“You mean your car.”
He smiled again, but for the first time, the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He looked sad. “Everything I own is yours too now, Allie. You’re my protégé. It’s meant to be a decision taken consensually, with full knowledge of both parties, but I…”
He shook his head, falling silent. Then he finally said, “You were so close to life still. Holding on so tightly. When I found you. And you were so full of life back in the museum], despite everything you’d been through… I couldn’t let you die.”
He seemed to be laying everything out for me to understand, and yet, I still couldn’t quite wrap my mind around his words. I’d spent years being owned by a terrifying man, the idea that I didn’t have to be afraid of him anymore felt unreal. Me being alive and a vampire felt unreal. But all I could do was keep moving forward and hope that I hadn’t traded one bad situation for another.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we have immediate things to deal with,” he said promptly, as if focusing on the next emergency kept him busy. “We’ll take you to see your sister. Get you settled at the house. Start to teach you what being a vampire means. And then…”
He trailed off.
A strange sense of foreboding clutched my chest. But I also felt warm and safe in his arms, a way that I hadn’t felt much in all my life.
I let my head fall against his shoulder and let him carry me.
When we got back to the house, he carried me up to the bathroom. He sat on the edge of the claw-footed tub, still holding me on his lap, as he leaned down and turned on the faucets.
Henry suddenly loomed in the doorway. “What did you do, Liam?” he demanded.
“You would’ve done the same,” Liam answered without hesitation.
“Yeah, but I didn’t,” Henry said, his voice tense. “You know there will be hell to pay, turning a mortal like that… as if all the bodies weren’t going to be trouble enough…”
“All the bodies?” I let out a laugh that sounded a bit manic, even to me. “There’s barely anything left of them.”
“Yeah, well,” Henry muttered. “They really pissed me off.”
“He’s our resident psychopath, but we love him,” Liam told me. The thought made me smile, and then he gently set me on my feet. I swayed for a second, the tile cold under my curled toes. My body felt awkward, coltish, not quite mine yet.
“I’m going to get you clothes,” he told me.
“Please don’t leave,” I said, grabbing his arm. My fingertips sunk into the corded muscle, and the next second I pulled away, overwhelmed by my own daring. He looked at where I’d grabbed him, but he just smiled as he turned those eyes to mine.
“You never have to be afraid again,” he told me. “You don’t need me, although I’m happy to stay if you want. No one can hurt you.”
Henry scoffed. “No one except other vamps—“
“Oh shut up, Henry,” Liam said. “Good god, the girl was murdered today and she still has a more upbeat perspective on the universe than you do.”
Henry stared him down, his eyes narrowing. Then he turned to me. “I personally gutted your ‘husband’. There isn’t anything left of him to ever hurt you again. I doubt you could even find his fingernails scattered in the woods to scratch you with.”
Liam closed his eyes as if he were praying for strength. “That’s very helpful, Henry.”
“It actually is,” I admitted. “But please. Stay with me.”
“Whatever you want,” Liam promised. “We just need to get you cleaned up so you don’t scare your sister. I’ll stay.”
I could’ve sworn jealousy flashed across Henry’s face, but then it was gone.
“I guess I’ll make myself useful,” he said.
Then he was gone, and it was just Liam and I in that brightly lit, old fashioned bathroom. The sound of rushing water still filled the room. He dipped his hand into it, then pulled a face. “I’m terrible at testing the water. I’m always cold.”
I dipped my hand in. “It’s fine,” I assured him.
“I’ll… I’ll turn my back.” He seemed so suave and self-assured, there was something that made me want to smile when he seemed to stumble over his words. He rose to his feet, looking away from me.
I stripped off the gown, the bra and underwear I’d worn. It felt like a lifetime before that I’d dressed in this outfit. I’d felt like nothing then, no matter how glamorous I looked in the mirror. I was pretty for someone else; even my face hadn’t belonged to me. And my eyes had always looked dim.
I eased into the tub. It was strange to feel no pain; I’d carried one ache or bruise or another for so long. But this is what it meant to be a vampire right? At least that’s what it was like for vampires in movies.
My mind started turning over everything I thought I knew about vampires. I wanted to ask Liam some questions, but I was pretty sure I was going to make a fool of myself. But I guessed it was better to know for sure then to be left guessing what this all meant.
“You can turn around,” I said softly. “You’re my sire, right? I’ve watched horror movies before.”
He did turn, just in time for me to see him wince. “There’s nothing… horrific…about it. And I’m no fan of the word sire.”
“You said protégé…”
“We tend to think of ourselves as mentors.” He perched on the edge of the tub, his gaze resolutely fixed on my face. He was such a gentleman, and I promised myself to ask him just how old he was, soon. I knew we had more important things to discuss. “It’s a difficult transition, being a young vampire.”
“Wait.” I sat up suddenly in the water. “I’m going to drink blood now.”
“We’re… not monsters,” he said. “We drink an artificial substitute for blood. It’s not quite as tasty, but…” He shrugged. “You’ll never have to hurt anyone. Unless they try to hurt you.”
“In which case…”
“You’ll never be a victim again,” he finished. He hesitated, then explained, “And you’ll never be alone again, if you choose. We tend to all live… like a family. A big family.”
“This is a lot to take in,” I murmured.
“You were completely fine with discovering vampires were real and you had been turned,” he said. “But the family thing throws you off?”
“Oh yes,” I said.
He looked as if he wanted to know more, but instead he interrupted himself. “You still have some blood—“ he indicated my hairline.
I touched the spot with the washcloth, but he shook his head. I held the cloth out to him, too tired for games. The adrenaline had fled, and even though my body had healed, I felt as if I could curl up and sleep for a week.
He gently washed my face. His touch, even through the rough washcloth, felt good. Then he asked, “Do you want me to continue?”
“Yes,” I said, and my voice came out husky, unexpectedly so. There was nothing sexual in his gentle touch, and I felt embarrassed. I had, after all, had him touch me quite a bit when I hadn’t thought he was real.
But he didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He washed the blood from my once-damaged body and shampooed my hair, his fingers teasing over the strands until they squeaked under his touch.
Then he lifted me easily from the tub, careless of how my wet body soaked his white shirt to his skin. He wrapped me in a big towel, then steered me to sit on the edge of the tub. He combed carefully through my long hair, which had been matted with blood, filled with sticks and leaves from the desperate struggle.
When Henry knocked on the side of the door, Liam was laying the comb on the side of the sink. I felt clean and cared for, and it was a pleasant sensation, no matter how strange it was to let a man baby me like that. If I hadn’t been so bone-tired exhausted, I would have fought him rather than let him care for me.
“I brought clothes for all of us,” Henry said. “If you’re done playing hairdresser.”
Liam rolled his eyes. “Forgive my brother. He’s got a two-hundred-year-
old attitude problem. I don’t think we’re going to fix him after all this time.”
Henry snorted. But to me, he said, “Don’t worry. I’ll grow on you.”
I smiled back.
He already had.
Even before he scattered Joseph’s bones through the forest.
Eight
On the drive back toward our city, I had a thousand questions.
But the one I asked over and over, that burned brighter for me than all the vampire stuff, was, are you sure my sister is okay?
“She doesn’t remember anything,” Henry finally exploded. “Micah glamored her. The whole night was traumatic. For her and the kids. It’s better that they don’t remember.”
My lips parted.
“That’s something else we can do,” Liam said, throwing a sideways look at Henry. “Although we rarely do.”
“Micah said it was necessary,” Henry groused, as if there were an accusation in Liam’s look.
Liam scoffed. “Micah thought it was necessary to glamor an antique dealer once because he couldn’t walk away from that eighteenth century French wardrobe. He’s not exactly known for being on his best behavior.”
“Yeah, well, you can enjoy being the naughty one now, turning a girl without permission.” Henry gave him a meaningful look.
I leaned forward over the console between them from the backseat. “What does that mean, exactly? Are you in trouble, Liam?”
“No,” Liam said, at the same time as Henry said, “Yes.”
“It was an unusual situation,” Liam said. “The clan will understand.”
“Yes of course,” Henry said. “Vampires are known for their compassion and reason.”
“Would you stop?” Liam demanded. He glanced at me in the rearview mirror, as if he were afraid I’d be scared. “It’ll be fine, Allie.”
I nodded. “You said you live like a big family. But… I can leave.”
“Yes,” Liam said, as Henry said, “No.”
Liam immediately corrected, “It’s not that you can’t leave. But you have to demonstrate that you have the urges under control first. At the beginning, when you’re a vampire, your instincts are so strong.”
“You’re really going to want to sink your teeth into anyone who annoys you.” Henry flashed me a smile in the rearview. “Actually, that doesn’t go away.”
“Just… let me see my sister. We can figure everything else out later.”
I tried to wheedle their stories out of them on the rest of the ride, but they only gave me the broadest strokes: they were brothers during the Civil War.
“You’ve seen a lot of history,” I said.
“Hence my attitude problem, as he calls it,” Henry said. “People are terrible. We don’t need pointy teeth to be monsters.”
“You’re not people anymore,” I pointed out.
“Close enough,” he said.
We reached my sister’s house on the outskirts of the city; deep in the suburbs. It was a modest little house.
When we arrived, Micah was sitting on my sister’s front porch. He seemed so out of place, eerily beautiful and dressed in an immaculate suit so early in the morning, sitting on a rocking chair next to a small tricycle.
My heart leapt with fear—what if my sister and her kids were hurt after all, and no one had told me, what if he had hurt them?
“Remember they don’t know you were in any danger,” Liam told me patiently as he brought the car to a stop.
“She always knew I was in danger,” I said, throwing open the door before the car came to a complete stop.
I raced up the sidewalk toward the porch. Micah’s eyes snapped toward me, but he made no movement.
The door flew open, and a little girl careened out of the house. Her socks slipped across the porch and it looked as if she were running toward me, but then she turned and threw herself into his arms. He caught her with a laugh.
“You’re too fast,” he said in that warm voice of his. “You’re dangerous.”
“I brought your own Barbies so you can play with me,” she said, ignoring me. She thrust two Barbies at him.
“I question this Barbie’s fashion choices,” he said, taking one from her. “Silver metallic and animal print all at once?”
I watched them for a second, feeling touched and lost all at the same time.
Then the door opened again, and my sister came slowly down the steps. She was carrying a baby in her arms, and her eyes were wide with tears.
“You’re okay,” she said softly. “I thought I’d never see you again, Allie. Are you and he… is he going to keep coming after you?”
“No,” I said. “No, I’m going to be fine.”
And vampire or not, when I hugged my sister, I could believe that was really true.
Micah smiled at me from the porch. Liam and Henry came up the walkway to stand around us.
“I’ll make coffee,” she said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.
When she’d gone into the house, I whispered, “Am I a danger to them? Do I need to tell them I’ll stay away?”
All over again.
“No,” Liam said, and I looked to Henry, who always had an opposing viewpoint, but Henry shook his head.
“I don’t think you should stay here,” Henry said bluntly. “But you’re no danger to them. Your every impulse is to protect your family.”
His lips turned up at one corner. “Maybe you’ll even be able to accept that your family is bigger than you thought. In time.”
“In time,” I agreed. I’d stay with them for a while, at least, until I made sense of what it meant to be a vampire. I was sure sometime soon, the reality of my new self would overwhelm me. I was still running on adrenaline.
For right now, I headed into my sister’s house to drink a cup of coffee and get to know my nieces.
And my new best friends.
The End
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About May Dawson
After traveling to all seven continents—including a research station in the Antarctic and an extended sojourn in Baghdad, Iraq—May Dawson settled in Virginia to raise her two children and a bevy of rescue cats. She is the author of several paranormal reverse harem series, including Their Shifter Princess, Their Shifter Academy, the Wild Angels and the True and the Crown series.
Want to hang out with the author, see cover reveal and exclusive sneak peeks first, win bookish prizes, and support May’s books on social media? Join May Dawson online in her Facebook reader group, May Dawson’s Wild Angels.
To stay up to date on May’s hijinks, follow her on Bookbub and Facebook.
About Lacey Carter Andersen
Lacey Carter Andersen loves reading, writing, and drinking excessive amounts of coffee. She spends her days taking care of her husband, three kids, and three cats. But at night, everything changes! Her imagination runs wild with strong-willed characters, unique worlds, and exciting plots that she enthusiastically puts into stories.
Lacey has dozens of tales: science fiction romances, paranormal romances, short romances, reverse harem romances, and more. So, please feel free to dive into any of her worlds; she loves to have the company!
And you’re welcome to reach out to her; she really enjoys hearing from her readers.
You can find her at:
Email: [email protected]
Mailing List: https://www.subscribepage.com/laceycarterandersen
Website: www.laceycarterandersen.wordpress.com/
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Read More of May Dawson’s Books
The Lost Fae Series, beginning with Wandering Queen
The Shifter Princess trilogy (complete, available in audio)
The Shifter Academy series (available in audio)
The True and the Crown series (complete)
God Fire Reform School series
The Wild Angels series (complete, available in Audio)
Dead Girls Club
The Academy of the Supernatural trilogy (complete)
Also By Lacey Carter Andersen
Monsters and Gargoyles
Medusa’s Destiny *audiobook*
Keto’s Tale
Celaeno’s Fate
Cerberus Unleashed
Lamia’s Blood
Shade’s Secret
Hecate’s Spell
Shorts: Their Own Sanctuary
Shorts: Their Miracle Pregnancy
Dark Supernaturals
Wraith Captive
Marked Immortals
Wicked Reform School/House of Berserkers
Untamed: Wicked Reform School
Unknown: House of Berserkers
Royal Fae Academy
Revere (Prequel)
Ravage
Legends Unleashed
Don’t Say My Name
Don’t Cross My Path
Don’t Touch My Men
Mates of the Realms
Renegade Hunter *audiobook*
Cursed Hunter
Betrayed Hunter
Rebel Lover
Rebel Lies
Rebel Loss
Rogue Demon
Box Set I: Demon Hunter
Box Set II: Rebel Angel
The Firehouse Feline
Feline the Heat
Feline the Flames
Feline the Burn
God Fire Reform School
Magic for Dummies
Myths for Half-Wits
Alternative Futures
Nightmare Hunter *audiobook*
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 19