He was also aware of wanting Butch to be with them, too—but as a half-breed, the former cop couldn’t ghost out and travel in a scatter of molecules. That was the thing with mixed blood. You got some of the characteristics of both sides, but it was a buffet you didn’t get to choose from. What your personal rules were got randomly assigned by the fruit salad of your genetic makeup.
So it was ground travel only for Butch, and it would take well over an hour for the brother—
A vibration went through V’s body, his marrow going tuning fork on him. And as Rhage stopped short and looked down at himself, it was clear the brother picked up on it, too.
“Is that . . .” Rhage let the words drift as he glanced back up toward the house. “I mean . . .”
At that moment, the front door of the farmhouse burst open and a female in a long dress and a bulky sweater rushed out. She had both palms forward and she was halfway into an epic no-no-no stream.
“—needing. You can’t be here!”
Needing? V thought. Oh, shit.
The Jackal’s shellan, Nyx, had gone into her—
“Do you want my mate to help?” he called out. “Jane can come here with the drugs to ease her.”
Posie, Nyx’s sister, flushed and shook her head. “That’s not . . . that’s not how it’s going to be handled. This was a little bit of a surprise, but females’ cycles? They can be unpredictable, especially during stressful times.”
She doubled back and shut the door. Then she came down off the porch to them. “I’m leaving as well. For . . . you know, their privacy.”
“Are they safe?” Rhage asked. “For the day?”
“They’re in the cellar bedroom. I made sure there was food and . . . Pete already left when the first signs of the fertile time started showing. I only stayed to get the house in order and make sure they’d have what they need.”
What a mess, V thought.
Vampire females were only fertile about once a decade—and good fucking thing. The hormones released were incredibly powerful and painful, and his mahmen, creator of the species, had set it up such that only constant mating with a male could make the agony bearable. Still, the sex act soothed the cravings only for a short time, so the orgasms had to be constant, for hours and hours. It was either that or drugs. All things considering, the cycle was a brutal system, but considering how high the mortality rate was for females on the birthing bed? It would take something that overwhelming to make them want to run the risks of getting pregnant.
He was really glad his Jane was infertile in her hybrid state—not because he wouldn’t have helped during her time, but because the pregnancy stats terrified him.
“Where are you going?” Rhage asked Posie.
“To our grandfather’s new place. That’s where Pete is. I’ll come back right before dawn and double-check they’re okay. But Jack has a phone, and . . . things to protect them with.”
Things = weapons, given the female’s squeamishness.
“Let us know if you or they need anything?” Rhage nodded to the house. “The Jackal’s a good male, and I wish my half-brother all the best.”
V kept his mouth shut because he thought the pair of them were nuts. If the pregnancy took? The Jackal got to enjoy eighteen months of worrying whether the love of his life, the female he’d bonded with, was going to bleed out trying to bring his fragile progeny into the cold, hard world.
“You know how to reach us,” Vishous muttered. Because he didn’t want the depths of his douchebagness to be apparent.
Fine, that apparent.
“Thank you,” the female said.
Relieved to get the hell out of there, V dematerialized off the lawn and traveled north and a little east, knowing Rhage would be right behind him. The needing was not a place for any males to hang around because they couldn’t help but be affected and nobody had time for that drama.
The good news? The whole issue of the Jackal tangling up with finding the prison camp was now a moot point, at least for the foreseeable future. If the couple was doing this the old-fashioned way, the male was going to need a waterpark’s worth of hydration after it was over, and then he’d have to wait to see if things took. He wasn’t going to want to leave his female.
Just as well.
One less cook in the kitchen.
The Audience House was located in Caldwell proper, in a zip code where people had gates across their driveways, access codes to every nook and cranny, and the inflated sense of self-importance that came when you could get whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted it.