Page 62 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

He had given up every last bit of his own power and leverage in our dynamic because somehow he knew I needed that from him.

And then, if any one of those things wasn’t enough on its own, he had even showed me how to guard my thoughts so he couldn’t know what I was thinking unless I wanted him to. He’d played it off as casual, but he was used to being in control, wasn’t he? And he had given up a big part of that control because he knew I needed him to. He had put what I needed first.

Just as he always seemed to.

I didn’t have any inside access to his mind, but I still knew it had cost him, big time. I had heard it in his voice, like he was speaking around ground glass that had gotten lodged in his throat even while he was showing me how to block him out. And yet, even so, even feeling whatever emotions had caused that pain for him, his very first instinct had been to make sure I had what I needed. That I was okay.

What was that, if not love? Real love?

It was dangerous. Because I understood just how that felt. And it seemed like it maybe had the potential to tear either one of us into tiny, jagged pieces if it all went wrong. But I didn’t want this to be just about me anymore. I wanted him to have what he needed, too.

“That’s a really, really long pause,” Tobias said lightly, even adding a little too-carefree laugh into the mix. He kissed the side of my neck again, causing tingles to spread through my body. “It’s okay if the answer is yes, Bryan. It’s okay if you still need time to process everything. If you still want me to go, now that this is all done, I will. And I swear that I’ll wait for you, as long as it takes for you to be ready.”

Somehow, that caused tears to burn in my eyes. What was wrong with me? Why was I always getting so damn emotional with him? Had I always been so emotional?

“I know that,” I whispered, the words coming up hard against the hot lump that was suddenly right there in my throat. “I absolutely do know that. But I don’t think I want to be alone anymore. Or, if I do, I think that maybe I want to be alone with you.”

The thing that was absolutely clear to me was that, yes, he had been right all along. He was my mate. And I was beginning to think that maybe I would do anything for him.

This whole mate-bond thing was starting to make a lot of sense to me. The connection between us wasn’t just chemical or magic or fate or whatever. It was mental and emotional, too. The totality of who he was always felt like an answer to a question I hadn’t even asked yet. He was exactly right for me. He was precisely what I needed, when I needed it. And I wanted—desperately—to be that too, for him.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. Not by a long shot.

Because I also knew, just as fully as I knew anything else, that if Tobias ever rejected me, if he ever saw the monster within me, if he ever understood the awful truth that a tiny part of me—the darkest and most inhuman part—had liked the bloodshed and violence I had been forced to commit, I wouldn’t be able to stand it.

Tobias was the very first man I had ever given my heart to.

I was also pretty sure he would be the last man I would ever give my heart to.

And he was also the only person in the whole world—and that would probably be true forever—who had the power to shatter me completely. No matter what else happened between us, I could never, ever show him who I really was. Not all of me, at least.

I met his gaze and found that he was watching me, his lips parted slightly, looking like he was afraid to even breathe. He had never looked quite so vulnerable before. And maybe that was because I had the power to shatter him, too.

“So, the answer is no. I don’t want you to go,” I said, at last, feeling barren and vulnerable, exposed and completely raw. “I don’t ever want you to go anywhere.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN || TOBIAS

Bryan and I spent the rest of the day in bed, save for a much-needed shower that we’d taken together. We hadn’t showered the first and second time that we’d made love, and so we’d both been covered in blood. I’d had to use a fair amount of magic to clean everything, because the bed looked more like a crime scene than a place of sex and intimacy.

Still, I almost couldn’t believe any of this was real.

I had known he was my mate from the moment I laid eyes on him, but I hadn’t understood what that actually meant until now. It wasn’t that the sex was incredible—though there was no denying that, either. And it wasn’t that he was so fucking adorable that it made me want to hold on to him and never let go. Again, no contest there. Nor was it the fact that my body craved his on a basic animalistic level. All of those things were extremely true in a way it would have been hard for me to ever really believe before I’d met him. But they were the easy part. The expected part. They were the completely unsurprising aspects of finding one’s mate.

But the part that I never would have guessed was that being with Bryan was easy. It felt effortless. Like I didn’t need to be anything at all other than myself in order to be with him. I didn’t need to be in control at all times, I didn’t need to always have the right answer, and that was perfectly okay. For the first time in my entire life, with Bryan in my arms, I felt like I could just relax and let myself be.

There was something immensely freeing in that.

Bryan, while he’d learned how to shield his mind from me in record time, wasn’t that great at maintaining the wall between us. His concentration on it seemed to slip regularly. Then the barrier between us would dissolve and his thoughts would abruptly be running through my mind. I had taken to casually letting him know each time it happened. On some level, maybe I was hoping he’d let the walls stay down, but I wasn’t about to ask him for that. If he ever felt ready to do that, it would be his choice and not because I’d pressured him into it.

However, it was one such slip that keyed me into how dire his condition was becoming. The light filtering in from between the shabby motel curtains had started to fade, growing murky with twilight. I was on the knife edge of sleep, with Bryan securely pressed up against me, with my arms around him. The sudden sensation of his mind against mine startled me fully awake.

Bryan was wondering, with mounting alarm, where he could ethically source blood in a town this small. His throat was practically on fire with his thirst. I could sense the pain it caused him through the link that connected us.

He was extremely aware of every single beat of my heart.

“The wall is down again,” I warned him, yawning, and pushing myself upright in the bed. “Also, when was the last time you’ve fed? Because I can feel your level of need and holy shit, Bryan.”

That had been the wrong thing to say.

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