Page 46

Gabe

O ne year later

“Dearest, darlingest, most bestest brother of mine.”

Gabe looked up from his plate, narrowing his eyes at his younger brother across the table. Danny had many nicknames for him. “Golden boy.” “Jerk.” “Asshole.” But “dearest, darlingest, most bestest brother of mine” definitely wasn’t one of them.

“I have a favor to ask you,” Danny said, his big brown eyes all wide and hopeful.

Gabe swallowed his bite of chicken carefully, unease growing in his gut. “Okay…”

“See, Roman and I have decided to have a proper honeymoon.”

Gabe’s eyes darted reflexively to their other dinner companion, Danny’s husband, whose bright-blue eyes were focused on Gabe in a way that was definitely intended to say, “Don’t fuck this up for me.”

Gabe ignored him easily enough. He was used to Roman glaring at him.

He turned back to his brother with a smile. “That’s great, Danny Boy.”

Danny nodded, grinning wide, his freckled cheeks pink. “It is. Super great. We’re, um, spending three weeks in Bali.”

“ Three weeks ?” Gabe’s brows lifted. A little over a year ago, his brother would barely take a full weekend off, working way too many nights in a row as a nurse in their town’s ER.

Gabe worked as a doctor in the same hospital, and he’d hardly ever had a shift without his brother’s face popping up at some point.

Danny had reduced to two shifts a week since settling down with Roman, but he’d still never taken any sort of significant vacation.

“Three weeks,” Roman confirmed in a tone that just begged Gabe to make a fuss over it.

Gabe would never. Not anymore. He was done getting in Danny’s way. He wanted his brother to have…well, whatever the fuck he wanted. “Okay. That’s still…great? Good for you, kiddo.”

Gabe couldn’t even be jealous of their vacation. Not really. Danny deserved it. Gabe hadn’t realized until he’d finally seen his brother happy just how unhappy he’d been before.

And how much of that was your fault? Gabe pushed the thought aside. Guilt was such a familiar feeling for him he barely recognized it anymore.

Danny was still looking at Gabe as if this had anything to do with him. “Yes. But the thing is—I was hoping—”

“We need you to watch the mutt.” Trust Roman to make a request sound more like a command.

“The mutt,” Gabe repeated.

The mutt in question, a six-month-old blue heeler mix, was currently lying under the kitchen table, nosing at Gabe’s feet, clearly hoping for some dinner scraps to drop down from above.

Gabe would have been offended on the puppy’s behalf if he didn’t know for a fact that Roman had chosen the dog himself, gifted it to his pet-starved husband, and could often be caught looking at it with a fondness he usually reserved for Danny alone.

“Ferdy’s just so young,” his brother pleaded. “I don’t want him with a sitter. He needs someone he knows .”

Gabe cleared his throat. “What about your, uh…roommate?”

“Soren?” Danny laughed at the idea.

Gabe controlled his flinch but only barely. He found himself glancing around furtively, as if speaking the name out loud was enough to summon the little monster.

Gabe wouldn’t even be surprised if that were true.

“He could help out,” Danny offered cautiously. “But I’m not so sure he could be trusted to remember that mortal puppies need to be fed twice a day. Or that they need water. Or bathroom breaks.”

Gabe looked over to Roman to see if he was offended by this assessment of his friend, but he was nodding along sagely to Danny’s words.

It wasn’t really a big ask. Gabe had no problem watching his brother’s adorable puppy for a few weeks. “Okay. Yeah. I can take him. I’m sure he won’t be able to manage too much destruction in my apartment.”

Danny shook his head, shifting in his seat. “Um, but not at your apartment? We were hoping you could stay here, instead.”

Gabe raised a brow at his brother.

Danny blushed but stood his ground. “He needs familiar surroundings, Gabe. He’s just a—just a baby .”

Gabe couldn’t help but laugh at his brother’s overprotectiveness, but it wasn’t an unreasonable request. Danny’s house was their childhood home. Gabe had grown up there—still had a room that could be considered “his”—it wouldn’t exactly be a hardship.

But…

“And Soren will be here too?” he made himself ask.

“Yep.” Danny had the grace to look a little nervous at the idea. “Like I said, he can help out. And with Mom too. So you can still visit her while I’m gone?”

Gabe’s throat went dry at the thought. He tried to restrain any bitter feelings, but this felt an awful lot like he was getting a babysitter, not the puppy. Someone tasked to make sure Gabe wouldn’t shirk his…family duties…with Danny away.

“Roman promises Soren will behave.”

Gabe looked again at Danny’s husband. Tall, imposing, not a strand of his jet-black hair out of place.

Roman’s expression was neutral enough, but there was a set to his jaw when he looked at Gabe that Gabe didn’t love.

He knew he wasn’t Roman’s favorite person.

Roman cared fiercely for Gabe’s brother, and Gabe had been letting his brother down for far too long.

Then again, Roman wasn’t Gabe’s favorite either.

The man was a monster. A literal monster.

Because Roman was a vampire. A fact Gabe had found out last winter when Roman’s ex-friend, Lucien, had attacked him viciously one sunny winter morning.

Of course, Danny was a vampire now too.

But that just wasn’t the same, Gabe reasoned. Danny was…Danny. He was still Gabe’s little brother, only now with a new… particular diet.

And Danny would still be human if Roman hadn’t come waltzing into the picture. Roman and his other little vampire friend.

Soren.

Gabe wanted nothing more than to stay far away from that particular monster, but Danny never asked Gabe for anything beyond the bare minimum of brotherly duty.

Gabe couldn’t let him down now.

“Sure, Danny Boy,” Gabe agreed, ignoring the new twisting in his stomach. “Of course I’ll do it.”

He even got a small smile from Roman for that before the vampire turned his face to Danny, and the smile grew so big and sappy that Gabe was embarrassed to witness it.

The sound of the front door opening cut through the moment.

Gabe’s muscles tensed. There was only one other person who would walk into this house without knocking.

A moment later and there he was. The little monster. Svelte, blond, and unbearably beautiful.

At least that was what Gabe used to think. But Gabe knew what lay under that beauty now. He didn’t care how his body reacted to Soren’s presence.

He wouldn’t be fooled again.

“How cozy,” Soren purred, leaning a shoulder against the kitchen doorway, his pale gaze landing immediately on Gabe. “A family dinner.”

Gabe’s fingers flexed around his fork. Soren was always doing that. Always looking at him.

“Want some?” Danny offered, smiling genuinely at the other vampire.

Gabe’s brother had a fondness for Soren Gabe couldn’t even begin to understand.

Of course, Soren treated Danny with rare sweetness, whereas he seemed to love nothing more than tormenting Gabe, so that might have something to do with it.

Gabe didn’t know why Danny bothered offering. Gabe was the only person at this table who needed to eat. The others only did it for—well, for funsies , as Danny put it.

“No, thanks, cutie pie. Just ate.” Soren ran his tongue over his incisors suggestively.

But that didn’t stop him from sauntering over and perching on a seat at the table anyway. “So did His Highness agree?” Soren asked.

Gabe’s jaw clenched at the nickname, but Danny answered for him before he could object. “He did. And”—his brother gave Soren a pointed look—“we promised you’d be on your best behavior.”

Soren’s lips widened into his familiar grin, a manic smile that always managed to send a shiver down Gabe’s spine. “When am I not?” the vampire asked innocently.

There was a glint in Soren’s eyes that told Gabe he was in major trouble.

Fuck.

Gabe rushed through the rest of his dinner, despite the fact that his appetite had long since disappeared. He needed to get out of that house.

The drive back to his apartment was a blur. For too long, he sat in his car in its parking space, trying to will his stomach into settling. He forced himself to take deep, even breaths.

So…living with a vampire who thrived on torturing him, who could mess with his mind just by looking him in the eyes. With no Danny or even Roman to protect him.

This would be an interesting three weeks.

Gabe could only hope he’d survive them.