#and neomi popping up to sweep him back away after like 'SEE THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HE LEAVES THE HOUSE!!! HE HAS ANXIETY!!!!'

[mermaidsirennikita]

One thing I do love about high stakes paranormal romances is that you typically do get to see old couples with an HEA come back, and while you know their HEA will last (this is why I always scoff at IAD readers who feel like "someone" has to die in the ultimate endgame... they don't.... lol at least not permanently; you can kill randoms, but you can't kill romance couples) you get to see them imperiled a little? And the Drama?

Like:

--in Kristen Callihan's Soulbound, we have an existential threat to the hero, which in turn creates an existential threat for all the supernatural creatures he's "sired", including two!!! Former heroines. Whose heroes subsequently get to cradle their prone forms (in the case of Jack and Mary of Shadowdance) or basically burn the house down in a case of werewolfy insanity (Ian and Daisy of Moonglow, one of my favorite romance couples of all time, who only got better through him literally growling over her prone form, I swooned).

--in Kresley Cole's Lothaire, when Mariketa of Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night (a book that was 8! installments prior) attempts to reach through a mirror and rescue/kidnap Ellie, only for Lothaire's Contractually Obligated Friend to cut her hand off (it grows back it's fine). Kresley just writes that Ellie hears a "beastly roar", but if you've read all the previous books, you know that's Bowen, Mariketa's husband/beast familiar werewolf man, who is VERY UPSET.

--and on a flip side, in Kresley's Sweet Ruin a few books later, you see Lothaire being very typically flippant about a Big Danger he's been called to help with, and Ellie isn't even named; but if you're a series reader, you understand exactly how the mood shifts when he snaps to the "female vampire" next to him to get the hell out of dodge IMMEDIATELY

(Kresley does not elaborate if she does, and it's Ellie, so I assume she Does Not)

This is also a benefit of being a series reader, of course; and I'll never be over the pure geeky joy of seeing two people I watched fall in love and be stupid for 400 pages come back to be in love and stupid on the sidelines, sometimes with MORTAL DANGER.