Page 81 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

For a split second, I saw Teresa Dames in the mirror, standing right behind me. She was close enough to touch. Her spectral eyes bored into mine. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

I whirled around, but no one was there.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

Was she still watching me?

From the bedspread where I had left it, my phone buzzed.

Casting a wary look around me and confirming that Teresa was nowhere to be found, I crossed the room and snatched up my phone. It was a single text message from Ethan’s number. It was the address where Tobias was being held.

Tobias, if you can hear me, I sent through the bond. I’m coming for you. Please hold on.

Then, without waiting a single moment longer, I tore out of the room. I didn’t even bother to shut the door behind me. If someone wanted to steal any of my meager belongings, they were welcome to whatever they wanted. That didn’t matter.

Tobias mattered.

I ran through the streets of the town as fast as my preternatural body was capable of. Anyone watching me would have only seen a blur, moving so quickly that I probably seemed like nothing more than a trick of the light. Something impossible that they couldn’t have really seen.

I didn’t even pause long enough to come up with a game plan or a strategy.

Instead, when I reached the address—a massive paper factory on the outskirts of town—I hardly even slowed down. I kicked the front door in with every bit of strength I possessed, tearing it off its hinges.

I could think of nothing else now except for saving my mate.

Even if I had to kill anyone standing in my way to do it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX || TOBIAS

More pain wracked my body, blotting out the factory around us and making my vision go gray and spotty. I gasped in agony as every muscle I possessed locked up and spasmed at the same time. I tried to—wanted to—double over. But I still couldn’t move. The binding sigil forced me to just sit there and take the punishment.

“Dude, you have got to stop doing that,” Michael told me. When my vision cleared again, I caught him rolling his eyes and shaking his head at me. “It’s a solid A for effort, but you can’t cast any spells right now. This isn’t our first rodeo—we know what we’re doing. And you’re stuck.”

“Why do you care?” I demanded. “Don’t you get off on seeing me in pain?”

“It’s like we told you before, it’s not like that. We don’t have a bone to pick with you. This isn’t personal.”

“You’re planning on killing my mate.” I glared up at him, wishing again that I could punch the hunter in his stupid, smug face. “It is fucking personal. And once I get out of this binding circle—”

“You’ll liquify our insides, turn us into toads, and make us rue the day we ever met you.” Michael’s lips twitched again and I somehow got the sense that he fully approved of my anger. He added, “Whatever you’re going to say, I promise that we’ve heard it all before.”

“Right. I bet you guys make friends wherever you go.”

“You don’t get it!” Michael snapped. “We’re the good guys! We’re the ones who ride into town on a white fucking horse and rescue folks who don’t even believe in what’s about to kill them. You two are the bad guys in this situation, not us.”

“My apologies,” I shot back, settling for sarcasm, since I couldn’t do much else. “I didn’t realize that saving your lives was such a dick move. Or the way Bryan destroyed the wraith so it couldn’t kill anyone else. What an asshole, am I right?”

Danny and Michael glanced at each other. Danny looked troubled. Even Michael looked more hesitant.

“Once we realized you guys were in danger, it was Bryan who insisted on coming to the rescue, even though he knew you two were probably going to turn on him the second we got done saving your asses!”

“We’re just having a hard time believing that there are suddenly good-guy vampires!” Michael shot back. “I’ve been doing this for five years! You’d think I’d know by now that there are good ones!”

“And how do you two find your cases?” I demanded. “If it’s because you catch wind of vampires when there’s a bunch of people turning up dead, then it’s pretty fucking obvious: the ones who have a conscience don’t leave trails of bodies! Because they don’t kill people!”

“What we don’t understand is why you two came here,” Danny put in, from the other side of the binding circle. He leaned against a cellophane wrapped pallet of printer paper, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked increasingly unhappy with each moment that passed, like he didn’t want to be here any more than I did. “Why are you even traveling with a vampire in the first place?”

“Bryan came here because he’d heard about the hauntings.”

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