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Danny gave him a strange half nod. Not exactly reassuring. “If that’s what you want.” And wasn’t that cryptic as hell? “But we need to talk first. Do you want to sit?”

Eric shook his head. He was feeling…agitated, all overheated and tingly, like his skin wasn’t quite fitting right.

It was a strange sort of agitation though.

Like from the outside, in. Which didn’t make any sense, but he didn’t know how else to describe it.

He still wasn’t frightened exactly, not like he should be.

But he didn’t think he could sit still either.

Danny sat in the chair by the bed instead, taking a deep breath afterward and letting it out slowly. “Do you understand what happened to you?”

Eric tugged absently at the fabric tying his robe together. “That fucker bit me, knocked me unconscious, then kidnapped me.”

Danny’s already big brown eyes grew even larger, but he nodded slowly, as if that tracked perfectly. He cleared his throat. “And do you remember what his face looked like, when he bit you?”

How was that the focus right now? Not, “ Oh my fucking God, he bit you, are you kidding? ” But Danny had a point. Eric thought back on that moment in the massage studio. “Um…weird. I thought— For a minute, I thought…”

“Was it anything like this?” And there, under the bright daylight streaming in through the window, right in front of Eric’s stone-cold-sober eyes, Danny’s face…

changed. Just like Wolfe’s had, back at Serenity.

The pupils took over those big brown eyes completely, turning them fully black.

Danny’s lips parted to reveal pointed teeth.

And all Eric could do was stand there. “Holy fucking fuck .”

Danny winced, a surprisingly human expression on such a weirdly not-quite-human face.

“I’m really sorry. I know this is an abrupt way to do this, but I’m not sure how much time Wolfe is willing to give us.

He’s clearly already very…protective of you.

So, um, brass tacks: vampires are real. Wolfe is one, so are Gabe and I. And now…so are you.”

Eric was vaguely aware he was shaking his head frantically. “Nope. Nuh-uh. No way.” But he could see it. Danny’s face was right in front of him. He could reach out and touch those fangs. And he remembered that bite. The gulping sounds. Wolfe’s freaky eyes and fangs.

Danny gave his head a slight shake, and his face went back to normal, just like that. “You can do what I just did too. Do you feel, like a…presence inside you? Just, um, relax. Let it out.”

Eric could waste more time protesting. He could go the denial route for sure. But he could feel it…something different inside him. Something strange and covetous and starved.

There was a standing mirror in the room, right next to the closet; Eric placed himself in front of it. He could feel that presence, like a shifting shadow behind his eyes, under his skin yet intangible at the same time. So just…let it out.

He ended up staring at himself for a good minute before turning helplessly to Danny. “I don’t know how to let it out. I don’t know how to relax.”

“I have something that might help.” Danny dug into the satchel around his chest and pulled out a brown paper bag, casually fishing out a blood bag from inside.

“Are you serious right now?”

Danny shrugged, like carrying around pilfered sacks of blood was no big deal. “Just look at this and think of how hungry you are.”

“But I’m not hungry exactly. Not for food, I don’t think. Or blood, I guess. I’m…restless.” Want Wolfe back was the crazy thought that zipped through his head. It didn’t even sound like his own voice thinking it.

Danny nodded, calm as ever. “Then focus on that restlessness.”

Eric did, turning back to face the mirror.

He thought of how ill-fitting his skin felt, how badly he wanted to be…

soothed somehow. How he had a sneaking suspicion he knew exactly who he wanted to do the soothing.

How if he just asked, he was pretty sure he could get exactly what he wanted.

As he did so, he felt some of that internal pressure release, and then his face—his own fucking face—changed, just like Danny’s. Just like Wolfe’s.

It was weird as hell, seeing himself look that way, seeing his murky green eyes go all black like that. He watched his reflection as he lifted a finger, touching one of those fangs. It sliced through the tip easily, blood welling. And then, just as quickly, the wound closed up.

“Whoa.”

Danny was smiling, looking…proud? “Yeah, there are some benefits. Healing is one of them. Also strength. Speed. Never aging. Et cetera, et cetera.”

“Why—” Eric asked, pulling at an eyelid to get a better look at his eyeball. Completely black, all the way through to the very edges. “Why did he…?”

He could see Danny shifting uncomfortably in his chair through the mirror. “Um, well… He thinks you’re his mate.”

“Mate?” Eric turned away from his reflection, felt his regular features slide back into place as he did. It was a weird, slippery sort of feeling but not all that unpleasant.

Danny took another deep breath, clearly preparing for a bit of a story, and then Eric listened, hardly daring to breathe, as Danny explained a completely unbelievable truth.

As this ER nurse who had never seemed anything but human told him about unending life spans, feral vampires and fated pairings, his own bond with his fated vampire mate.

When Danny was finished, Eric stumbled blindly back to the bed, sitting heavily on the edge of it, trying to take it all in. It turned out if enough shock pumped through his limbic system, he could sit still after all. “So I have to stay with him. It’s, like, destiny?”

“Well, no, you don’t have to, but…” Danny shifted in his chair again.

“New vampires—unbonded ones—tend to be very unstable. If you leave Wolfe—if you run from that stabilizing connection—I don’t know what that would mean for you.

And if you are a danger to the people here, we’d have to… contain you.”

“So I get to choose one form of captivity or another.”

“You’re not a captive,” Danny said adamantly. “He can’t force you to stay in this house. He can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. Do you want to leave right now?”

He should. Eric should 100 percent want to leave this house, return to his apartment (cold, empty, no bergamot anywhere), and never look at that psycho vampire fucker again.

But he couldn’t make himself say the words.

He pressed his palm to his forehead. “Fuck, I don’t know.

I’m angry. I’m confused. But he— He smells really good? ”

Danny nodded calmly once again, as if that made perfect sense.

As if someone smelling really good was reason enough to stay.

And then, since talking about crazy things like they made perfect sense was apparently what they were doing now, Eric confessed, “Um, so I feel really agitated right now. Distracted. But like I’m not feeling that way. Like it’s coming from…outside me?”

Danny’s eyes widened in realization. “Oh. Oh . Shit. Um, yeah, that’s another part of the bond. Feeling each other’s emotions. Which might be kind of…strange. With Wolfe.”

Eric thought back to what Wolfe had told him they’d say about him. “Because you think he’s a psychopath?”

Danny gave a half shrug. “So Jay says, at least… It’s not like most vampires are the pinnacle of empathy and self-control though.”

“You and I both know there’s not any sort of official diagnosis for that though. Antisocial personality disorder, on the other hand.” Eric paused, finally registering the rest of what Danny had said. “Wait— Jay the barista? He’s a vampire too? How many are there of y—of us—in this town?”

“With you, it makes eight.”

“How is there not more press around this? Like the missing persons alone, right?”

“Wait, what?” Danny sat up straighter as he seemed to realize what Eric was getting at.

“Fuck. No. We don’t kill people, Monroe.

You bite them, you make them forget, you move on.

” He reached out a hand, gripping Eric’s forearm in reassurance.

“I promise, getting turned isn’t the end of the world.

There will be sacrifices, sure. And I’m sorry for how it happened it you.

But you’ll get to know all of us. It won’t be so bad.

” He sounded halfway convinced he was telling the truth.

Danny let go of Eric and dug another paper bag out of his satchel. “Here. This will do for now, until Wolfe teaches you how to hunt. Without killing,” he stressed.

Should Eric be embarrassed that he’d thought he had to kill other people to eat and he’d just…accepted it? But he was overwhelmed and confused, and weirdly enough…he still really wanted Wolfe back.

He took the paper bag from Danny. “Um, can you—?” He stopped himself, unable to finish the sentence.

“You want to stay,” Danny guessed, empathetic as all hell, as per usual, at least as far as Eric had seen at the hospital.

“I guess. Just—just to try. If he keeps his fangs to himself from now on.”

Danny cleared his throat. “You might change your mind about that part. But yeah, okay. I’ll send him up.” He gave Eric a slow smile, clearly relieved at Eric’s choice. “Welcome to the family.”

And weirdly, for how off-putting literally every other thing Danny had said since coming to the room had been, that part didn’t sound so bad.

Apparently all Eric had needed to do to be accepted in this town was give up his very life.