Wanda

I had never felt so helpless in my entire life. The woman I loved, my fated mate, was gone. I’d utterly failed in my job protecting her, literally handing her over to her kidnappers.

I still had no idea why Mark and Monica had kidnapped her, but when I came back into the house and found them all gone, I knew they had. I just hoped they hadn’t hurt her. I knew Tasha enough to know she wouldn’t have gone without a fight. The stakes were too high.

“Where could they be?” I raged. “I can’t believe this.”

We had Lois and the rest of the team on a video call while the bears and I set up a war room in the dining room.

“Wanda, I need you to focus right now. Can you hack into traffic cams in the area?” Lois asked.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “There’s no traffic cams.”

Then I stopped as a thought occurred to me. “But there’s likely store security cams and Ring doorbells.”

I started tapping on my laptop furiously, looking for local access to cameras.

“I have plate number,” Boris called from the corner of the table where he was huddled over his laptop. He scribbled it on a piece of paper and slid it in my direction.

“Mark and Monica live in Monroe, it’s a suburb on the west side,” Lois announced. “There are no other properties under their names anywhere in the state of Washington. Let’s assume they went there.”

We heard the sound of a chopper. I looked up with a frown.

“What the hell? Are we under attack now?” I asked.

“No. We order helicopter,” Boris told me. “Is faster to travel. Let’s go. There is landing pad six blocks from Mark’s house.”

“We’ll meet you there,” Lois called. “Don’t go in without backup.”

“Roger.”

I disconnected the video call and followed the bears out to the grassy patch next to Tasha’s house where a helicopter was waiting. We made the trip faster than I expected, and the minute the chopper touched the ground I was out and running towards the house where we thought they’d taken Tasha, the bears right behind me.

“We’re not waiting for backup?” Yuri asked as we ran.

“They’ll catch up.”

“This way,” Yuri called, running north up the street. “We go get them.”

“I only hope they’re there,” I said quietly. “Otherwise, I have no idea where they went.”

“Tasha is here,” Boris told me as we skidded to a stop next to a large hedge that separated Monica and Mark’s house from their neighbor. “Her scent is fresh.”

Sometimes it was nice to have a shifter around, I thought. My senses were much stronger than a human’s, but nothing like a shifter.

I didn’t need to be a shifter to hear a male voice yell out, “You little bitch! You broke my nose!”

“I’m going in,” I told the bears.

“We’ve got your six,” Boris assured me.

As we ran up to the house I could see Mark through the window, Tasha standing in front of him. Suddenly Mark dropped to his knees with a grunt of pain.

Boris muscled past me, throwing his shoulder into the front door. It opened with a crash. We burst through the door in just enough time to see Tasha take Mark the rest of the way down with a roundhouse kick to the temple. The big man went down like a ton of bricks.

My mouth dropped open.

“What was that?”

Tasha turned and gave us all a big smile. “Hey guys, I’m glad you finally made it. Did I ever mention I’m a black belt in tae kwon do?”

I shook my head. “Holy shit, that was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. Are you okay, Princess?”

“Oh my God! What did you do to my brother?”

I turned as Monica came rushing into the room, heading straight for Tasha.

“Stop right where you are!” I ordered, using my vampire speed to place my body between them.

Monica skidded to a stop, her hand slipping into the pocket of her chef’s jacket. I expected her to pull out a knife or a gun, instead she brandished a wooden crucifix.

“Back, creature of the devil!” she shrieked. “Be gone!”

With a sigh I pulled the crucifix from her hand. I released my fangs and made a hissing noise that made her scream in fear.

“This isn’t a movie,” I told her calmly as I rolled the crucifix between my palms. “I’m not going to turn to dust from this piece of wood.”

“How do you kill a vampire then if the sun and crucifixes don’t work?” Tasha asked me curiously as the noise died down. “I haven’t asked you too much about the vampire thing.”

“Fire, bullets, pretty much the same way you kill humans except we don’t get diseases like cancer.”

“Hmm.”

“Are you planning to kill me, Princess?”

“Nah, I’m planning to do this.”

Tasha strode across the room and pulled me into her arms, giving me a hard kiss. When we pulled apart, the bears had zip tied Monica’s hands and feet and were working on Mark’s, who was still unconscious.

“We didn’t get to kill anybody today,” Yuri said glumly as he stared at the two trussed up humans laying on the floor.

“Maybe next time,” I said.

Just then my team from Sapphic Security came racing in, Angie in the lead. She looked around, seeing the two siblings restrained, and sighed.

“I’m glad I left my mate’s bed for nothing.”

“Report,” Lois barked, rushing in next.

I looked at Tasha. “Why don’t you start?”

She stepped a little closer to me and I couldn’t help but slide my arm around her waist. When she relaxed into my side, I felt a jolt of happiness.

“I was standing in the cabin watching you guys leave and I guess Mark hit me on the head because the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the basement with a headache.”

“What happened when you woke up?” Lois asked.

“Monica came downstairs to bring me food. I overpowered her then came up here to kick Mark’s ass,” she said proudly. “Nobody kidnaps Tasha Blue against her will.”

Lois’s eyes bulged out of her head. “Wait? You did this?” she asked, nodding towards where Mark was still unconscious on the floor. “I assumed it was a bear.”

“She gave him a hard kick to the back of the knee, then when he dropped to the floor she hit him with a roundhouse kick to the temple,” I said proudly.

“Wow, that’s impressive. You’re talented and a badass.”

I’d never heard Lois be so positive towards someone before, including when the team stopped a terrorist attack on Los Angeles. When I rolled my eyes at my boss, she gave me a glare that would peel off paint.

“And what did you do, Diaz? Besides ignore my direct orders to wait for back-up?”

“Tasha had it under control when we got in,” I said. “But I was able to dispel some vampire myths while I was here.”

Lois rolled her eyes. “Okay, let’s get these two to the cops. Diaz, I expect a full report on my desk in the morning.”

“Roger that.”

I met Tasha’s eyes and she stared at me for a long, heated moment. “Can someone give us a ride back to Tasha’s place?”