Before Daybreak (Love Bitten)

Epilogue

Braeden

“Are you ready?” Callie asked as she strapped another stake to her thigh.

Fuck, no. But I have to be.

Callie laughed, having heard my thoughts before I could voice them out loud.

“It’s not that I don’t have confidence in your abilities,” I assured her.

“I know, babe. That never crossed my mind.”

I loved how much she trusted me, and I worked hard to make sure I never damaged her faith, and that meant letting her spread her wings and fly.

However, if I was going to let her do that, I would damn well be doing it right beside her. She was everything to me and doing this together meant there wasn’t much chance of her being injured or killed. Which was how we ended up right where we were. About to venture out on her first mission.

“Okay, let’s go.”

I nodded, but as she turned to walk away, I grabbed her arm and spun her around so she slammed into my chest. Then I captured her mouth for a deep, passionate kiss that left us both shaking with need by the time we came up for air.

“Just a reminder of what you have to live for,” I rasped before turning her back around and patting her sweet ass. “Let’s go.”

Callie walked in a bit of a daze, and I laughed as I took her arm once more. She was in no condition to teleport, so I took us to the location we’d been given. A twin girl and boy, Odessa and Olivander, lived there, and they were both destined consorts. They’d moved in a few weeks before, right after their eighteenth birthdays.

The council had located them shortly after and decided to back off and give them some time unless we felt they were in danger. They soon learned that there was rumor of a nest close by the apartment building, though no one had been able to ferret out the location. Unfortunately, before they could bring the brother and sister in, Odessa was attacked. She only survived because the daywalker assigned to watch her was damn good at her job. But she’d faced five or six nightwalkers alone while trying to protect the girl. They’d both been pretty severely injured, which meant they’d been taken by the council. Callie and I had been assigned to collect the brother before he either attracted the vamps or made a big splash with the police and media over his sister’s disappearance.

Odessa’s attack had only happened last night, and Ollie worked the graveyard shift as a desk clerk at a nearby hotel. We checked out the area, keeping our eyes peeled for evidence of the supposed nest. When we struck out, we headed to the hotel to wait for Ollie’s shift to end.

Marcus and Parris, two daywalkers I worked with often and respected, were already standing guard. With the number of leeches who’d attacked Odessa and Lilith, the council had sent all four of us to make sure we were able to bring Ollie in safely.

He would be finished with work at three o’clock in the morning, which left plenty of sunless hours for the nightwalkers to prey on him. At about twenty minutes to three, Callie went stiff and lifted her nose, inhaling deeply.

Before I could ask, the scent drifted to me, then to Marcus. Parris had gone on a perimeter check, so I sent him a mental message to get his ass back immediately.

The wind picked up, and the smell grew stronger. There were nightwalkers nearby. A lot of them.

“Well, well, seems the boy has a fan club,” a smooth female voice said.

Shit. Vampires were natural predators and possessed traits that drew in their prey. But most of those who fell in with a master ended up losing all of their finesse, outwardly becoming the monsters they were inside.

But masters, they only grew more dangerous as they collected minions. They fed off them and took their essence, essentially stealing the magic that made them so attractive to humans. Which was the biggest reason they became so grotesque.

Female masters, though...it made me sound sexist, but I only spoke the truth. They were the worst of their kind. Manipulative, seductive, evil, demanding, and they had the ability to appear like a sweet damsel in distress. Not something male masters had been able to achieve, go figure. And to make matters worse, they were even more possessive and as catty as the mean girls in high school.

Fucking bitches. Every single one of them.

“Well, well, seems the queen of the damned wants her ass kicked,” Callie drawled in return. I grimaced, wishing I had warned her not to poke the blood-sucking chick with claws and—if the number of approaching minions was any indication—an army at her disposal.

The nightwalker flicked her shiny black hair over her shoulder and tapped one of her long, sharp fingernails on her ruby red lips. I had a scientific understanding of how she drew humans in, but personally, she made my cock shrivel as if it were running away.