Chapter 5

Sylas woke slowly,his neck still throbbing from where his beautiful mate had taken a drink of his blood after he'd marked her. He touched the space, feeling the ridge of scars and knowing that at some point, he'd become a vampire as well, immortal and fully bound to her as immortal mates.

He couldn't wait.

But first, he wanted to get to the bottom of whoever was targeting the kiss, because he didn't want to join up with the group and be unable to help during the daytime, when the attacks seemed to come more often.

As Georgia slept on his chest, he gingerly grabbed his phone to check the time, and saw a few texts from his family as well as Alaric.

He responded to Ronan and Taryn's texts of congratulations, promising to bring his mate to meet them soon.

Then he opened Alaric's message.

I got your message about your mate, congratulations. Also, I saw Nash's report about her accident and that you believe her tires were shot and she was being watched from the woods. Can you please call me when you're able to discuss?

Slipping from the warmth of the bed, he moved silently out of the room and shut the door, then called Alaric once he was in the front room.

"Sorry to drag you from your mating bed," Alaric said.

"No worries, I was going to reach out to you anyway. So yes, Georgia said she heard popping sounds before her tires went flat. I looked and the flat tires had huge, gaping holes in them, so I do think the popping she heard was from a rifle. She felt like she was being watched from the woods, and when I got there, I felt the same thing."

"You didn't see anyone, though?"

"No, it was just a feeling."

"If it was near dawn, then it wasn't a vampire, unless they had a way to get out of the sunlight." Alaric hummed. "We know there's a kiss that's targeting the Belle Terra kiss, we just don't know why. But I wanted to tell you that two more kiss members were targeted, just like Georgia."

Alaric explained that Isla and Richard, who both worked at the club, had left a few hours before dawn to pick up a delivery for the bar that hadn't made it onto the truck. On the way back, their van had its tires shot out and they crashed. Fortunately, a kiss member happened to be on the road at the same time and picked them up."

Sylas frowned. "Someone is targeting kiss members by shooting out their tires?"

"It appears so. We had already said kiss members shouldn't be out alone, but we hadn't suggested they needed more than one vehicle when traveling. We wouldn't have had an issue getting to Isla and Richard before sunrise, but Georgia was a different story."

"Georgia told me she sent a few texts to kiss members that she was on the way home before she left. Lia, Nash, and a couple others I can't remember off the top of my head. Could someone be monitoring kiss communications?"

Alaric let out a short growl. "I hadn't thought of that. Either someone has hacked the communications network for the kiss or there's a mole."

"Neither is good," Sylas said.

"Not even a little bit," Alaric said. "Shit. Okay, I'm going to reach out to the security team and Caleb. We need to get to the bottom of this immediately before someone else is hurt."

"Let me know if I can help."

"Enjoy your mating, I'll let you know if I need anything."

The call ended and Sylas glanced at the time. It was nearly dinnertime, and he was actually starving. He'd missed breakfast and lunch thanks to his sexy truemate and the sweet way she cried his name in the throes of pleasure.

He strode back into the bedroom when he heard Georgia call his name.

"Do vampires say good morning when it's evening because you just woke up?" he asked, sitting next to her and leaning over for a kiss.

"We say whatever time of day it is," she said. She cupped his face and gave him a second kiss.

"Well, good evening, sweetness. Did you sleep well?"

"I was well and truly worn out by my sexy truemate. You?"

"Same."

She smiled, her eyes sparkling. "I overheard you speaking to Alaric."

He told her what he'd learned. Her brow furrowed. When she didn't say anything, he asked, "What's on your mind?"

She pursed her lips and then said, "Someone's clearly trying to take over the kiss."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, first the car bombs at the hotel in which there were no casualties. Then someone messed with the electricity at both the hotel and the club."

"Right."

"And then, someone brought in toxic plants to the club, which, if they hadn't been taken out by Dredge, from what I heard it would have eventually leeched into the entire club and down into the apartments through the ventilation system."

He stared at her. "Go on."

She sat up and tucked the blankets under her armpits. "Okay, so if you were going to take over a kiss, you have to go after the master. Whoever started with the car bombs must have thought that Caleb was in the hotel. He does have the penthouse apartment there. They may have expected him to be evacuated quickly and outside when the bombs went off."

"What about the electricity?"

She stared at him for a moment, then said, "They clearly knew about the protection spells that Dredge set up, which means that they were trying once more to get people outside. Not just at the hotel, but also the club. If someone was watching the hotel, they would have known that Caleb wasn't there and switched their attention to the club."

Something clicked in his head. "So Caleb really is the target."

"Right. And attacking his people, including me, while we're out—I don't think someone was going to kill me, or Isla and Richard, I think we were meant to be taken captive and held for ransom."

"Why didn't someone take you yesterday? You were alone in your car for a half hour while I drove to you."

"I think they wanted to wait until sunrise, so I'd be weak. Sunlight doesn't kill vampires immediately, it weakens us. They could have broken into the car after the sun came up and I would have been helpless to fight back."

"So in your case, they were using people who were humans to be out during the daytime. It must be someone from Caleb's past," Sylas said.

Georgia hummed. "So he killed the original master of the city of Belle Terra and took over three years ago. But he wasn't turned by that master, he was turned by a female from the kiss named Felicia, who turned him against his will. His dad hated vampires so much that he went after Felicia and killed her, and then members of the kiss killed him and his wife, so Caleb and Aubrey lost both their parents. Caleb killed the kiss members who killed his parents once he took over the kiss.

"I wasn't here when it happened, I joined after Caleb took over. But I do remember… holy crap. Where's my phone?"

* * *

Georgia nearly dropped the phone in her rush to get to the internet browser. She pulled it up and did a search for Felicia. It took a few minutes of scrolling before she found the article she remembered reading when she joined up with Caleb.

"Here," she said, turning the phone toward Sylas. He took it and read the article, which was from a website that reported on supernatural happenings in the state. There was an article written about Felicia's death because she'd been killed by a human, and it wasn't something that normally happened because vampires were stronger and faster. According to the article, Felicia was survived by her younger brother Julian, who'd been traveling when his sister lost her life.

Sylas stared at the screen for a long moment, then said, "If he'd been here when Caleb went after the people who'd killed his parents, he probably would have taken out Julian as well."

"Definitely. I'm not sure Caleb even knew about Julian. The only reason it clicked for me is that I looked up Belle Terra online before I joined up and read the article about her death and then his takeover of the kiss."

"If Julian has been laying low since his sister's death and Caleb taking over, and no one's seen him since those events, then he may be striking back now," Sylas said.

She nodded. "We should talk to Caleb. I'll call him."

She reached out to her master, who immediately asked her and Sylas to join him and Lia at their suite to discuss the situation in person.

As they got dressed to meet up with the heads of the kiss, Sylas gave her a long look.

"What's that for?" she asked, reaching for her undergarments from the dresser.

"Because I'd wanted to spend the night in bed getting to know you better, and we have to go stop a coup."

She grinned. "I'd love that, trust me. After we help make the kiss safe, we can get right back in bed."

"Now that's the best idea I've heard all day."

They finished getting dressed and she led him out of her apartment toward Caleb's. "I can hear your stomach growling," she said with a low voice.

"I was so distracted by your sexiness that I forgot to eat."

She couldn't help but smile. "I'll get the place stocked. Unless you want to live at the hotel? We'd have to move to one of the suites that's made for vampires and is light tight with automatic shutters."

"I don't mind either place, so long as we're together."

She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "I feel the same way."