Page 23 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

Because Tobias’s car was parked in the lot, facing my motel room door.

CHAPTER SEVEN || TOBIAS

Icouldn’t get comfortable. The steering wheel was in the way, for one. For another, I had never noticed how cramped the driver’s seat of my car was until I tried to relax enough to fall asleep in it. Every single ache and feeling of discomfort seemed to be magnified and I dreaded how kinked up and in pain I’d be in the morning, after two days in a row of trying to sleep in my vehicle.

Maybe I ought to go back into the front office and use a spell to force Liz to give me a room? I knew at least half a dozen that would work.

With each passing moment of discomfort, the idea became increasingly tantalizing.

It would be just a small persuasion spell, after all. Nothing even close to what I had used on the morgue attendant. Just a tiny magical nudge, to convince her that whatever reasons she had for refusing to rent a room to me were no longer important. And, judging by the more than half-empty parking lot, there were, in fact, plenty of rooms available.

But, feeling a little resentful of myself for making everything way harder than it needed to be, I ultimately decided against it, for at least the tenth time.

It was one thing to use my magic to help the coven, or to help Bryan with what he was trying to do, but it was another thing altogether to use spells every time I suffered a small annoyance. I didn’t possess any starry-eyed notions about never using witchcraft for personal gain, or never using it to cause harm. Magic was a tool. It was meant to be used to make the world a better place. That meant making it better for me and the people around me when the situation demanded it. And sometimes even a bit of violence was necessary now and then, even if I tried to avoid that whenever possible. But still, using a spell to fulfill my every whim would make me kind of a jerk, wouldn’t it? Especially if I was messing with someone else’s mind to do it.

Besides, I couldn’t have asked for a better vantage point. I could see Bryan’s door easily through the windshield and I was all but fifty feet from him. At least this way I could keep an eye on his room and be ready to swoop in to save him at a moment’s notice.

I’d already—discreetly, of course—put a simple alarm spell on his door, which would alert me if someone who wasn’t him or me tried to enter. I was reasonably confident that no harm would come to my mate at the motel, but I couldn’t be certain. Both my vision and the mirror had been fuzzy on the details of where Bryan’s death took place.

I really hated the mirror, even though it had—grudgingly—helped Ethan save the city. It had also nearly gotten him killed. And now it was giving us just enough information to know that there was some kind of big sketchy threat looming on the horizon for Bryan, but no real details as to what that threat would ultimately end up being when it came for him. And the damn thing knew exactly what it was doing, of that I had no doubt. For one thing, it could see the future. For another, it was a semi-sentient magical object, created a very long time ago by the sadistic power-hungry warlock who had helped found my coven. It probably enjoyed every moment of discomfort it created.

We ought to have destroyed it.

In theory, the danger was probably going to come from the pissed-off spirit Bryan was hell-bent on going up against. The simplest explanation is usually the most accurate, after all. But in practice, it could have been anything—or anyone—that came for him.

Maybe Liz moonlighted as a vampire slayer in her spare time. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I had ever seen.

And then, of course, there was the fact that even if—when—I protected Bryan from this, whatever this ended up being, he was still plunging himself headfirst into danger by choosing a life spent hunting malevolent supernatural beings, determined to do it all on his own.

I’m not an asshole. I understood it well enough. Giles had hurt him badly and now he felt he had something to prove. And sooner or later he would find more trouble and even more danger.

The worst part was, I had no idea how to make it better for him. I didn’t know how to fix any of this so he didn’t have to feel this way. But if I could have, I would have. Even if he never wanted to see me again afterward, I still would have done it.

I could have found some way to be happy, so long as I knew he was.

After an hour of trying to silence my racing thoughts and get myself comfortable enough to drift off, I finally scowled and sat up, still wide awake. Despite the fact that it was almost two in the morning, sleep seemed totally out of the question.

On impulse, I called Nathaniel. The vampire king had a front-row seat to my discovering that Tobias was my mate. Plus, he was the husband of my best friend. So, we had bonded.

Sort of.

He answered, sounding confused. “Tobias. It’s the middle of the night. Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” I said immediately. Then I let out a sharp breath. “No, not really.”

“It’s Bryan,” he guessed, sounding sympathetic. “Isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure how to fix this,” I admitted, letting out my breath in a rush. “What Giles did to him… I don’t know how I can make it right for him.”

“Maybe you can’t,” Nathaniel replied softly. “Maybe you simply give him love. And space. And time. Maybe you just let him know that you’re there for him, no matter what. And then you trust him. You have faith that he can heal from this.”

“What if I can’t do that?”

“Then maybe that’s what you should be trying to fix.” He said it kindly, without any sort of heat, but it still stung. When I went quiet, he added, “Believe me—I understand. But part of having a mate is learning how to trust them. And it’s also learning how to be the sort of man who can be trusted. How else is he supposed to give you his heart?”

“Was it hard with Ethan?”

“You grew up with my mate, did you not? You tell me if you think it was a rough go.”

---