Page 33 of Snowed in with the Vampire Prince

He blanched, seeming to grow even paler than before, before turning his eyes back to the road. We should have been back in his cabin, making love in his bed, but instead we were here, with him driving my jeep through the freshly fallen snow—grudgingly, I had to admit he was doing an excellent job of that—and taking me back to civilization.

The endless crush of trees on either side of the freeway and white expanse of snow blanketing the ground both began to lessen with each mile we drove. By the time we reached the freeway, there was no snow at all. Apart from my ragged, bloody clothing, it was almost like I might have imagined the whole thing.

Feeling more and more uneasy, I gave Pierce directions to where I lived. The hour was growing late, but even so, there were a number of cars on the road. Ordinarily, that would have been a small measure of comfort. Under ordinary circumstances, it should have been a reminder that, no matter how alone I ever felt, there were other people very nearby, going about their lives, who probably sometimes felt the exact same way I did.

Alone. Disconnected.

But I wasn’t alone anymore, was I? I certainly wasn’t disconnected.

Or, I shouldn’t have been, at least.

But the strange silence standing between Pierce and I—both audible and mental—was frightening. It was like an invisible wall, growing denser and denser with each passing moment, harder to break through.

At last, Pierce pulled off the freeway and turned onto a street that should have been familiar and safe. But in the darkness, it seemed almost unrecognizable, a place where some stranger lived, not the street I had grown up on. This feeling of eerie unfamiliarity only got stronger as he pulled my jeep into my driveway.

The house in front of us was a modest single-story rambler, painted yellow, with white trim. The lawn was maybe a touch too long, growing a bit wild and unruly. It hadn’t been mowed in far too long. There was a single tree on the property, an ancient and wizened willow with a wooden swing dangling from one of its thick lower branches. It looked so thin and brittle that if anyone dared sit on it, it might snap in two.

I stared at my father’s house with a sense of panic. It should have felt like it belonged to me now, especially since I had just let him go. But instead, it felt even more like it belonged to someone else. I didn’t want to go back into that house alone.

Pierce looked over at me. “We need to talk about this.”

Then, without waiting for my reply, he opened the driver’s side door, climbed out, and walked over to the passenger side of the car, moving at human speed. Probably so that he wouldn’t frighten my neighbors. His amber eyes were practically on fire, but his expression was otherwise unreadable as he opened my door for me.

Warily, I got out of the car.

“I know you didn’t want this,” I said, deciding that the kindest thing I could do right then was to take control. For both our sakes. “I know you didn’t plan on a blood bond with me. Or with anyone else. But we can be adults about this. I mean, we’ll need to figure out what to do about it, obviously.” The words felt like broken glass, scraping against the inside of my throat. But I forced them out anyway.

“Obviously,” he echoed, though his lips jerked into what looked like an involuntary smile. “And what do you propose we ‘do about it?’”

“I don’t know. But I don’t want you to be chained to me against your will.”

“Against my will,” he repeated, his eyes going wide. His jaw dropped. “No. No, that’s not?—”

“You got so quiet,” I said, feeling suddenly defensive. “And, I don’t know, weird. I figured…” I trailed off, suddenly not sure if I should be feeling stupid or just terrified of what was going to happen next. I forced myself to keep going, to keep shoving the words out of my mouth, one after the other. “And then there was your fear. I could sense it through the bond. I thought you were worried about how you were going to break things off.”

“You scared me,” he whispered, his voice going raw with emotion. “I’m not used to not being strong enough to protect the people I love.”

“Well, I’m sorry that your ego is bruised—” I started, feeling a swell of righteous anger that felt a whole lot better than the icy dread I’d been wrestling with for the last hour. But then I broke off suddenly, finally hearing what he’d just said.

“Wait.” I swallowed, staring up at him, feeling my eyes widen. “You love me?”

He just stared back at me, looking incredulous. “I said it back in the clearing. Did you think I was making it up?”

“I thought that maybe you were trying to rescue me from the wolves and said what you needed to. Heat of the moment and all that.”

“You said it too,” he accused, narrowing his eyes at me. “You told the Alpha that you loved me and there would never be anyone else for you. You did a whole speech. Was that heat of the moment?”

“No.” It was just one word, but my entire heart was contained within it.

“Thank God,” Relief flooded into Pierce’s eyes and his mental walls crumbled enough to show me how worried he’d been. His fears, the entire drive here, had been almost identical to mine. The wary, guarded look I’d gotten when he had spoken to me of the future had been haunting him the entire time. “You got quiet, too.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I’m a little afraid, maybe.”

I knew better, of course, but I still half-expected him to poke fun at me, or to tell me how he didn’t think I was afraid of anything, or something else that might dismiss the way I was feeling or make it easier on him somehow. Or even worse, for him to make my fear about him, about the fact that he was a vampire, when that wasn’t it at all.

Instead, he nodded, giving me a small smile, his eyes searching mine. “Yeah, I get that. Me, too.”

It was like Pierce and I were standing at the edge of a misty chasm, and we had no way of knowing how far down it went or whether we’d be okay when we hit the bottom. All we really knew is that we were in this together.

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