Chapter Four #3
I look at her, then back at him. The words stick in my throat, heavy with implications I don’t fully understand yet. “I…” My voice cracks. “I don’t know.”
But that’s a lie.
I do know.
This woman, this newly turned vampire who stumbled into our territory by accident or fate or some cosmic joke I’m not in on… is my fated mate. And my bond with Crave, the sacred oath that’s defined my entire existence, is bending to accommodate her.
Making room.
Stepping aside.
Choosing her.
Sloane appears beside Crave, her crimson-gold eyes flaring with Crimson Sight as she looks between this woman and me. I watch understanding dawning across her features, watch her grab Crave’s arm and whisper something too quiet for me to hear.
Whatever she says makes Crave go very, very still.
The kind of stillness that means a predator is calculating threats, outcomes, and whether violence is the answer.
My mate sways, her legs finally giving out. I’m moving before she hits the ground, catching her, one arm around her waist, one hand cradling the back of her head, so her neck doesn’t snap back.
She folds into me like she was always meant to be there.
The thought guts me.
I’ve held a lot of people in a lot of states over two centuries—the dying, the grieving, and brothers pulling me upright when my legs went out from under me—but one of it ever felt like this.
Like coming home to a place I’ve never been.
She’s lighter than she should be, new vampires always are, their bodies not yet adjusted to undeath’s strange physics.
She looks up at me with eyes that are starting to dim, the bloodlust fading into exhaustion. Her hand reaches up, her fingers trembling as they touch my bearded face.
“I-I know you,” she whispers, and her voice is silk, smoke, and everything I never knew I needed. “I don’t… I don’t know how. But I know you.”
My throat locks around every word I want to say. Then my thumb moves on its own, brushing along the underside of her jaw, the softest thing my hands have done in maybe decades. She leans into it a fraction, the way something starved leans toward food without meaning to.
“Yeah,” I manage, my voice cracked open down the middle. “I know you too.”
“Am I going to be okay?” The question is so quiet I’d miss it if I weren’t holding her this close. And it hits me somewhere in the chest I thought had armored over so long ago and forgotten it could be hit.
“Yes,” I say. No hesitation, or a promise I have no authority to make, not yet, not with Crave behind me and the club watching and everything this means still unraveling. But I make it anyway.
I mean every syllable.
“You’re going to be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”
Something flickers across her face like she’s letting herself believe this for half a second even though every instinct she has should be screaming not to.
Then her knees buckle, and her fingers slip against my shirt.
The fight drains out of her all at once, body sagging hard into mine like whatever kept her standing has finally given out.
Her head drops against my chest, lashes brushing her cheeks, and the only reason she doesn’t hit the floor is that I catch her before gravity can.
New vampires can only sustain bloodlust for so long before their bodies shut down, forcing them to rest while the turning completes.
I stand here, holding her, feeling the weight of multiple gazes on my back.
My packmates.
My brothers.
My family.
And Crave.
His confusion bleeds through our diminished bond. He’s hurt at feeling me pull away, at watching years of absolute loyalty suddenly… complicate. His fear of losing me to whatever the hell this is.
But I can also feel something else.
Understanding.
Because Crave, more than anyone, knows what it’s like to have your entire world shift around one person. To feel a bond form that rewrites every rule you thought was absolute.
He has Sloane.
And now…
… I have Charlotte.
I don’t know how I know her name, I just do. The same way I know she’s twenty-three, that she was turned against her will last night, she’s fed on four humans since then, and hates herself for every single one.
I turn slowly, Charlotte cradled in my arms, and meet Crave’s silver gaze across the distance.
His eyes flicker from me to Charlotte, then back, and hold.
I’ve known Crave for two centuries. I’ve seen him in war councils, in executions, in the moment before he tears out a throat. I know all his faces. And the one he’s wearing right now—blank, still, unreadable as carved stone—is the one that comes before something gets decided.
He’s not angry.
He’s not betrayed.
He’s calculating.
The kind of calculating a millennia-old vampire does when he’s weighing how much rope to hand a brother before the rope becomes a noose. I feel it through what’s left of our bond, not his emotions but the absence of them, the door pulled carefully shut while he thinks.
Whatever he decides, he’s not sharing it yet.
For over two centuries, I’ve been Lucien the lycan.
Rogue the VP.
Crave’s Bloodguard.
His brother.
His shield.
My entire identity is built around protecting him.
But now…
I glance down at Charlotte in my arms, my fated mate, this impossibility the universe decided to drop at my feet.
Now I don’t know what the hell I am anymore.
And the terrifying part?
I don’t think I care.
Because every instinct I have, every cell in my lycan body, every beat of my ancient heart is screaming the same thing…
Protect her.
Guard her.
Keep her safe at all costs.
Even if it means letting go of everything I thought I was.
Even if it means my bond with Crave will never be the same.
Even if it means breaking every rule my bloodline has upheld since the First Vampire rose from darkness.
She is mine.
And I am hers.
And everything else…
Everything else can just go to fucking hell.
If the universe thinks this is a mistake, it’s welcome to try and stop me.
I will not let go of what’s mine.