Page 7 of Make Me Bleed (Sanctuary #2)
CHAPTER 6
GIRL TALK
B ridget takes me by the elbow, guiding me gently toward her couch.
“Sit.”
I fold my skirt under me and lower myself to the cushion.
She frowns. Of the two of us, she’s always been the more forceful one. Grateful that I invited her to share my apartment with me, giving her her own bedroom in the Sanguine at below market rate, she never bossed me around or anything. We were friends, even if I’m more of an introvert and homebody and Bridget is an extrovert who makes no apologies for herself.
From the moment we met, I adored that about her. She didn’t know me. She had no idea that I was a vampire, or that as handsy as Peter was, I was in no danger from him. He talks a big game, and I believe him when he says he’ll never give up, but he won’t hurt me. Honestly? He can’t.
Did that stop her from bursting in on the scene, saving the day? It didn’t, and as soon as she mentioned she was looking for a place to stay, I knew how I could repay her. Unless a vamp vouches for you or you have an in with the other humans, it’s nearly impossible for an outsider to succeed in a Fang City. Bridget mentioned how everywhere she went to visit, hoping they had an opening in their housing, turned her down for one reason or another.
I knew the reason. She was human. Even if the other vampires could tell she was a witch, it wouldn’t change a thing. She didn’t have fangs so she didn’t have an apartment.
Until me. I offered her my spare room because I appreciated her help—and because a van Duren always settles their debts. I owed Bridget. And while I never expected how close we would become in the time since, I’m grateful to her for her friendship.
In Alaska, finding herself with her magic, she’s more in her element than she was in Clarity. I’m the one who’s been lost and thirsty, struggling to make the most of it. Anything was better than going back to the lonely life I was living before I met Bridget so when she admitted she was staying here in Conall, of course I couldn’t leave.
Now? Knowing that Hank makes his home—his den —in the woods surrounding Dyea, how can I leave?
But how can I go with him?
And if I can’t, what happens then? Everything I heard about shifters, especially the males, said they were proprietary and possessive, devoted and unable to resist the urge to be near their mates as often as possible. Take Conall. Even before Bridget knew the wolf shifter was her fated mate, he would stand outside the house we shared. He followed her into the caves to help her search for the magic crystal she needed, and in Dyea, he was her constant shadow, hiding behind his role as head of security.
Hank… he just left me.
Our one-way blood-bond is stretched. If I focus, I could probably pinpoint the exact spot he’s gone, but the fact that it’s outside of the sanctuary’s borders is enough. He left me, whether he thought he was being a good mate to me or not. He left, and with a jab to the side and a whispered argument, Bridget makes her mate go.
Once the door closes behind the scowling Conall, I peer up at Bridget through the fringe of my eyelashes. “Did you just kick your wolf out of his own den?”
Bridget shrugs impishly. “I had to. This whole sitch screams ‘girl talk’ and I know you. If Conall’s lurking around, you’ll do that thing where you hold up your head, making your neck impossibly long and slender, while pretending like everything’s okay. But, babe, I don’t think everything’s okay.” Plopping down next to me, she bumps her shoulder against mine. “Come on. Open up. Tell Bridge all about it.”
Even before I knew she was capable of conjuring fire, I’ve always seen how Bridget burns for those she cares about—and I’ve never felt safer standing near where her heat can warm up my chilled skin. Sitting next to her, I instinctively search for her heat, leaning next to her.
Bridget reaches down, patting my thigh. “It’s a shock, ain’t it? When you realize that you’re looking at the only guy you’re gonna fuck for the rest of your life.”
Her tone is so casual, yet so supportive. But her words…
My lips were pursed together when her comment landed. My explosive chuckle ends up half-stifled, half-guffawed, a most unholy sound escaping me.
She grins. “Made you laugh.”
That she did.
She pats me again. “But in all honesty, I mean it. The idea of forever is pretty fucking daunting. Like, what if I wake up and I’m allergic to fur? Or Conall loses his rose-colored glasses and realizes that I’m a pain in the ass.” It’s Bridge’s turn to chuckle. “Literally. Every time I see the scar on his ass, I have to fight the urge to go down on my knees and kiss it to apologize. Then again, considering how much he’s learned to like it when I drop to my knees…”
When it comes to everything else in this world, Bridget can’t help but think that I’m too sweet and innocent for it. The only exception? Sex. Bridget knows all about my extensive sex life, and how I’ve been celibate ever since I ended my arrangement with Peter.
Her patting becomes a teasing prod with two fingers. “It’s a good thing that vampires breathe more out of habit than out of necessity. I mean, you?” She holds up her hand, her pointer finger and thumb about an inch apart. “And him?” Now her right palm is flat, her left palm is flat, and she holds them about a foot away from each other. “If he’s at all proportional, I can’t see how you won’t choke on his dick when you blow him.”
Is now not the time to tell Bridget that a vamp’s ability to hold their breath comes in handy when it comes to swimming and fucking? My first glimpse of Hank’s cock tells me that he has plenty to work with, but I’ve serviced fatter and longer before?
I’m not worried about taking him, either in my pussy or my mouth or anywhere else he wants to stick himself in me. It’s more about where he’ll want to bed me…
I could admit my worries to Bridget. Instead, I simply say, “It is proportionate.” My fangs grow about another half-inch at the memory. “And it’s glorious.”
“You already saw it?” Bridget asks in awe before she corrects herself a moment later. “Duh. He was a bear when you ate him. Fed from him. Whatever. And then he… what? Shifted?”
I nod.
“And you got to see li’l Hank?”
I give my head a royal shake. “Trust me, Bridge. He’s not so little.”
She laughs. “Sorry. It’s a joke between Conall and me.” Waving her hand, knocking aside my curious question before I can ask, she says, “So. You bit the bear.”
Okay. I guess the time for joking around is over. Bridget’s tone has turned serious.
So I do what I’ve been dying to do since I ran into her new home. Groaning, I bury my face in my hands.
Her hand goes behind my back, rubbing circles. “It’s okay. I’m not offended you passed up my sweet blood for Hank. For the record, though? I’m glad. I wasn’t kidding earlier. You were getting too thirsty.”
She doesn’t know the half of it.
Without Conall here, his presence giving silent judgment, I sit up again and tell Bridget everything. Well, almost everything. I leave out the details involving Julian’s unexpected visit outside of my house. That’s vamp business, and since I’m sure Bridget will share most of what I tell her with her mate—and I’m okay with that as long as he’s not scowling at me when she does—I don’t want to involve the shifter head of security into whatever stunt Julian thinks he’s pulling.
So, leaving that out, I explain my rationale. How, if the small bunnies were enough for me to subside on, a larger animal might be enough to keep the thirst at bay even longer. She covered her mouth, audibly giggling when I detailed my face-off with the moose, and shook her head slightly as I told her I was willing to piss off a slumbering grizzly instead.
“Whether he was hibernating or it was that torpor-thing he mentioned, all I can tell you is that his snoring put yours to shame,” I tease.
Bridget looks slightly indignant. “I don’t snore.”
It’s my turn to pat her on her pants. “If Conall says that, he’s lying. Probably because he’s lying and he doesn’t want to hurt you, but he’s lying.” I grin, showing off my fangs. “Vamp, remember? I can’t lie.”
“Fine. Then I snore. But if you can’t lie, tell me this: is Hank your mate like he claims?”
Crap. That’s what I get for poking fun at the witch. I forget that Bridget pokes back.
If I don’t answer, she’ll know the truth anyway, gleaning it from my silence.
I sigh. “I was always told by my parents that there would be a moment when I drank a sip of blood and I’d know instantly it belonged to my beloved. That it would be the most delicious taste I’d ever known…” I shudder out a breath. “If I could drink Hank every day for the rest of my existence, I’d never be thirsty or want anything else again.”
As Bridge thinks over what I just said, I do the same.
My parents… I’ve never cared who or what my mate is. Mama and Papa, on the other hand? They’ve had great visions of me becoming the beloved to a powerful Cadre leader. Not Thorn, because he’s centuries older than me and saw me grow from a fledgling to a mature vampire, but there are plenty of Fang Cities all over the world.
Just before I met Bridget, they mentioned there was a Cadre leader in Holland searching for a beloved that wanted me to meet. I refused, insisting I was too delicate to fly from the States overseas to their homeland, but I knew that, eventually, they would insist on it…
“Could you?”
Hm?
“Could I what?”
“You’re the one who mentioned it… could you drink Hank every day of the rest of your existence?” At my puzzled expression, she explains further. “You’re a vamp, right? You look like you’re twenty-two, twenty-three, even though you’re seventy-four. You’re immortal. What about Hank?”
Oh. Is that what she’s worried about?
That’s another reason why most supes don’t intermingle. Vampires are technically immortal. I can’t get sick. I can be in pain, and I can suffer, but I can’t die unless someone drains me of every last drop of blood or my head is hacked off. Shifters are equally as hard to kill, but they don’t live as long as we do. Due to their delayed aging and regenerative properties, they usually reach about one-fifty, maybe two hundred.
Bridget will die. One day, she’ll be a memory, and I’ll live on. I knew that going into our friendship, but she’s not even thirty human years yet. Now that she’s bonded to Conall, her lifespan will match his.
And if I take Hank as my beloved, his will match mine.
“When a vampire bonds with their mate, the exchange makes our partner as immortal as we are. I can live without him. But Hank? If I die, so will he.”
“Whoa.” Bridge leans back in the seat. “Heavy.”
Not so much. I mean, I have no intention of dying, and if I do agree to be Hank’s true mate, he’ll do everything he can to keep me safe. Like I said, that’s how they’re wired.
“Okay, then. You found your mate… and it’s a bear .”
“Yes,” I say, deadpan. “Thank you for reminding me.”
A bear with a Southern drawl who lives in a cave out in the woods being the fated mate to a coddled vampire whose idea of camping out is lying on my couch in the heated cabin, watching a streaming show on the television in the living room…
“So. What’s got you so tightened up?” She scrunches her face, closing her body up, mimicking my pose. “He said he could smell your fear. Conall could, too. What’s up, Elise?” Relaxing again, Bridget gives me a knowing look. “Is it the cave?”
Surprised, I look at her. “How did you guess?”
“I didn’t guess. I could tell. You face,” she adds. “You’re already super pale, but you lost all your color when he mentioned bringing you home. Since he doesn’t live in Dyea, and Conall said he knows him from the woods, I thought about where a bear might make his den. Not the underground caves, since I would’ve known that after all the time I spent down there with Conall. But there are a couple above ground. He told me we might have to check them once, but we never had the chance.” She rubs her thumb over the orange crystal hanging off the chain around her neck. “Then we didn’t need to.”
I sigh. “Well, you’re absolutely right. I saw the cave. He was sleeping on a rock just outside it. If he thinks I can go there…”
“So? Don’t.”
“What?”
“You heard me. He seems to accept you pretty readily as his mate. Use that. Let him know that Elise van Duren isn’t sleeping with him on the floor of the cave or however it is the bears sleep. You have a house. He might brush his head against the ceiling, but he’ll fit. Tell him that if he wants you, he comes to you.”
How can I tell that to a dominant male shifter who came after me one, then left ?
When I stay quiet, Bridget asks, “Is that it? Is that the only thing holding you back?”
She’s serious again, and I give her question a good amount of contemplation before I look at her, lost.
“I don’t know.”
“I get it, Elise. I do. And no one is saying you have to rush into mating. I mean, I did once I knew I was meant for Conall and pulled my head out of ass, accepting he was the one for me. But you… maybe you should figure that out.”
Maybe I should.
I stay with Elise until Conall returns, admitting that he lurked just behind Hank, watching to make sure that the bear returned back to the deeper part of the wild where I stumbled upon him.
I’m not surprised that he did so. After all, he’s the head of security in Dyea. And while he mentions his suspicion that Hank was able to breach the borders because the boundary spell recognized that he was my mate following after me—another point in the ‘he’s mine’ column—he still has to keep the rest of the town’s safety in mind. Especially now that Hank is a bear shifter who is apart from his mate, Conall wanted to make sure he keeps his distance.
And if Bridget hugs her mate, showing him gratitude for protecting her friend at the same time, I avoid the searching stare Conall shoots me over her head.
Now that I know Hank’s gone for the moment, I decide it’s time to go home. Of course, Bridget offers to walk me home. Conall joins us, eager to be near his mate again after she booted him from their home. Walking just behind them, I’m quiet until I say my soft goodbyes, then let myself into my house.
I take a shower. Change into my pajamas. Drink a glass of water out of habit because, for the first time in months, I… I’m actually not thirsty. Hank’s blood is still flooding through me, and if I don’t know how to think about that, that’s fine. I just curl up on the couch, grab my remote, and start mindlessly scrolling through one of my streaming apps.
I lose track of time after that, lost in thought as I am. The mate bond keeps pulling at me, almost like Hank himself is calling me to him. I try to shove it away, doing my best to ignore it, but when my mind is consumed by the memory of his deep voice and that sexy drawl, it’s tough.
Which is why, when the sensation that someone is lurking near my house, I can’t help but think that the bear shifter has returned to Dyea. It worries me that my first instinct is to run to him. I mean, we just met. Just met. I shouldn’t want him to disregard my confusion and follow me. That’s what made me grow to wish I’d never met Peter… and, yet, I rise up from the couch, tiptoeing toward the window, and pull back the curtain.
A silhouette stands beneath the half-moon peeking through the dark clouds up above.
For a split second, I inexplicably hope that it is Hank. Only for a split second, though, as I realize that the figure is too short, too slender to be my bear.
His hair is too fair.
His eyes too pale.
Julian.
It’s Julian .
He’s watching my house. Why? No idea. He shouldn’t be here.
Did he see me? I’m hoping I’m quick enough in dropping the curtain and back away that he didn’t, but as fast as I am, I’m not as fast as the other vamp.
The same vamp who I sense like a buzz against my skin long after I retreat to the couch again—after I double-check that I locked all the doors and windows.