Page 33 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

So, my car—a shiny new black Volvo—was the one we slipped into after our confrontation with the hunters. I barely waited for Bryan to put on his seatbelt before I put the car in drive and peeled out of the parking lot.

Bryan sat in silence, darting looks at me every few seconds, an unhappy expression on his face.

Only when I was in relative safety did I notice that I was so angry I was practically shaking.

I drove us to the edge of town before I pulled off into a deserted parking lot of some big box store that had long since closed down, its windows boarded up with plywood. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to drive, with how violently I wanted to go back and start something with the two hunters.

I was the good guy, always.

I was who you called if you needed someone to help you move. Or put down a demon. Or bury a body. Or when you needed someone reliable and steadfast to help you get stuff—even the big stuff—done. That’s who I was and who I had always been.

I didn’t ever get angry. Not like this. Not where it felt like my whole body might split apart from it at any moment. Like the rage might double me over and leave me gasping and murderous.

But I could tell, from the wretched look on my mate’s face, that I was scaring him.

And that was unacceptable.

So, for lack of a better idea, I got out of the car.

I slammed the door behind me with more force than I intended to use.

I stared out at the dusty, abandoned parking lot, focusing on controlling my breathing until my fury with the hunters started to subside.

I wasn’t even half as good at locator spells as Poppy, but I still knew about a half dozen incantations that would help me find those fucking assholes. I could try them all until one of them worked. And once I had found them, I knew another handful of spells that could have set them on fire where they stood.

After several long moments, I began to feel a bit calmer.

Behind me, I heard a car door open.

“Are you okay?” Bryan asked me, sounding hesitant.

“No,” I told him. I went for honesty because I didn’t know what else to say.

“I get the feeling they’re used to people being afraid of them,” Bryan replied. He added, “You really… um… defended my honor.”

“Those assholes are hunters, Bryan. If they figured out what you were, they wouldn’t be after ghosts anymore. They’d come after you.”

I let out a breath and grimaced, realizing that was a big part of my desire to hurt them. It was because I was scared of what they might end up doing to Bryan.

“Fuck it. I should track them down, destroy whatever amulets they have that ward them from magic, and then wipe their memories so they don’t know they ever even met us. It’d be way safer that way. I could call the coven for backup.”

“No way,” he said, his eyes going wider with alarm. “They both had guns. I could smell the gunpowder. They’re armed.”

I gave him a dark look. “So am I.”

“Listen to me, my maker is a hunter, too. She hunts vampires who murder innocent people—one of them had gotten really close to killing me. It was how I got turned. She saved my life. But she warned me not to cross paths with any human hunters, ever. They don’t stop long enough to ask questions. They hit hard and fast, always. Because if they don’t, whatever they’re hunting usually gets them first.”

“What do you want to do, then?” I demanded. “Do you want to leave town? Let those jackasses chase us out of here?”

Bryan winced. “Look, I—” He broke off, then let out a breath, shaking his head. “I don’t know what we should do. I think we need to take a beat, though.”

“Bryan, if they figure out that you’re a vampire—”

“They won’t,” Bryan told me, too quickly. “They said it themselves, back at the diner. They think I’m a warlock, just like you. So, we have time to figure this out.”

“Figure what out? This matters to you,” I gestured back to the town, which was sprawled out across the horizon behind us. “I’m not going to lie and say I get all the reasons why, but if it does, then that’s all that matters to me. We’re not leaving. I’ll protect you from them. And from the ghosts. And from whatever else decides to fucking come for you.”

“That’s an awful lot of protecting.” Somehow, my words seemed to relax him a little, like we were back on familiar ground in his mind. “And yeah. I do need this. I need to know that I’m still capable of…” He gave a hollow sort of laugh. “I don’t know? Doing the right thing?”

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