HARRY IS LOSING HIS MIND.
The plan was for her to stay by his or Niall's side the entire night, staying out of the way so she wouldn't get hurt, and he'd find a chance to whisk Adeline away for interrogation. It was supposed to be quick, easy, and smooth enough for them to be back home before midnight, yet here he is, trying to not appear as frantic as he feels as he searches the house for the one person he never should've left alone.
At first, he assumed that Liam was here today to help with the interrogation. He thought that Niall wanted more backup, considering that they were bringing a human along, but he didn't even know they were going to be here, let alone bring Jo along.
The rooms pass in a blur, and he can't help but stop and double-take at every woman that has the same color hair or similar features to her. The only thing that kept him calm while he caught up with Liam was knowing that she was safe with Niall, but then he watched in horror as he walked into the room without her. He didn't bother explaining before setting off to find her with a sinking, nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach.
His shoes tap the floor harshly with every step he takes, and he struggles to remember which rooms he has already visited by the time he crosses the main entrance hallway to the other side of the house.
The memory of watching her being pinned to the ground and nearly murdered this morning plays on a loop in his mind. All he can see is the fear that lingered in her eyes for the hours that followed and how she kept glancing at him for reassurance before falling asleep on the couch, like she needed to know that he'd still be there once she woke up to relax.
There's only one room left to check. If she isn't there, he doesn't know what he's going to do. His chest aches, and he feels the rage begin to bubble up inside of him at the possibility of her being hurt—
Her giggling laughter rings through the air like the delightful chime of a bell.
He stops abruptly just before the open doorway, hiding behind it, and peeks around the corner to see her there. If she's laughing, she's okay, so he doesn't want to come barreling in with his protective instincts flaring at an all-time high. Luckily for him, it's easy for the person she's with to mistake his scent for her since he recently fed from her.
"You should come to see me again soon," a feminine voice he prays doesn't belong to the person he suspects it does says, "I never spend time with anyone half as interesting as you. Isaac always had me locked away in the house for protection, but it drove me crazy half of the time."
Isaac.
The name strikes a chord of familiarity in his mind, and he realizes, with no small amount of terror, that the woman she's talking to is the vampire associated with the gang they're actively plotting to dismantle. His first reaction is fear, but it's cut short by a moment of rational thinking to actually process the sentence that left her mouth.
It was an invitation for them to see one another again...which means more access into Adeline's life and more information about her husband's gang affiliation. But is he willing to put Jo in danger to obtain that information? Having someone on the inside would be useful, but not her, not the very person he's trying to protect from these people. For all he knows, this woman could be just as evil as her husband was, and that isn't a risk he wants to take.
If it were Niall or Liam, it would be different. At least they're vampires, but she's a human in a foreign land where violent criminals hunt her kind for sport. He doesn't know if he can live with himself if he lets her befriend one of those people. There's so much light and liveliness left in her, even after everything she's been put through since coming here, and he doesn't want to watch that light disappear.
"I'd love to," she says, voice muffled by the sound of music that carries through the house, "Where can I find you?"
Before he can stop himself, Harry rushes into the library to find them sitting in opposite armchairs.
Adeline turns to see him a second sooner than Jo does, thanks to those heightened senses that detected his scent on her when she walked in earlier, and when he catches her gaze, he sees the eyes of someone who has been caught red-handed. For the smallest second, she looks at him with wide, frightened eyes, and it makes him want to take Jo by the hand and drag her out of the house as fast as he can.
But he doesn't.
Instead, he stands, appearing as calm as he can externally, and watches her look over at him. In sharp contrast to Adeline, her face is overwhelmed with relief at the sight of him standing there. Suddenly, the fear he felt ebbs into something different. He only now realizes that she's okay, alive, and not at the mercy of a cruel vampire's fangs. She's sitting there with a pen outstretched to her new acquaintance and a smile on her face, which is very different from what he thought he'd see while frantically searching the house for her.
Harry gathers himself in that split-second span of time, as does Adeline, and raises his brows playfully at them both.
"Am I interrupting?"
The clock hung on the wall between where they sit ticks with every second that passes, far slower than the slightly fast pace of her heart that picked up speed, as always, when he stepped into the room. He's certain that if he walked over and flattened his palm over the exposed skin on her chest, he'd feel it thumping inside of her chest.
Adeline seems to notice too because she glances at him curiously and looks him up and down.
She bounces back into the persona she had while greeting hoards of people at the life of the party earlier, as he explained the blood bond to Jo, and says, "No. I was actually just leaving."
With a quick glance at the shelf behind her, she stands with the pen Jo gave her in hand and swipes a book from the countless supply that litters the room. Her dress hugs her body as if it was made for her, and perhaps it was, but it isn't what he's focused on. A month ago, he would've ignored any human woman to ogle someone as beautiful as Adeline, but, at this moment, all he thinks about is the feeling he felt in his stomach when he thought she was taken.
He's never been tasked with protecting a human, only avenging them, so it's new territory to be on the preventive side of his job as a defender of human beings. He never knew how attached he could get so quickly, considering his vow to never get close with a person like her again, but he should've seen it coming. One can only spend so much time devoted to protecting a stranger and spending every waking moment trying to track down their attempted murderers before growing protective over them, and the fact that he just fed from her only worsens it.
Jo watches as Adeline tears a blank, worn page from the back of a book and scribbles something down onto it. Her eyes track the smooth drag of the pen on paper, but he can see her gauging his reaction in her peripheral vision.
"Here," she says, handing it over before she starts to make her way from their side of the room to the door, "you can visit me on Saturdays at any time you'd like. That's my only day off from work, so it's the only time I can see you again. I hope that's okay."
The happiness in Jo's eyes cannot be mistaken as she stands, smiling, and folds the paper up neatly in her hands.
"Perfect. It was lovely meeting you. I'll swing by next Saturday if I can."
Today is Saturday, so at least that gives him a week to argue with her over it because there is no way in hell she's going to that house all by herself. She might as well be walking straight into the lion's den, ringing the dinner bell for her and all of her husband's friends that probably see her as nothing more than a meal to drink and a body to violate. Considering their habit of raping their victims, he wouldn't put it past them to do so, nor would he put it past them to use Adeline to lure her in. That is if they all know she's no longer in the human realm.
It was only a matter of time before they found out, but he was hoping to keep her under the radar for as long as possible. As long as they don't know he's the one hiding her, they can get away with it, but they already had a close call this morning, and he can't allow it to happen again.
He resists the urge to rest his hand on her waist like he has been doing all night and settles for sticking his hands into his pockets while they watch Adeline stop in the doorway for one last goodbye.
"It was lovely meeting you too. I'm looking forward to all of the human stories you have to tell, it's been so long since I was turned, I'm sure a lot has changed since then."
With that, she dips her head to them and disappears beyond the view of the open doorway. And, before either of them dares to get a word in, he crosses the room in a few quick strides of his long legs and shuts the door as gently as he can amid his explosive stirring emotions. It hardly makes a sound.
Finally faced with the consequences of the risk she took, she grasps the folded-up book page in her hand tightly for support. She knew going into this conversation/interrogation with Adeline that it was going to piss him off, that he was going to regret ever bringing her along, but it was too great of an opportunity to pass up.
Plus, it's not like she has much left to lose anymore. Without her family, friends, or beloved dogs at home, she doesn't have much to live for. She survives but does not live. And, whether or not many people like to acknowledge the difference between the two, one is objectively better than the other. Living would be waking up with a sense of purpose and belonging every morning, yet all she has felt since coming here has been uselessness and cold detachment from other people in Harry's constant absence.
Tonight was better than most days are, but she fears that it'll go back to how it was before come tomorrow morning. If things don't get better, why should she care if she gets killed? Why does it matter anymore if she doesn't have anyone who truly loves her? In her eyes, an existence forged in loneliness and trepidation is not one worth living.
Harry doesn't waste a second of time before delaying his brutally honest opinion surrounding what she did.
"Are you trying to get killed?" he asks, "Y'can't see her again. There's no way in hell I'm letting you walk defenseless into her house and probe for information that I could've gotten tonight if y'let me do things the way we planned them."
But she doesn't back down. If there is anything he has learned about her, it's that she will never back down from a confrontation with him, even if it means throwing herself out of a moving car like she did the day they first met.
Her hands settle on her hips.
"All I care about is making sure the people that attacked me never touch another human again, and if I have to die doing that, then so be it."
His chest tightens significantly at her troubling admission about not caring if she lives or dies, but he rakes through the piles of memory in his mind for proof that shows that she doesn't really mean it. This morning, the sound of her screaming at the top of her lungs for him to come and save her shook him to the core. They were screams of desperation and fear, not the screams of someone who is indifferent toward death.
She doesn't want to die, he reasons with himself, and he doesn't want her to either, which is why he feels so strongly against her newfound acquaintance. Sure, it could work in their favor, but he can't handle the possibility that fate will swing in the other direction.
"I care if you die. It's my job to protect you, and I'm not okay with letting some gang member's wife lure you away every weekend. I don't trust her, so you won't see her," he demands.
Then, as if it were as real as the two of them, he witnesses the fire in her eyes flare up at the use of such a stern tone and a command like that. She shifts back forth on her feet for a second, as if unable to do anything but bounce around in the unspent energy that her anger is fueling, and steps up to him.
"You aren't allowed to order me around," she spits, "if you think you are, you're in for a rude awakening, Harry. Whether you like it or not, I have to see her again. I have the perfect opportunity to spy on this gang from the inside, so I'm not just going to throw it away."
The library is all but silent, save for the sound of the clock ticking steadily in the background of their hushed, but harsh voices arguing in the dimly lit darkness of the secluded room.
Whatever moment they shared in the bathroom feels worlds away compared to this one. Rather than wanting to lift her onto the bathroom counter again and revel in the soft moans that escaped her, he wants to scream at her in a fit of rage. He has never and will never raise his hand to a woman, but she drives him so crazy, he wishes she was Niall so they could have it out in a round of boxing or something productive. Anything is preferable to this fruitless build-up of tension.
He steps closer to her too.
"If y'just stuck to the plan—"
"The plan was never going to work!" she cries indignantly, forgetting where they are and the critical importance of the facade they've created, "If she thought, even for a second, that telling us anything would lead to the downfall of her husband's gang, she would've died rather than sell him out! If we played it your way, we wouldn't know anything, but"—The hand holding the piece of paper with her address and home phone number raises in front of her—"now we have a way in."
Harry's hand flexes at his side, and he has to clench his jaw to refrain from spewing profanities and storming out of the room like a child. How can she get under his skin so easily? With everyone else, it rolls off of him like water, but she has been able to frustrate him unlike anyone else from day one. He was better at concealing it back then, but it still got to him.
What she says makes sense. It's cunning and bold and he has never admired her more than he does right now because of the sheer bravery she exhibited in taking a risk as she did, but he has also never hated her as much as he does right now. If it were the day they met instead, he would've agreed with her. He would've agreed to let her risk her life and stroll into the lion's den, but it's different now, and he fucking hates it.
He softens for a second, seriousness invading his voice as he says, "You promised you'd stay with me or Niall..."
And this makes her pause for a second, reconsidering everything in the conversation that led to this moment. All of the anger and fear that boiled over and directed them to this argument stills, as if the burner on the stove it sat atop was turned down to simmer and left with nothing but an eerily abrupt stop.
He said it with too much honesty for her to think he's being manipulative or anything but worried for the person he's been protecting with his life 24/7. It would sound stupid to anyone looking from the outside in, but she hadn't considered that he only tried to forbid her from seeing Adeline from a place of deep-seated worry. In the heat of the moment, all she saw him as was another arrogant vampire that underestimates her at every chance he gets.
It's only now that she notices how close they became amid their argument, and her chest rises and falls faster with the realization. She's close enough to touch him if she pleases to. Their noses are one twitch away from bumping, just like they were in the bathroom earlier, and she has to retreat a step before regaining the ability to think clearly.
"I'm sorry for breaking my promise and making you worry," she says, "I was trying to help. I know you don't think I'm strong enough to handle myself, and maybe you're right, but befriending Adeline is the only way we'll get the information we need. You know I'm right."
He murmurs softly, "Of course I know you're right, why else would I be so pissed off?"
The sound of her gentle laughter makes everything feel right again. Even though he's still angry with her, he can't help but relax when she laughs.
"Not that I need your permission to do anything, but is that a yes to seeing Adeline again, then?"
Weighing the risks versus benefits, he has a hard time deciding his answer, but, as she said, she doesn't need his permission. Even if he doesn't like it, even though his job is to protect her, he isn't allowed to tell her what she can and can't do. All he can do is adapt his plans around the fact that she's going whether or not he wants her to and pray it doesn't end in disaster.
He sighs, "It's a yes."
Once she starts to perk up, he cuts her off and continues again, "But, you aren't going in there defenseless. I'm sending Niall to keep watch from outside of her house in case she tries anything, and you are going to learn to defend yourself. We won't always be there to save you every time shit hits the fan."
They only stay at the party for another half hour once they leave the library and return to the festivities with fake smiles and flutes of champagne in hand to celebrate their victory, but it feels like forever to them.