Page 10 of Her Eternal Mate

“Will!” Alexis laughed, slapping me on my chest. “You shouldn’t keep count of your partner’s orgasms. It’s unseemly.”

“Well, I never really had a partner before you, so what do I know?”

“True. True. Well, you have succeeded in tiring me out. I’m going to sleep, and when I wake up, I’m going to take you to that Jacuzzi, and we’re going to get massages at the spa, deal?” Alexis said as she yawned.

“Deal,” I said, yawning in response.

“I just want you to know that all of this…the vacation and everything else…it is helping. I do feel like things are going back to normal, and I appreciate you doing this for me. Truly,” she said.

“I love you so much, baby. I’d do anything for you,” I said wearily, feeling sleep tug behind my eyes.

It just didn’t occur to me that she’d do something strange while I was asleep. I was so certain that she was going to be okay that I turned to my side and fell fast asleep, only to wake up in the middle of the night to find no signs of Alexis anywhere. She wasn’t in the bathroom, nor was she out on the deck.

“Will, you fool!” I snapped at myself, thinking about what I’d done. I had taken someone who was suffering from PTSD out into the open and had gone to sleep without checking to see if she had slept or not. Who knew where she might be?

I hurriedly got dressed, noticing at the same time that Alexis’s clothes were gone from the bathroom. The rest of her stuff was still there, including her luggage. So, wherever she was, she hadn’t gone far. I tried to use my bond with her, but it gave me nothing in response. All I got was pitch black in return, which meant that she was either very far or something very worse.

Not wanting to think more about it, I headed outside my room while locking it behind me and went into the lobby, where the receptionist was still standing behind her desk.

“Excuse me, the woman who came with me, do you know where she went?” I asked her.

“Umm. Yes, sir. As it happens, I did see her leave the lobby precisely an hour ago,” the woman responded, smiling at me professionally. Could she not see that this was a case of emergency and her smile was unwarranted?

“Did she say anything?” I asked.

“Nothing at all, sir. She just headed out of the inn and went to the road.” the woman pointed at the road from the window.

“Great. Thanks for your help,” I said, heading out of the inn and to the car park where I had parked my Jeep.

It then occurred to me that instead of going on my Jeep, I could simply shift into my wolf form. I’d be better able to follow her by picking up her trail.

Where are you, Alexis?I called out, hoping that there would be some response on her end.

There was just radio silence.

Chapter 5

Alexis

How could I have explained to Will what I was feeling? It wasn’t that he was incapable of feeling something similar. Of course, he could understand what I was going through. He had gone through so much worse, and he had dealt with his fair share of PTSD. But despite all his efforts, my symptoms were not subsiding.

The Frampton Inn had been a wonderful idea, and I loved him for it, but the minute Will fell asleep and I was left alone to deal with the silence and the blackness, all the dark thoughts crept back into my mind, prohibiting me from sleeping. Even still, I managed to go to sleep, but my dreams were more along the line of nightmares heavily featuring undead vampires lurking in the woods behind Fiddler’s Green.

When I woke up feeling disturbed from those unending dreams of undead vampires chasing me all through the town, I decided that staying in this tranquil and serene place was not the right course of action for me. I had to do something productive. Anything that would take my mind off the lingering question that swam in my subconscious.

What if the vampires came back?

What if there was still some threat out there that was conspiring against us?

Blair was still out there as far as I was concerned. He could come back at any time with his forces and destroy Fiddler’s Green.

But this was not the pestering enigma that had ensnared my mind at this hour of the night. Having been kidnapped once by Maurice, I had seen the inner workings of the vampires in his secret cave. They came via ships to take the caches and deposit new smuggled goods. What if somehow the ship that I’d destroyed had not been destroyed? What if some part of it was still functional that the vampires were still using? On that note, maybe all the vampires were not dead. Perhaps some of them were still lingering around, waiting for their turn to attack.

How could I vacation in Frampton while so much danger lurked everywhere?

The self-aware part of me knew that all these thoughts were the by-product of the PTSD I was experiencing. I had been through so much recently. From me falling off the top of the building after Will’s presumed death to me discovering that Fred had rigged the entire town with bombs—everything that had happened had rattled me to the point that I could not think anymore. As much as I loved my mate, and as much as he was doing for me, I knew that the solution to my fixation was not here in Frampton.

That’s why I left in the middle of the night. I went on foot for as long as I could until I reached a thicket of trees where I could safely shift into my wolf form. I calculated that it took around five hours to travel here from Fiddler’s Green. It’d take me two and a half hours to run cross-country in my wolf form. I’d make it to Fiddler’s Green and come back by the morning. Will wouldn’t know a thing.