by Marcy Jacks
Now that it was going to get sealed up, and they were going to get the drop on these bloodsuckers, it might make for a nice change of pace in this fight that Seth had been having.
And Theron couldn’t wait to prove his worth, Evzen’s worth, as well that of as Lasius, Tiny, and the other dragons that had come to this house with this takedown he was going to be doing.
He looked to Lasius and Dimitri. Both men nodded at him. Lasius grinned eagerly, his scaled forming a protective layer along his face, hands, arms, and even covering up some of that blond hair.
They said nothing. They just sprang on the vampires beneath them.
The takedown was easy. Too easy. It was almost a shame that this had to be done without the knowledge of their opponents. A fair fight was never a good fight.
All they had to do was yank the masks off before anything else. The vampires cried out, and a few shots from their guns were fired as they struggled to get out of any direct sunlight spilling in through the canopy.
Theron got ahold of one of the guns. He smashed it over his scaled knee, storming to the vampire who would drag his mate back to a life of servitude. The vampire threw a punch at him, but of course, it did no good. Theron ducked out of the way then sprang back up with a heavy uppercut that made him wince when he heard the crack from the vampire’s jaw.
He went down so hard that it was over before it got to be fun.
Theron stared at the man. He kicked his black boot to see if he would move.
Well, that was no fun.
He turned to see if Dimitri needed some help. Nope. His vampire was dead the instant Theron got a look at him. Theron knew because of the cracking sound of the neck.
Despite what pop culture said, there were definitely more ways to kill a vampire.
Dimitri grinned at him. “Mine’s down.”
“Mine, too.” Theron looked around. He hadn’t even built up a sweat, and he wasn’t out of breath either.
Well, he supposed that was a good thing, considering what the alternative was. He didn’t want an enemy that was so strong it could get through him and find Angel with the other omegas.
Though he still couldn’t hold back the feeling of being incredibly disappointed.
“Lasius, how about you?” Theron looked at his friend. Lasius was crouched down, facing the bloodsucker he’d just taken out.
Only, no, that vampire was still alive. And Lasius was incredibly still.
Dimitri got to his feet, slowly approaching the dragon. Theron held his hand out, stopping the man. He put a finger to his lips then quickly motioned for Dimitri to walk a half-circle around, which would put him on Lasius’s other side.
The man was so still. Because of the scales all over his body, Theron honestly had trouble telling whether or not the other man was even breathing.
“Lasius?”
Theron reached out, touched his friend’s shoulder, and then everything went to hell.
* * * *
Angel wanted to look out the window, but he wasn’t allowed to. He hated that. He wanted to see when Theron was going to come home, but the dragons who had been left behind to guard the mansion, and the omegas inside, refused to let him anywhere near the windows.
They said it was dangerous. Angel didn’t understand how it was dangerous. If there was someone out there, he would see them coming and be able to warn the dragons, but they seemed insistent that it was not a good idea, as they refused to open the curtains, and at one point, James, the half-dragon, half-werewolf, had to step in Angel’s way when he tried to get around them.
Angel crossed his arms, deciding that he didn’t like the people in this room who weren’t omegas.
Or the vampire.
The bunching in Angel’s shoulders calmed down a little at that last thought.
Well, maybe the vampire wasn’t entirely bad. Angel still didn’t like him, but at least Sorin wasn’t actively getting in his way and preventing him from seeing what was going on outside.
The others were doing that. Even Tiny, who was still injured and had to be brought downstairs. He sat in one of the chairs, bandaged up, and he’d given Angel a warning to not try to open the windows.
Cole had said that Tiny was nice. Angel begged to differ.
He was going crazy. Thoughts of his mate dying circled through his head, and he couldn’t stop them. He’d only just gotten Theron, and he’d only just accepted the man as his mate.
Angel’s stomach ached. What if Theron died? What if he was captured and badly hurt? Angel had wasted so much of their time fighting what should have been natural and beautiful, and now he might lose the other man forever.
“Try not to worry too much.”
Angel jumped. When he hadn’t been looking, Miles had apparently come along to talk to him.
“I’m not worrying.” Angel quickly lowered his arms, trying to make it look as though he hadn’t been pouting in a corner.
Miles’s smile was soft, pitying. He clearly wasn’t happy about the situation either, but he seemed to be better accepting of it.
Of course, he’d lived through more situations like these.
“They’ll come back. Seth has a plan. He wouldn’t even tell me what it was because he wanted to make sure all the alphas and lower dragons knew about it. It’s going to be different this time.”
That got Angel’s attention. “How was it different the other times?”
Miles pressed his lips together and looked away. He looked to Sorin, who was sitting with some of the other omegas. A few more omegas seemed to be purposely avoiding that group because of the vampire.
“Someone died once,” Miles finally admitted. “You didn’t know him. He was a friend of Marxus’s. Al was a good dragon. He was funny. A couple of the other omegas were killed, too. One of them we used for our first aid. I had to learn a bit about it after that. Sorin, too.”
Angel looked to the vampire, who smiled softly at something Micah said. The baby in Micah’s arms didn’t make a fuss. He just slept soundly.
“Sorin’s been helping?”
“Yeah,” Miles said. “Not all the omegas will let him see them, but he understands why.”
Miles suddenly looked at him with such an expression that there was no way Angel could look away. “I know you don’t like Sorin, but I grew up here. I was still a servant when Sorin and his father were here. He’s not like his father.”
“I keep hearing that.” Angel crossed his arms again.
“I know, but trust me on this one if you’re not going to trust anyone else.”
Angel looked at the omega, wondering why he should. Then he asked, “What was your job when you were working here, anyway?”
Miles never stopped smiling at him, that sad smile. “I was Varrick’s favorite pleasure slave.”
Angel tensed.
It wasn’t that Miles had been used for sex that shocked him but that he’d been used by Varrick, Sorin’s father.
“And…you can still forgive Sorin?”
Miles shook his head. “Sorin never used me like that. We were friends. We grew up together. Before I was Varrick’s pleasure slave, I was just another cleaner in the house. It’s hard to tell with vampires, but Sorin is young. He’s only a couple of years older than me. When we were kids and he wanted to play outside, because I was still a kid, I was sent out to play with him. So the master wouldn’t get bored, you know?”
Angel nodded, even though he didn’t know. He’d only heard of such things. That some vampire households that had children sent the younger omegas out to keep them company.
He’d also heard of those omegas being sold when it looked as though there was an attachment growing. No one wanted their children to actually be friends with their servants.
“Sorin’s my friend. He’s been my friend for my whole life. He didn’t always know what was happening around him was bad, he was just a kid, but I could tell when he was starting to get it. He’d sneak me and Micah food whenever we couldn’t have any, and the fi
rst time he yelled at his dad for turning me into a pleasure slave, I saw Varrick…”
Miles trailed off and glanced behind him to make sure no one could hear him. Then he leaned in.
“I saw Varrick slap him for that.”
Angel rolled his eyes. “The way you built that up, I thought you were going to say something much worse had happened.”
“That’s nothing to us, but it is something to him, and it meant something to me, that Sorin risked getting punished to stick up for me, and I know for a fact that the only reason I wasn’t sold before Varrick got attached was because Sorin wanted to keep me around. If I hadn’t been here when Seth came, I could still be a prisoner to some perverted vampire somewhere. Sorin saved me by fighting to keep me here.”
Angel really didn’t want to be in this room. Whether it was the dragons telling him what he could or could not do or the people around him trying to make him like Sorin, everything seemed to be way too annoying for him to deal with right now.
Still, he figured he should at least come clean. “I’ve…I’ve already heard about…some things. From the dragons in this house, I mean. Lucian told me about his mate and how Sorin was just trying to defend him when Sorin threatened me.”
From the look on Miles’s face, it was clear he knew about that, too.
“I’ve forgiven the vampire, I think. But that doesn’t mean I have to like him or want to hang out with him. I still want to be left alone, but I don’t…I don’t hold it against him. Not anymore.”
It felt strange saying that out loud. He’d felt as though it was hard enough when he’d walked into this room and seen Sorin here at all. He’d thought he’d let the vampire know how he’d felt by simply not saying anything to him, by letting Sorin be.
Apparently, this was something that Angel was going to have to make clear a few times.
Miles nodded. “Thank you for that. I know that must have been hard for you.”
It was, but apparently not as hard as what it must have been like to be Miles and to be the favorite plaything of his friend’s father.
If Miles could be on such good terms with Sorin, then maybe Angel one day could be, as well.
Angel cleared his throat. Before he could say anything, James ran out of the library. As did Zane and Josh, following after the man.
Angel didn’t understand, and he looked to the other dragon warriors in the library. “What’s going on?”
Tiny had a content smile on his face. “They’re back.”
Angel didn’t wait for anyone’s permission this time. He ran out of the library, too.
Chapter Ten
Theron couldn’t stop looking at the vampire on the way home. The one Lasius guarded jealously.
Dimitri walked on Lasius’s other side, and Theron didn’t know what to do about him.
He understood the man’s confusion, even his anger, but at the same time, Lasius was Theron’s friend. He’d known the man a lot longer than Dimitri had.
Theron wanted to protect his friend. He wanted to stick up for him, but at the same time, this was completely fucked. He couldn’t believe this was even happening.
Lasius growled at him when he noticed that Theron had been staring too long.
“What?”
Theron shook his head, forcing himself not to look at the vampire that Lasius held by the throat.
“Nothing.”
They’d managed to convince Lasius to let them near the vampire long enough to search him and strip him of all of his weapons, but Lasius was the one who demanded the right to get the vampire out of his black protective gear so he could search for weapons beneath it. There was nothing, but that didn’t mean they were going to let the vampire get dressed in that getup again.
Which was why the vampire walked with only his black mask in place to protect from the sun. Otherwise, he was in his underwear and a T-shirt. Not exactly the right kind of clothes if he wanted to escape in the middle of the day.
Dimitri held the suit as though it was dirty.
Theron hated this. He hated it so much, probably more than that vampire Lasius forced to walk with them. Beneath that mask, Theron was sure the bastard was glaring at him.
Like he was supposed to care.
The omegas in the house who already had a problem with Sorin were going to throw a fit. This was crazy.
Lasius had found his mate. With a goddamned vampire.
That was just fucking wonderful.
When they made it back to the house, Seth, Evzen, and the others who had gone into the tunnel they’d found beneath the pool table were already there waiting for them. Because, of course, they were. That tunnel was in the house. The thing that made Theron stop in his tracks were the four other men in black.
“What the hell?”
Dimitri groaned. “Are you serious? More of them?”
Lasius squinted his eyes. “No, they’re not wearing masks, and look, they’ve got wolf ears on their heads.”
Theron frowned. “Jesus, what else happened when we were gone?”
He stepped out into the light to meet the others, as did Dimitri. When Lasius tried, the vampire who had been so docile up until now, as though he’d been in shock, pulled back.
Lasius stopped, looked back at him, and then tugged hard. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t! It’s bright!”
Theron growled at the vampire. He waited for Lasius to say something comfortingly to him, to tell him that he could put the rest of his clothes back on or something.
Lasius shocked Theron when he growled at the man he’d thrown himself on top of, claiming to be a mate. “Then hurry up and we can get inside.”
He tugged the vampire harder, yanking him out into the sun. Nothing happened to the man’s face, but his skin immediately began to smoke and turn red.
Shit.
Lasius power-walked with the vampire, still holding him by the throat. Seth, Evzen, and the others stopped short at the sight of him. Lasius didn’t stop walking. “I’ll explain later,” he called.
“Is that a vampire?” Seth asked, incredulous.
“I said I’ll explain later!”
Seth growled, his eyes changing to a dangerous shade of red as some of his ruby-colored scales appeared. He looked as though he was about to follow after Lasius until Evzen grabbed his shoulder and pointed to Theron and Dimitri.
The scowl didn’t entirely go away, but he did calm down a little bit as Theron and Dimitri approached.
A little.
“Someone please tell me what the fuck that was.”
Right. Seth didn’t sound too pleased. “He found—”
“Theron!”
Theron stopped before he could say another word. He leaned to the side, looking past Seth, and his heart jumped a little at the sight of his mate running to him.
It was like a magnetic effect took over. How could he not run back to Angel when his mate flew to him like that?
Theron went to him, meeting his mate halfway, and then was nearly knocked off his feet when Angel jumped into his arms.
Even with his much smaller size and less weight, the force of him was intense.
And Theron loved it.
“You’re back!”
Angel sounded disbelieving.
“Of course I’m back.” Had he really been that worried? Theron didn’t like knowing that his mate had been so worried, but at the same time, some small part of himself took pleasure in that. His mate worried for him, had thought of him.
What could be better than knowing that?
“Don’t ever leave again!” Angel begged, tightening his arms around Theron’s neck, burying his face there.
And Theron’s heart exploded. He gripped his mate by a fistful of his pretty ginger hair then pulled his mouth back and crushed their lips together.
Angel’s eyes flew wide, as though he hadn’t expected to be kissed at all, but then he relaxed into it, his eyes sliding shut, his hands holding on to the back of Theron’s head, as though to m
ake sure he didn’t go anywhere.
Right where Theron wanted him.
No, that wasn’t quite right. Where he wanted his mate was back in their bedroom, alone, so they could continue letting the mating heat run its course.
Seth cleared his throat.
The kiss Theron shared with his mate broke off suddenly. He turned to look at the alpha, who had a raised brow. “Do you need a minute?”
Theron glanced down at Angel, who quickly nodded.
Theron turned back to Seth. “That’s a yes.”
Seth rolled his eyes. “All right, fine, whatever. I’ll get the info I need from Dimitri. Go finish off with Angel. I can smell you already.”
Theron grinned. “Thank you, alpha. Come on, Angel.”
He grabbed his mate by the hand and started to run for the door to the mansion with the same speed and desperation Lasius had.
Though he didn’t much want to think about that right now.
“Explain what?” Angel asked, not knowing the trauma rushing through Theron’s mind. “What’s he talking about?”
“I’ll explain later.” Theron pushed the door open, rushing inside, and then he got the idea to turn around and pick his mate up.
At least this way he could run a little faster as he carried Angel, instead of making the poor man try to keep up.
“I need you right now after that,” Theron said, making it to the stairs and taking them three at a time to get to their floor.
Angel put his arms back around Theron’s neck. “Me, too.”
Theron stopped at their door. He looked down at his mate, and he didn’t know why it shocked him to hear such words out of his mouth.
He smiled anyway. Of course he should have seen that coming. Their mating heat had barely begun, and if Theron needed Angel’s body after that, then it only made sense that Angel was going to be in a similar boat.
He had been worrying his head off about Theron, after all.
Theron opened the door, letting them both inside, shutting it, locking it. He never took his eyes away from Angel’s.
And the way Angel’s palm stroked his cheek, his jaw, and then his hair, it was wonderful.