Hupotasso (Vampire Bachelor Games #2)

69

69

Adam’s wife, Marianna, puts two hands on my huge stomach, and grins, and I can’t help but smile back.

Yin’s dropping me here, on their farm near a quiet Amish village, while she goes to hunt Viper.

It’s clear The Free Men haven’t done anything to get him since they started their negotiations with Falcon. I thought by advising them to go through Falcon that I’d have helped them get Isabel back, and they’d owe me for that. But Yin said they’d been bogged down in plans and discussions — so it was time she took matters into her own hands. She has a strategy, she says, that will get her into the castle with no problem, but she hasn’t shared that with me.

“The less you know, the less you can tell him if the worst happens,” she’d said. “Which it won’t, but we just need to take precautions.”

And that’s just one of the many precautions she’d put in place.

We still have a few weeks until I’m due to give birth and we can’t risk me going to a hospital, but since most of the Amish give birth at home coming to Adam and Marianna was the obvious answer.

I was fearful, at first, that I’d be putting them in danger, but Yin’s security team advised a month or more ago that the community was no longer being watched. We’d waited and watched ever since, and triple confirmed. I’d just assumed Falcon’s search party had decided I wasn’t stupid enough to go back to my family. But Yin said she’d passed on through a number of channels that The Free Men had spirited me overseas the day I’d escaped. It wasn’t too much to expect him to believe this either. One thing that everyone agreed on after seeing me on The Games was that I had a strange propensity for engendering help from others. People wanted to aid me, even if they didn’t always understand why.

I don’t really believe this. But Yin says it’s true.

Either way, word on the street is that Falcon is still occupied negotiating with The Free Men to free Isabel and her family from whoever holds them, and has agreed to exchange them for his mother.

I have to believe he’s so taken up with that task that he’s left me on the back burner.

But there’s one vampire, I know, who’s just playing a waiting game.

I turn to Yin now and reiterate what I’ve said a hundred times already.

“Be careful, he’s called Viper for a reason, and if we’re right and he’s aligned with Spider… you know his reputation.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she smiles. “You keep those babies toasty and tucked up until my return.”

Adam puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me close.

“Kill the vampire, Yin,” he says, his voice deep and serious. “We’ll keep Angie safe.”

I lean my head against his shoulder and take Marianna’s hand as Yin nods and gets into her car.

As she reaches the end of the driveway I feel a twinge.