Page 13 of Eleazar

“Give me a few minutes,” Andrew said. “Make yourself at home while I pack.”

Eleazar chose to poke around instead. He glanced at pictures on the wall of a younger version of Andrew, one with a small boy and two adults, which Eleazar assumed were Andrew’s parents. Another was of a young girl who wore a large smile, had crooked teeth, and two pigtails.

Eleazar’s gaze slid to the door when someone knocked.

Andrew came out of a back room. “I’m not expecting anyone.”

He opened the door without even looking to see who was there. Did Andrew not have a sense of self-preservation? Clearly not if he’d discovered vampires existed and still wanted to stick around. Worse, he’d just opened his door before he even knew who was on the other side.

A muscular human male stood there, a wide grin on his face as he looked down at Andrew. “Hey, thought I saw you come home.”

Eleazar could sense Andrew’s unease. He would intervene if he had to, but Eleazar would allow Andrew to handle this for now.

“Bert,” Andrew said with a strained smile. “Now’s not a good time.”

“I just wanted to invite you to this new place that just opened up,” Bert said. “It’s got great music and, from what I hear, even better food.”

“Bert.” Andrew sighed as he pinched his nose. “We’ve been over this.”

“I know. I know.” Bert crossed his arms. “I still don’t see why we can’t try again. We have great chemistry, Andrew. I think we were just too nervous the first three times we went out. This could change things.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Andrew said, still standing there, his hand on the doorknob like he would shut it at any second.

When Bert took a step forward, as if to walk inside, Eleazar made his presence known. He moved so that Bert could see him. “The young man said no.”

Bert looked Eleazar up and down, as if sizing him up. If the fool only knew who and what he was dealing with. He could kill the guy with a single strike, and damn if it wasn’t tempting. But Andrew had just found out that vampires existed, and Eleazar didn’t want to seem like a monster by killing the prick.

“Who the hell are you?” He glanced down at Andrew. “You dating someone else now?”

“We were never dating,” Andrew said, drawing out the last word. “We went on three dates. That doesn’t make us boyfriends, Bert. I’ve told you that a hundred times already. We’ve never even kissed.”

Eleazar saw two of his elite in the hallway, moving silently toward Bert. He hadn’t needed them to come with him to Andrew’s apartment. They’d simply been at the private party and had followed Eleazar across town.

“Stand down.” Eleazar held up a hand. “He is no threat to me.”

Bert glanced over his shoulder, and when he turned his attention back to them, he’d paled. “I’ll catch you later, Andrew.”

As soon as Bert walked away, Andrew looked up at Eleazar. “Who are they?”

“Two of my most elite. Most of the time they are unseen.”

“Like invisible?” Andrew asked.

Eleazar smiled. “No. They are just out of sight. Blending into the darkness.”

“So you have your own assassin squad?”

Eleazar hadn’t thought of them in that way. Yes, he dispatched them for critical things—like when Felix needed to be rescued or when Luka’s mate went missing. Eleazar had wanted Spencer found before Luka destroyed Ridgeway because his mate was gone. But his elite mostly kept him protected from enemies. “In a sense, yes.”

Andrew looked the two over before he closed his door. “Cool.”

“Bert?”

The human rolled his eyes. “You heard the gist of it. We went on three dates, awful dates because Bert loves talking about himself, in detail. I thought maybe the first date was terrible because we were nervous.”

“But he continued to regale you with stories of himself.”

“Exactly,” Andrew said. “Honestly, I felt pressured into the third date, which killed any kind of soft feelings I might have had for him. As you saw, Bert has no idea just how off-putting he is. The guy actually thinks he’s charming and that I’m just playing hard to get.”

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