Ezra
NINE
What the hell had I been thinking?
I hadn’t, clearly.
That was the only excuse I had for Rina sitting in the passenger seat of my car, smelling like the most delicious temptation, while I was driving us towards… what?
I’d been talking out of my ass earlier, and I could only hope that Archer would know a solution.
That my old companion would know more about this mate bond that tied us together than I could ever hope to.
What was the alternative—being stuck with a woman who didn’t want to be with me? No, thank you.
Even if her blood called to me, and my fangs ached with the desire to plunge them into her tanned skin. To sink them into her neck until the bond was fully formed between us. Until we shared everything—life, thoughts, emotions. Maybe then I could read her better.
Maybe then she wouldn’t be so incessantly exasperating.
No matter how my body responded, I’d never choose to be with her.
This was a necessity because I couldn’t let her out of my sight. Because I needed her more than she’d ever know.
“Seriously, though,” Rina said for the third time since I’d started driving—and we hadn’t even crossed the border out of Pleasant Grove yet. “Where is this friend of yours? Where are we going?”
I adjusted the sunglasses on my face, grateful that my car had been specially equipped with windows that blocked out UV rays and kept the sun from draining my energy anymore than it already would being awake during the day.
“We’re going to have to find out through my contacts.
” I’d called around while I’d been waiting for her, but I only had one solid lead—that was where we were heading first.
Was I explaining that to the irritated witch in my front seat, though? Nope. Partially because I could tell it was driving her crazy not knowing. I didn’t know why it pleased me so much, but it did.
She let out a little growl, flopping back against the seat. “This was a terrible idea,” she muttered, staring out the window.
“Probably,” I agreed, turning up the radio. The trees whipped past us, the sign showing that we were leaving Pleasant Grove passing by in a blur.
I could feel the wards as we crossed over them.
They felt different now—more welcoming. How different would the town be once we returned?
If I returned. Something could go horribly wrong, and I would never come back to this place.
It was a strange thought, mainly because I never thought I would care about a town full of witches.
Especially not after, well… I shook the thought away. No sense in dwelling on the past.
A thought occurred to me. “Is this the first time you’ve ever left?”
Rina shook her head. “No—I went to college in Boston.”
“So you, what… lived as a human?”
“Yes. It’s something we all accept if we decide to go outside the wards.
Exposing our powers to anyone, letting anyone see what we are…
it’s dangerous. After the witch trials, we’d all accepted that humans would never let us live if they knew we were here.
That was why we all accepted the wards. They kept us safe. ”
“Until they didn’t,” I observed.
“Yeah. Until they didn’t.” She bit her lip. “But who could have imagined those wraiths were even out there? I didn’t even know they existed.” She turned to me. “Before all of this, I didn’t know vampires, demons, and wolf shifters existed either.”
“That much is evident.” I chuckled, wondering how it must feel to know you’d been living in the dark for your whole life. Then again, that was all I knew. “But living as a human, hiding all those parts of yourself, wasn’t that unbearable?”
“Sometimes. The hardest part wasn’t even hiding my powers; it was that I felt like I was living a lie. Trying to be someone I wasn’t. And living away from my coven—that was hard. We’d all bonded together at such a young age that it felt like I was missing a piece of me.”
“Hm.”
I’d never experienced that level of closeness.
Barrett was the closest thing I had to a friend, though over the last years of working together, he’d almost become more like a brother.
Or at least, what I assumed it would be like to have a brother.
My mother had only ever had me, so satisfied in her progeny that she didn’t find it necessary to lie with my sire a second time.
It was a life devoid of warmth, of happiness—so at odds with the one Rina had experienced here.
She furrowed her eyebrows at me. “Why do you ask?”
“Just making sure I don’t need to prepare you for reality. Life isn’t like your idyllic, pretty little town.”
That made her snap. “Yeah, well, it’s not all magic and rainbows in Pleasant Grove, either. It might be a small town, but there’s so much more to it than that.”
“Damn, it’s easy to get under your skin,” I said. “Toughen up a little, witch. You’re going to need to learn how to do that—and how to defend yourself—out here in the real world. There are more beings than you can even imagine.”
I’d been alive for a long time, and there were still things even I hadn’t seen.
There were beings here that were not of this world.
Creatures who shouldn’t exist here, who’d traveled through cracks between realms, never finding a way back to their own.
Ones that were more dangerous than I could ever explain.
Monsters in the darkness that even Barrett and I couldn’t stand a chance against alone.
“You’ve already made it obvious that you think I’m weak and useless,” Rina bit out. “How, exactly, do you think I’m supposed to defend myself?”
“I didn’t say you were weak. And I definitely never said you were useless.”
Now I knew why her magic had felt wrong to me. Why, when I’d pressed my powers against her, she hadn’t reacted. I’d been mistaken before—something I was loath to admit.
Still, I’d never have expected she was my mate.
She let out a little humph of disapproval.
“I can’t always keep you safe.”
Rina rolled her eyes. “See, that’s the thing; I didn’t ask you to. Besides, wasn’t I the one who had to save your ass from poison and death?”
“While I was saving your little town from an entire horde of wraiths that were feeding off your magic supply?”
“Some saving you did when you got injured.”
Gritting my teeth, I tried to focus on the road. I was immortal, but that still didn’t mean I was immune to all danger. “Look. Let’s just drive in silence.”
“Fine by me.”
I turned up the radio—loud enough that I couldn’t hear myself think.
Or her.
Mostly her.
Rina yawned as I pulled the car off the road hours later. “Why are we stopping?” She frowned. She’d fallen asleep two hours into our drive, and after the last few days she’d had, I figured she’d needed it.
I pulled into the small diner that looked somewhat promising. “Thought it might be good to get you some dinner.”
The witch looked surprised. “Oh.”
I leaned back in my seat, rubbing my bottom lip with my thumb. “What, did you think I wouldn’t feed you?” I didn’t want her to think I was being thoughtful—that wasn’t what this was.
“I—No.” She had that stubborn look. “I just didn’t realize how late it had gotten, that’s all.”
“Come on, then, witch.” I slid out of the car, waiting for her to join me. The moon was high in the sky. I hated to waste precious night hours, but I couldn’t let her starve either.
She pulled back her hair into a high ponytail on top of her head, leaving her neck bare—free for my eyes to linger on.
Fuck, I hated these impulses, these urges that were biology’s way of assuring the mate bond would be fulfilled. That we were bound for life. I knew what would happen if we didn’t complete it, but I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it.
“Let’s go,” I grumbled.
With her hands stuffed into her pockets, she followed me inside the restaurant. We slid into opposite sides of a booth; the seater leaving us both with menus.
I didn’t bother looking it over, just watching her as she scanned the laminated piece of paper.
Neither of us talked, which I was perfectly fine with.
The last hours of quiet had been the most peaceful ones I’d had since arriving in Pleasant Grove—except for the ones in the daylight hours where I’d slipped away, falling into a deep sleep.
When the waitress returned, Rina ordered a burger, fries, and a milkshake. They both turned to me, and I just shook my head. “Just water,” I said, looking at the witch opposite me.
She waited until the woman was gone, putting our order in, to ask, “You don’t eat?”
I shook my head, keeping my voice low. “The only sustenance I need is blood.” Which I’d be abstaining from for the time being, since I definitely would not be drinking from her.
Rina scrunched up her nose. “Oh. Right. The whole… bite thing.”
“Yes. Blood helps us heal. It jump-starts our natural healing process. You forgot, didn’t you?” Forgot what I was—if only for a moment. If only I could do the same.
She traced a star with her fingertip on the table. “I didn’t forget… I was just choosing to ignore it.”
I let my sharpened canines show. “It’s hard to ignore the fact that I’m a vampire forever, Sabrina.”
Rina fit her better, but I was enjoying teasing her with her full name, sensing how much she disliked it.
The witch glared at me. “Keep your voice down. Someone will hear us.”
I shrugged. “No one in this restaurant will pay attention to us. Not unless I want them to.”
“You…” She blinked. “What? How?”
Gods, I really needed to stop forgetting how little she knew about vampires. “The power of persuasion, belladonna.”
“Persuasion?” Rina asked, frowning.
I nodded. “I can manipulate people’s perceptions, their memories.
Vampires have long used it to keep their victims from remembering them.
They leave the pleasure and take away the pain.
” I thought about the underground feeding dens of the 20s, back when Prohibition had forced alcohol consumption into the seedy underbelly of the city.
How easy it had been to lure humans there, how little remorse my people had for the ones who accidentally died.
Humans who were drained with not a single drop of blood left in them.
The moment I’d realized that vampires truly were the monsters humans had made us out to be.
“What about you?”
My fingers rapped against the table. “What about me?”
“Do you do that? Erase people’s memories of you…” she trailed off. “Feeding from them?”
I clenched my hands. “No.”
“No? Then how do you find… food?” That nose scrunch again. Damn, but it was adorable. Ugh. I couldn’t think about my mate in terms like that. This wasn’t—and would never be—like that.
“Willing participants,” I explained, giving her a dark smile. Better for her to hate me than to know the truth. I wasn’t trying to endear her to me, not when neither of us could stand each other.
Rina’s eyes widened. “There’s people willing to let vampires drink from them?”
“Some find it very pleasurable.” But drinking blood, for me, had never been about sex or passion.
It had always been about survival. Before Rina, I’d never been aroused when quenching my thirst. Of course, I also drank primarily from bagged blood, since it had gotten easier in recent years to have a steady supply of blood.
No longer. I sighed. There was no alternative now, not when I was inexplicably tied to her.
Rina’s food came, and I watched as her eyes widened in genuine delight as she took in the spread. She let out a little moan, and a happy dance, then looked to me.
“Okay. There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she started.
“What?” I grunted.
She stirred her milkshake with her straw. “How did someone like Barrett end up with you? He’s so… happy, and you’re so…” Rina waved her hand.
I quirked an eyebrow. “So?”
“Asshole-y.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, dryly.
“You know what I mean.” Her nose scrunched up.
“Do you really want to know?” I asked, surprised that she was interested in hearing anything about me.
She nodded, taking a big bite of her burger. “Mmm, yeah.”
It wasn’t a story I told often. Mainly because it painted me as the good guy, and I wasn’t supposed to be the hero.
“Barrett and I met the summer after he turned eighteen,” I explained.
Nearly a decade ago, which had felt like nothing to me.
“He was a young wolf shifter trying to prove himself, and he’d been tracking a gorgon by himself.
Definitely not the smartest decision, but he didn’t know better back then.
They’d been terrorizing a small town, and he was determined to come to the rescue. ”
Rina stopped eating, burger sauce dripping out of the bun. “What happened?”
“What you’d expect. He got cornered by three of them, and that was when I stumbled upon him.” His wolf had been fending them off, but it was clear he wouldn’t have stayed that way for long without me.
She quirked an eyebrow. “So you saved the day.”
“I helped him keep the humans safe, to keep them from finding out what lurked outside their town, yes. And then I trained him. Over the years, I’d found others like me—beings who wanted to keep the world safe from monsters.
It’s the reason we could identify what the wraiths were.
” There were dozens of bestiaries in my library for a reason.
Done eating her food, she slumped against the back of the booth, just looking at me. “Huh.”
I frowned. “What?”
“You managed to sound noble for once,” she shrugged. “I guess you’re not completely self-serving, are you, vampire?”
When I looked back up at Rina, she had a strange expression on her face. I wondered if she knew that her brow creased when she was deep in focus.
I longed to reach over, smoothing that spot with my thumb. But, no. Lacing my fingers together, I kept my hands in my lap. There would be no touching, no unnecessary moments of contact with this woman.
We were here for one reason, and one reason alone—to break this bond.
Not to complete it.