Page 68 of Lucien

Luc decided right then and there he was glad he’d turned the boy rather than killing him. Danny could be a good friend for Jamie down the line. Eternity was a long time, and as much as Luc hated to admit it, Jamie would most likely need sweetness and companionship beyond what Luc could give him. Jamie was a social creature; that was his nature, pure and simple.

Danny hummed thoughtfully. “I wonder if— Soren thinks some parts of our personalities get enhanced when we’re turned. Like the volume on particular qualities gets turned up a notch.”

“Ah yes. Let us see… Were you a hateful psychopathbeforeyou were turned, Lucien?” Roman asked.

Luc was starting to think spending so much time around humans had upped Roman’s capacity for sarcasm. He answered the question honestly anyway, for Jamie’s benefit more than anything else. “I’ve always struggled with…anger, I suppose.”

Roman gave an ironic laugh at that.

“Didn’t your mate tell you to benice?” Jamie asked, eyes narrowed at Luc’s old friend. Roman scowled fiercely at him, but Jamie only met the scowl with his own dirty look, completely unintimidated.

Luc hid his smirk behind his hand. Such a brave flower.

“My point was,” Danny continued, after pulling his own face at Roman, “maybe your special Sight stuff will enhance as a vampire. Maybe you’ll even learn to control the visions. Or—Oo! Oo!—direct what you see. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

Jamie looked both pleased and intrigued by the idea, and something in Luc warmed—not only at having his mate experience what it was like to have someone excited for, rather than fearful of, his abilities, but also at hearing talk of Jamie turning as if it was the inevitable choice.

And it was, wasn’t it? Danny and Gabe had kept control of themselves after turning. They were able to live in their hometown and spend time with their ailing mother. Luc had all the information he needed. What else could possibly hold him back?

He was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of the front doorknob—which they’d locked behind them earlier—jiggling.

Jamie looked to Luc nervously. “Maybe Monique’s back?”

But Luc wasn’t even surprised when in the next second, the front door burst open, wood splintering all along the edges.

He and Roman were up in a flash, their mates pushed behind them. Jay remained seated in his chair, looking up in curiosity from the book in his lap, seeming more or less unconcerned by the arrival of two strange, hostile vampires.

These fuckingtwins.

“Well now, what the fuck do we have here?” That was Fox speaking, Luc was mostly sure. He at least knew their names now, from their last conversation. Although Luc had liked the monikers Jamie had come up with—Tweedledum and Tweedledick—he couldn’t exactly use them to their faces. And while their visages were still almost impossible for him to differentiate between, there was a subtle distinction between their voices.

Plus, Fox was always the asshole of the two.

“Were you raised in a goddamn barn? It’s rude to just break down someone’s door.” Jamie’s accusation rang out from directly behind Luc’s ear.

“It’s rude to promise not to drain our humans and then leave a body practically on our doorstep,” Dane said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You left itwhere?” This time, Jamie’s voice was a whisper. Although, considering they were surrounded by vampires, chances were high everyone in the room had heard him anyway.

Luc had most certainlynotleft a body on the vampire twins’ doorstep. He’d taken the drained corpse into the desert, hoping to at least delay the finding of the body by the self-appointed vampire sheriffs of this town.

Which meant there must be a second corpse.

If Luc hadn’t been sure they had a feral vampire in town before, he certainly was now.

He could feel Jamie poking his head out from behind him. It was almost laughable, really—Luc’s body didn’t hide him all that well anyway, seeing as how they were almost the same height.

That was okay for the moment. While Luc’s monster was on high alert with the twins’ arrival—coiled and tense within him—it wasn’t nearly as amped up with rage as the first time they’d barged into Jamie’s home.

Mostly due to the fact that he and Jamie had reinforcements now. No matter how bitter relations between him and Roman may be, Luc knew his former friend wouldn’t side with two strangers over him in some bullshit territory dispute. It just wasn’t Roman’s style.

And, if it came down to it, the twins were here for Luc, not Jamie.

And Luc would allow himself to be ripped apart a thousand times over before he let anyone harm a hair on Jamie’s perfect head.

Dane started to list offenses off on his fingers while Fox postured in what Luc assumed was meant to be a menacing manner next to him. “We tell you to leave; you refuse. We tell you to keep your fangs to yourself; you start a killing rampage. And now you’ve broughtmorebloodsuckers to our territory? What exactly is your end game here?”

“He didn’t kill anyone,” Jamie protested, always willing to defend Luc against perceived slights.

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