Hunting His Vampire Mate (Blood Bonded Mates #4)

EPILOGUE || MICHAEL

“ You needn’t be afraid.” A tall, dark-skinned woman with a regal face and an accent that sounded like it had everything but the kitchen sink in it flashed us an amused look. “We won’t bite.”

It wasn’t her biting us that I was afraid of.

But it had been a little over three months since I had asked Thierry to turn me into a vampire. We should have been fine to be in mixed company by now, according to both him and Bryan.

Still, a bar full of people seemed like it was pushing it.

Danny gave my hand a squeeze and I glanced over at him. I could sense through our bond that he was just as wary as I. We had essentially placed ourselves on house arrest the moment we’d gotten to Seattle. His dark eyes met mine.

Are you okay?

I nodded back at him. Surprisingly, I was. Certainly, I felt steadier than he did. I could sense his anxiety rippling through him. What if he lost control? What if he hurt someone again?

You won’t, I said, replying to his unspoken thoughts. Even if you wanted to, I wouldn’t let you. I made you a promise. You know that I keep my promises.

He smiled at that. I do.

“Ah.” The woman standing in front of us smiled, obviously catching the silent exchange between Danny and I. “Seeing the old magic at work truly never gets old, does it?”

“You and the ‘old magic.’” A short and thin waif of a woman with billowing fire-engine red hair bounded up to us, neon-blue drinks held in both of her hands. She shook her head at the woman, but the expression on her face was soft with affection. She turned back to us. “You’ll have to forgive Simone. She still remembers when magic was invented.” She smiled, presumably to let us know she was joking. “I’m Poppy. You’re sitting with us.”

“Go on, then,” Thierry said archly from right behind us. “Go. Mingle. Make friends. Try not to murder anyone.”

The only one I was likely to murder was him. But no more than usual. I shot him a dark look, but the blond vampire batted his eyes innocently at us and gave shooing motions with his hands. I exchanged another look with Danny, who rolled his eyes a bit at that and shook his head.

We followed Poppy and Simone to a long wooden table on the far side of the bar, acutely aware of the fact that everyone in the room was staring at us but trying to pretend like they weren’t. The company truly was mixed. About half of the patrons were vampires. The other half were humans, who were either oblivious or didn’t seem to care one way or the other that they were surrounded by vampires. It was hard to say how I could tell the vampires apart just by looking, since they didn’t appear any different than the humans in the room at first glance, but somehow, I could. Part of being a vampire, it seemed, was recognizing other vamps on sight.

Bryan and Tobias were already at the table. Tobias grinned at me as we approached. “Not under house arrest anymore, then?”

“Thierry is kicking us out,” I agreed.

“You’re goddamn right I am,” the blond vampire huffed from behind us. “You two use up all of the hot water. I haven’t had a decent shower in three months. It’s been an ordeal. No one has suffered quite like I have.”

Apparently, the standard protocol when you have a newly turned vamp is to have an older vampire babysit them until the danger has passed—usually it’s their maker, but not always. Though Nathaniel Bailey, the king of the city, had a sort of elder vampire foster program in place, Thierry had flatly declined on our behalf. He had insisted on keeping an eye on us himself.

Danny flashed him a grin. “You’re going to miss us.”

He sniffed. “I shan’t. Sadly, you two aren’t moving far enough away for me to miss you.”

Notice how he’s not quite ready to let us out of his sight, Danny said silently through the bond, amusement rippling through him. He’s totally going to miss us.

Absolutely, I agreed.

Thierry glared. “What are you two saying?”

“Thierry, don’t be an ass,” said a human man from the other side of the table. I glanced over and saw that it was a compact man with sandy-blond hair and golden-brown eyes who had spoken. His gaze was oddly intense, and he displayed zero trepidation at our presence, despite the fact that Danny and I were both newly turned vampires and this was our first test of self-control. But then, he was also holding hands with a pale, dark-haired vamp who was almost as muscular as Michael. He was probably awfully used to vampires.

He added, “Hello, by the way. I’m James.” He nodded to the vampire beside him, who inclined his head at us. “This is Pierce, my mate.”

Oddly, even though he was certainly appealing, I didn’t have the slightest urge to hurt him. Danny didn’t either. Relief flooded through him, and I felt it when the tension drained out of my mate. It was replaced by a staggering relief.

There was no impulse to hurt James at all. He felt like himself again. And so did I.

Danny pulled out one of the wooden chairs and dropped down into it. He took in a long, steadying breath that he no longer needed and blinked back the tears of gratitude that were welling up in his eyes.

I gave the table a wave, eager to buy Danny a moment to collect himself. “So, who do we need to shake down in order to get a drink?”

“That would be me, I believe.” A tall vampire who hardly looked like a vamp at all set two pitchers of beer on the table. Beside him, a much shorter and thinner man with a shock of white hair and eerie violet eyes popped a stack of glasses onto the table. The vampire added, “I am Nathaniel Bailey. I own this bar.”

“Way to undersell,” the white-haired man grinned at Nathaniel, obvious love and affection in his expression. To us, he added, “He’s also the king of the city’s vampires.”

Danny and I exchanged a surprised glance at that. Thierry had given us a run-down of how the city operated: Nathaniel Bailey was the leader of the city’s vampires. His council was made up of Thierry, Pierce, James, Simone, and Ethan, his husband. Somehow, he had made Nathaniel sound far more imposing. But the vampire standing before us, with his brown hair and his rugged and open guy-next-door sort of face, looked like he could have been just about anyone, someone you might not have glanced twice at. He didn’t fit with the idea I’d had in my head of what a vampire king should look like. He looked, oddly enough, like he was a fairly nice guy.

“A title which is no longer nearly as important as it once was,” Nathaniel chided the white-haired man, who had to be his husband, Ethan. His tone was mild when he added, “Not when we’re trying to get a shared council off the ground.”

I took a seat beside Danny and held his hand under the table as everyone else settled in around us. Ethan and Nathaniel poured the beers from the pitchers and passed them around. There were conversations, warm with easy familiarity and laughter, none of which went out of their way to exclude us. Bryan and Tobias, at least, seemed pleased by our presence. Everyone else was gracious and friendly. We weren’t friends yet, but I could tell that if we tried, even a little bit, we could be.

And through it all, I could feel the deep relief flooding through Danny that he didn’t feel a single impulse to hurt anyone. The cold, alien aspect of him, which had taken him over so completely months ago, was deeply buried and silent. It hadn’t stirred since the moment in the alleyway, when he had realized that I had become a vampire for him. When he had chosen to come back to me. And now, surrounded by humans, he was realizing for the very first time that it probably never would again.

Thierry, for all of his pointed hints that we were unwelcome intruders cramping his style, sat right next to Danny, practically vibrating with tension, clearly ready to spring into action the moment our guard slipped and we went for the humans around us.

I didn’t take offense to that. I had seen the real him. Granted, it had only been for a few minutes, but that had been enough, hadn’t it? Thierry might have a prickly, icy exterior, but on the inside, he cared far more than he let on. He wasn’t just ready to protect the humans from us, he was also ready to protect us from ourselves.

Still, I wanted to tell him to relax. But as the night wore on, he seemed to realize that his vigilance wasn’t needed, and the tension vibrating through him waned. And, with increasing frequency, his gaze kept sliding over to Danny.

I couldn’t help but notice the way he became more troubled with each passing moment.

I made a mental note to ask him about it later. He was my maker, after all. I wasn’t sentimental or anything, but he had made it possible for me to save Danny’s humanity.

I owed him.

And besides, he kind of grew on you.

I’m still waiting for you to call him Dad, Danny told me, his dark eyes dancing with mischief when he glanced over at me. And his happiness was infectious. When he grinned, I couldn’t help but grin back at him.

As it turned out, pretty much everyone at the table was in the same boat as Danny and I. James and Pierce were blood bonded. So were Ethan and Nathaniel. And, of course, Bryan and Tobias. And, even though Poppy kept making pointed remarks to Simone about ‘taking things a little more seriously’ and her obvious annoyance that everyone around her was ‘shacked up by destiny or some shit’—a direct quote—Simone’s gentle amusement never wavered. And somehow, I got the sense that Simone knew far more about their connection than she let on.

“I’ll do the Verum Amor,” Poppy threatened, when she was three beers deep, hiccupping in punctuation. She gestured at Tobias, who was her sibling, as it turned out. She glared at Simone, who had to bite her lower lip to keep from laughing. Poppy added, “And then, if it shows me your face, I’m going to be livid.”

“Darling,” Simone said, sounding not the least bit concerned. “You are a formidable witch, and you know that I adore you. If you remain patient with me just a little while longer, I promise that we will test those waters very soon.”

“We’ll take things to the next level?” Poppy demanded.

“Indeed, we will,” Simone replied, her lips curving into a smile, the obvious devotion on her face plain to see.

“Please stop,” Thierry remarked dryly. “I might vomit. Truly.”

But I wasn’t fooled. He wasn’t nearly as unaffected as he seemed. I was proven right when, a half hour later, he stepped out for some air. I excused myself from the table and followed him. Danny gave me a knowing look and squeezed my hand.

He’s lucky he turned you. Now he’s got someone to call him on his bullshit.

“You don’t need to breathe,” I said, when I found Thierry leaned up against the brick wall of the building at the far end of the parking lot. The bar was on the ground floor, with apartments above it, one of which housed Pierce and James. Thierry had rented a large house over an hour away, northeast of the city, in the shadow of the Cascade Mountain Range. There were very few neighbors nearby, which meant that he could supervise Danny and I until we were safe to be around people again. But I knew that he had an apartment in this building as well. So did Nathaniel and Ethan, on the top floor.

He looked up at me. “You ought to go back inside and get drunk with the others. We are, after all, celebrating your release back into the wild.”

That didn’t even deserve a response. Instead, I asked, “It’s Danny, isn’t it?”

“Of course you would believe that everything revolves around your mate,” Thierry shot back.

“It’s the fact that his humanity came back. And now he’s fine around people, just like he would have been if he hadn’t slipped.”

Thierry let out a long breath that hissed between clenched teeth, but he didn’t answer. And he didn’t look at me, either. But his body went more rigid with tension at my words.

“You’re wondering if the same thing could have been done for your brother.”

“My brother has been dead for two hundred years,” Thierry muttered, half under his breath. But his expression tightened. After a long moment, he shot me a dark look. But then, when that was clearly doomed to fail, he sighed. “Tell me, hunter: when did you get insightful? I could have sworn it said ‘big dumb jock’ on the side of the box.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I stabbed him in the heart with silver and set the building on fire with him still inside it. The building was a pile of ash by the time the fire burned out. He’s dead.”

“You’re certain? You saw him mummify?” I paused, frowning. “Well, if he’s as old as you are, I suppose he would have become a pile of crumbling bones.”

Thierry shrugged, looking unhappy.

“You didn’t stick around long enough to find out.”

“You kill the only person who has ever truly known you and then tell me how you handle it.”

“Look, I’m not judging. I’m just saying—”

“My brother is gone, hunter. And even if he’s not, it’s pointless.” He shot me another dark look. “You can be forgiven for believing otherwise since you met yours long before either of you became a vampire, but it isn’t exactly common to meet your destined mate.”

I scoffed at that, gesturing in the direction of the bar. “Isn’t it? An entire table in that bar is filled by couples who have done it.”

“And the rest of the bar is filled with the people who have not!” Thierry snapped, exasperated. “It’s not as though someone can simply wave a magic wand and cause a murderous vampire to meet their fated mate!”

I stopped dead, blinking at him, my jaw falling open. “Wait. Has anyone ever actually tried that?”

Thierry froze, startled.

“There’s no telling whether that would actually work,” Thierry breathed. But something strange twisted into place across his face. Almost like he was afraid to hope. “Surely, some witch or warlock somewhere out there has attempted to write a spell to conjure their one true love.” He paused, frowning. “And if they could do such a thing, they wouldn’t need to rely upon the Verum Amor to see the face of their true love, would they?”

“What if that spell could be modified?” I demanded.

“That’s preposterous,” Thierry replied. But his tone didn’t match his expression one bit. I could see the wheels spinning.

“What if it wasn’t? What if Danny and I could hunt down murderous vampires? And instead of killing them, we could…”

But then I trailed off, suddenly at a loss.

We could, what? Rehabilitate them somehow? Enchant them so that they would cross paths with their one true love, in the hopes that it could spark some degree of humanity in them? So that it could stop them from being monsters?

Thierry was right. It was a ridiculous idea.

But the older vampire hugged himself. And if I hadn’t known better, I might have imagined that he was a bit frightened by the direction our conversation had taken. But then something went steely in his expression.

“We’d need proof of concept that such a spell would even work,” he said, finally. “And it might have consequences we wouldn’t intend. We ought to know what those are, before we start flinging it at every psychopathic vampire that crosses our paths.”

“Our?” I blinked in surprise.

“Obviously, I’m going to help you test this idea. You lot would just screw it up.”

When I stared at him, speechless, he rolled his eyes and added, “My brother is surely gone. But there are others like him out there. Others who ended up the way Danny might have, if you hadn’t pulled him back from the edge. If there’s a chance I can help them avoid the same fate as Nicolas, I must try to find it.”

“You do care,” I accused him.

“And if you tell anyone, I promise that I will gut you and—”

“Use my innards to decorate your bed chamber,” I cut in, shaking my head at him in exasperation. But I couldn’t help the slow smile creeping across my face. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You keep saying shit like that, but you know you love me.”

Thierry sniffed dismissively at that, his icy scowl returning. “Perish the thought.”

* * *

“So, what do you think?” I asked, hours later.

Tobias and Poppy wore identical expressions of dismay. Tobias was the first one to speak. “That depends. Are you in any way joking?”

“I think it’s a marvelous idea,” Simone put in, leaning back in her chair. “Your first day back into the world and you’re already attempting to make it a better place. You remind me of a few others I know.”

She shot Bryan a meaningful look when she said that last part. From the way Bryan ducked his head, I could tell that if it was still possible for him to blush, his cheeks would have been bright red.

“The Verum Amor is a difficult spell,” Poppy said faintly. “It requires you to mean it. You need to long for the face of your true love in a way that most people—even those who still have their emotions—aren’t able to pull off.” Her tone grew sharper, more incredulous. “And you need to be an experienced witch or warlock in order to cast it in the first place. And you’re talking about, what? Modifying it? Are you insane?”

“So, write a new spell,” Thierry remarked, glaring back at her. “Do you truly believe you aren’t witch enough to do such a thing? All evidence to the contrary begs to differ.”

Danny stood beside me, his arms crossed over his chest, and I could sense the storm of emotions brewing within him, whipsawing so fast that I couldn’t pick anything specific from the maelstrom. But he shot Thierry a startled glance at that.

He wasn’t alone. The vampire clearly wasn’t exactly liberal with his praise. Poppy looked just as thunderstruck by the compliment as the rest of us.

But Tobias frowned at Ethan, clearly turning the idea over in his mind. “We’d need to ask your mother for help, most likely. Apart from Poppy, she’s the most gifted witch in the coven.”

Ethan nodded back grimly. “She’d help with this. I know she would. Say what you will about her, but she places a lot of value on life.”

“We could stay in the city for a little while,” Bryan suggested, giving his mate a shy sort of look. “My sister has been begging for us to stay with her for months.” To the rest of us, he added, “I’m pretty sure she likes Tobias more than me now.” He paused, giving Danny a hesitant glance before turning back to Tobias. “It’s probably a good thing anyway. Rico is probably going to need a couple more weeks, at least. He’s having a harder time with the cravings than I did.”

Beside me, Danny stiffened ever so slightly.

“Each vampire is different,” Simone told us. “Some are very fortunate and require almost no supervision, even in the very beginning. Others take much longer to settle into their nature. Rico will adjust, in the fullness of time.”

Bryan nodded, looking troubled. “He’s keeping a positive attitude,” he said, a bit more doubtfully. “But he’s going to need us.”

“Are you sure you’re okay to stay longer?” Tobias asked, turning to his mate. His concern was written all over his face. “Staying in the city for a little while, I mean.”

When Bryan had been under the control of an evil warlock, he had hurt a lot of people here. Bryan had mentioned having a difficult time in the city since.

“If I’m being honest, it’s hard.” Bryan shrugged. Then he added, “But what you guys are suggesting has the potential to save countless innocent lives. There’s no way in hell I’m standing in the way of that. I still want to heal people. Because that matters, too. But for right now, we can do that here just as well as anywhere else. And I can be a little bit more okay every day, I think. I just need to give myself some time.”

The look of raw devotion that dawned on Tobias’s face almost hurt my heart to see.

Like he loves Bryan and would do just about anything for him? Danny asked, looking over at me, his eyes shiny again and his whole face filled with light, even despite the mention of Rico. He added, I know the feeling.

The storm inside of him had quieted down and I could sense now, for the very first time, the wonder that had flooded into Danny at the proposition Thierry and I had put before the group. The idea that maybe we could use our skills—the dark upbringing he’d never really had much of a say in—and turn it into something good and pure. That we could bring light out of the darkness.

Together.

“Assuming this is even possible,” Poppy said. She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned thoughtfully, her eyebrows knitting together. “We’d still need to test it somehow. I’d prefer not to do that on a psychopathic vampire before we know a summon-my-true-love spell even works on someone with a conscience. Without driving them crazy, inadvertently cursing them, or blowing them to bits.” She paused. “Where would we find someone crazy enough to let us test this on them? How would we even ask that of someone?”

Thierry shot her a dark look. “No asking will be necessary. You will try your spell out on me first, once you have created it. I insist.”

* * *

The following evening, Danny settled down on the porch steps of our rented house beside me, where I had been sitting and watching the last dregs of sunlight vanish behind the mountains in the distance.

We were a little more than an hour drive northeast of the city, between Gold Bar and Index, at the base of the cascade mountain range. The area was breathtakingly beautiful and, more importantly, remote. There were no neighbors for at least miles in each direction.

And it was ours, now.

Thierry had announced last night that he was moving back into his old apartment in Seattle, above Nathaniel’s bar. And that we were welcome to stay for the remainder of the two-year lease he’d signed on the house. I’d balked, wondering about the rent. Simone and Nathaniel had traded a glance and chuckled a bit at my expense. Apparently, the vampires were quite well funded, and I was the only progeny of the king’s right-hand man. Paying the rent wasn’t going to be an issue.

“Are you happy?” he asked suddenly.

Danny knew that I was deliriously in love with him, so I understood what he had really meant by his question. I barely even needed to consider the answer, either. “I don’t regret becoming a vampire.”

And I didn’t. Not when the alternative would have been letting Danny go. I would have traded a lot more than my humanity for him. I would have traded everything I was, body and soul, a thousand times over.

“I’m sorry,” Danny said, slipping his hand into mine.

“What for?” I asked, even though I thought I knew.

“For how long it took me to realize how I felt about you. I kept you waiting for years.”

I smiled a little at that. “Two can play that game. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I was such an idiot about it after you told me.”

“Pretty sure I’m used to it by now.”

I turned to shoot him a glare, but he caught my cheek with his hand and met my gaze.

I love you, Michael. And I always will.

Peering into his eyes, feeling the depths of his emotions surge up within him through the bond, it was impossible to do anything else but melt into a giant puddle. Danny had that effect on me.

I love you, too. I’ll love you for as long as you let me.

Danny smiled at that and landed a kiss on my lips. Then he cuddled himself into my arms and I couldn’t feel anything other than blissfully happy that everything had worked out the way that it had. I would trade a million days spent in the sun for an eternity under the light of the moon with Danny.

An eternity, huh?

I nodded, pulling him closer to me, happiness and absolute rightness crashing through me as I threaded my arms around him. He was still my Danny. And now he would be for a very, very long time.

Well, I don’t know about you, but forever sounds pretty good to me.

Yeah, he agreed, laying his head down against my chest with a happy sigh. Forever is just about perfect.

THE END