it was with her broken arm. In fact, it was feeling better and better by the minute. “Are you hurt?”

  Her father grunted. “He’s fine. Stop mollycoddling him. And you,” he said to Bhaltair, “hand me my daughter.”

  Whitney came to a stop near her father. Their features were vastly different. Where Meena’s father had jet-black hair and a goatee, Whitney had long sandy-blond hair with streaks of platinum through it. He had a five o’clock shadow, which was more facial hair than she was used to seeing on him. His blue eyes widened as he sniffed the air. “I smell wolf shifter in this mix, but it’s tainted. Wrong.”

  “Aye,” Bhaltair replied. “I believe two hybrids are a wolf and vampire mix. They reek of death and decay, so it’s hard to tell.”

  Whitney tipped his head to Stamatis. “Anyone want to tell me why that dickhead is holding Meena and why you’re letting him?”

  Her father groaned. “Because my baby girl is refusing to let me take her.”

  Bhaltair snarled, glaring at Whitney. “Make any attempt to remove her from me, wolf, and I will kill you. She is mine.”

  Meena jerked as her father and Whitney gasped. Whitney grabbed for her father, ripping him back as he started to charge at Bhaltair. “Whoa, no. Calm down there, big guy. No killing the dickhead just because he laid verbal claim to your baby.”

  Meena tensed. “I’m not his baby. Rose is. I’m a grown woman. And…wait. What? Verbal claim?” She wanted to say more but the dull throb that had been in her head increased tenfold. She clutched her stomach. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “So am I,” snapped her father. “You are not his mate, Meena! No.”

  “What?” she asked, her stomach cramping more.

  “Stamatis, this is nae the time nor place to argue. Meena requires medical attention,” said Bhaltair.

  Whitney whistled low. “I did not see that claim coming. Nope.”

  Chapter Seven

  Meena sat on the exam table in a clinic that catered to supernaturals, with her father near her, pacing endlessly. Whitney was matching him step for step, more than likely tired of playing referee between her father and Bhaltair.

  It had been an ordeal to simply agree on transportation to the facility. Her father had wanted her to ride with him. Bhaltair had refused to put her down, and Meena had been thankful for that. It was Whitney who’d finally pointed out that they were wasting time with petty arguments that could be better spent getting her medical attention.

  Bhaltair was close, his hand near hers on the table. She inched her fingers over his and kept her head bent. Making contact with him felt right, and she needed to feel normal—to feel safe. She’d wanted to ask him about the verbal claiming Whitney had mentioned, but she couldn’t seem to find the right words. The car ride over had been silent, his mood foul after arguing with her father.

  Dr. Sambora, a supernatural himself, reentered the room. He had her chart in his hands. He was handsome and smart, though often he lacked a lot in the way of a sense of humor.

  She sighed. “Can I go now? I’m fine.”

  And she was. Her leg was now healed over fully. Her arm was still sore, and Dr. Sambora had claimed the films showed it wasn’t broken, despite her knowing deep down that it had been at the library.

  “Meena, did one of them bite you?” Dr. Sambora asked.

  Her father was in front of her in an instant, his eyes wide. “Meena?”

  Whitney had to drag him backward. “Dude, relax, and let the doctor do his thing.”

  Bhaltair took her hand entirely in his, seemingly unconcerned if he set her father off again. “I shared my blood with her, if that is what yer getting at?”

  Meena tilted her head, holding Bhaltair’s hand tighter. “I shared mine with him too. When he kissed me, I think I cut my tongue on his fangs.”

  “You kissed her and exchanged blood with her?” Her father went nuts. It took Whitney and the doctor to get him backed against the wall. He pointed at Bhaltair. “I will kill you.”

  “Daddy,” she said, jerking upright. “Enough. Bhaltair saved my life, and if you�
�re going to keep acting like a child every time anything is brought up, then you are going to have to leave the room until Mom gets here. You’re ancient. I expected better of you.”

  He blinked and lifted a brow.

  Whitney failed to hide his laugh.

  Dr. Sambora faced her and released her father. “If I can continue. Meena, there are anomalies in your blood work that weren’t there at your last checkup a year ago. PSI’s labs are sending me the results of the tests they’re doing on the hybrids that attacked you.”

  Her father stepped away from the wall. “What kind of anomalies? Is she infected with whatever it was that turned them into what they are?”

  “No,” the doctor said. “Well, I don’t think so.”

  It was Bhaltair who leaped up and began to yell. “You do nae think so? What the hell kind of response is that? I will nae lose my woman to whatever those were. Fix her now.” He yanked Dr. Sambora up until his feet cleared the ground, and it wasn’t as if Sambora was a weak or frail man.

  Meena gasped, and her father grabbed Bhaltair, pulling him free of the doctor. “Calm down.”

  Whitney caught Meena’s gaze and grinned wide. “Bet you never thought you’d see the day your father was the voice of reason, huh?”

  She knew Whitney was trying to lighten the mood, and she appreciated it. She glanced down at her leg. “The minute Bhaltair shared his blood with me, my leg started to heal. That didn’t happen when Dad did it long ago. The wound didn’t heal instantly like Bhaltair’s or Dad’s would if they were injured, but it healed fast enough to watch it happen. And by the time I got here, it was just a scratch. Now it’s smooth skin. Why did it work with Bhaltair, but not my own father?”

  Dr. Sambora took a step back and glanced at the ceiling. A sure sign he knew the answer, but didn’t want to say.

  Whitney twisted and motioned to Bhaltair. “Holy shit, you really are her mate!”

  Her father put his head in his hands. “This is not happening.”

  Meena stared at Bhaltair, waiting for him to say something. He merely glanced away. She flexed her arm, the very one that had been broken at the library. It was nearly healed as well. “Why do you keep calling me your woman? And why do you keep saying I’m yours? You’ve said the word mine more than once tonight. And why is Whitney saying we’re mates? I know what mates are. I grew up around supernaturals all my life. If we were mates, we’d have already figured that out long ago, right?”

  He said nothing and refused to look at her.

  She tensed.

  Whitney hooted. “Hot damn, I think Dickhead did figure it out, at least on some level. How long have you known?”

  The muscles in Bhaltair’s neck twitched. “We’re nae mates. We can’t be.”

  Hearing his rejection stung more than it should. She wrapped her arms around herself and lowered her head. He didn’t want her.

  “Meena,” her father said tenderly. “I fucking hate him. Say the word and I’ll kill him. I can see how upset his words made you.”

  “What happened here?”

  Meena glanced up as her grandmother, a full-blooded Fae, came rushing into the exam room. Thankfully the facility catered to supernaturals, so it had oversized rooms. They’d have never all fit in a normal one. Meena wasn’t sure how old Aine really was, all she knew was that her grandmother looked like she was in her twenties and always would. She was also very petite but packed a lot of power in that small frame.

  Her long, wild red curls bounced about as she hurried toward Meena, brushing right past Stamatis.

  “Oh, sweetheart, I heard whispers from the trees of an attack on someone I love. The minute I put together that it was you, I feared the worst. Nature made it seem as if you were on death’s doorstep. You don’t look bad. A bit roughed up, but certainly not as if you’re dying.”

  Meena gulped and glanced at Bhaltair, then back at her grandmother. “It was really bad, Grandma. I’m pretty sure I was going to bleed out on the spot. Bhaltair saved me.”

  A large, rather knowing smile spread over Aine’s face. “Did he now?”

  Meena knew the woman well. She was up to something. She reached out fast, taking hold of Aine’s wrist. “Grandma, no. Don’t make a bigger deal of this than it is. Bhaltair only did what he did because he’s Grandpa’s second-in-command. There isn’t anything more there. He’s made it very clear that I’m not his special someone, and you already know he sees me as too human to bother with.”

  Bhaltair grunted. “Meena.”

  Aine continued to smile in Bhaltair’s direction. “Is that so? You don’t see her as your special someone? Odd. I could have sworn you saw her as a mate, as nature had intended, but that you were simply too stubborn and bullheaded to realize as much. And each time you did begin to suspect, you talked yourself out of it because of your loyalty to my husband. So, really, I always just thought you were an idiot when it came to my granddaughter and something of a coward in regards to your feelings for her, but what do I know?”

  Meena jerked. “Grandma?”

  Aine focused on her. “You’ve been through a lot on this night. And I can sense your hurt and pain with Bhaltair. What happened?”

  Meena didn’t respond. She didn’t have to.

  “Dickhead just stated very publically that she isn’t his mate. So while she got a verbal claim in one breath from him, he rejected that claim in another,” stated Whitney, his normal lighthearted approach to things missing from his words. “Stamatis isn’t going to have to kill the dickhead. I’m going to do it for him. If you’re lucky enough to find your mate after being alive for centuries, you don’t fucking reject her. You don’t push her away for anything.”

  “Oh, sweet wolf,” said Aine, compassion in her voice. “All of you stubborn alpha males think that, right up until you meet your mates. Then the stupid kicks in and look what we’re left dealing with. Men. Natural-born morons.”

  Meena shook her head. “I’m not Bhaltair’s anything. And he’s not my anything. Can we stop talking about this now? It’s weird enough that I kissed him and the whole mine thing. Can we just let it go?”

  Aine narrowed her gaze. “What whole mine thing?”

  Meena glanced at the floor, already knowing that while vampires couldn’t read her mind, Aine could.

  Aine gasped and then clapped. “Oh, Bhaltair, you did it! You exchanged blood with her and laid verbal claim to her during a heightened state of passion? I always wondered if the addition of Stamatis’s line of vampire would alter how the girls’ claims would work. I see it did. They apparently do not require the full act of sex for a claim to stand. They simply need the blood exchange, the passionate moment, and the verbal claim to all happen together.”

  Meena tensed. “Grandma, would that explain the elastic bands I felt forming between him and me? Why I felt like I was being connected to him mystically?”

  Her father eased closer to her, looking like he was dying to say something. He moved past Aine and drew her into his large, powerful embrace. “Baby girl, I’m so sorry that you were attacked. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you. And I’m sorry that asshole of a mate you have is being this way to you. Also, I’m sorry he’s your mate.”

  “Pretty sure Labrainn feels the same in regards to you being his daughter’s mate,” said Whitney from the sidelines. “Megan is his baby girl and there is no way he’s happy she got you as a mate. Shocked he isn’t here forcing me to hold him back from Dickhead too.”

  Aine nodded. “But Stamatis is slowly growing on him. I believe my husband is not here now because Bhaltair has blocked the events of tonight from him. They share a deep connection, and I believe Bhaltair, whether aware of it or not, understood my husband’s fierce need to protect his granddaughter would have outweighed his common sense. He’d have forced the two of them apart, much like I’m sure you want to do, Stamatis.”

  Her father hugged her tighter. “I want to gut the prick, but right now I’m only worried about my baby girl.”

&nb
sp; Meena squeezed him. “Daddy, I’m fine. Bhaltair did what all of you would have wanted him to. He protected me, and he saved my life. Please be nice to him. It’s okay that we’re not mates. That doesn’t make him a bad person. It just means he’s not the man for me.”

  Aine perked. “And who is the man for you? A certain tall good-looking wolf shifter?”

  Her father whipped around and pointed at Whitney. “Touch my daughter, and I’ll rip your fucking throat out.”

  Whitney paled. “Hey, I would never dream of it!”

  Aine laughed. “Not him. Rudy.”

  She knew about Rudy?

  Meena yelped. “Rudy! He was going to meet me at the library, but he never came. Ohmygod, those things might have attacked him too. We have to go back. We have to look for him.”

  Bhaltair snarled. “I do nae care if yer wolf was eaten by them. Yer nae going back there and yer nae to see him again. Am I clear?”

  “Oh, look, he can speak,” added Aine with a wink. “Does someone not like the idea of Meena with another man? Is someone jealous?”

  “Grandma, how do you know about Rudy?” asked Meena, easing out of her father’s hold and standing. Her clothing was covered in blood and ripped up. She knew she looked a mess, but she didn’t care.

  Aine flashed a knowing smile. “There isn’t much I’m unaware of.”

  “He might be hurt. Make them go and check. Please.”

  Her father formed a T with his hands. “Hold up. Her wolf? Rudy? What the fuck is a Rudy? Explain.”

  Whitney pulled a chair out from near a small desk and straddled it. “This is getting good.”

  Meena made a move to head to the door, but she wasn’t quite as fully recovered as she’d first thought. She fell forward, and her father and Bhaltair lunged for her. Bhaltair beat her father to her, dragging her to his chest and steadying her.

  She stared up at him. “You have to help him.”

  Chapter Eight

  Bhaltair found himself holding Meena close, wanting to whisk her far away and bed her. He wanted all the things having her as a mate promised. But they were not to be. She couldn’t really be his. Aine was mistaken. It was rare, but it happened. And Meena was only worried about her shifter. Nothing more. “Meena, he wanted to bed you, lass. I’ll nae help him. I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”