* * * *
They were at the hospital in record time. While Adrian and
Nikkos
took Anstice in the emergency room, Damian stayed behind to inform Shana of the rules she was going to follow if she wanted to stay alive. “You will stay right next to me. You will not speak to anyone. You will not scream for help.”
She swallowed her fear and nodded.
Kassie took that moment to wake up from her nap and turn her head enough to see them. “She’ll be a good girl, Damian, won’t you, Mommy? Damian and his friends are the good guys. We need to go with them and listen to them and do what they say like good girls. They won’t hurt us. Damian loves me, so he has to love you, too, because I love you. I love my real mommy, but I love you, too. You took care of me while she was gone.”
She looked at Damian. “I knew you would come back for me, you always do. Don’t worry, Mommy will be a good girl. Can we take her home with us and keep here there? I don’t like them bad guys and don’t want them to hurt her.”
Damian chuckled. He forgot how much the little girl was like him. He could talk a mile a minute and no one, not even him, was going to get her to stop when she got going on something she was excited about. Damian reached out and ran a finger down her cheek. “Of course, my baby girl, we can take her with us.”
He wasn’t sure why he pledged this to her. He somehow just knew that this woman had become part of their lives for good. He felt the other woman relax, but he almost jumped when she put her hand on his arm.
“Thank you for saving Emily and me from those men. I really don’t know what my husband had gotten himself a part of, but…” she trailed off and had to wipe a tear from her eye. “Just, just…thank you.”
Damian was having a hard time blocking all the emotions inside the close confines of the SUV, so he got out, took Kassie out of her car seat, and helped Shana from the vehicle. He stopped her and asked, “Remember the rules, right?”
She looked him right in the eyes before nodding and saying, “Yes, I remember. Don’t worry about me, I’ll behave. I just want you to keep Emily safe.”
He shook his head. “Her name is Kassie, and I know it will be hard, but you have to start calling her that.”
She had a small, sad grin on her face when she replied, “She always wanted me to call her that and said it was her real name, but I never believed her. The funny thing is, sometimes she would play hide-and-seek without telling me, and when I would go try to find her I actually had to call ‘Kassie’ out to her before she would come out of hiding. Guess next time I’ll listen when she tells me something. That is, if you let me see her again when this is all cleared up and you go wherever it is you live.”
He answered, “I don’t have the final say in that, but if Anstice makes it out of here okay, I have a feeling that if Kassie wants to see you that you will be going with us and probably get to see her often. The little princess will always get what she wants.”
That caught Kassie’s attention. “Can we play princess when we get home? I like to play princess. I will have a crown, and you can be my prince. You’re my prince because you rescued me from the bad guys.”
Damian had to place his finger over the child’s lips to get her to stop talking. When she did, he looked her in the eyes and said, “You don’t have to play princess anymore, baby girl, because you are a real princess now.
Nikkos
is the prince and will someday be the king of our race, so that will make your mommy queen and you a princess.”
Her eyes lit up, and she hugged him around the neck as tight as she could.
Shana whispered, “Your race? What does that mean? What are you?”
Damian took her by the hand and promised to explain everything later while he led her into the ER waiting room.
Once inside, Damian asked the human receptionist where Anstice had been taken. The only response he got was a blank stare. She answered, “We don’t have anyone by that name here.”
He told her he was looking for the woman that was shot that had just come in. She again said there wasn’t any woman there that had been shot. Damian was getting pissed now. “Tell me where the princess is, and tell me
now!
”
The woman flinched from him but told him she didn’t know of any princesses that had been brought in. Just then, security walked in and asked if there was a problem. Damian looked them up and down and could tell they were vampires. “I’m looking for a woman that was brought in a few minutes ago with a gunshot wound.”
The bigger of the two apparently was the spokesperson. “And who are you?”
Damian had had enough. He needed to find
Nikkos
and Adrian to see what was happening with Anstice. He could feel the pain she was in, but she was so weak that he couldn’t quite get a good location on her. “I’m her brother-in-law. I can feel her. She’s getting weaker by the moment, and I need to be there.”
This confused the guards. “How can you feel her if she is your sister-in-law? Why would you be bound to her?”
Damian understood the confusion. His brother should be the only one bound by blood to her as he was her mate. “I had to save her life once when her mates were not able to provide her with blood.”
This confused the guards more. “But we thought she was human?”
Ah, so they knew where she was. They just weren’t going to tell him. Damian really did not want to waste any more time explaining this, especially in front of Shana, but if it got the guards to take him to Anstice, he would.
“She is, but she was injured and was given our blood to save her life, as she is one of my brother’s mates. Then she was injured and in need of blood again, but neither of her mates could provide for her, so I was asked to help. That was actually how we discovered I had a brother. Now please take me to them. She may need blood, and her mates were injured, too, and may not be able to provide for her.”
When he was finished speaking, the guards’ mouths hung open. After a few seconds of hesitation, one of them asked, “You gave her your blood? Don’t you know that is against the rules? You could be put to death by admitting that. We are going to have to report this.”
Damian gave a small chuckle before asking, “Who are you going to report it to?”
The guards didn’t see the humor in the situation. “The city police chief is one of us. We will have to call him and see what he has to say. Until then, we are going to have to confine you.”
Damian didn’t like the sound of that. He needed to get to Anstice now, not sit around and wait for some police chief to come and arrest him. Time to play the royalty card. “Do you know who my brother is?”
They both shook their heads. They must not have been present when
Nikkos
came in. Every vampire in the country and maybe even the world knew who
Nikkos
was. “
Nikkos
Argyros
.”
Now, if it had been widely known that
Nikkos
had a brother they may have believed him, but everyone knew that
Nikkos’s
only brother was killed a few years ago.
“Yeah right, buddy, and I am the king of
England
. You need to come with us right now.”
Leave it to Kassie to save the day. At the mention of a king, she popped her head up and said, “I’m a princess because my mommy is going to be the queen soon. I want to see my mommy. Can you take me to her because she was hurt by those bad men and I want to see her, please? You know, you really should let me see her because I’m a princess and princesses are supposed to be able to do whatever they want. And I should see my mommy because those two big guys are going to be my new daddies, and they will be mad if we don’t find them soon. Please take me to my mommy.”
They couldn’t get her to stop talking any easier than Damian had been able to. They just looked at her in awe because every time they tried to interrupt her, she just kept talking. She stopped midsentence to look past them and point. “See, that’s my new daddy. Now can we go see my mommy, please?”
The guards turned to see who she was pointing to and saw
Adrian
striding down the hallway. Of course the guards knew who he was
. Everyone
knew who the prince’s best friend and guard was. They immediately backed out of the way and let him pass to stand next to Damian.
He asked, “What’s taking so long?”
Kassie looked over at him and asked, “Daddy, is Mommy okay? They wouldn’t let Damian see her and want to take him away.”
Adrian held his arms out to her as tears rolled down his cheeks. “Little one, did you just call me Daddy?”
She was hesitant at first but went to him and cuddled into his shoulder. “You are one of my new daddies, aren’t you?” she whispered.
He held her tight and said, “Of course I am, sweetheart.” He looked over at the guards, who were dumbfounded. “This is Kassie, daughter of
Nikkos’s
mate. And this is Damian, brother to
Nikkos
,” he said as he nodded toward Damian.
The guards looked between Adrian and Damian, their lips moving but no words coming out. When they finally found their voices, one asked, “I thought
Nikkos’s
brother had been killed?”
Adrian nodded and said, “One brother was killed, but Damian was just found to be his brother. I expect you to remember that in the future should you ever have the privilege of meeting him again.”
Damian blushed at the words. He never thought it would be anyone’s privilege to the meet him. The guards looked at him again and immediately dropped to their knees and bowed their heads.
“Please forgive us,
Kyrios,
we did not know the
Prigkipas
had another brother.” He glared over at the receptionist. “And we didn’t know he was in the hospital, only that someone brought in a human that was shot and we needed to keep everyone away from the OR,” he continued.
She was at least smart enough to be scared by them. “They came in, and the doctor met them at the door. Told me not to tell anyone where they were but didn’t tell me who they were. I have never met the prince before. I’m sorry.”
Damian was in shock. These were the first two to bow before him and call him
lord,
but he didn’t have time to enjoy it. He needed to be with his brother and his mate
.
“Thank you. Now please stand. I need to go see Anstice and
Nikkos
.”
They stood and said, “Follow us, we will take you to the OR.”
Adrian stopped them and said, “No, I’ll take them. I need you to alert all of the security that we are in the hospital. We are not expecting
anyone
else, and we were attacked by
kynigos
.
I want a guard at every entrance, and when you are finished I want the two of you outside the OR.
No one
gets anywhere near the prince or princesses. Is that understood?”
They nodded their acknowledgement but pointed to Shana. “Is she the
Prigkipas’s
other mate?”
Adrian looked to where they were pointing and looked confused. “Of course not, what are you talking about?”
They answered, “His brother said he had more than one mate. We assumed if one was a human that the other would be.”
* * * *
Adrian
could see where that confusion would come from. No one outside of their family knew that
Nikkos
and he were together. Question was, would it cause problems? Did he care if it did?
Nikkos
had said that he wasn’t going to hide their mating, but he needed these men’s cooperation to help keep everyone safe. Still, he tipped his head to the side and proudly displayed his mating mark. “No, I am his other mate. She is a prisoner until further notice. If she somehow gets away from Damian, you are not to let her leave this hospital. Detain her anyway necessary.”
The two guards exchanged a look, and
Adrian
thought for sure there were about to say something stupid about the prince. But then they both had tears in their eyes, and hopeful smiles crossed their faces. “Do you mean that? Are you really mated to the prince? Does that mean that men can mate together now?”