Chapter 20 Marcus
MARCUS
Marcus was not giving up. He was the alpha of the largest territory in North America. His name inspired respect, fear, and admiration, and those who tried to deny him were ground into the fucking dust.
He would not let some jacked-up vampire take everything from him.
“Give up,” he growled, his jaw clenched and his body worn down like it hadn’t been since he was a teenager and he used to spar with his father.
“You give up,” Harland grunted back.
They were locked in a stalemate, trapped in a mutual leg-lock, their arms wrapped around each other in a sick parody of an embrace.
Marcus could feel Harland weakening, the other man’s muscles quivering and his strength flagging, but Marcus couldn’t take advantage, his own endurance similarly depleted.
“Fuck you,” Marcus breathed. “Fuck you straight to hell!”
“Not if I send you there first, you yapping puppy.”
“Die!” Marcus flipped them over, managing to get half on top of Harland and bite his deltoid, but before he could tear out a good chunk of the vampire’s arm, Harland flipped them back over and headbutted him again.
Why was that his go-to move? It was so annoying. Marcus had broken his nose more times during this fight than he had in all his previous fights combined.
Thank fuck that he’d told Bruce and Cain to stay back at the hotel with William. The idea of his lieutenants witnessing his humiliating stalemate made him want to curl up and die.
“Call it a draw?” Harland asked.
Marcus bared his teeth in a bloody grin, the question basically an admission of defeat.
“Not on your undead life.”
Harland headbutted him, slamming his forehead into Marcus’s face and breaking his nose again.
“Asshole,” Marcus gurgled, blood rushing down his throat before his healing kicked in.
Harland headbutted him again. This time Marcus managed to tilt his face and keep his nose from getting hit, but he wasn’t sure if the fracturing of his orbital bone was any better.
Fuck, that hurt!
Vision going blurry, Marcus didn’t even have time to catch his breath before Harland headbutted him again, getting him right on his nose.
He headbutted Harland back, his head ringing and his vision blacking out right after the impact.
“Fine. We’ll call it a draw,” Marcus conceded, slurring his words and feeling like he was at the very brink of what he could endure.
“On three,” Harland said.
“One,” Marcus counted, his arms and legs starting to tremble.
“Two,” Harland counted, his teeth clenched.
“Three,” they both finished together, rolling away from each other and landing on their backs with their shoulders pressed up against each other. Marcus heaved for breath, his vision taking a worryingly long time to return to normal as he stared up at the night sky.
“Let’s tell Warren and Max that we talked it out and decided it wasn’t our place to decide for them who they’re allowed to be with,” Harland said.
Marcus turned his head, his neck protesting the movement, and shot Harland a contemptuous glare.
“You just want them for yourself,” he accused.
Harland turned his head and met Marcus’s glare with a deadpan expression, the sclera of his eyes shockingly white against the drying blood smeared around his eyes and all over his face.
There was so much blood, it looked like he’d taken a bath in it, his skin sticky and glinting wet under the moonlight.
“I’m willing to share.”
Marcus waited for the punchline or, at the very least, a list of conditions, but Harland just looked at him.
“Just like that?”
Harland flicked his gaze up and down Marcus’s prone body, returning his gaze to his face and saying nothing.
“So how would that work?” Marcus asked, licking his lips and grimacing at the taste of vampire blood. “We split custody, send them back and forth like children of divorce?”
Harland rolled his eyes. “I’ll spend winters in Alaska, but you’ll have to come down south for the summer. I’m not staying inside for months at a time.”
“You want us to live together?” Marcus asked, incredulous.
Harland sighed, looked up at the sky for a moment, and then before Marcus could brace himself, rolled over and sank his teeth into Marcus’s shoulder.
Thinking that Harland was restarting the fight, Marcus slashed his claws down Harland's face in a desperate bid to get the upper hand before Harland forced him to submit. His hand dropped limp to the ground when he realized what was actually happening.
Harland was claiming him. Not as a pack member or as an alpha, but as his fucking mate.
Marcus waited for his wolf to rebel, to shake off the claim like it had every time Harland had tried to bring it under its power, but his wolf just wagged its metaphorical tail and let it happen.
When Harland withdrew his teeth, licking over his claim with a perfunctory stroke of his tongue before slumping back, Marcus leaned over, and, feeling like he was in a trance, bit him back.
Harland’s wolf accepted his claim with the same happy little tail-wag as Marcus’s own wolf, and just like that, they were bonded.
Marcus had only ever claimed one person before – which was Warren – and that claim had not been reciprocated or even really acknowledged. It was still real, but there was a lot of work to be done until it felt secure.
The bond with Harland – a man he’d just met – was settled.
“How are you going to live in Alaska?” Marcus asked, staring up at the sky. “The sun barely goes down in the summer.”
“We’ll stay here.”
Marcus laughed. “I can't stay here for that long. I can take them, but the council will go to war if I take more territory. They’re all on edge.”
“Then it’s a good thing this isn’t your territory.”
Harland sounded very pleased about that.
“Fuck it,” Marcus said, too exhausted to think about the logistics of being mated to a vampire alpha with his own territory. They’d figure it out.
Resting shoulder-to-shoulder with his mate – and wasn’t that bizarre to think about – Marcus was starting to get dangerously cold. Harland was like a heat-sink, leaching the warmth from his body, and the ground beneath him was frozen solid. His teeth started chattering.
“I have an enormous bathtub.” Harland’s voice was bland, the fact presented without any follow-up. Still, his meaning was clear.
“Fuck yeah,” Marcus said, grunting as he sat up and pushed himself to his feet. He stared down at Harland, offering his hand to help the vampire up.
Harland took his hand and together they started the walk back to the house. Neither of them had the energy to run. The fight must have lasted for hours, but thankfully they hadn’t moved too far away. It only took them a few minutes to reach the house.
“That’s so fucked up,” Marcus said, looking at the carvings around the door as they walked up the stairs to the main entrance.
“I’m having it removed.” Harland walked inside.
The warm air inside the house was like a balm. Marcus hadn’t realized just how cold he really was.
“Max?” Harland called out, standing still and listening for movement anywhere inside the large house.
“They left, remember?” Marcus said. He relaxed his hold on his alpha shift and changed back into his human form.
“I was hoping they came back.” Harland looked disappointed. He closed the door. “Come on, there’s food in the kitchen. I need to eat.”
Marcus followed Harland through the house to an industrial kitchen. Harland pointed at a fridge and told Marcus to help himself, while he reached into a freezer and grabbed a frozen bag of blood and tossed it in the microwave.
The fridge was fully stocked, and Marcus wasted no time eating. He wolfed down a whole hunk of ham, a pound of roast beef, two cartons of some sort of Chinese takeout, and a block of cheese.
Behind him, Harland took his blood out of the microwave, bit into the bag with his teeth, and started drinking.
He was still in his alpha shift, looking even more like a monster under the bright kitchen lights than he had under the darkness outside, his pale skin contrasting harshly with the wet blood drenching his body.
They had really done a number on each other.
By the time Harland had drained the bag, Marcus was full.
“Bathroom is this way.”
Harland led the way upstairs and into a room that smelled like him and Max. The bed was unmade, and the walk-in closet he could see through the open door next to the bathroom was filled with clothes in Max’s casual style.
The bathtub was just as enormous as Harland had promised.
Their bellies pleasantly full, both of them too tired to talk, Marcus and Harland took turns showering before climbing into the tub. Marcus set the water as hot as he could stand and sat down, stretching his legs out and leaning back and closing his eyes.
When Harland was done with his shower, he stood in front of the tub, dripping water, and finally let go of his alpha shift.
The change was slower than it should have been, but this time it didn’t look painful.
Harland took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders before climbing into the tub. He sat across from Marcus, their legs resting next to each other, neither one of them saying a word as the water slowly rose up their chests.