Chapter 10 - Percy

"What is that?"

I heard Veronica come in the front door, but I still jumped when she appeared behind me, goosebumps rolling over my skin. I'm too aware of her presence, I can hear her breathing, and sense how she's standing behind me. Her perfume is as strong to me as if she had just sprayed it in front of my nose, and that underlying, ever-present cinnamon scent plays underneath it.

"It's a lock," I mutter, turning the screwdriver one last time and standing back to admire my handiwork. This apartment was a gift from Aris—he said that his grandfather owned most of the apartments in the downtown area, but Aris hadn't gotten around to checking on them or fixing them up. Despite being a little rough—the paint peeling, every light fixture blown out, the apartment has excellent bones. Real, strong wood for all the doors and frames, nothing like the new constructions I've seen that seem like they're made out of cardboard.

This means, with any luck, this door frame will hold if I lose myself and try to break it down tonight to get to Veronica. It's a dark thought, but once you've lost control of your body, go into a psychosis so intense that you're buried somewhere deep inside, gasping for breath and lost to yourself, you install locks. You put up countermeasures in case the day ever comes that your body doesn't belong to you again.

And I can't live with even the faintest possibility that I might do something to Veronica without knowing. Maisie has tried to convince me that so far, all the data points to that not happening again. That the antidote has completely wiped the wolfsbane from my system, clearing the nerve blocks.

But I have nightmares almost every night that I go back into that place, and when I come to, I've seriously hurt people I love. Sometimes it's Aris and his family, sometimes Bigby and his wife.

Mostly, it's Veronica. Even before I knew she was back in Rosecreek. Because she's always been the person, I'm afraid of hurting most. It's why I left her behind in New York City—ripping the band-aid off by joining a mission at the last second. I thought that not saying anything to her might be the kindest way to make the break, but now, looking back at it, I realize I was just being a coward.

Something inside me—likely Linnea's voice—tells me I should talk to her about that and get our history out on the table. Apologize for leaving her the way I did. Another part of me thinks that she's probably long over it, and bringing it up now will just make me look like an asshole.

"I can see that it's a lock," Veronica mutters, which pulls me out of my thoughts. She rolls her eyes, and I get the sense that even though she's only been back in my life for a few days, and both of us have spent large chunks of that time unconscious, she's still tiring quickly of my sarcasm. "What are you doing, installing it?"

"I wanted you to feel safe," I say, tucking the screwdriver into my pocket. "This way, you can lock the bedroom when you go in there. Not that I'm going to try and come in—I just thought that it might make you feel better."

"It would make me feel better," she says, popping her hip, "if I was sleeping in there. Which I'm not."

"I am not taking the bed while you sleep on a couch ," I insist. "That is not happening."

"Well, I don't want to sleep in your bed, Percy, did you ever consider that?"

I glance back at the bedroom, sighing. If I sleep in the bedroom, we'll need to install the lock outside the door, to keep me in. But that would look deranged the moment anyone came over and saw that lock on the outside of a door.

"Veronica," I say, my voice low. "Please, let me give you the bed. Maybe we could think about it as the very, very beginning of the reparations I owe you for everything I've done."

"Percy," she says, mimicking how I said her name, imitating my lower voice. "You don't owe me anything—I've already forgiven the whole…abduction thing. I realize now that you weren't in control of yourself. So—"

"That's not the only thing I need to make up to you," I say, which seems like it genuinely stuns her for a moment. She blinks, sucks in a breath, then nods.

"Fine," she says, "I will take the bed. But I'm not locking the door."

"You should lock the door!" I call after her, but she's already turned on her heel and stalked back into the living room.

***

"Where are you going?"

"Oh," I say, jumping yet again at the sight of her, although I could sense she was there, standing in the door to the bedroom, looking out at me as I stood with one shoe on, one shoe off. "Aris has called an emergency meeting."

"I'm coming," she says, "just wait for me."

"No, Veronica," I say, shaking my head. My position within the team is already tenuous enough without me bringing along a human. The human I am illegally blood-bonded to. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Good thing I didn't ask for your opinion," she says, appearing in the doorway with a backpack again. "Look—I'm in this now. Whatever happened to me, whether it was a blood-borne pathogen from some weirdo who chose to bite me or…a vampire—I don't want to be left out of whatever discussions take place around this matter."

She looks gorgeous, wearing black and sheer running tights that show parts of her skin and a plain black t-shirt. Her hair is pulled up into a high ponytail, her face set in an expression I would recognize anywhere—I am not going to win this battle.

"Fine," I say, getting my other shoe on and getting to my feet. "But we have to go now."

As she passes in front of me to go down the stairs and to the door, I grit my teeth, willing my hands not to reach out and touch her. It's only been a day, and the pull to her is so intense it feels like staring directly into the sun.

We climb into my car—a new Ford Bronco, which Bigby calls a knock-off Jeep, and pull away, heading to the pack center. When we park outside, Veronica lets out a low whistle.

"This place always impresses me," she says, "it's so unexpected in a small town."

It is impressive, especially in the timeframe the Cadells managed to get it up and running. According to Aris and Bigby, it's bigger than the old pack center, and houses far more facilities and services. There's free daycare here for anyone in town, not just the shifters. Several huge kitchens are situated in the back of the building, which the pack can use for catering during events, or people can use when they don't have access to their own.

There's a picnic area, indoor and outdoor playgrounds, grilling, a pool, and several sporting and athletic activities, like basketball, tennis, and weightlifting.

The outside is completely modern, with a greenhouse and solar lighting. It's part of what makes me proud to call Rosecreek my home.

"Yeah," I finally agree when we push through the doors and step inside. It looks like someone is having a birthday party in one of the adjoining rooms, but we head to the top floor of the building, which is exclusively for the special ops team.

I scan my badge on the elevator door—a badge that Aris only recently gave me—and hold my breath as we climb.

Since everything that happened, my place within the team feels more tenuous than ever. None of them know how to treat me, it seems—with some of them constantly giving me looks of pity, others joking too much, and some struggling to talk to me at all.

Aris looks at me like a father looks at his wayward son. Like he has to figure out how to get me back on the right track. Like he's still trying to decide if he can put the door back on my room, trust me, with the keys to the car.

When the elevators slide open, we step into the long, cool hallway, and Veronica sucks in a breath. The inside of the building is just as impressive as the outside, but the top floor is decidedly more high-tech. Like in our previous agency building, there are digital maps lining the walls, communicating the movements and whereabouts of other teams.

There are diagrams of the different paranormal creates, where they live, and their current danger levels. On the other side of the hallway, updates from paranormal news run the length of the wall, sharing news about current fairy dust levels and what to do if you find an abandoned gnome in the forest, which is becoming more and more common with deforestation.

"Every day, I feel like I'm living a fever dream," Veronica mutters, shaking her head, and I can't totally blame her. I try to imagine what it would be like to grow up as a human, not to know about paranormals, and suddenly be thrust into their world.

To be mated and blood-bonded to a shifter. The problem presents itself yet again—what are we going to do about this situation? Veronica will leave Rosecreek after the threat of the vampire venom killing me is gone, and I'll live in pain every single day, resisting the urge to go to her, to find her, and make her mine. It seems like the only possible solution.

When we walk into the meeting room, every head turns in our direction. Aris quirks an eyebrow at me, his eyes darting to Veronica.

"Hey, everyone," I say, "sorry I'm late."

"Shit," Byron says, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. "I was really hoping you were going to bring donuts."

He's alluding to the last time we were all together like this before a mission, back at the old headquarters, and it makes my stomach squeeze.

"Next time," I manage to get out, pulling out a chair for Veronica, then taking one myself.

"You didn't miss anything," Aris says, "we were just getting started. First—do you want to update us on your situation? Linnea told me some…interesting things. Yesterday."

"Well," I say, clearing my throat and glancing at Veronica. Maisie is also sitting at the table and starts relentlessly picking at her cuticles. I wish I could project to her, telling her to stop being so obvious about her nervousness. "I was bitten, as you all know. Turns out, Veronica is immune. Maisie found a way to use that immunity to help me."

"Is that why Veronica is still here?" Olivia says, from the other end of the table. I haven't talked to her much, but she's a certain type of pretty—big eyes with that soft, bubblegum pink hair that never seems to wash out or get more intense.

"Yes," Veronica says, clearing her throat. "I…had my first shift . In the clinic, with Maisie and Percy there. I guess the vampire venom triggered it in me. I had no idea. My parents have a lot of explaining to do."

I glance at her, remembering that she was raised by a single father, and that her mother died in childbirth.

"I have never heard of something like that," Aris says, leaning forward, his eyes bright and intense. "Have you been able to project?"

"To…what?"

Aris looks to me, then seems to remember that I can't project, either.

"As shifters, we have the ability to project to others in our pack. It's a skill like anything else, and the better you get at it, the more directly you can send things. I can talk to Linnea about working on it with you."

"Okay," Veronica says, her glance skittering over to Maisie, who is covered in a fierce blush, spreading all the way down to the collar of her shirt. It never occurred to me that she might be a terrible liar, but it's going to make this whole thing a lot more difficult.

"We can explore that more later," Aris says, clearing his throat. "But for now, let's get into our priority assignment: the vampires."

"Since getting here, I've been scrubbing through the hard drives left behind by Varun," Olivia says, her face growing more animated as she talks. I notice Byron roll his eyes from across the table, crossing his arms and leaning back in his seat. He's always been our trusted source for tech needs, and I imagine he doesn't like having his toes stepped on by someone better than him. I refocus on Olivia as she continues.

"They are heavily encrypted—at least they were. The other night, I finally had a breakthrough, and it gave me access to all of Varun's files. I found some old correspondence, and tracked down the IP address associated with the sender—"

"This is all very interesting, Olivia," Aris cuts in, "but can you just tell us the part that we'll understand?"

"Right," she says, practically bouncing in her seat with excitement. "Basically, Varun was talking with the vampires. We already knew that he was working with that commander at the agency, but based on these communications, it looks like it goes deeper than that. The entire agency might be filled with traitors, who have all communicated with the vampires."

The room is stunned, silent for a moment. It's somewhat fuzzy from time to time, but I remember Aris dragging us all down to the water, forcing us to strip and get soaked just in case we were somehow bugged. Learning that the commander had betrayed us was heartbreaking.

"Based on the information Olivia sent to me," Aris says, "I believe this has the potential to become an all-out war between shifters and vamps. The development of the serum was definitely an effort to give the vampires a leg-up over us, but we don't know what their overall goals are."

"Yes, we do," Byron says, letting out a quick breath of air. "Their overall goal is to use human as cattle, and they don't like that we get in the way of that."

"I hate vamps as much as the next guy," Aris laughs, "but the last thing I want is another war. We will be looking for alternative solutions, but until then, I think we all need to be increasingly careful when it comes to our interactions outside of Rosecreek. We don't need anybody else turning up with a bite."

"Actually," Maisie says, her voice shaking a little bit as she half-heartedly raises her hand to get Aris's attention. "I thought Veronica might be useful in developing a sort-of…vaccine? Against the vampire venom?"

Aris's eyes widen, and he nods between Veronica and Maisie.

"Veronica," Aris says, "would you be willing to participate in the creation of a vaccine? If it requires testing and samples from you, I'd assume?"

Maisie nods, and Veronica plays with the end of her ponytail, as though thinking.

"I'm willing to help until Percy is healed," she says, "but after that, I still plan to leave Rosecreek."

A shiver runs up my back at the thought.

"A vaccine would certainly be beneficial," Aris says, "permission to focus all your efforts on that endeavor for the time being. After the analysis of the wolfsbane sample is complete, that is. We need confirmation that it's the same strain. When Rosa returns, I'm sure she'll be interested in helping with the vaccine development, as well."

"Thank you, sir." Maisie squeaks out.

"Veronica," Aris says, turning to her. "Linnea had mentioned that you were planning to leave—but while you're here, would you like an appointment at the local clinic? You're under to obligation to accept, but I thought you might like something to occupy your time."

I would like to occupy her time. I'd like to take her back to my apartment right now and not let her leave until I've touched every inch of her body. But that's not going to happen.

When I see Veronica's face light up at the idea of working in the clinic, warmth spreads in my chest, and I can't help thinking that it might be one extra point in Rosecreek's column, something to make her glad she stuck around.

"That would be wonderful," Veronica says, and Aris says he'll send her over the information and get her in touch with the coordinator there.

"Alright," Aris says, "let's run through our objectives. Olivia and Byron, keep looking through those hard drives. Send me a report each day of what you find, but if it's something urgent, come and find me. Maisie and Veronica, you're working on that vaccine. Ado and Percy, I'm sending you to scope out an address that Olivia uncovered in the hard drives."

My heart is beating so hard that it might leap out of my chest. Aris doesn't give the moment any extra fanfare, or acknowledge it, but this is the first time he's sent me out on assignment since I got the antidote.

When Ado's eyes meet mine across the table, I can immediately feel that he knows how big this is for me. A rush of companionship rushes through me, and I get to my feet, a full smile stretching over my face.

"Okay," I say, bouncing on my heels, "let's go!"