The Blood Bundle, Books 1-2: Blood Singers and Blood Song (New Adult Paranormal Vampire/Shifter Romance) (41 page)

And just like that she thought of Jules again.
She had a damn knack for making everyone crack up and get in
trouble.

Then Cynthia realized something as she walked
away from the booth, order in hand; she'd thought of Jules without
crying, the happy memory being just that.

Happy.

Maybe she'd be okay after all.

A fragile seed of hope began to germinate in her
heart. If not for the possibility of actually seeing Jules again,
but maybe of remembering her without the crushing sadness.

Cynthia put in her customer's order and then one
for herself on the spinning circle of tickets. The discounted meal
was all she was allowing herself to eat. Money was tight, she'd
deal with the hunger until she had more money. She began to
salivate thinking about the rich Banzai burger and fries that
Sherry the cook would whip up, her last order of the day was her
last customer, the only table left. Cynthia sighed with relief.
Tomorrow was her day off and she intended to make the most of
it.

First stop:
Freedom Affirmed
. She was
going to talk to Shirley. Maybe she could verify if Julia had
stayed there. It was such a slim chance, Cynthia knew.

Cynthia latched on to that small hope that
bloomed inside her, holding on for dear life.

She wasn't going to let go.

No matter what.

*

Truman

Truman hadn't needed to lean on the local fuzz
too much. They'd gotten the word from Alaska.

Full cooperation.

He was getting a lot of
yeses
and that's
how he liked it.

His nose was literally twitching with
excitement. He'd buzzed through all the drivers and was down to the
last one.

The driver was a pudgy guy with thick hair that
had once been black and had now edged its way into the pewter
category. Truman picked up on his nervousness right away, it was in
the set of his hands as he twisted his cap in his thick hands.

“I'm Karl Truman, Homer PD,” he stuck out his
hand and swallowed the bus driver's in his own.

Firm grip, nervous but not a pussy. Truman liked
him immediately. Seemed like a good sort.

“Good to meet ya,” the guy said. “I'm Alfred,”
he elaborated, giving Truman a solid pump then letting his hand
fall.

Truman pegged him with his gaze and when Alfred
didn't waver, drop his stare and met his eyes full on- the
twitching became a buzz.

He took the picture of Julia Caldwell and
Cynthia Adams out of his billfold. It was a graduation shot, their
heads covered with caps, the tassels captured in mid-swing, the
cold Alaskan sunlight lending a halo effect.

Truman put it in front of Alfred's snout. Alfred
squinted at it. Finally giving up, he extracted some eyeglasses and
put them on. He leaned in and peered at the photo for a long
moment.

Too long
, in Truman's opinion. He opened
his mouth to tell him to get the lead out when those eyes flicked
to Truman's; he noticed they seemed kind.

“Yeah, I seen that girl,” he pointed at the
photo.

Truman turned around and indicated Cynthia Adams
with a finger flick. “Her,” Truman said, satisfied like a clam at
high tide.

Alfred gave a slight frown and shook his head to
the negative. “Nah, her.” With his pointer finger, he carefully
pressed it to the shorter girl in the photo. Her golden hair shone
almost red in the weak sunlight typical at the beginning of the
Alaskan summer, a stray ray exactly falling across her eyes,
lighting them in her delicate face.

Lion's eyes,
Truman
thought
,
the startling amber an unforgettable
shade.

Truman's eyes snapped up to Alfred the bus
driver.

“Her?” Truman almost screamed in his face,
stabbing the photo.

Alfred cowered back at his tone but Truman
didn't care. He'd been looking for one girl and found the other. He
ignored the bus driver's vehement nodding, his thoughts already on
the revelation at hand.

Julia Caldwell, presumed dead.

But that was wrong.

She was here, and apparently, very much
alive.

Blood Singers Region One

Julia swung low, sweeping her leg toward Scott's
for the strike he taught her, geared at numbing the largest muscle
of the leg. He caught her foot, twisting it and she flipped,
falling to the floor and slapping the flat of her palms on the mat,
the sound echoing in the cavernous training barn. She'd almost
face-planted and flipped over on her back, chest heaving from
exertion, her strength was definitely not fully back.

Julia hated Scott.

He was a Punisher.

She grinned at his expression of contained
guilt. He wore gloves so he could train her for hand-to-hand
combat. Not an easy task with a soul-melded partner. Scott was
having to go against his primal nature to protect her while he
taught her defense, he didn't need the additional challenge of
skin-to-skin contact.

“Nice, Scott!” Michael sung, striding by the mat
and never breaking pace, “Beating up our Queen. Terrific form, pal,
keep it up.”

Scott's face took on that tomato color that
looked so funny with a man with dusky coloring like his. He was
just shy of olive-skinned with an almost Mediterranean skin tone.
He looked nothing like the other Singers, who were primarily
fair-complected. His huge hands curled into fists and giving a
guilty glance at her on the floor he stuck a hand out to her.

Gloved, of course.

Julia stood with his help and those inky eyes,
like smooth stones of the finest honed ebony gazed down into hers.
Whiskey met black and he gave another glance at his brother, who
flipped him the bird.

Julia was getting a little more accustomed to
the sibling interaction but much of it seemed like rivalry to her.
Scott began to go after Michael and she forgot their promise to not
touch each other and put a staying hand on his muscular forearm,
the striated muscles rippling under her fingertips.

In a tingling rush of almost electric
proportions, Scott gasped, groaning.

“Julia!” he said in a low voice, charged with
emotion and restraint.

“I'm sorry,” she apologized and withdrew her
hand but Scott was helpless with the sensation of skin-to-skin
contact and wrapped her against him.

Hard, with almost brutal contact he wrapped his
hand in her hair and kissed her forehead, then her nose, then found
her mouth and pressed his lips to its softness.

Julia squirmed against the intimacy even as she
began to press forward. It was almost like a witch's spell, cast by
genetics, directed by fate.

Using a restraint Scott didn’t know he
possessed, he put Julia away from him at arm's length. She was
flushed, her vivid coloring reasserting itself as the hiatus of
recovery that had spanned this last week had given her vitality
back. Scott knew that the flush wasn't from health, but from
desire. It burned in her eyes, deepening them to a fine amber.

He didn't need to look to know that his eyes
mirrored hers.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

Julia gave a shaky laugh. “It's okay. I just...”
she paused then continued, “I didn't want you to pummel
Michael.”

“I'm trying to give us time. You know what
Marcus said...”

Julia did and she was embarrassed. She lifted
her eyes, their bodies straining for contact, two feet of
separation feeling like ten miles.

She stayed where she was, looking at the gloves
he wore so he could train her. It had been Marcus' idea. When Scott
had tried to train her for self-defense, he'd executed his first
throw against her and gone and barfed up the breakfast they'd
shared.

Scott found that he could not touch her in a
move that might cause her harm without a physical reaction.

In essence, it hurt him to instigate any move or
intent that had potential to harm her. Marcus thought it was all
part of the fabric of their soul-meld.

Of course, he didn't want to hurt her,
Julia knew this. She had insisted. Julia didn't want to ever feel
weak again. Unprotected.

Scott was the highest ranked Singer in the
tri-state region for his ability: Deflection. So far, he had no
sub-ability like Brendan did (Tracker and to a lesser extent Pyro,
as it was affectionately referred to). As Marcus had explained,
those secondary abilities could manifest at any time. There was
always a primary ability and in the instance of a secondary, it was
considered an “overlap” or “crossover,” talent. In Singer
terminology whatever a Singer possessed was their “talent.” So
Julia had spent the first true week at Region One's compound
getting quizzed on her “talents.” So far, her primary was the
telekinesis and it appeared she had a low-level telepathy. However,
it seemed to work only with other Singers, sporadically at best and
was not very powerful. As Julia had discovered, it wasn't uncommon,
if a Singer concentrated hard enough, they could communicate mind
to mind with other Singers.

In fact, Julia wasn't sure why she'd be the pick
for Queen. She just wasn't seeing why she “had it.”

Scott looked at Julia for another frozen moment
then straightened from the semi-slouch he'd adopted to hold her.
Julia was really overwhelmed by Scott's size. When he was training
her, it took every ounce of her internal fortitude to remind
herself:
he would not hurt her.

The soul-meld thing made it doubly awful. It
was like she hovered around synchronicity; it was just out of
reach. And, of course, she was desperate to touch it.

“
Let's go ahead and take a
break, I can feel how thirsty you are,” Scott said with a small
smirk.

He had a devilish sense of humor. Julia
wasn't sure if she'd warmed to it or not. But she dished back what
she took. It was squaring up awesomely for her. In fact, Julia
found it lightened her to banter with him.

Scott knew that Julia wasn't as sensitive to
his basic needs and it peeved her that she didn't know if he was
hungry or thirsty. He couldn't hide his desire though. That
smoldered in his gaze, his body, his mannerisms. She couldn't
escape that dark knowledge. Sometimes she wished she didn't have
it.

Scott certainly couldn't help it.

Didn't want to.

He held out his hand to her and she took it.
He cupped her small hand and looked down at the crown of her head,
the golden red hair halfway down her back, a cascade of liquid sun.
Scott wanted to touch it so bad his chest tightened.

Instead he said, “After we get a drink,
let's go by and see Marcus.”

Julia turned and looked up at him, way up.
Scott was nearly a foot taller. “Why?”

Scott walked for a few more paces and
replied, “He's got some big ass revelation about me. I need to
know.” He glanced at her and the weak ambient light that worked its
way through the canopy of trees pierced her face just right.

God,
Scott
thought,
it's like she's captured the sun inside
her.

“
Scott?” Julia
asked.

Scott startled, he'd been openly gawking at
her and felt heat rise to his face again. This damn soul-meld shit
was a force to be reckoned with. He gulped.

Hard.

“
Yeah,” he chuckled, softly
towing her after him. He grinned and said, “He'd been about to tell
me a big secret,” he lowered his hands from airquotes and
continued, “then you were sliding down the sick slope and I took
off to help you. I've been so consumed by that I haven't had a
chance to get back to it. But I know it's important,” Scott said
with certainty, mentally distracted by all the possibilities of
what the information could be.

Julia stopped walking and Scott felt her
fingers leave his gloved ones and a form of grief took residence
where they'd been.

“
What?” his eyes searched her
face.

“
I don't want to burden
people,” Julia said, her eyes clear and level on him.

“
No,” Scott said, moving into
her personal space, uncomfortably close. It would have been more
natural for them to touch. However, they both knew that it
caused... problems.

Scott put a piece of hair that floated in
the breeze of the woods they were traveling through behind her ear,
allowing himself that at least.

It was a short path between “the barn” and
the Victorian where his family lived, the deepness of the woods
their only audience.

He cupped her face, the tips of his fingers
at her temple and his palm easily capturing her small chin, a
fragile egg he held in his palm. “It's not you. You're not a
burden. I was just...”

So damned worried I barely slept, ate,
breathed,
Scott remembered but said, “I was
assuring your safety, Jules.”

“
Please don't call me that.”
She stepped backward, a frosty silence inserting itself between
them, her face closing down. The openness of the moment
vanishing.

Fuck. Double-fuck
,
Scott thought. That nickname was off-limits. It's what her friends
had called her.

From before.

Scott's hands fell at his sides and they
stared at each other. How could he repair it? He knew Julia needed
to talk about the attack against her by her husband. Even thinking
about someone other than himself mated to her made his skin crawl
and adrenaline pump through his body. He squelched it without
mercy.

“
What do you want me to call
you?”

“
Julia,” she said in a huff,
crossing her arms across her narrow body, her full breasts cradled
by the movement and he looked at them presented before him like
delicious fruit then raised his eyes to Julia.

She saw his assessment of her as a woman and
laughed. He grimaced, caught.