Chapter One- The Highlander

107K 3.4K 1.5K
                                    

"Step away from the window Josephine," The deep rumbling voice of Josephine's father called from the living room as the black wall of ominous storm clouds rumbled over the horizon.

Josie nibbled on her lips and turned away, pulling the curtain close. Her father was putting a few things in a backpack as he doubled checked he had everything. He was moving urgently and Josie was slightly confused. 

"Do you really have to go now, dad? Can't you just wait for the hurricane to pass?" She asked him, those blue eyes blinking up at him. 

"I need to go now, honeybun, you're almost out of your iron supplements." He said and she huffed lightly as she looked down at the empty orange medicine bottle. Her father kissed her forehead lightly. 

Iron supplements. Josephine read online somewhere that many people had iron deficiency but her deficiency seemed too serious. If she was within a week of running out he grew odd, anxious. Josie had researched on her own and she knew that it wasn't dire if she went a bit of time without them. Josie figured it gave her father purpose, a reason to go into town so she never argued him.

"You'll be home by tomorrow?" Josie asked and her father nodded.

"I'll be back around midnight so don't wait up. Relax pumpkin, just remember the rules. Can you say them back to me so I know you know?" Her father asked and Josie blushed, looking at her shoes. She was twenty- two not five. She often felt like a toddler with her father around how was she supposed grow up, she was twenty-two and her father treated her like a child.

"Don't open the windows, don't open the door, pour vinegar on the welcome mat just inside the house, lights off, no sound on the television." Josie listed off the rules that her father had instated for her own protection.

The creatures could tell if a female was their mate through eye sight, smell, touch, or hearing their voice. They legally can't take the female unless they can say, without a doubt, that female was theirs. And it was taboo to force a female to expose herself to them.

"Good, all right I better leave now before rush hour." Her father said and kissed Josie's forehead. He smiled at her, his love for Josephine immeasurable. She was all he had left and he suffocated her on accident- it wasn't his intention.

Taking a deep breath he entered the windy outside of the Louisiana bayou and began the long drive into town.

Josie watched as her dad's rusted red truck pulled away from her home and down the long dirt road. Turning away she closed and locked the door before observing her house, it was so empty.

Her father was the only person she had. Josie had been cooped up in this building for her entire twenty-two years of life. And she didn't really complain, human females were bing swiped off the street left and right and Josie couldn't imagine a world without her father, they were all each other had.

Josie was an only child, her mother died when she was only a few years old leaving her father to raise her. Josie knew how to change a tire, she knew she every player of the New Orlean Saints, and while she never had alcohol she knew which beers were best for a Sunday night game. But she knew nothing else, she didn't have social skills, she froze up when the mailman came to drop off her magazines. Josie was hopeless, and it was because of those creatures.

But Josie was openminded and tried not to resent those beings for her entrapment. She had to believe there were good Legends, and bad Legends. Just as there were good people and bad people.

Josie moved to her kitchen and made herself her favorite meal, spaghetti with mushrooms.

Josie loved mushrooms. It was an odd taste that not a lot of people agreed with (she found from her father who hated mushrooms). But Josie couldn't get enough of them. Fried mushrooms with ranch was her second favorite food and a thick hamburger with swiss cheese, fried mushrooms, and fried onions was her third.

A Primal Passion - A Night's Mate| Book OneWhere stories live. Discover now