Chapter 5
“I’m not here to hurt you, I swear,” Dani said through chattering teeth.
She was pale—deathly pale. The bright colors in her hair that I’d grown to recognize her by were gone, her waves having been cut short, barely brushing her shoulders.
And it looked like her hair hadn’t been washed in days.
It fell in stringy strands over her forehead.
“They just left me, a-and I didn’t know—”
“‘They?’” James echoed, one arm still secure around me.
A car door slammed, and for the first time in our relationship, I saw James flinch.
He shot a concerned look at me over his shoulder.
I’d never seen him so unsure of what to do.
Then Dani swayed, and he leapt forward, catching her with an arm around her waist. To me, he said, “Let’s get her inside before anyone sees. ”
I don’t know what help he thought I’d be, but I held the door open anyway while he maneuvered her inside, using his other hand to wiggle his phone free.
There was only one person he would be texting in the middle of the night when a vampire turned up on our doorstep.
As he eased Dani onto the couch in his office, I took the seat at his desk, trying—and failing—to hide my nerves.
My right leg bounced a mile a minute, and my thumbnail was fixed between my teeth.
James turned around, clearly conflicted.
“I’m fine,” I muttered around my finger, hearing the lie as it left my lips. “Where the hell is Gabriel?” The vampire could cross the city in an eyeblink, so I had expected him to show up before James returned his phone back to his pocket.
“I don’t know,” James admitted, and hearing those three words coming from his mouth did little to ease my anxiety. “He’ll be here as soon as he can.”
“It’s almost two in the morning,” I snapped, more to myself than my fiancé. “What could he possibly be doing?”
I didn’t get an answer.
I’d never wanted to see Gabriel walk through that door—or any other, for that matter—more than I did in that moment. I wasn’t typically a nervous person, but damn it, recent events had really kicked my heart rate up, making me sweat like a teenager on his first date.
One of those things was Gabriel Smith.
Sure, the man had proven to be helpful when a team of hunters groomed Kian to plant cursed diamonds on James and me. Gabriel had been the only one who knew how to break the curse. Not only had he saved our lives—he’d saved our relationship.
He still gave me the creeps, and my skin was already crawling from having to babysit an unpredictable baby vampire.
I stayed behind the cover of the desk; not that it would provide much protection if things went south.
James, with all his training and centuries of experience, could snap the thing like a toothpick given the chance.
The thought of what a new vampire who didn’t know her own strength could do chilled me to my core.
Minutes ticked by on the clock, and Dani fell asleep on the couch. James perched on the edge of his desk, ready to intercept her if she woke up angry. He’d removed his silver chain, I noticed.
I could have gone home—James was more than capable of handling things—but I didn’t want to be alone. It was a feat in and of itself for me to admit that, even to myself, but I wasn’t going to dwell on it. At least not right now.
There was no chance in hell that I was leaving James on his own with Dani.
After what felt like forever, James muttered, “Finally,” and pushed off the desk. I blinked, and then two vampires appeared in front of me.
My heart began to race.
Gabriel stood next to James. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans—designer, no doubt.
His blond hair was a bit longer, but otherwise he looked exactly like the last time I’d seen him, save for the absence of the bandages around his palms and wrists.
The last time Dani tried to kill us, Gabriel had risked his life to free James from the pure silver chains that bound him to the bed.
His bright, crimson eyes gazed back at me. After I was released from the hospital, James explained that Gabriel had found his mate. That heightened his emotions, making his eyes appear more vibrant than usual, especially since his mate wanted nothing to do with him.
“Where’ve you been?” I snapped, a bit more venom in my voice than I intended. But… I was scared, okay?
“I got… caught up,” Gabriel admitted, shuffling on the spot. “Work stuff.”
Skeptical, I raised a brow. “I didn’t know PIs worked in the middle of the night.”
“That’s when we do our best work.”
Something was still off. Usually the one to stare me down until I submitted, Gabriel wouldn’t hold my gaze, his attention bouncing around the room. Fated vampires were terrible liars when it came to their mates.
Feeling smug, I relaxed in the chair and crossed my arms over my chest. “How’s Luke?”
“The bane of my existence,” he muttered to his feet.
Attempting my best British accent, which according to James was terrible, I said, “And the object of all your desires?”
Raising a brow, Gabriel turned to James.
“We’ve been watching Bridgerton,” my fiancé explained, “and he gets mouthy when he’s nervous. Can we get back to the reason you’re here, please?” He indicated Dani’s sleeping form on the couch.
“Happily. Did she say who turned her?”
“No,” James answered. “Just ‘they.’ She passed out and has been asleep ever since.”
“I can’t imagine being left alone after a turning bite…” Gabriel watched Dani with a look I’d never seen from him before. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and he blinked against glossy eyes. “Even the people who did it to me watched me through the transition.”
“Who was it?” I blurted without thinking.
“Ryder—”
“It’s all right, James.” Gabriel continued to speak, but he didn’t look at me.
Instead, he perched on the couch next to Dani and took something from his coat pocket: A drink pouch that almost looked like a Capri Sun but was slightly larger and solid black.
As he talked, he pierced the edge of it with his teeth and brought it to Dani’s lips.
“My sisters and I were quite the spectacle when we were born. Triplets are rare in their own right. Triplets in the 1600s were unheard of. Ones that survived infancy and made it to adulthood? That just didn’t happen.
Doctors—such as they were in those days—were fascinated by our very existence.
Even as children, we were tested, poked, and prodded.
We thought that if we just tolerated their experiments, they would eventually grow bored. We were wrong.
“When we were in our thirties, we got sick. All three of us.” He met my eyes and held them.
“At the exact same time. What would have been a tragic event for any other family was instead seen as… fascinating. Possibly supernatural. Doctors wanted to study us to understand how it had happened, but the illness was aggressive, and it quickly became clear that we weren’t going to survive it.
Before we perished, a miracle occurred. A team of doctors came all the way from Spain claiming they could cure us.
” He let out a mirthless chuckle. “It turned out they were vampires. They didn’t cure us, they turned us, and it worked: The illness didn’t kill us.
They hoped that, with time and more… aggressive experimentation, we would yield secrets about triplets and the connection between those like us.
We didn’t know what they were looking for, not specifically, and we never would… ”
He trailed off as Dani’s eyes fluttered. Weak, she lapped at the drink Gabriel offered her, red blood tinting her lips. The sight made me queasy
“What happened?” I asked, interested in spite of myself.
“Turning us into vampires eradicated our human DNA, and the answers with it.” He shrugged.
“After all of that, they moved on. Decades passed, and they had procured other subjects to test. They didn’t need us anymore.
We spent nearly a century with them, but they discarded us like nothing more than failed experiments.
So my sisters and I took our knowledge and left. We never looked back.”
Okay… maybe that made the guy less intimidating. Sort of. “I’m sorry,” I said, my own throat tight.
“Don’t apologize. I don’t mind talking about it.”
Dani’s weak and raspy voice spoke up. “Please don’t try to kill me again.” Her words startled me. I’d been so focused on Gabriel’s story that I hadn’t realized she was alert. The blood she’d drank had some of the color returning to her face, and her eyes deepened.
“That’s not our intention, Dani,” Gabriel said softly, helping her sit up.
“I was talking to him,” she clarified, burgundy eyes cutting to me.
My skin prickled in goosebumps again. The glare on Dani’s face could have reduced a grown man to tears, but James’s hand on my back relaxed me. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath before opening them again. “Keep your hands off my fiancé, and I won’t have to.”
“Fiancé? That’s new. Congratulations—and trust me, I’ve learned my lesson about fucking with vampires.” She sank into the couch again, brushing sweaty hair out of her face. “This sucks—no pun intended.”
“How long has it been?” Gabriel asked.
“Right after…” Dani looked at me again, still sipping at the blood. “You know.”
I did the math in my head. “Almost three months. And you’re still like this?”
“They were starving you, weren’t they?” Gabriel said darkly, offering Dani a second drink.
Dani nodded, sucking from the pouch like it was a lifeline before speaking.
“This is a vast improvement to what I looked like before. I didn’t want to turn, but I didn’t want to die either.
The blood loss from that stab wound nearly killed me.
” My stomach roiled, and I choked back the bile rising in my throat.
“They agreed to save my life if I agreed to work for them.”
“Who?”