“Can’t say how much it means to me, you bein’ this cool,” he told her quietly, and she grinned a feisty grin.

“You don’t have to. I know I’m totally awesome.”

She was.

His Delilah.

Totally awesome.

He grinned back.

Then he dipped his head and kissed his mate. He did it hard and as thorough as he could when shit needed to get done.

And when he was finished, he didn’t leave the room alone to get shit done.

He took her hand and pulled her with him so they both could see to it.

Together.

* * * * *

Yuri

“Told you,” Aurora stated after lifting her eyes to him. “Cuckoo.”

Yuri stood back from the women, arms crossed on his chest.

He did this because he was allowing Aurora to work. He also did this because it meant her mother, with the shockingly unworthy witch name of Barb, was at his front.

Not at his back.

To say his meeting with Aurora’s mother was thorny was a vast understatement.

Luckily, she was well aware of The Prophesies and trusted her daughter wasn’t an idiot.

She would know. She’d raised her.

And after spending the last several days with the both of them, Yuri now knew that neither of them were.

Barb Lenox was sharp, no-nonsense, blunt-speaking, affectionate with her daughter through actions, not words, and she utterly detested vampires.

Aurora Lenox was intelligent, humorous, talented, energetic, openhearted, quick to smile, and unconsciously appealing, which made her infuriatingly alluring. Thus, with all this being her, along with her body and beauty, she was damnably fuckable.

In other words, the last four days had been torture, and not simply because Barb eyed him like he was manure on her shoe at the same time she did things, like sharpen a wooden stake, something she knew didn’t work on him, but that was not her point, even if she was making one.

And also not simply because he was forced to procure bagged blood, which was hideous, but he couldn’t feed nor take the time to find a Feast where there were hundreds of mortals with The Dominion’s stamp of approval he could partake from.

It was because he wanted his errand to be done since the information he sought was important to the cause, and also because it would mean Aurora would be out of danger and he was free to turn his mind to other things.

Like how to get her in his bed.

But right then, after exhaustive efforts, which were exhausting because they needed to be clandestine and because no one had seen her in years, they’d found the witch who’d scarred Abel.