Bite Me (Vampire Wardens Resurrection 1)

Humans and vampires are different. Me and my brothers are not.

Cam tosses in his cards. “Busted. Fuck. When do I get better at this game?”

Rocco grins. “When I don’t play.” He flips his cards to show off a killer hand and all of us, vampire and human alike, groan.

“I’m out,” I say, standing, feeling the claw of hunger. Maybe my month is closer than I remembered. No. This is early and unlike me. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe I just need a fucking hit, and why wouldn’t I? Today is Ivy’s birthday and no matter how long it’s been since a vampire ripped her throat out, I feel her loss every single year.

“You want company?” Cam asks, no fool when it comes to my state of mind.

He knows I’m fucked in the head right now, but I wave him off and not because I don’t love the hell out of Cam. We’re tight. We would have died as well if Marcus, our warden in charge, our maker, hadn’t saved us and given me the chance to kill the vampires that slaughtered Ivy. Because there was no saving her. She was dead before I was ever bitten.

He gives me a worried look followed by a chin nod, and then I’m gone.

I walk through the bar where the music rocks the walls with an oldie but a goody: Van Halen’s “Back in Black.” I swear music has shifted from better and then worse, then better, then worse, so damn many times in my lengthy lifetime, the bad part of the curse of being over a century old. My body never ages, but sometimes my head wants to explode with the stupidity of the newest decades of young adults. The eighties were a favorite, though, mostly because of the music, and on that, I can agree with more than a few humans.

I pass on through the last of the thick Saturday night crowd and exit to what would be a chilly September evening, but then, the weather doesn’t affect me. Not anymore. I can’t even remember what it was like to be human and vulnerable.

Cutting left, I start walking, with nearly a mile ahead of me to reach my apartment at the top level of the Ritz Carlton, a luxury location me and my three brothers chose for many reasons. Obviously after a century of living our retirement, luxury is a reward worth paying for, but we don’t get such things from our warden salaries. It’s about how we manage the dowries we’re given by the council upon being awarded warden status. We invest, just like humans invest their money, and many of us are Apple and Amazon financial winners. I get closer to the hotel, walking up a side street, avoiding humans, even as that clawing need for blood grows strong. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m halfway there when I round another corner and a woman slams into me. Instinctively I catch her narrow shoulders, her long brunette hair catching in the wind, lifting. The scent of her, the feminine natural scent that a human could not capture flares something raw and primal in me, the hunger for blood, her blood, roaring in every part of me. And I know why.

It’s not time to feed.

It’s her.

They say we all have a mate, a partner that our newest scientific breakthroughs now say makes us stronger, quite literally and physically. Those who are mated are now the true warriors, the leaders of our war. Which is bullshit. A mate to protect, to fear for, is not a way to be stronger. It’s a weakness. And yet I’m still holding onto her. I’m not letting her go when I should be.

“Are you okay?” I ask, telling myself I’m simply steadying her.

She blinks up at me with pale blue eyes, a tiny little thing I tower over by at least a foot. “I—ah yes,” she says, her voice a sweet, gentle tone, and there is something familiar about her, something I don’t quite understand. “I think I’m actually the one who ran into you,” she adds.

“I’ll forgive you,” I say softly, the instant attraction between us all but demanding I kiss her. And she’d let me. That’s how natural, how magnetic the call of two mates can be. I’ve heard stories. I’ve thought them exaggerated. I was wrong and the guilt in me is stabbing. Ivy was my one true love. Fucking around is one thing, and I’ve done plenty of that over my many years, but a mate? A mate is an eternal bond.

I can hear the blood rushing through her veins, and my teeth and tongue tingle. Every part of me wants to pull her to me, push her against the wall, and slide inside her. Taste her.

Instead, I force myself to let her go, my hands reluctantly falling from her arms, my gaze lifting to the coffee shop sign above the door where she’s just left. I wait for someone else to exit, to join her. They don’t. She’s alone. And I’m not leaving her alone on the downtown Denver street.