Hot Vampire Seduction (Vampire Wardens 2)

“I want to believe you. I want to believe you more than you can imagine, but you have to explain this to me. You have to give me a logical answer for everything that’s going on here.” He realized then that she wasn’t going to let this go, and she was too smart to accept any foolish excuse of an explanation he might give her. He had to tell her the truth, and he’d have to scrub her memory later.

But the truth was all that could save them now.

“If I tell you,” he said, his chest tight with emotion, with the idea of telling her what he was. What he would always be, “you’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Try me.”

He walked to the sliding glass door.

“Aiden! Don’t you dare walk away!”

He pulled the door shut and turned to her. “I’m not going anywhere.” He motioned to the shredded couch.

“Let’s sit down.”

She shook her head. “I’ll stand.”

“Very well,” he said, using his superior speed to close the distance between them in a mere instant.

She gasped at the unexpected action, but he was already touching her, already reaching inside her mind, and playing back his history, letting her see who and what he was. Letting her see how it had happened.

Chapter Thirteen

Suddenly Kelly was in Aiden’s head, a different Aiden, a younger Aiden, though not in body. It was just a sense she had of him, a feeling. She gasped as she brought his face into view, as her eyes followed his.

And then she knew. This was the man before the pain of a lifetime, and she was watching it happen, watching the ache that filled him in present day be created in his past.

He stood over the bodies of three people she somehow knew they were his parents, his sister. Beside him were two men, his brothers, but Troy was different—dark haired, and without the edge he possessed now, without the darkness. There was just pain. His pain, and the other men, all three of them – she felt their pain as well. But it was Aiden’s suffering, his anger, his fury, that carved her inside out.

“Why!” Aiden shouted at the heaven above, dropping to his knees to hold the pale, lifeless body of his sister Anna. She was bloodless, drained dry by the monster that had killed hundreds in their village, that he and his brothers had been hunting.

“Well hello, my little pretties.”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a woman with long raven hair, and extended fangs, appeared, blood dripping from her mouth. She wiped it. “I’m ready for desert and you three will be lovely.” Aiden pushed to his feet, drawing a long blade from the tan animal skin pants he wore. “Come and get me!”

“Come and get us,” Troy shouted, stepping to Aiden’s side, knife drawn.

“Run,” his older brother Evan shouted. “Run now!” He lunged to the front of Aiden and Troy, shouting,

“Come and get me witch!”

“No!” Aiden shouted, knowing his brother had just ensured his death, knowing one man against this monster could not survive an attack. But it was too late. Evan fell at Aiden and Troy’s feet, his throat ripped open.

Aiden charged at the monster, aware that Troy was by him, that Troy’s blade sliced at her as his did. She moved too fast though, and was behind them in seconds. Pain sliced through his neck, his shoulder and everything went blank. Time faded away into shadows, into screams for his family. Something coppery touched

his lips and a sudden hunger ravished him. Desperately he drank of the substance. Slowly, he became aware of the impossible, of Evan leaning over him, of his mouth on his brother’s arm. He was drinking…blood. Aiden scrambled away from the mirage, the trickery that must be that of the monster, to see Evan standing well and strong, alive.

“Evan?”

“Yes,” his brother said. “It’s me.”

Wildly, his gaze searched the area in front of their family cabin, finding the dead bodies of his family and a leather clad blonde man leaned over Troy, dripping blood into his mouth.

“The monster is dead.”

Troy came awake suddenly, shouting and scrambling backwards as well. The blonde man stood up, moving to stand beside Evan. “What Evan means is that the vampire is dead. I killed it and I can teach you how to hunt and kill others like it.”

Kelly came back to her own mind for a mere instant before an onslaught of images overtook her. The brothers fighting together, side by side, driven to save lives, to kill monsters. And then…then there was Aiden running towards Troy in a dark alley, desperate to get to his brother before the wolf did. The wolf.