Page 87 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

Ice slithered under my skin at his words. Or, rather, it was at the broken sort of way he said it, the way he hugged his arms over himself, like he was keeping his insides from spilling out. I understood that only too well.

But he seemed determined to hide how much it cost him to say that to me, because in the next moment, he looked back over and flashed me a smile that didn’t even come close to reaching his eyes. “It’s okay, really. It’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine.

My future wasn’t with the coven any longer. It was with Bryan. If he would have me, that was. The thing is, I had no idea if he wanted the same thing, because we still hadn’t talked about it. Maybe he still wanted me to leave. Maybe he didn’t want a mate, after all. Maybe he didn’t feel the same way about me that I felt about him.

But that didn’t matter. Even if he didn’t choose me, I would still always choose him.

“I’ll give you the banishment spell if you need it,” I told her, at last. “But I’m not coming back. Probably not for a very long time. If ever.” I caught Bryan staring at me as I said this, so I turned and held his gaze and added, “I’m staying with my mate. For as long as he’ll have me.”

Poppy pursed her lips, but she didn’t look especially surprised by this news. “Yeah,” she said shortly. “I figured as much. Well, Tatiana will be pissed, but she’ll get over it. You’re coming back for holidays though. All of them. Non-negotiable.”

“We’ll figure something out,” I promised.

Something softened fractionally in Poppy’s expression as her gaze slid to Bryan. “Take good care of him?”

Bryan nodded. “I can do that.”

“I might pop in now and then,” Poppy warned me. “You’re still my brother. And besides, bilocation is way cooler than using a telephone.”

“Knock first,” Bryan said, deadpanning.

Poppy grinned at us, even though her eyes had gotten a little watery after all. Then she winked out of existence.

The silence between us was absolute for a long moment.

“I meant it,” I said quietly.

I had already put everything on the line for this. But if he didn’t want the same thing, even now, I knew I would still walk away. It would shatter me, but I would, if he asked me to.

“How could you choose me over your entire life?” Bryan demanded. He sounded more stunned than anything else. “Your coven needs you.”

“My coven will be fine without me,” I assured him. “They have been for a while now. And I chose you because I’m in love with you.”

Bryan bit his lower lip, suddenly looking more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him before. “I’m in love with you, too,” he admitted, meeting my gaze. His green eyes were wide and shining. “I think that maybe I always have been.”

“Do you…” I trailed off, my heart suddenly hammering in my chest. I wasn’t used to making myself this vulnerable and I didn’t like it one bit. But I would do it for him. I took a breath, steeling myself to ask the only thing that mattered now. “Do you still want me to go?”

“No.”

It was just a single word, but it was like magic. The tension drained away from me in an instant. I found myself grinning at him like a madman.

“No?” I asked, unable to believe it.

“I want a life with you,” Bryan confirmed, grinning back at me, his eyes still shining. “I’m not sure exactly what that looks like yet. But we can figure it out as we go.”

I searched his eyes and found that he was serious. “If you’re sure?”

“I’m not all better or anything,” he replied. He gestured vaguely to himself and gave me a small smile. “This is what you’re getting. I’m going to try to be okay, though. I’m going to try to be better than okay, as much as I can be.”

“Bryan, you’ve always been exactly enough. And I swear to you that I will remind you of that every day, for as long as you’ll let me. And, for what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve met a kinder or more heroic man in my entire life.”

“You’re just saying that because you want to get into my pants.”

“I definitely want to get into your pants,” I agreed, grinning at him. “I plan to do some fantastically bad things with you in a minute. But I need to say this, and you need to hear it.”

When he didn’t protest, I went on. “You came here, without any backup, because you wanted to fight evil. You saw something dark inside yourself and your very first instinct wasn’t to go off and hurt people or try to escape into hedonism or to pretend nothing at all even happened. Instead, you wanted to help people you had never even met before. You wanted to do good.”

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