Page 19 of Wolfgang

It was weird as hell, seeing himself look that way, seeing his murky green eyes go all black like that. He watched his reflection as he lifted a finger, touching one of those fangs. It sliced through the tip easily, blood welling. And then, just as quickly, the wound closed up.

“Whoa.”

Danny was smiling, looking…proud? “Yeah, there are some benefits. Healing is one of them. Also strength. Speed. Never aging. Et cetera, et cetera.”

“Why—” Eric asked, pulling at an eyelid to get a better look at his eyeball. Completely black, all the way through to the very edges. “Why did he…?”

He could see Danny shifting uncomfortably in his chair through the mirror. “Um, well… He thinks you’re his mate.”

“Mate?” Eric turned away from his reflection, felt his regular features slide back into place as he did. It was a weird, slippery sort of feeling but not all that unpleasant.

Danny took another deep breath, clearly preparing for a bit of a story, and then Eric listened, hardly daring to breathe, as Danny explained a completely unbelievable truth. As this ER nurse who had never seemed anything but human told him about unending life spans, feral vampires and fated pairings, his own bond with his fated vampire mate.

When Danny was finished, Eric stumbled blindly back to the bed, sitting heavily on the edge of it, trying to take it all in. It turned out if enough shock pumped through his limbic system, he could sit still after all. “So I have to stay with him. It’s, like, destiny?”

“Well, no, you don’thaveto, but…” Danny shifted in his chair again. “New vampires—unbonded ones—tend to be very unstable. If you leave Wolfe—if you run from that stabilizing connection—I don’t know what that would mean for you. And if youarea danger to the people here, we’d have to…contain you.”

“So I get to choose one form of captivity or another.”

“You’renota captive,” Danny said adamantly. “He can’t force you to stay in this house. He can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. Do you want to leave right now?”

He should. Eric should 100 percent want to leave this house, return to his apartment (cold, empty, no bergamot anywhere), and never look at that psycho vampire fucker again. But he couldn’t make himself say the words. He pressed his palm to his forehead. “Fuck, I don’t know. I’m angry. I’m confused. But he— He smells really good?”

Danny nodded calmly once again, as if that made perfect sense. As if someone smelling really good was reason enough to stay. And then, since talking about crazy things like they made perfect sense was apparently what they were doing now, Eric confessed, “Um, so I feel really agitated right now. Distracted. But likeI’mnot feeling that way. Like it’s coming from…outside me?”

Danny’s eyes widened in realization. “Oh.Oh. Shit. Um, yeah, that’s another part of the bond. Feeling each other’s emotions. Which might be kind of…strange. With Wolfe.”

Eric thought back to what Wolfe had told him they’d say about him. “Because you think he’s a psychopath?”

Danny gave a half shrug. “So Jay says, at least… It’s not like most vampires are the pinnacle of empathy and self-control though.”

“You and I both know there’s not any sort of official diagnosis for that though. Antisocial personality disorder, on the other hand.” Eric paused, finally registering the rest of what Danny had said. “Wait— Jay the barista? He’s a vampire too? How manyarethere of y—of us—in this town?”

“With you, it makes eight.”

“How is there not more press around this? Like the missing persons alone, right?”

“Wait, what?” Danny sat up straighter as he seemed to realize what Eric was getting at. “Fuck. No. We don’tkillpeople, Monroe. You bite them, you make them forget, you move on.” He reached out a hand, gripping Eric’s forearm in reassurance. “I promise, getting turned isn’t the end of the world. There will be sacrifices, sure. And I’m sorry for how it happened it you. But you’ll get to know all of us. It won’t be so bad.” He sounded halfway convinced he was telling the truth.

Danny let go of Eric and dug another paper bag out of his satchel. “Here. This will do for now, until Wolfe teaches you how to hunt.Withoutkilling,” he stressed.

Should Eric be embarrassed that he’d thought he had to kill other people to eat and he’d just…accepted it? But he was overwhelmed and confused, and weirdly enough…he still really wanted Wolfe back.

He took the paper bag from Danny. “Um, can you—?” He stopped himself, unable to finish the sentence.

“You want to stay,” Danny guessed, empathetic as all hell, as per usual, at least as far as Eric had seen at the hospital.

“I guess. Just—just to try. If he keeps his fangs to himself from now on.”

Danny cleared his throat. “You might change your mind about that part. But yeah, okay. I’ll send him up.” He gave Eric a slow smile, clearly relieved at Eric’s choice. “Welcome to the family.”

And weirdly, for how off-putting literally every other thing Danny had said since coming to the room had been, that part didn’t sound so bad.

Apparently all Eric had needed to do to be accepted in this town was give up his very life.

seven

Eric

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