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oddly enough, everything seemed quiet tonight.
    She opened the door to her office, which was dark except for the warm, amber glow of her cell phone display. As she grabbed the phone off the clunky, old schoolteacher desk, it buzzed joyfully in her hand to indicate a new text message: Think we found her. Will let U know asap.
    Lee.
    “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.” Tyra hugged the phone to her chest. Already there were rumblings in the community. Folks wanted to know why Thad hadn’t officially announced his ascension.
    Due to a recent uptick in wizard sightings, many of the elder conservatives were pushing for a ban on interacting with humans or breaking up the vampire communities and moving out of the area in smaller groups. Some civilians were even talking about taking up arms against the wizards themselves, Michigan Militia-style. The whole situation had “impending shit storm” written all over it.
    A drop of moisture escaped from Tyra’s eye. Her half brother might be inexperienced, but if he didn’t rise to the challenge of being king, the vampire race was in trouble. If he had managed to track down the mate that had supposedly been prophesied for him, then he could finally come the hell back from wherever he was and get down to business. There was still hope. She sniffed and swiped hastily at her wet cheek, turned the lock on her office door, and sent herself home in a scatter of tiny molecules.

Chapter 5
     
    Thad paced Isabel’s bedroom. The sparse furnishings—from the functional Ikea desk and the explosion of party flyers on the walls to the bed decked out in spaceship-themed sheets—all screamed college-kid chic. He compared it to his own home. His life.
    Nothing about the two of them was similar.
    Easing onto the bed, Thad ran his hands over a soft pillow that could have been made from the hide of that Wookie character in Star Wars . He could just picture Isabel’s face resting upon its furry surface in the daytime. His chest tightened at the thought. There were stickers on the walls and ceiling, too. Little white glow-in-the-dark stars and planets that scattered all over like their own special solar system.
    A bulletin board over the desk was packed full of pictures of Isabel and her human friend, Alexia, with their tongues out and their arms slung around each other. Most were taken in club settings like the one where he’d found her. She had a life here, and while not exactly prosperous by Thad’s standards, she seemed happy. How was he going to make this work?
    Thad’s thoughts vanished into the ether as soon as Isabel stepped from the bathroom, having changed again into black yoga pants and a plain, white form-fitting T-shirt. Her skin was paler than his, peachy and freshly scrubbed of her heavy club makeup. A faint network of scars, which hadn’t been visible before, traversed her neck and cheek. While he ached to know more about them, his gut told him not to ask. Not yet. Vampires didn’t scar easily, so whatever had caused them… well, he and Isabel probably weren’t “there” yet.
    That she had allowed him to come back to her apartment was a huge victory, even if he might have elicited the invitation by insinuating that he and Lee would be stuck without a place to hide from the sun.
    A hint of lemon wafted in her wake, and Thad couldn’t help but suck it into his nostrils with gusto. His chest squeezed again, even as his dick swelled in appreciation. Whether because of lust or the prophecy or just an intense longing to do right by his kind, damned if he didn’t already want to fall on Isabel and wrap around her until there was no way to tell where she ended and he began.
    Damn. He had planned and he had strategized, but every time he looked at her, his mind went completely blank. He simply hadn’t expected this. How could he have? He’d expected his destined mate to be like the other females he’d known: desperate for the status of becoming queen. And yes, admittedly,