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Having to explain to just Kiko was humiliating enough, not that she hadn’t been cool about it. Her reaction to Jem’s behavior was to be worried about Jem––versus being smug about Nick being treated like garbage by the guy who’d thrown her over, or smug because Nick was the piece of shit who nearly killed her while he was a newborn vampire, or relieved she’d made a narrow escape from both of them.

However much Kiko might still harbor some resentment towards Jem or Nick or both of them, sheknewJem.

She knew it wasn’t like him to do something like that.

In the end, Nick had to talk her down from putting out some kind of company-wide bulletin to find his fucking mate. He ended up having to tell her, again with some embarrassment, that it wasn’t the first time Jem had done something like that to him recently.

He also asked if she’d keep it to herself for now.

Talking to Jem himself, when he’d finally returned to the house, had been as much of a waste of time as every other one of Jem’s bizarre disappearing acts. Jem acted surprised Nick hadn’t known he’d gone. He acted surprised Nick “felt he’d left him there,” like that was just some subjectivefeelingNick had about what happened. Jem acted likeNickwas the crazy one; he accused Nick of having a temper tantrum because Jem left early.

Nick fought to get mad about it, to get mad at Jem.

He wasn’t mad, though, not if he was being honest with himself.

He was fucking worried.

Maybe not for the same reasons Kiko had been that night, but he was definitely worried.

He even wondered if Jem had something physically wrong with him. A brain tumor? Did seers get those? Was it some kind of early-onset Alzheimers? Did seers get that? Was there some seer-specific disease Nick knew nothing about?

Fuck, was it somethinghehad done to Jem?

Did it have something to do with him feeding on Jem, as part of their fucking kink with one another? Had he somehow poisoned his mate? The thought worried him a lot. He’d been worried about something like that happening pretty much from the beginning of his relationship with Jem, but Jem always insisted Nick’s venom didn’t affect him like that, and from what Nick had seen, that had been true.

Even now, Jem wasn’t acting like a vampire venom addict.

Nick had seen venom addicts, and they didn’t act like this.

Hell, they acted pretty much theoppositeof whatever this was.

A venom addict would sooner stab themselves in the eye than leave “their” vampire anywhere, particularly in a way that might risk that vampire’s health. They would never doanythingto risk their relationship with the vampire whose venom they’d grown addicted to, or even risk offending them, not if they could possibly help it. Venom addicts were obnoxiously submissive. They were hyper-focused on their partner’s every mood, whim, word, facial expression. Really, they acted more like slaves.

Whatever was going on with Jem, it sure as fuck didn’t look like that.

Nick had just made up his mind to talk to Miri about it, and probably Black, too, since Black knew a lot more about seers and their quirks, when Black sent Jem to New York.

He probably should’ve talked to them, anyway, while Jem was still on the East Coast, but then they’d found that girl, and everything else got sidelined while they tore Rucker’s place apart and Miri spent the rest of the day babysitting their new charge.

Nick was still thinking about when he should try to pull Miri aside…

When he must have fallen asleep.

Just like when he was human, Nick didn’t know he’d been asleep until something woke him up.

Unlike when he was human, it was harder for Nick to wake up as a vampire.

Maybe he got more disoriented because of that.

Maybe he was slower on the uptake, too.

He wasdefinitelyeasier to throw off balance.

That was doubly true when he woke up smelling seer all around him.

It was even more true when that seer felt familiar, and safe.

For all of those reasons, and maybe a few more, it took him a few seconds longer than it should have to connect his being awake to his very hard cock, the realization he wasn’t alone, that this wasn’t a dream. There were hands on him, actual physical hands. His mind immediately went to Jem. It took him a few seconds longer to realize there was something off with those hands, even as he realized they were undressing him.