by Joyee Flynn
Marius Brothers 4
Victor
Victor Marius has watched as three of his brothers and some of their friends found their mates. He is happy for them. He truly is. But, as the oldest brother, he had thought that he would have found his mate by now.
Malachi is half demon, and he has known nothing but pain and horror. Finding a chance to flee the cave where he's been a prisoner since birth, Malachi runs until the sun and its harmful rays take him down.
When Victor sees the man lying on the side of the road, he stops to help but realizes something's not right. He's a demon. The man may smell like a demon, but he also smells like something else entirely...Victor's mate.
Can Victor get past Malachi being half demon, and how can a soulless demon have a mate?
Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 36,683 words
VICTOR
Marius Brothers 4
Joyee Flynn
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
VICTOR
Copyright © 2011 by Joyee Flynn
E-book ISBN: 1-61034-364-6
First E-book Publication: March 2011
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
To Dr. Christian Newton & everyone else at the Mountain View Vet: Thank you for helping to save Marius' life and getting us to the specialist he needed. We would never have made it through this without you, and I wouldn't have made it through without your support. You never complain about the middle of the night on-call phone calls you get from me, freaking out once again because I'm scared. And I swear your staff doesn't even seem like they roll their eyes when they hear my name.
Plus the way pup loves on everyone when we have an apt, shows me the quality of care you give when I'm not there. Thank you for giving him the continued help he needs to recover fully and constantly checking up on us and his progress. You've all gone way above and beyond and it's very apparent this is more than just a job to everyone in that office. You guys are the best part of my move to small town, WY.
VICTOR
Marius Brothers 4
JOYEE FLYNN
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 1
Everyone was finding their mates, well, everyone but me it seemed. Micah had found his by landing his ass in Riley’s old hospital. Which was great, of course, because Riley helped heal my brother, too, so I was grateful they found each other. Remus found Noah Dragos when they were on a Council sanctioned mission. And the kicker was Noah had been living a few miles away the whole time.
And again, I was thrilled that they found each other, I’ve never seen Remus so happy. A few months later Stefan went on a soul searching trip to New York to explore his repressed sexuality. He went to a human sex club and found his mate being held prisoner and brutalized. I mean how random is that?
Patrick is a great person, exactly what my brother needed. He’s full of life, always eager to help out, and just a ball of energy. Riley found out Patrick was half vampire when he checked out Stefan’s mate, being a doctor and all. And then by some miracle, with Riley’s genius brain and modern science, Riley was able to force Patrick’s conversion to full vampire. Patrick was adapting to being a vampire like fish to water, and they were monumentally happy.
Even Dillon, Noah’s older brother, had just found his mates on a mission to Ireland while I was gone. Identical twin mates. He got two, and I had none. Caleb went over to help with a mission along with my mated brothers and ended up having mates in the same family. I was happy for my friends; they deserved all the joy mating would bring.
And I was miserable. I was jealous. And it made me feel like a complete douche bag. I was happy for them. I really was with all my heart. It wasn’t like I wanted to steal one of my brother’s mates. I just wanted to be happy, too. Shouldn’t the oldest find their mate first? I mean that seemed only fair to me. Isn’t that the old adage, age before beauty?
I knew I wasn’t ugly by any means, and my brothers weren’t really any prettier than I was, since we all have the same chestnut brown hair and kelly green eyes. But I am the oldest. It was me, then Stefan, Gabriel, Micah, Virgil, Remus, and the baby Damian. I was eight hundred and ninety-five years old, and I thought it was my time to be happy and settle down.
Did I say that to any of them? Hell no, I wasn’t a complete bastard.
But it was hard to be around them in all their mating happiness and honeymoon antics all the time. So when the Council asked for a volunteer to investigate rumors of a pack of demons around the Mohegan Bluffs of Rhode Island, I immediately raised my hand.
There were normal vampires who ranged in all shapes and sizes, just like humans did. Then there were some of us who were born warriors. When we went through our transitions at puberty to become full vampires who needed blood to survive, some of us grew massive. I’d been about five six before my
transition at sixteen and then ended at six eight after it was over. Our large stature and ability to bulk on major muscle was what determined we would be warriors of our race.
Why did strong, fast, almost invincible vampires need their own warriors? Demons.
Demons were actually vampires once—vampires who decided they didn’t want blood to feed like the rest of us. They wanted it for the power, for the kill. Vampires, enforced by our various High Councils, lived by a strict code: Do no harm to humans, and hide all evidence of our existence from humans. In recent decades with blood banks everywhere, most owned by founding vampire families, we didn’t need to drink from humans to survive anymore.
My father, Desmond Marius, had been one of the first vampires to start a medical company that had a plethora of blood banks. While the family made a lot of money selling the blood to covens all over the country, a lot of good was also done.
He had instituted a program to pay college students great money for them to go donate every couple of weeks. Most inner cities had programs where you could get paid if you donated, but it was normally just a few bucks. Mother and Father had thought if there were any healthy adults who could use some extra pocket money, it was college kids. And it was all regulated so no one tried to donate too much and got hurt.
Most of the blood didn’t end up going to vampires, probably less than twenty-five percent. The vast majority of it went for free to under-funded trauma centers. Father had always said that setting up the company had been a way to help us survive and hide who we were from the general population, but that didn’t mean we didn’t have a responsibility to help others out. We were getting a lot from the human population, it was important to give back.
My family lived by that code in everything they did. Hell, my parents had seven children who all turned out to be warriors and served their race for centuries upon centuries. It was the right thing to do. We were born to help our people, so it never came into question that we would. And while some demons had once understood that, they chose the path to evil.
They liked the thrill of the chase and slaughtering of humans, who just weren’t built to stop us if we wanted to hurt them. But even like psycho humans, demons weren’t right in the head and chose this life. Demons were what human legends of vampires were based on. Blood-sucking, vile creatures that lost their souls and would burn from sunlight or holy objects.
Vampires were different. We could die of course, just not how most legends said. Garlic was nothing to us, crosses didn’t hurt, silver was no big thing, and we could be in the sunlight. Granted, the sunlight wasn’t our favorite thing because we were quite sensitive to it, but we certainly didn’t burst into flames. There just probably weren’t too many vampires who lived in the tropics.
Every vampire had one or two special gifts of their own. Mine was fire. I could control a flame from yards away or could shoot it from my hands like a flame thrower. Micah could scramble minds of people, which was useful in battle as well. Remus could talk to animals. While a neat parlor trick, it wasn’t a great gift for field work unless we needed a distraction sometimes.
My father had one of the coolest gifts in my opinion, he could manipulate the ground. It was like he could cause a square mile earthquake that was so violent no one could move. Stefan’s was right up there in the cool factor as well, being able to control the wind. My mother, tiny Elena Marius, could create ice. She could build a wall of two-foot, solid ice around herself in less than a minute. It was a trip to watch.
The gift I had worked very well since demons tended to light up faster than a dry, dead Christmas tree. Though my brother, Stefan, and Riley had designed ultraviolet ammunition and grenades that helped in the war against demons and allowed some of the smaller, more remote covens to protect themselves. For centuries it seemed that we were fighting an uphill battle, but now with these inventions, the tables were turning.
I was about a half hour away from the Mohegan Bluffs on a deserted road when I saw a figure lying on the side of the road. What the fuck? Quickly pulling over, I slammed on my brakes and hopped out of the car. I made sure to grab my 9mm just in case and ran over to him.
The sour scent of blood hit my nose, though not as strong as it normally was with demons. And it was the middle of the day. If it was a demon they should have been a pile of ash.
What the fuck?
As I got closer, I saw steam coming off the small, barely clothed, and beaten body. Approaching slowly and cautiously, I almost jumped when the man rolled over and looked at me. Shit, he was a demon.
“Wait,” he croaked out when I raised my gun. “I’ve never killed anyone, warrior. I swear it to you! I was born this way.”
“Demons are dead, they can’t have children,” I growled as something else hit me at the same time. While his blood smelled somewhat rancid, it called to me, smelling sweet at the same time. Fuck! This man was my mate!
“M–my mother was pregnant when she became a demon.” He gasped, holding his side. “I escaped, but the sun was too much for me. I’ve never hurt a living soul in my life or even drank from a human. They’ve kept me prisoner since the day I was born. Please, help me. I can’t go back there.”
“That’s not possible,” I whispered, feeling the draw to my mate. I desperately wanted to believe him, and there were signs that he wasn’t a full demon. He was still alive in the sun even if his skin was smoking, and he had a nasty-ass sunburn. The man also didn’t have the typical red eyes of a demon, they were midnight blue. “What is your name?”
“Malachi Owens,” he answered, his eyes filling with tears as he kept gasping for breath. “You’re my mate, aren’t you? You smell so sweet to me, and it’s not just from thirst, because I can tell the difference. Please, if I was a soulless demon, I wouldn’t have a mate.”
“You try anything and I will end you, mate or not. Are we clear?”
“Yes, I’m too weak and starved to hurt you,” Malachi whimpered. I eyed him over, taking in his bright eyes, small button nose, plush lips, and sort of chubby cherub cheeks. He was gorgeous, even in his dirty state, and I felt myself get hard. I guessed he was no more than five-five and under a hundred pounds. My instincts were screaming to hold my mate, feed him massive amounts of food, and take care of him.
“Okay,” I said with a nod as I tucked my gun in the back of my pants. I closed the gap between us, bent down, and lifted him into my arms. Malachi felt perfect in my embrace, like he was destined to be there. He cried out in pain, and I loosened my hold on him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” he whispered in my ear as he wrapped his arms around my neck.
“For what?” I asked, completely confused as I walked back to the rental car.
“For this,” Malachi answered and sunk his fangs into my neck.
I cried out as my cock instantly exploded in my jeans from my mate drinking from me, as vast pleasure swarmed me. It was so intense I almost fell to my knees and dropped him, but I was able to keep myself upright and leaned against the car. I kept coming and coming, shooting so much seed in my jeans that I didn’t know my balls could carry that much.
“Now you won’t kill me,” he whispered as he licked his bite. “But you won’t love me ever, either, for doing this to you.”
“Probably not,” I snarled as I came back down from my orgasm. “You know mating without someone’s permission is a death offense.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Malachi said as I opened the passenger’s door and gently put him inside. “I literally have lived in a cave all my life. I know nothing about anything except I’ve fought to survive all these years, and while I never wanted my mating to be that way, I want to live.”
“Cave? I was sent here by our Council to investigate claims of demons living in the Mohegan Bluffs.”
I closed the door and walked around to the other side before he could answer, giving him time to think about what I said while I had a moment to digest that I was now mate
d. Leaning my head against the top of the car, I felt a pit of despair form in my stomach. I’d waited all of these years to find my mate, desperately wanting to find them. And I was mated to a half demon, which I still wasn’t sure if that was even possible, who just mated me without my consent.
What the fuck?
This wasn’t the mating I’d always dreamed of. And I’d pictured it a lot over the past eight hundred and ninety-five years, the fantasies keeping me going when I sunk low and wanted to resign myself to never finding my mate. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen! I jumped when I realized he was still in the sun sitting in the car and got in. Fuck me! Him biting me already had mating instinct kicking in that I wanted to put his needs before mine.
“I know where they are,” Malachi panted as I got in the car. “I’ll help you find them. I hope you kill them all. If nothing else, maybe it will show you that I’m not one of them. And they have prisoners.”
“This just keeps getting better and better,” I growled as I reached into the back seat and grabbed my jacket. Turning back to him, I gently covered up his exposed skin from the burning sun. He cried out in pain, and I felt it like a knife to my heart. Great, so not only did he mate me, I was feeling things for him already. “Sorry, but it’s better than you burning more.”
“I know, thank you,” he whispered as he turned his head and peeked out from under my coat. Malachi’s eyes were swarming with tears as he bit his bottom lip. “I am sorry. I know what I did was horrible, but I knew you wouldn’t kill me if we mated.”