2. Rena #2
My life was small, and I liked it that way.
Reese was really my only family. Pete Miranda and his husband, Noah, could be described as distracted uncles.
They rarely reached out, but were always happy to hear from me.
I had a few close friends that I kept in touch with and saw once a month if we were lucky.
That was it. I enjoyed spending time at home, finding new restaurants, decorating my place, watching movies, and reading.
I’d never had the inclination to be famous or rich or any of the things that other kids talked about on the playground.
Security was my main goal. A comfortable life with people I cared about. Quiet mornings where I didn’t have to rush out of bed. A fully stocked fridge and pantry. Bills that were paid automatically because I was never worried that there wasn’t enough money in my accounts to cover them.
“What are you thinking about?” Chance asked, his thumb running over the back of my hand.
“Your family is being hunted,” I replied baldly.
He actually flinched.
“I like my life,” I continued. “I like my routine and my job and my house. And while Reese and I have pretty much done everything together since we were kids, I wasn’t planning on following her down this rabbit hole.”
“Would you believe me if I said it’s all going to work out?” he asked, watching me closely.
“No.”
“Would it help if I explained how we’re going to end this?”
“Do you even know?” I huffed. According to Reese, the Bouchers had been investigating the organization that was kidnapping Vampires and their mates for months.
They were getting closer and closer to finding the people responsible and stopping them for good, but from what I could gather, it was far from over.
They were in the crosshairs and had been attacked more than once already.
“We know who’s responsible,” Chance told me calmly. “And as of this morning, we know where to find them.”
“Good?” I wasn’t really sure what to say.
The whole thing seemed so far from reality that it was hard to believe.
If there was one thing that I’d been brought up to believe, it was that Vampires were just like humans.
Their lives were longer, and their mates were forever, but beyond that, they wanted the same things we did.
They loved their families and lived lives that were the same as ours.
Wrapping my mind around a family of Vampire commandoes that spent their time fighting a shadow organization? Not easy to do.
Acknowledging that I was part of that family now? Nearly impossible.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Chance said, his hand tightening on mine.
“I think the best way to move forward,” I replied. “Is to go our separate ways.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“We haven’t completed any bond. There is no actual tie between us.”
“You can’t feel it?” he asked curiously.
I considered lying.
“Yes,” I admitted. “I feel it. But that doesn’t mean?—”
“It’s only going to get worse, not better.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“We can pretend this never happened,” I argued. “We’ve been around each other for a few hours. That’s nothing in the bigger scheme of things.”
“Your grandparents were Joe and Irene Rossi,” he said, his body tensing.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing, I guess,” he replied. “I just assumed you knew how this worked.”
I tensed, offended. “I do know how it works. Mates have an instant connection, obviously. But there’s no permanent tie unless you complete the bond.”
“Technically true,” he said, running his free hand over his beard. “But rejecting the bond is…painful. From what I’ve heard, extremely painful.”
I carefully controlled my expression, but inwardly cringed. My torso was already throbbing, and my head felt like it weighed fifty pounds. Adding more pain to what I was already feeling sounded like a nightmare.
“It wouldn’t be forever,” I countered. “If we stayed away from each other, it would go away, right?”
Chance chose his words carefully. “It would never go away for me,” he said finally. “You might be able to move on with your life, but I’m not sure.”
“There have been humans who rejected the bond, right?”
“I only know of one,” he confessed. “My brother Beau’s first mate. But that’s different. She didn’t know there was a bond. Didn’t even realize that it existed—that we existed—and she was devoted to her human husband.”
“See, it’s possible.”
“Beau didn’t even enter the United Kingdom while she lived,” Chance said flatly. “Are you planning on moving out of the country?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m not either. How do you think it’ll work? For all intents and purposes, Reese is your sister. Beau is my brother. Can you picture a reality where our paths never cross again?”
“You’re saying it’s inevitable,” I said, emotionless, as the weight of my new reality settled on my shoulders. “It doesn’t matter if we try to stay away from each other.”
“The mating heat is different for everyone,” he conceded. “But from what my brothers have experienced recently, I don’t think it will be possible for us to stay away from each other. Rosemary handled the symptoms best because she has an abnormally high pain tolerance, but she was still miserable.”
“What kind of symptoms are we talking about?” I asked, dread pooling in my belly.
Mating heat wasn’t something my grandmother had discussed with my mom. I only had the vaguest idea of how all of it worked.
“Nausea is a big one,” he said softly. “Literal heat, like a fever you can’t bring down. Chills. Radiating pain in all your muscles. Chest pains. Depression. Panic.”
“What the fuck?” I breathed in disbelief.
“My father would say that the old Gods were ensuring that we didn’t squander the gift,” he said, clearing his throat. “I lean toward the science of it, though we don’t know as much as we should, since no Vampire has ever been willing to offer their mate up as a test subject.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think our bodies, once they’ve been introduced, are connected on a molecular level. Once that happens, we need each other to survive. If we’re parted, our bodies recognize that there is something essential missing and behave appropriately.”
“So it doesn’t matter how long we’re separated. Our bodies will always know that a piece is missing.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s fucking terrible.”
Chance let out a bark of laughter. “Depends on how you look at it, I guess.”
“I like to choose my own partners.”
“You’ve never gone home with someone, even knowing it was going to end badly, because you were physically attracted to them?”
“That’s different. I still got to choose whether or not the fallout was worth the sex.”
“Fair enough.”
“You might be absolute shit in bed.”
“I assure you, I’m not.”
“Says you.”
“Want references?”
The jealousy and possessiveness hit me so sharply and quickly that I nearly gasped. The thought of Chance having sex with anyone else, at any point in his life, made me instantly murderous.
“No,” I gritted out through clenched teeth.
“I don’t think sex will be one of our problems,” he said simply.
“Your confidence is a little off-putting,” I lied.
“The attraction is there.” He smiled. “If one of us isn’t getting what we need, then we’ll adjust until we do.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out. It was a logical assumption—if something wasn’t working, you fixed it. But that had never been my experience. Sex was a deal breaker. If it was bad, I bailed. Or he did.
I couldn’t hide the fact that I was a little intrigued by Chance’s pragmatic view.
He leaned forward a bit and lowered his voice. “There’s no way in hell that the sex will be bad, sweetheart.”
“Hey, sorry to interrupt,” Chance’s brother Danny said, his voice ringing with amusement. “But I think we’ve managed to plot out something worth looking at. You have a minute?”
“I’ll be right out,” Chance replied, not bothering to look away from my face.
Danny disappeared around the doorway.
“There’s a ton of shit we’ll have to figure out,” Chance said. “We’re probably going to fight about every-fucking-thing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m watching you choke back an argument for everything I say,” he replied with a light chuckle. “You think you’re hiding it, but you’re not.”
“I am not,” I argued.
He lifted his eyebrows.
“Choosing not to engage doesn’t mean I’m choking anything back.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
“We’re going to argue,” he said with a shrug as he rose to his feet. “I’m good with that. The makeup sex will be worth it.”
He lifted my hand and kissed the back of it before gently setting it back on my lap.
“Get some rest, mate.”
I watched his ass as he strode out of the room, looking better in a pair of sweatpants than other men looked in well-tailored suits. Somehow, the short conversation had calmed the chaotic and frantic thoughts that I’d been struggling with since I realized the Vampire was my mate.
We hadn’t solved anything, but at least he didn’t feel as much like a stranger as he had before.
“You good?” Reese asked, walking in a few moments later.
“He’s sex on a stick,” I hissed. “And you left me.”
I wasn’t positive, but I was pretty sure that I could hear Chance’s burst of laughter from a room away.