Hunting His Vampire Mate (Blood Bonded Mates #4)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN || DANNY

W e expected Thierry to balk at the idea of us going off to hunt a nest of vamps. And he didn’t disappoint.

“Absolutely not,” Thierry said, leaning up against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at Michael.

“This is what we do,” Michael countered. To me, through the bond, he said, Told you so.

My mate stood in the doorway of the motel room, blocking it. I was right behind him, perched against the edge of our car. Thierry had retrieved it for us earlier, while we were… otherwise occupied. I was doing my best to pretend I couldn’t smell the enticing scent of the other motel guests in the nearby rooms. But with Michael right beside me, it was easy to ignore the hunger gnawing away at me in the pit of my stomach. I was just on the verge of pain, even with him beside me. But it was manageable. I could almost pretend that I wasn’t tempted.

“Not anymore, it isn’t.” Thierry rolled his eyes at Michael, clearly exasperated with him. “Once your boyfriend is safely under lock and key in Seattle, we’ll send a team out to deal with this. Your services are no longer needed.”

“More people could die by then,” Michael ground out.

“Do you understand what will happen if Danny loses control?” Thierry’s voice went dangerous, and his gaze slid past Michael and landed on me. “You’re one mistake away from becoming the very sort of monster you hunt. Is that a risk you’re truly willing to take?”

Michael sighed. “We’ll be fine. Danny will stay next to me the entire time. We can deal with a nest of vamps.”

Thierry let out a little laugh, but anger flashed in his eyes. “I apologize if I’ve said anything that makes you believe this is a discussion. The answer is no. You’re not going.”

Michael nodded, then took a step back. He still had his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face. I imagined that his expression was steely and stubborn, though. I could feel his grim resolve through the blood bond. And his whole body went tense, like he was preparing for a throw-down.

“Yeah,” he said, taking another step back, away from the vampire. “We figured you might say that.”

Thierry seemed to understand that he’d been played in the very same moment, because he zipped forward. And then he slammed into an invisible wall.

His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open in horror. “What is this?”

Michael pointed at the line of enchanted black powder we’d poured over the threshold, courtesy of our witch contact in Vegas. She really didn’t like it when we popped up, but we had put down the murderous demon she’d accidentally conjured several years back, in return for her promise that she’d help us every now and again. “It’s a boundary spell, tied to the cycles of day and night. It’ll break at sunrise. We were hoping you’d see reason and let us go do our jobs.” He shrugged. “But we figured you wouldn’t. So.”

“You unimaginable idiots!” Thierry hissed, but there was no mistaking the naked fear on face. His gaze landed on me again. “Don’t do this!”

“We’ll be back in a couple hours,” Michael said. Through the bond, he added, I’m driving, by the way.

I snorted but rolled my eyes. Fine. But I’m picking the music.

He grinned, fishing the car keys out of his pocket and shaking his head. You wish.

Thierry banged on the invisible wall of the boundary spell and shouted after us, but we ignored him as we piled into the car. I felt a pang of guilt, though. Thierry was kind of a dick, but he had come here to help. And what if he was right?

We’ll be okay, Michael replied silently, catching my thoughts. He slipped the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine purred to life. He added, you said it yourself: we’ve done this a million times before. This is nothing new.

I nodded, trying to banish my unease. But it wouldn’t quite go.

* * *

Bryan and Tobias called us twenty minutes later, just before midnight, hours earlier than we’d thought they would. We met them in the parking lot of a grocery store on the edge of town. There wasn’t a single other soul around, which is why we’d chosen this as a meeting place. It didn’t make sense to take any chances.

They stood in front of us while we leaned against the back of Michael’s car. They both looked exhausted and bedraggled, but they had come.

They both stared at me like I was an alien.

“So, this isn’t what we expected,” Tobias said, by way of greeting.

His pulse beat in his throat, pumping his hot, red blood through his body. I could almost feel my teeth breaking through his skin, the pure vitality flooding into my mouth…

You doing okay? Michael’s gaze snapped to me. I felt his unease ripple through the bond.

Feeling shame wash through me, I nodded.

“You guys… um,” Bryan’s gaze flicked down to Michael and I’s joined hands. “This isn’t really what we were expecting to find.”

He looked back up at me, his eyes wide and disbelieving. I could interpret his unspoken questions just fine. I was probably supposed to be tied up in the barn, half-crazed with hunger, barely even still a person. I wasn’t supposed to be calmly holding my mate’s hand in the empty parking lot of a grocery store, in the middle of the night, while we talked about destroying a nest of evil vampires.

“It’s been an eventful forty-eight hours,” I agreed. But I felt relief that they were here. It was surprisingly good to see Bryan again.

“Where’s Thierry?” Tobias asked, eyeing us.

“He’s back at the motel,” Michael replied, without missing a beat. “We’re going to take care of the vamp nest. Then we’re headed up to Seattle, I guess.”

“And he just let you guys go?”

Michael shrugged. “He’s fine. And we’ll be back in the morning.”

“What did you guys do?” Bryan demanded.

“Just a boundary spell. He wasn’t going to let us take care of this,” I said. “There’s a nest of vamps in town. They’re murdering people and dumping them in the street like trash after they’re done.”

Bryan flinched.

“If we had played along with Thierry, more people would have died,” Michael said. He fixed Tobias with a speculative look. “If you can pop off a locator spell, we’ll be on our way.”

Tobias snorted. “There’s no way in hell we’re letting you guys go off on your own. You need us.”

Tobias and Bryan exchanged a look that spoke volumes. They, too, were holding hands. And there was an easy familiarity to the two of them that caused me to feel a pang of emotion. Michael and I could have that too.

Soon enough.

One last hunt, Michael agreed, flashing me a smile. At least for a little while.

I nodded back at him. I waited for the fear to come back: that maybe I wouldn’t be enough for him once we no longer had a shared purpose. But it didn’t.

Instead, the future seemed, for the first time, to be filled with possibilities.

You’ll always be enough for me. Always. It doesn’t matter if we work on cars together, or hunt monsters, or if we just spent every hour of every day exploring the world. Or hell, we could take up knitting together—

Knitting?

I couldn’t help but laugh at the mental image of Michael and I trying to figure out how to turn a ball of yarn into something that a person might want to wear. There would definitely be a lot of swearing and recriminations involved.

Yeah. Knitting. Michael rolled his eyes. Point is, you’re already enough for me, Danny. You always have been. You always will be.

“Wait a second,” Bryan cut in, leaning forward, his green eyes going wide and his jaw dropping. “Are you two—”

“Yeah,” Michael said, grinning. “We totally are.”

Tobias grinned back at him. “I never thought I’d see the fucking day.”

But Bryan was still staring at me. “And you—are you guys… um. Doing everything now? Like, are you guys actually together ?”

If a hole had opened in the earth right then, I would have jumped in with both feet. But Michael let out a sharp bark of laughter and when he glanced over at me, his eyes were dancing with amusement.

“I’ll fill you in on everything later,” I promised Bryan. “But for right now, we have bad guys to hunt.” I paused, then met Tobias’s gaze. His pulse beat under his skin, and I ignored it. Michael gave my hand a comforting squeeze. I added, “That is, if you’re willing to help out with a spell to help us find the nest?”

“We did just travel across the country for you guys,” Tobias reminded me, after exchanging a look with Bryan. “We’re, um… friends?”

I felt a flash of warmth through the bond.

Michael’s mental voice was smug when he said, See, he’s totally going to ask me to be his best man.

I couldn’t help but smile at that. To them, I replied, “Yeah. We’re friends.”

Bryan’s eyes seemed to widen even further. “What happened to you two?”

Michael and I exchanged another long look. Michael grinned at me. And I couldn’t help it, I grinned back.

Like a fool in love.

Tobias sighed. “I suck at locator spells. I’ll call Poppy, but we’ll get this handled.”

“We?” Michael asked, sounding surprised.

They exchanged a glance, but it was Bryan who spoke. “I won’t hurt anyone, but you might need another set of hands. Just in case.” His gaze landed on me, and I couldn’t help but understand his meaning. He added, “We’re coming with you.”

* * *

Less than an hour later, we stood at the mouth of an abandoned mine in the foothills less than five miles outside the city limits of Ontario. Because Tobias had cast a spell to make our vehicles undetectable to anyone but us, we were able to pull almost right up to the mine entrance.

Thierry was already waiting for us there.

What the fuck? Michael traded a glance with me as we stepped out of the car. How?

“Your sister let me out of the boundary spell,” Thierry said to Tobias when we approached. “She was rather alarmed when I called her and explained the situation. She, at least, has the good sense not to detain the only vampire willing and able to control a hotheaded newborn. She’s by far my favorite, by the way.”

“We’re doing this,” Michael gritted out. He was armed to the teeth. He had his machete, two guns, a pocket full of powdered silver, and a wickedly sharp dagger, also made from silver. I only had a single gun, filled with silver bullets, and a machete in a holster slung at my side. He added, “You’re not stopping us.”

Thierry glared at us. And if looks could have killed, Michael and I both would have been goners.

“Fine,” Thierry snapped, his eyes flashing with his fury. “But mostly because we’re already here and I don’t trust either of you enough to let you out of my sight!”

“We’ll be fine,” Tobias told him. He held up his hand and electric-blue sparks of magic flashed between his fingertips. “We’ve got the magic touch.”

Thierry rolled his eyes and glowered at him. Then he turned back to us, his pale blue eyes sparking with barely controlled fury. “If either of you ever pull anything like that with me, ever again, I will gut you both and decorate my bedchambers with your innards. Got it?”

“Yup,” Michael said, his lips twitching. I could feel his amusement ripple through the bond.

“I’m not going to kill anyone,” Bryan said, interrupting the furious looks Thierry gave us. He cast the mines a nervous glance. “I’m on rescue duty, in case there’s anyone still alive in there.”

Tobias extinguished the magic in his hand and then rubbed Bryan’s back soothingly. “It’s okay, babe. You never need to do anything you don’t want to. No one expects you to hurt anyone. We’re there to protect and heal, just like always.”

Bryan nodded at him, looking relieved.

“The rest of us will do the dirty work,” Thierry agreed grimly. But I didn’t miss the flash of concern on his face for the younger vampire. Then, with his eyes still on Bryan, he gestured in my direction. “Stay to the back and keep an eye on him . You do not need to participate in this if you don’t wish to.”

Bryan flashed me an unreadable look before turning back to Thierry. “Right.”

Michael hesitated, casting me a strange look. I felt his ripple of unease. Then he turned back to the others. “Wait. Danny and I need a moment alone.”

I stared at him. We do? Now?

Michael stared back. Yeah, we do.

Tobias and Bryan looked completely unsurprised while Thierry glowered at Michael.

“We’re about to walk into battle,” Michael told him, completely unfazed. “Danny and I need a moment. We can wait five minutes.”

With that, he took me by the hand and towed me away from the others. He led me fifty feet down the unpaved road that slanted dangerously into the canyon below.

I let myself be led, feeling apprehension at the storm of emotions I belatedly sensed from him.

The nearly full moon was partially covered by clouds, and in the diffuse glow, Michael looked hauntingly handsome when he turned to face me, like he wasn’t quite real. But his gaze was intense when it locked with mine.

“If something happens to me—”

“I’ll protect you with my life,” I replied, cutting him off. The idea of anything hurting him was too much for me to even wrap my head around. And if things went south, Michael’s last memory of me would be me fighting to save him.

He gave a little half-smile at that. “Obviously. I know that, Danny. And I’ll do the same. And you know that. Which is why you need to give me your blood.”

I took a step back from him, jerking my hand away from his. I had been prepared for him to say anything, but I hadn’t been prepared for that . Not even a little bit.

Michael, what are you saying?

“I’m saying that I’m not letting anything get in our way, ever again. If I get hurt—if one of the vamps gets the jump on me—then at least you’d know that I would come back to you.”

My jaw dropped open and alarm shot through me as I fully realized what he was driving at. “As a vampire ?”

He shrugged, his expression going harder. “Danny, if you don’t know by now, you haven’t been paying attention. I would do anything for you.”

“By becoming something that you—”

“I’m in love with you,” he growled. “It’s not just words.”

“Michael, no . I’m not giving you my blood—not right now. Not for this.” I took another step back, the future blooming before me in horrid, vivid detail. Michael loathing himself every time he sank his fangs into a beating pulse. Never growing old. Never having his white picket fence. Always possessing an inhuman hunger that ran so deep that it felt like ground glass cutting him to ribbons. “Michael, no . You don’t ever have to change for me.”

When he opened his mouth to argue, I shook my head, silencing him with a look.

“ No . Don’t you get it? If you died and came back, if you hated yourself afterward, it would be completely my fault. I couldn’t ever do that to you. I love you too much to condemn you to an eternity hating yourself.”

“Don’t you get it? It would be worth it,” Michael whispered, his expression naked and more stricken than I had ever seen it, causing my throat to close up painfully. I could feel the depths of his fear for me, that I might someday wind up alone for an eternity. I could feel his awareness, that I was right there, feeling what he felt alongside him. He nodded, his gaze searching mine. “And it would be worth hating myself a little, if it meant I got to love you for forever, Danny. It’s you and me. It always has been. I will always choose you.”

I could sense how much he thought he meant it. But I knew from the bond that he wasn’t thinking it through, either. Not really. He was too focused on the horrible notion that he would end up being just like my father and my brother, in the end. That he would leave me behind. That if he died, he would be abandoning me. He didn’t stop to consider everything he’d be giving up. He wouldn’t be human anymore. Instead, he would become something other , always on the outside edges of the world, peering in from the darkness. He’d be giving up an easy life spent in the sun and trading it for dangerous moonlit nights spent in the shadows.

“My life has been that way from the first night we met,” Michael insisted. “Danny, please. ”

“But the hatred is gone now, Michael,” I replied, feeling like I was encased in ice. I could feel the pain I was causing him, and I hated it. I hated every bit of it. But I still plowed on relentlessly, forcing my words out, one after the other. “And you could stop now. The need to do this—to be a hunter—you don’t feel it anymore.”

Alarm and confusion shot through the bond. Michael blinked at me, surprised. Then dismay settled onto his face, and he shook his head. “Danny, that doesn’t matter. I’d walk through fire for you. An eternity spent in the darkness would be fine, so long as you were there with me.”

“It does matter, and you know it. You have a choice now. You could walk away any time you wanted.”

“You can’t possibly think that.”

“I do,” I replied stiffly. “Because it’s true. You could still walk away, if you really wanted. You still have a choice.”

“Fine. I mean, maybe at some nebulous point in the future, I could theoretically make the choice to go and lead a normal life, sure. I wouldn’t, but you’re right. I technically could. ” Anger flashed through the bond, reflected in Michael’s eyes. “But what if I died tonight?” Michael demanded, his voice dropping dangerously. “What then, Danny?”

I gulped. And a selfish, needy part of myself almost compelled me to open my wrist then and there to give him my blood. So that he could never leave me. Not even if he died.

But I couldn’t— wouldn’t —do that to him. Not even if the idea of never losing him, of him being far less breakable, filled me with a hideous impulse to skip the waiting and just turn him then and there, on the spot.

But I couldn’t be selfish with him.

Michael fixed me with a ghastly, broken look, his lower lip trembling as his gaze met mine. “Are you sure about that?”

I stared back at him, at a loss for words, wondering if I was really making the right choice. Maybe if I’d had more time, he could have convinced me. But then again, maybe not. It was one thing to give him my blood to heal him, to preserve his life, but it was another thing entirely to give it to him knowing that it might make him into something inhuman, just so I wouldn’t have to live my life without him.

When the silence stretched too long, Michael nodded once at me, a sharp jerk of his head, like I had just finally convinced him. Then, without another word, he turned and stalked off toward the others, his hands clenched into fists. And I could feel the pain and doubt I’d just caused him, warring with his anger and disbelief.

He hadn’t pictured me saying no to him. He hadn’t been prepared for it. Not after everything else.

I had blindsided him.

Bryan and Thierry had probably overheard everything.

Thierry examined his nails, pretended to be deeply interested in his cuticle situation, but he said nothing as we approached. Bryan, however, watched me with a pained look as I trailed behind Michael, feeling like someone had scooped out my insides. Feeling like I had just broken something quintessential between us.

“Danny—” He started, taking a step toward me.

I shook my head sharply, causing him to fall silent. He nodded and his meaning was clear: he wouldn’t push it. But he still looked miserable. Which was ironic, because he had no reason to feel that way. He hadn’t just broken his mate’s heart without meaning to.

Not like I had.

I fixed the others with a hard gaze. “Let’s do this.”