Annie was their wife. Someone they all loved and shared. Two hundred years before, they’d met a woman and married her, and then what? “Annie was human.” There was only one thing that would make her leave them, and it was inevitable.
“She was when we met her.” Hudson took the story over from Valen. “She may have been younger than you, I’m not sure. She seemed younger, looking back, but she was probably in her early twenties when we came into town.”
She was when we met her. “She became a vampire.” How?
“Yes,” Hudson answered. “We made her a vampire.”
“You did?” Of course they did, but for some reason, it surprised her. They’d hinted at her humanity bothering them.
“Yes,” Hudson answered. “We met her. Courted her. Fell in love. Married her.”
“How did you manage that?” she asked. “Two hundred years ago…”
“It was easier back then,” Hudson said, and then seeing her disbelief, chuckled. “It was. Sylvain, Marcus, and I were Valen’s brothers. It was enough that he married her, officially, and then we all lived together on a farm, way out in the wilderness. It wasn’t unheard of for families to stay together, especially bachelor farmers who shared land.”
“Oh.” What he described made sense, and she didn’t know enough about history to disagree. She tried to remember her classic literature. Hadn’t Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights lived with his son and Catherine’s brother for years? That would have been three males and one woman, so maybe it wasn’t shocking for a woman to live with her husband and three bachelor brother-in-laws. And if they were far away from town, no one would notice they were all in love with Annie.
“Even now, we can live together as roommates, and it doesn’t raise eyebrows,” Hudson said.
True enough. Their situation was a bit like a romantic comedy, but on the surface, it certainly looked like she was merely a lucky grad student who’d won the roommate lottery.
So Annie was a human they’d turned into a vampire. But the way they spoke of her… she was dead. “Did Asher kill her?” she asked, immediately wishing she’d kept the question to herself. Sylvain glanced away, unable to hold her eyes. Valen frowned and shook his head slowly.
“No.” Hudson’s voice was quiet. He sat on the edge of the couch and smoothed his hand down Briar’s hair. “No. She stepped into the sunlight.”
Why? Her mind was whirling with questions. To be given eternal life, and then give it all up. To give up the guys? The guys talked about how good she smelled, and she saw them struggle with their hunger, but there were times when she forgot they were vampires. Today, strolling to class with Sylvain, all she could think about was how lucky she was. What had happened to Annie, what had she experienced, that made her want to give up everything?
“She didn’t want to be a vampire,” Sylvain said. “We never asked her. Valen married her, and we changed her.”
“What?” Tiny bits of information she’d caught in the past fell into place. Sylvain’s protectiveness and unwillingness to discuss his past until recently. Marcus—when he’d lost it and reminded her he wasn’t human.
This was why.
What would she do if they changed her without asking? What if they changed her by mistake? Perhaps… “Did you change her on purpose?”
“Yes,” Hudson answered. “We’d found her, and we were truly a family. I never wanted it to end.”
“You all discussed it ahead of time?” she asked.
“Yes,” Marcus answered. “While we were courting her. She was so innocent, but when we told her we all loved her…” He smiled, green eyes lighting up. “She loved us, too. All of us. We thought we’d finally found everything we were looking for.”
“But we never told her what we were,” Valen said.
“You never…” Briar lifted one eyebrow. She didn’t want to think ill about Annie, but how would she not notice? “You were courting her. At night. Only at night.”
“That’s when most people courted, Briar,” Hudson answered, dryly. “They worked from sunup to sundown.”
Okay. “So it came as a surprise when you told her what you were.”
Marcus laughed. “Yeah. You could say so.”
“Two hundred years ago… she didn’t think you were demons?” Briar tried to imagine a woman, a product of her society, but one who could buck tradition and settle down with four men like hers.
Hers. They were hers now.
“No,” Hudson answered. “Though, catch Sylvain at the right moment, and you’d swear hell had kicked him out for being too mean.”
“So you… revealed you were vampires and then bit her?” Briar asked.
“No.” Marcus cut in. He settled into a leather armchair, keeping his gaze on the floor. He held out his hands, frowning at them before turning them over to stare at his palms. “No. We married her. Fell into a vampiric sleep that left her believing we were dead. Awoke. Told her what we were.” He sucked in a breath before he went on. “Days passed, and she… she wouldn’t eat. I don’t think she slept. Until that point, she’d accepted everything about us.” Now he raised his eyes to hers, studying her reaction. Whatever he saw on her face caused him to glance away. She was shocked, yes, but she ached for them. They’d revealed their secret to Annie, and she’d rejected them.
“With each passing day, she faded a little more,” Valen said when it was clear that was all Marcus was going to say. “I thought she was dying, so ill she could no longer care for herself, and as her husbands, it was our duty to care for her. Protect her. Ensure her survival. I thought she loved us enough to do that—survive. And after we turned her, she tried. God. She tried so hard for so long. But feeding… losing the sun. It was too much for her. One day, we woke up before sunset, and she was gone.”
Grief clogged Briar’s throat. They’d made mistake after mistake, but how they’d paid for those mistakes. Paid, dearly.
“I tried to stop her,” Sylvain choked. His hands grazed his arms, like he’d reached into the daylight for her. “You held me back.”
“I couldn’t lose you, too,” Valen answered. “There was no way to save her. She was too far out. By the time—I’d have lost you, too.”
“It tore us apart,” Hudson said. “I left. That very night, I was gone.”
Marcus nodded as Hudson spoke, then leaned back in his chair. He drew one long leg up as he studied his brothers. “It destroyed us.”
Annie had walked into the sunlight, and she’d been consumed. Briar’s skin itched and pebbled with the remembered pain of a thousand burns. How much worse was it? For a moment, she could almost smell the scent of burning.
Briar thought about her own injuries. Right before they happened, everything came into focus, and then, afterward, things sharpened to a pinprick. There was only Briar and the pain. Everything outside of that disappeared.
She and Annie had more in common than falling in love with the same men. Shaking her head of the memories of her own time in the sun, Briar realized something—Marcus had said Annie’s death destroyed them, and from what Hudson alluded to, it split them apart. “But when I met you—” Their story didn’t make sense. She’d met Marcus at Hudson’s lecture, and the very first time she met Sylvain, Valen was with him. What had brought them together?
“It was another two hundred years before we could stand to be together for more than the time it took for Hudson to dose us with the medicine that let us walk in the sun.” Marcus rubbed his hands over his head. Even though Briar knew none of them slept anymore, not with the medicine, he looked exhausted. His normal golden-brown skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones, and there seemed to be shadows under his eyes.
“It was you,” Valen stated baldly. He leaned forward again, having never left his spot on the table. “You brought us together. But for real. As a family.”
As a family. Like they had when they’d found Annie. But she wasn’t Annie. They didn’t frighten her, even if she was afraid of what they could do to her heart.
Especially if she lost them.
“Have you thought about…” Briar wondered if she should ask the question that had been at the edge of her thoughts since her time with Sylvain.
“Thought about what?” Hudson asked when she struggled to go on. “Thought about what, Briar? About you being part of our family? You are. I’d hope that was clear after tonight. We’ve laid our hearts bare.”
“I mean.” She took a deep breath and rushed the next part. “Thought about making me a vampire, too. I’m already almost one… our DNA is so similar… what if you just turned me?”
“Just turned you?” Sylvain drew his brows together and shook his head. “Just turned you. Like it’s so easy.”
“No.” Marcus edged toward the end of the chair. He pinned her with an angry stare, his mouth drawn down in a frown. “Absolutely not, Briar.”
“But you said it yourself,” Briar argued. Hudson and Valen were silent, neither one meeting her eyes. “You said I was too fragile. You’re afraid of hurting me and of Asher hurting me. Of the sun hurting me. What if you didn’t have to worry?”
“Is that what you want?” Marcus asked. “To live forever? To fill yourself full of blood like a tick?”
Yes? “I want to be with you.”
“You can’t know what you want,” Sylvain said. “You’re too young. Jesus, Briar. You’re twenty-two years old. Do you know how old Hudson is? Two thousand years old. If he had a choice, do you think he’d have chosen this life?”
“Would you?” she asked Sylvain.
“No!” His answer was immediate, and it sucked the air from her lungs. “I should be with my human wife and son. No one should remember me. I should be nothing. I should be dust.”
She shook her head. A world without Sylvain was too painful to contemplate. A world without any of them hurt. They were hers. Why else had they existed all this time?
“You were made for me.” Briar turned so she could face Sylvain. When he scoffed and tried to look away, she crawled onto her knees and caught his chin between her thumb and forefinger. “You were. You’ve said it before. I smell like home. I brought you all back together.”
“We don’t deserve you, Briar,” Marcus said. “No matter how we feel about you. I won’t be so selfish as to keep you forever.”
Briar glanced up at Sylvain. He agreed with Marcus. There was a set to his jaw and a hardness to his eyes that said he was firmly in the Marcus-camp.
“But I deserve you,” she said quietly. “I’ve already been burned up in the sun, Marcus. You don’t have to be afraid of it happening again.”
“Unless you reach into a sunbeam without your gloves…” Sylvain muttered. His words were mushed because she still held his chin, so she released him.
“Right.” She mashed her lips together to keep from smiling. “Unless I do that. But you could change me, and then I could take Hudson’s medicine and never burn again.”
Hudson stood. No. He erupted from his place on the edge of the couch. He was a blur of motion, pacing from one side of the room to the other. Once, he stopped, and his face… He was in agony. His upper lip was swollen, like his fangs had descended, and he covered it with his hand.
“Hudson,” she whispered.
He shook his head, holding up his free hand. Stay back. She’d awakened the beast. Perhaps Hudson’s struggle wasn’t telling her he didn’t want her forever, but telling her he did.
“Think about what this would mean, Briar,” Valen said quietly. He lifted her into his arms and took her place on the couch. “Think about what it would mean to give up everything. Your family. Your life.”
“I wouldn’t be giving up my family,” Briar answered. “Not for a long time.”
Valen’s voice vibrated against her ear. “No, little one. You’d have to give them up before they noticed you’d stopped aging. In ten years, twenty maybe. And you want to be a scientist. Think about Hudson. Every twenty years, he has to disappear and start all over again. And it’s only going to get harder. Pretty soon, he won’t be able to do what he loves at all. The world is so interconnected. It is much harder to hide.”
“And that’s if it even works,” Marcus burst out. His knee bounced as if he couldn’t contain his nervous energy. “You saw what happens when it doesn’t work.”
Crawlers. The oozing, slithering creature that had pulled itself by its clawed fingers up her body. She could end up like one of those.
It would be worth the risk.
“Will you think about it?” Briar asked. She scanned the room and stopped at Hudson, who finally lifted his gaze to hers. “Will you think about it?”
“There’s little else I’ve thought about since I met you.” His voice was still distorted by his fangs. “But you will as well. You will weigh your request with everything that could go wrong. Everything you’d give up.”
Valen stood, hands on her waist as she got her feet under her. He kept his hands there, silently supporting her as she faced Hudson. Each of them approached her until the four of them surrounded her. She’d put them in a difficult position, but it was one that needed to be considered.
For all they loved her, each one of these men harbored a creature inside him who thirsted for her blood.
“I will,” she promised. It was enough for them. For now.
Briar left them in the living room, her mind on a million things but focused on the two very real ways she could meet her end. Asher wanted to kill her. One mistake in the sun could kill her.
Oh gosh, and she had so much homework left to do.
Briar snorted, but it wasn’t funny, because she was considering which of two possible really bad ends she could meet.
But life didn’t stop just because death threatened. Her homework would pile up if she didn’t get a few chapters of reading done. Not even a run-in with the cops, and a near fatal altercation with Asher, meant a night off from homework. Briar chuckled to herself and trudged upstairs a few minutes later. Someone would follow behind her in a second. They always did. It was just a question of whether they’d come into her room or hang out in theirs, ear to the wall and ready to pounce.
Briar walked into her room and shut the door, and suddenly, everything hit her at once.
Holy shi—moly.
The things she’d learned tonight… there was too much for her to process. She tried to picture diving into the work she had to do for classes, the work that could swiftly build into an unmanageable avalanche if she began to let it go.
But she had to.
Tonight, she had to. Because aside from Valen, Sylvain, Marcus, and Hudson’s past, Briar had to start thinking about her future.
The future she would have with them.
And whether or not it would last a human lifetime, or an eternal one.
With a sigh, she flopped onto her bed, body bouncing a little before settling into the mattress. Could she do it? Could she give up her life to be with them?
What life?
Ummm, the one I worked very hard for, thank you very much. The one with a master’s degree and then a doctorate in biology. The one where I solve the mystery of my syndrome, and as a result, no one else has to suffer the way I had to.
Briar shut her eyes. Except—it wasn’t really her syndrome was it. What she had wasn’t EPP. It was genetic mutation that mimicked the mutation on Valen, Sylvain, Hudson, and Marcus’s genes.
Mimic.
Biology was full of examples of species, which had evolved to be similar to each other. There were butterflies and moths with spots on their wings that resembled the eyes of a larger animal to scare off predators.
There were mimics that resembled predators, for example, but were completely harmless. Briar could remember photographs of snakes, one of which was toxic, and the other, which was harmless.
In biology, there were so many avenues to pursue, she couldn’t help wishing she’d paid better attention to evolutionary biology. Teasing the edges of her mind was a memory of another sort of species, on
e that evolved to resemble other species it lived alongside. If she remembered correctly, this was something bugs did, evolving to look like ants or bees.
What had been the purpose of her mutation? It couldn’t be to frighten off other predators; her scent was too appealing to the guys for this to work. And she was too weak to fight them off. Briar ran her tongue over her canines, they were sharp, but not like a vampire’s. No, her mimicry was purely at the cellular level.
So what about the type of evolution that allowed one species to resemble another species? Like the ants? Humans were like ants, there were so many of them. They swarmed, and could potentially be harmful to a vampire if they knew vampires existed. All humans needed to do was arm themselves with machine guns or daylight.
Daylight. Scent. Her scent made the guys want to bite her, but they didn’t. Why was that? Did it confound them? Cause them to hesitate instead of act? In an evolutionary sense, when a predator hesitated in its attack, the prey had an opportunity to escape. Was this what her mutation did—confuse the vampires long enough to give her a fighting chance at escape? Or perhaps there was another reason. Did her scent create protective instincts in a predator, thereby safeguarding her from attack?
It could all be much simpler than she was making this out to be. It could be a random mutation, which by chance, was similar to the guys’ mutation. They may not bite her because her vampires were good at heart and had come to care about her. There may be nothing evolutionary about it.
Briar grabbed the pillow from under her head and pressed it over her face, screeching in frustration. Her door burst open, and the pillow snatched from her grasp. “Briar!” Sylvain loomed over her, alternately examining her and studying her room for attackers.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, pushing to sit. “I was frustrated. I thought you wouldn’t hear me.”
“I heard you,” Sylvain said.
“In all fairness, he was standing outside the door debating whether or not to come in,” Valen called from the hall. “He was looking for an excuse.”
Sylvain shrugged, a half smile on his lips. “Maybe. Don’t care. I’m in here, and you’re out there.”
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