CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO || THIERRY
I wrenched the vampire off Jeremy and hurled him into the side of a shipping container. Metal buckled with a deafening clang where the creature struck.
Though I spent a not-insignificant portion of my life in varying degrees of annoyance with everyone around me, it had been a long time since I’d truly gotten angry.
The world narrowed to the vampire in front of me.
One truth blotted out everything else: this thing had hurt my mate.
My wolf.
It rose slowly, fangs bared, Jeremy’s blood staining its mouth crimson. Malice burned in its eyes.
An eerie calm settled over me. This was a predator. It would always be a predator. And it had tried to kill someone I cared about.
It would take more lives unless it was stopped.
What I had to do now was very simple.
It rushed me, enraged I’d ruined its kill.
My senses slowed to a crawl. The vampire charged at me in slow motion, unaware its life was about to end. Jeremy was bleeding on the ground, and I couldn’t go to him until this thing was destroyed.
This time, I didn’t bother with hurting it. I went straight for the kill.
I drove my hand through its chest. Fabric tore and bone snapped.
Its eyes widened. Its lips parted. The gasp it made sounded human, but I wasn’t fooled.
A savage, white-hot rage flared when my fingers closed around its unbeating heart.
It had tried to kill Jeremy.
It needed to die.
“Thierry, stop!”
The murderous calm shattered. I froze.
“That’s Quinn!” Jeremy shouted. “He was a person , just like you and me. Remember what you told me—this was done to him.”
I hesitated, my gaze glued to Jeremy.
He clutched one hand to his neck. But there was no blood now—either the bite wasn’t as bad as I’d thought, or his healing had already begun to kick in. My wolf was on his feet, his other hand out toward me, coaxing like one might calm a cornered animal.
A flash of annoyance cut through the concern. I didn’t need to be managed. Certainly not by him.
“Poppy’s spell worked,” he said. “I know it did. You’ll regret doing this.”
Some of the rage receded, enough for me to think properly. I turned back to Quinn. And I found that I could see him not as what he was, but what he might someday be. If Jeremy was right, there was still a chance for him. He might still have a life that wasn’t soaked in blood and death.
Quinn’s fangs were gone. His eyes were huge, the whites showing all the way around the iris. A very human expression of terror—as though he was justifiably afraid I was about to tear his heart out and end his existence.
Interesting. I hadn’t thought Quinn capable of fear.
“It tried to kill you,” I ground out.
“Quinn is a him , not an it .” Jeremy’s voice was steady. “We don’t need to kill him. We just need to keep him from hurting anyone until the spell does what it’s supposed to do.”
“Why are you stopping me? You hate vampires.”
He huffed. “You can get bent if you still think that’s true.”
I scowled, released Quinn’s heart, and yanked my hand out of his chest.
Quinn howled in agony, clutching at the hole I’d left.
“Sorry about that,” I said, without an ounce of remorse. “Lucky for you, I have nature’s best painkiller.”
Before he could speak, I snapped his neck. He dropped to the ground, unmoving.
Jeremy exhaled in relief.
“Let me see it,” I said, closing the distance in a blur.
He didn’t flinch, just pulled his hand from his neck. “I’m okay. It’s already healing.”
He was right. The wound had already knit over with shiny pink skin. Slower than a vampire’s healing, but in an hour or two it would likely vanish entirely, leaving no scar.
He nodded toward the patchy clouds, where the moon glimmered faintly. “As long as I have moonlight, I can recover from almost anything.”
“And if you’re attacked during the day?”
“Wolves hunt at night,” Jeremy said, avoiding my gaze. “And never on the dark moon.”
“By which you mean you’re defenseless unless the moon’s visible?”
“Everyone in the pack is trained in weapons,” he countered. “And basic first aid. Me included. Wolves are far from defenseless.”
Though I didn’t want to, it was easy enough to follow that train of thought to its conclusion: wolves were supposed to fight monsters.
And Jeremy would likely spend the rest of his years guarding some small mountain town with his own life.
Which, given how limited his supernatural healing was, might not be all that long.
“The moon often rises before it gets dark—”
He shook his head. “The sun’s light is too strong. It drowns out the power of the moon. I can’t usually shift during the day. Not until twilight. Even then, it’s harder until it’s fully dark.”
“You’re supposed to tell me something that won’t make me fly off the handle.”
“I’m never going to lie to you. You should know that by now. You can expect nothing but honesty from me.”
“But you’re only immortal sometimes!”
“I’m not immortal at all. Wolves are mortal creatures. We live and we die, like almost everything else. We age slower than humans, sure. But I’ll get old too. Eventually.”
The bone-deep fear in me made it obvious how I felt. Jeremy hadn’t been killed. This time.
And the idea of him dying was already impossible to fathom. Like imagining a star collapsing in on itself, obliterating everything when it did. Even though he’d almost died twice this week alone—both times because of me.
“I didn’t, though.”
“Stop reading my thoughts.”
“They’re louder when you’re emotional,” he said mildly. “They kind of echo, actually.”
“I’ll have to stop being so emotional, then.”
Jeremy’s mouth curved into a lopsided, tentative smile. “Good luck with that. You’re about the most emotional creature I’ve ever met.”
The outrage must have been plain on my face, because he shook his head and added, “No—you don’t get it. That’s a good thing. It’s part of why I—”
He stopped abruptly, the tips of his ears reddening. He sucked in a breath, then let it out.
“It’s why I can admit I was wrong,” he finished, though I was sure we both knew that wasn’t what he’d been about to say.
“For the record, I’m sorry for what I said in Rookwood.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet, but I figure I ought to.
I was wrong about you. And about vampires in general.
I was raised to think a lot of things that aren’t true. ”
“They sometimes are,” I said, gesturing to Quinn’s unconscious body.
“Not for long,” he countered. “After he meets his mate, you’re going to spend your eternity saving people just like him. You’re going to be giving them their lives back. Because that’s who you are.”
Tears pricked my eyes, and I felt a flash of furious indignation. “If you make me cry again, I swear to everything holy I will beat you senseless with Quinten’s unconscious body.”
He smiled, so apparently my threat wasn’t believable. “Sorry.” His gaze lingered on my mouth. “Thierry, I’d like to kiss you.”
He looked so earnest, so guileless, but still masculine and utterly beautiful in the moonlight. His eyes seemed to catch gold, as if man and wolf were both watching me.
I swallowed, off-kilter at the question. Not opposed, though. Quite the opposite.
“You didn’t ask permission before.”
“And neither did you,” he said. “But I’m asking now. Is that something you want? Because I won’t do it until you use your words.”
“Yes.” The truth of it hit hard and clear. It was something I’d felt since Rookwood, maybe even since first seeing him in the council chambers. “Yes, Jeremy. I want you to kiss me.”
He moved instantly, one hand cupping my cheek, the other around my waist. Strong for a mortal, he crushed me to him. But when his warm, soft lips met mine, his kiss was gentle.
Fire sparked low in my belly. His scent coiled around us, making the rest of the world vanish. My arms circled his waist. The solid muscle beneath his clothes, the smooth masculine hardness of him, felt like a promise.
When my lips parted in invitation, his kiss deepened—more demanding now. His tongue swept mine, and I let out a soft noise of need. My cock hardened, and he was hard too, pressed against me.
It wasn’t sloppy or selfish. It was tender and forceful, as though he was pouring every ounce of feeling into it, telling me without words how he felt.
In eight hundred years, no one had ever kissed me like that.
The half-formed blood bond felt suddenly tangible, cocooning us. I wasn’t a vampire and he wasn’t a wolf. There was only him and me.
It could have been a minute or an hour. When he finally pulled back, his breathing was rough.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” he said, his eyes bright and his lips swollen. The lopsided grin he gave me made me want to kiss him all over again.
“Yes, well,” I said, straightening my velvet jacket. “It wasn’t awful or anything.”
His gaze dipped lower, his grin widening. “I can see that.”
I huffed. “We ought to get Quinn back to the others.”
“Sure thing,” Jeremy said, still grinning in a way that had me half-believing he was the big bad wolf after all and might swallow me whole.
I wasn’t entirely sure I would have minded.
* * *
We ended up taking Quinn through the back door of Nathaniel’s Place again. Oddly enough, frog-marching an unconscious vampire past several dozen vampires, humans, and witches in the bar wasn’t my idea of a good time.
The door was warded against intrusion, but at my touch it flung itself open—courtesy of a spell the witch queen herself had cast. It opened onto a long hallway: three storerooms, a break room with couches for human patrons who’d had too much to drink, the entrance to the upstairs apartments, and—around the corner—another warded door leading down to the basement stairs.
Those last two doors were heavily protected. Making friends with the witches last year instead of mutually annihilating each other had its perks. Better security was one of them. Though it hadn’t slowed Quinn down.
Derek was in the break room, snoring peacefully.