Chapter 4: Chapter Four

Now he’d gone and done it.

Standing up to anyone in the royal family was a death wish, but what other option did he have? He couldn’t have let his mate die at the hands of a temperamental vampire.

Nicole had been shocked when he slammed into her, knocking her down to the ground. She got up with fury in her eyes, but she waved them off when the others came to her rescue.

“You have some sort of claim on this girl?”

Drake swallowed. Not really, but he would eventually. Or he planned to. “She’s my mate.”

Nicole glanced down at her rolling and groaning on the ground. “She doesn’t know?”

“I just found her,” he said. “I’m … working on it.”

She tilted her head to the side and grinned like some sort of demon conjured from Hell. “Well, consider this her one and only warning. If she crosses me again, it’ll be the last thing she does. I won’t forget this, or you. You know who my father is?”

Drake nodded. “I do.”

“Good,” she said, turning on her heel she disappeared around the corner of the building. Her posse luckily went with her.

Bending down, Drake hauled Waverly into his arms and lugged her toward his truck. He’d warned her, but she seemed to be a person that needed to learn things on her own, and not be told what to do.

Ultimately he admired that, but not in a situation like this that could have been avoided.

Lowering her to his backseat, he raced around toward the driver’s seat and pulled out onto the road. Waverly moaned occasionally in the back seat, moving around and twitching, but never fully waking.

Drake wasn’t sure if he should take her to the hospital for a possible concussion, or nurse her back to health himself.

The idea of nursing her back to health sounded good to him. Having her in his apartment, in his room, in his bed, would make him feel better that she was safe.

Pulling into the parking lot, he parked and got her out of the back. Her body was limp in his arms. Drake tried not to envision what she looked like under that uniform.

He loved the idea of how curvy she was, and how she would feel in his palms. It wasn’t the time, so he pushed the ungodly thoughts out of his brain and brought her into his apartment.

The room was cold, considering his lack of needing warmth, so he took her to his bed and placed her down. She groaned, and turned onto her side, her body becoming still.

Drake went into the kitchen, grabbed a vacuum-sealed piece of meat and took it back to her. Placing it on the back of her head, he noticed the blood for the first time.

He’d been so worried about her that he didn’t notice.

Now, he noticed.

Drake’s body tensed at the smell of it. It was hearty, and it called to him.

Being mated to a human had its complications. The desire to drain them would be strong, but he’d never let that happen.

He’d never hurt his mate that way.

Curling his fingers into the sheets of his bed, he pressed the meat to the back of her head and tried to hold his nose. He needed to feed soon. The pack of blood in the kitchen was calling his name.

The real food he ate was to fit in. He didn’t need it to survive. He needed the blood. After several minutes, he dropped the meat and walked toward the kitchen.

He grabbed the bag of blood, ripped open the plastic, and guzzled it. It was nice and cold sliding down his throat. Nothing satisfied his desire more than human blood from the source, but this was enough for him to survive.

Some human and vampire couples were close enough that the human let them feed, but he couldn’t sense if Waverly would be one of those or not.

Time would tell.

Wiping the remains off his bottom lip, he walked over to toss the empty blood bag and walked back into his room.

Waverly wasn’t on the bed. He stopped in the doorway, hearing her breathing behind the door, and he slowly began to shut it.

Waverly yelped, and swung something at his head, missing by a few inches. “Damn!” he shouted. “Kill me why don’t you?”

She held a baseball bat that he had perched behind the door, eyeing him through heavy eyes. “Why am I here? What happened? Why is my head bleeding? What did you do to me?”

Drake grabbed the bat swiftly and tossed it onto the bed behind him. “Calm down, Waverly. Listen. To. Me. You know the group you pissed off at work. They attacked you—”

“Good try!” she said, putting up her fists as if she wanted to fight him. “Likely story. And you just so happened to show up and save me?”

Drake put his palms up. “I followed you because I know the redhead. She’s mean, and I figured she would corner you. You had better be glad I did. She knocked you into the dumpster, and you hit your head. That’s why you are bleeding.”

She titled her head and gave him a once-over. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

“What other option do you have?”

She dropped her arms and looked around. “My head hurts. I need to get home.”

She took a step but stumbled forward. Reaching out, Drake caught her in his arms and brought her to his chest. Drake watched as she tried to gather herself. “You need to come sit down—,”

“I want to go home,” she mumbled, grabbing her head.

Drake took her toward the bathroom and sat her on the counter.

Waverly’s hazel gaze snapped to his. “This isn’t home.”

It would be one day, maybe.

“I think you need to stay here tonight.”

Waverly tossed her head back in laughter but grabbed her head and groaned. “Ouch. I’m not staying with you.”

“I’m afraid she followed us home. I’ll sleep on the couch. Just tonight. Then tomorrow morning you can go back to watching the guy down the hallway, and tossing me sideways looks.”

She rested her head against the mirror and groaned. “Make my headache go away and I’ll stay the night.”

“Come here,” he said, grabbing a washcloth and wiping the blood from her neck. “You’ll need a shower in the morning, but it doesn’t look like you need stitches or staples. Let me get something to wrap it up. Do you want to change clothes?”

Waverly bit her bottom lip. “Can you run next door and get a t-shirt from my middle drawer?”

Drake didn’t trust her not to run. “You can wear one of mine.”

She waited patiently while he cleaned her off, and brought back a t-shirt. Drake slipped out of the room and took a deep breath. That was going to take some time to get used to.

Several seconds later, Waverly walked out with a blush on her face. Drake’s gaze lowered to her bare legs in his t-shirt, and how she filled it out.

This was definitely going to take time to get used to.

What he would do to rip it off her?

She placed her fists on her hips. “Do you need something? A camera to take a picture.”

Drake smiled. “Don’t worry. I have a photographic memory. No camera needed.”