Page 78 of Ruthlessly Mated
I sprint as fast as I can, outrunning my mates. I am smaller than them, but I am also lighter and therefore actually faster. I bolt for the truck while bullets fly and people scream and blood sprays. There’s silver in the air, fogging every breath. It burns to breathe.
I get to the truck yard, drop my shift, pull my clothes on, and start getting into the truck. I don’t know what Tailor and Conroy are doing. I am just making sure that I get done what I need to get done.
Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see large wolf shapes throwing themselves at the throats of those in the way.
First I check the truck over quick, making sure nobody got into it and fucked with the material. It doesn’t look like it. The truck looks like shit, which is a good way to ensure nobody fucks with it. All around me, death is happening. Over and over, in the most brutal and pointless of ways and it is all orbiting this truck, and this decision I made a while ago.
Ka-Boom!
A sudden detonation shakes the entirety of the city, making the ground beneath our wheels rumble. A light brighter than the sun emanates from the explosion, forcing me to close my eyes and then shield them with my hands because the brightness still feels too bright.
After a few seconds, the light fades. When I open my eyes, the vampires, almost all of them, are dust in the wake of the deployment of the world’s largest UV weapon. Even the stronger ones who can take a little sunlight can’t take that much of it.
There is deep gray everywhere, a near total haze made of vampire dust, a fog so thick I can taste it. The flavor is blood and ash. Wind blows, ever so slightly and the great choking haze washes over me. I see the shadows of my mates moving in the dust, almost completely obscured.
The lack of visibility is accompanied by a raucous cheering from the humans who are thrilled that they’ve managed to vanquish all their enemies in one big explosion. Hundreds of vampires evaporated. Probably thousands of retinas ruined, but blindness is a small price to pay for not being drained to death, I suppose.
For a brief moment, I celebrate with everyone else, but then I remember we are wolves and we are not wanted. The three of us are the last remaining supernatural creatures in a besieged city full of furious people who are ready to kill and to die. We need to get out of here. Now.
“Come on!”
I call to Tailor and Conroy as I jump into the driver’s seat, gun the truck, throw the doors open for my mates to pile in if they want to, and head out through the busted gate.
They don’t come into the truck, but I think I see them running behind me, choosing to use the ash and fog of war as cover rather than the truck.
Alexander is still sitting in the mid-distance, around the siege line. He is not moving. Ash is floating around him in the breeze, the remnants of his army. He is still as stone as the loss spreads out around him. I lock my eyes on him, this statue of cruel masculinity who took so much from me, and will likely take more in the future, and I realize that this is my chance. I coulderase him now. Hit him with the truck, cut off his head, stake him, turn him to ash like the rest of his kin…
“Don’t.”
The word cuts through my mind like ice.
I forgot he could do that.
How the fuck did I forget that?
A chuckle resonates through my mind, a hollow laughter that comes with the realization that I forgot because he wanted me to. He has been toying with my memories, overwriting things he wanted to stay hidden for his own amusement or ends.
I feel a flush of guilty heat. He’s been reading my mind this whole time, enjoying my pain, my fear, oh, my god—sensing my arousal. He probably knew every time I got laid. He probably knew when they threw me on that table in the smuggler’s bar.
I drive the truck up to him nice and slow, and park it tidily next to him. I get out, breathing in the odd scent of hundreds of dead vampires turned to dust and floating on the desert breeze along with the remnants of burning buildings and other fiery things.
“Your heart, sir,” I say.
“Good. Thank you.” He smiles at me a little too broadly for my liking.
“I’ll be going now,” I say. “You have a good one.”
He catches me by the arm and swings me back to face him.
“You think it is that simple? You think I am just going to let you go after you just got a thousand vampires killed?”
I stare. I can’t believe he is blaming me for this. Wait. Why can’t I believe that? Of course he’s blaming me for this. He’s blamed me for everything. I am a scapegoat.
“You are not a scapegoat,” Alexander says. “You are the wolf who stole my heart. And you will be held responsible.”
“Your vampires got themselves killed trying to eat a lot of people who made it really clear they weren’t up for being eaten,” I say. “That’s what happens when you ignore consent.”
“And what happens when you ignore the danger you put yourself and everyone you love in just to annoy your surrogate vampire father?”
