Chapter 3

Sylas was standing nextto Nash at the front desk of the offices a little after five a.m. when the male's phone buzzed. While he answered the call, Sylas looked over the security log, where the humans and shifters who worked during the daytime signed in and out, from the cleaners to the daytime staff who ran some parts of the kiss's business during the day.

His ears pricked at the voice on the other end of Nash's call. His cat let out a curious sound and his heart thudded a few times in response.

Interesting.

"Where are you? Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay, here are my coordinates," she said, speaking quickly and repeating her location for Nash as he wrote it down.

On a whim, and because his cat was going nuts right now, Sylas opened a GPS program on his phone and put in the coordinates. The female's location was about forty minutes away, just south of a town called Villanohvah.

"Do you have a blanket or clothes you can cover yourself with?" Nash asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"Good, I'll be sure they come with a panel van that won't let light in the back. Call me if anything comes up. Did you hit something?"

"I don't know. I heard a popping sound and then my car went nuts. I don't think I hit anything, but I'm not sure."

"As long as you're safe. Stay with your car."

"Will do. Thanks, Nash."

"I need to make some arrangements, give me a few minutes," Nash said.

"I'll go get her," Sylas said.

Nash's brow rose. "You will? Why would you do that?"

"I'm already here, you don't have to explain things to me or give me her details because I already put her location in my GPS, plus I can get on the way as soon as I get hold of a panel van."

His shoulders dropped and he smiled. "That would be wonderful. Let's hurry."

They took an elevator to an underground garage, where several vehicles were parked along one side. Nash unlocked a cabinet that revealed keys and handed a set to Sylas. "The windows are blocked to prevent sunlight from getting into the back, and there's a curtain separating the front and back, so you can talk to her but she won't get burned by the sunlight. When you're back in town, take the alley to the back entrance of the club and honk, someone will open the doors for you so you can park underground, and she can go straight to her apartment."

Sylas hustled to a black panel van. "Does she need food or anything?"

"There's a lockbox in the back with synthetic blood if she needs it. Keep me posted."

"I will."

Within moments, he was out of the garage with his foot on the gas, worried about a female he'd never met in his life. The only thing he knew was that her name was Georgia and she was in trouble.

* * *

Georgia was staring out the windshield at the night sky. Dawn was coming, she could feel it in her bones. And she could see it, too, in the little fingers of amber that were creeping up into the moonlit night.

It wasn't as dark out as it had been when she'd first crashed, but it was still dark. Not for too much longer, though.

She remembered when she was first turned, how fascinating she found it to watch the sunrise once the sun became a thing she couldn't tolerate. She'd been burned a few times, pushing the envelope and her tolerance to see what would happen with little bits of sun on her young flesh.

Now she knew better. Getting burned hurt like hell and took forever to heal, so hard pass on that happening. It had been almost a half hour since she'd called for help, which meant that if they'd been able to get someone on the road within a few minutes, they might be arriving soon. She had a feeling, though, that it hadn't happened as fast as she would hope and she would most likely end up covering herself with dirty clothes from the last week and trying to make sure not a single bit of skin was showing. The UV tint on the windows would only do so much, even a little bit of sunlight would burn her.

She heard an engine approaching and the skid of tires on rocks.

She looked behind her but didn't see anything.

Then someone knocked on the window and she shrieked in surprise.

"Sorry."

At her driver's side door was hands-down the sexiest guy she'd ever seen in her life.

She was just too stunned to say anything.

"Are you okay? I'm Sylas, one of the sabers. I work for Caleb. Well, I just started working for him, I guess. I was working at the hotel, but I started today at the offices and I'm rambling. Are you okay?"

She was aware he'd repeated himself in between word-vomiting too much information at her, probably because he knew he'd scared her.

"I'm…I'm good. I'm Georgia."

"I know," he said, smiling, which took him from sexy to gorgeous times a hundred.

If her heart was beating, she'd probably pass out from the strain.

"Let's get you out of here, the sun's on the way up."

She snapped to attention at the mention of the sun, grabbing her bag, purse, and phone. He tried to open her door but it was locked, so she hit the button and he pulled it open, offering her his hand.

The moment their hands touched, everything within her snapped to attention. This was no ordinary sexy guy…he was her truemate.

* * *

Okay, so she wasn't simply the most beautiful female he'd ever laid eyes on, she was his truemate. Head to toe gorgeous, with a waterfall of blonde curls, curved in all the right places, and smelling like home to his tiger.

He glanced up at the sky, aware that it was a moonlit night.

In fact, it seemed to be the very sky he'd dreamed about.

Well, how the hell crazy was that?

He helped her up the ditch and opened the back of the panel van, taking her bag and setting it inside. Before he shut the door, he said, "There's synthetic blood in that lock box if you're thirsty. I closed the curtain so the sun won't get back to you, but we can still talk."

He rocked back on his heels, feeling like an idiot.

And then he had another feeling, but this one wasn't full of gooey emotions or hope for a tumble between the sheets.

This one, this feeling, was all wrong and dangerous.

He shut the door with a snarl and spun, his claws and fangs appearing as he scanned the area for danger. There were woods on either side of the lonely stretch of road. Hell, he hadn't seen another vehicle at all on the trip, and he wondered how long she might have been trapped out here until someone happened to come by.

He didn't see anything in the woods on either side, but he could feel something. Someone.

"Sylas?" Georgia called, her voice muffled by the van.

"It's okay."

"You don't sound like it's okay. Are you growling? Are we in danger? You should get in the van."

"I just have a weird feeling."

"I had that too, when I first hit the ditch. Like someone was watching me."

He hummed and stared harder at the trees, the sunlight slowly illuminating the area. He didn't see anything, though.

"What did you hit?"

"Nothing. I heard a popping sound and the tires blew."

He walked to the ditch and looked down at the car, moving to look at both sides. The front tires were shredded. He walked back up to the road and away from the crash site until he saw the black marks her tires made when she braked hard. There wasn't anything in the road, no dead animal or sharp objects.

The popping sound might have been a rifle. But why would anyone shoot out a random person's tires?

Shaking his head, he moved swiftly back to the panel van and got behind the wheel.

"Did you see anything?" she asked.

She was close to the curtain, and he could pick up her sweet honey scent, his cat purring in his head.

"Were you peeking at me?" he asked, amused.

"Hell, yes. What if you got attacked by some weird boogin and I was trapped out here. Again."

He laughed. "No boogins. I didn't see anything that might explain your tires, so I think someone shot them out."

"Why would someone do that?"

"I don't know," he said, pulling in a circle and heading back to town. "Have any enemies?"

"Not that I know of," she said dryly.

"You're Lia's assistant?"

"Yep."

"Where have you been?"

"For the last ten days I was at my parents, their kiss is in Villanohvah, and it was my mom's birthday."

He hummed, his mind spinning. "You must have left before my sister met her truemate."

"What do you mean?"

"Hey, Georgia?" he asked.

"Yeah, Sylas?"

"I want to ask you if you know what we are to each other, but I don't want to be an asshole. There's so much I want to tell you, but I'd like to look at you and talk to you without there being a curtain between us."

She chuckled and he loved the sound.

"I know what we are."

"Good. Can we talk when we get to the club?"

"You bet. Do you have to work?"

"I'm going to make a call right now. Then you can tell me about yourself and I'll tell you about myself, including why it matters that you left before my sister met her truemate."

"Sounds perfect."

His cat let out another purr, and this time it spilled from his lips.

Before, he'd been rushing to get to her before the sun came up. Now that she was safe? He wasn't in such a rush.

Well, he was, because he wanted to spend time with her face-to-face and get to know her.

"Well, I guess things started about twenty years ago, when my mom turned me. She was fifty-five, but actually thirty-five, because she'd been turned by my father right after I was born. Let me tell you how weird it was growing up with parents who were vampires while I was human!"

Okay, so she had a sexy as hell voice too.

He couldn't wait to get her to her apartment so they could talk.

He'd gone to the vampires' offices for his new job and ended up finding his truemate.

Now that was an awesome benefit.