Page 59 of Vampire Savage

I process his words, propping my jaw up on a thumb, my index finger along my cheek. I feel similar towards Wren. The idea of her leaving my life is gut-wrenching and inspires an infuriating rage to confront whatever is between us.

“Don’t convince yourself that you can’t have a mate, Landon.”

My eyes fly to Ambrose’s knowing gold ones. He continues when I say nothing.

“Do you know what pisses me off the most about you?” He doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “You’ve limited yourself to this role and convinced yourself it’s all you’re capable of. The unfeeling psycho with deviant sexual tastes. You could be so much more if you’d accept that your brain has healed much more than you believe.”

I want to refute him, to insist that he and my mother are wrong. That I am a cold, heartless bastard with no empathy for those around me, but I cannot. Not when I feel love for my mother, and not when I feel ... something for Wren.

“What if I can’t ever love Wren?” It’s physically painful to expose such vulnerability to Ambrose, but I refuse to be a coward and look away from him.

Rather than mocking me or taking full advantage of my state as I would have done, he gives me a moment of consideration.

“What do you feel for her now?”

“Possessive,” I answer without hesitation. “She’s mine. I ... need her.” I press the heel of my palm to my chest, my feelings for my mate intense enough to cause a physical ache. “I crave her, with a strength that will never be satisfied. In every way.”

“Have you been with anyone else since her? Have you fed from anyone else?”

“Not since the first time we had sex,” I muse. I’d taken my urges out on the redhead at Lush that one night, but even then I couldn’t bring myself to fuck the human. As for feeding, I’d never cared who I’d fed from before. With Wren, I simply assumed I had no desire to feed from additional people since she is always eager for my bite. Now, though, actively considering feeding from a woman other than Wren causes my guts to twist in revulsion.

Ambrose shrugs, the gesture pulling me from the realizations.

“You may not be ready to accept you love your mate, but what you’re describing is the foundation of a vampire’s love,” Ambrose says. “You can love Wren, if you let yourself.”

“What is this, Emotionally Stunted Men Anonymous?”

A snarl rips from me, and it’s echoed by Ambrose, as Eris waltzes in. She rolls her eyes and inspects her talon-length nails. Today, they’re painted a metallic gold almost the exact shade of vampiric eyes.

Ashe enters a moment later and steps around the demon in his wife’s body; his arm brushes against her and neither jerks away.

Interesting.

He sits in the other chair on my side of Ambrose’s desk, casually unbuttoning the single button on his black suit jacket before he crosses his ankle over the opposite knee. In a single glance, I catalog everything about him. How his shoulders are slightly more relaxed than normal, his dark blond hair a bit longer than he normally allows, his right hand—his gun hand—resting lightly on his shin. The inherent violence every vampire has in our muscles is languid in Ashe.

He’s fed up with the last twelve hours.

My eyes dart to Eris, to her neck, then to her dark gaze which meets mine with a challenge. There’s no evidence, even with my enhanced eyesight, of a bite on Eris’s exposed neck. She crosses her arms, and I smirk. She’s wearing long sleeves. It may be getting cooler as autumn takes hold of the Barrows, but not that cold for a woman known to wear sleeveless tops until frost coats the ground every morning.

Definitely interesting.

“What do you have?” Ambrose gets straight to business.

Ever since Eris revealed the existence of her celestial blade and her failure to acquire it, Ashe has devoted himself to the fulfillment of Cassandra’s bargain. The return of her celestial blade is only one part of the bargain, according to the demon. The second half is Cassandra’s agreement to locate and help defeat an archangel Eris only refers to as the Benevolent.

“While information is typically your wheelhouse—” Ashe inclines his head towards me.

“—Eris and I have been combing through religious establishments and searching databases for any indication of a supposed miracle or sighting that can be connected to him.”

I peer at Eris. “You’re certain this Benevolent is still in this realm? What if they—” I gesture upwards “—returned to Heaven or whatever they call it?”

Only Ambrose looks at Eris where she stands behind Ashe. She’s like one of the many solitary, stone guardians the mortals place above graves to protect their loved ones’ spirits—or ferry them to the depths of Hell. Ashe must have already asked this question, as his expression never falters as he looks at our sire.

“It is not well known, even among my kind,” Eris begins, her voice hollow. I sit up straighter and she looks pained at my movement, grimacing at my clear interest. It only makes me want to know this secret more. She pushes on. “Eons ago, in the times where mortals believed gods walked the earth, there was a reckoning. Many cultures have recorded it as a great flood, while in other areas a battle between the gods, like Ragnarok. The context doesn’t matter. What does, though, is not everyone who survived was able to return to the other realms. The Benevolent is one of them.”

I recall and file through everything I know about religious mythology, but I never paid attention at the Mass my father made me attend while he was with us. Everyone knows the story of the Arc, and many know Ragnarok. But beyond a shallow, referential knowledge, I’ve never had a reason to dig deeper into supernatural history and its impact on the mortal realm.

“And, to clarify, you want him dead?” Ambrose asks, his fingers steepled under his chin. “Why?”

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