“I’m surprised you didn’t just attack and form the bond by force, then,” he said bitterly.
His moms exchanged a glance. “We’d like to give you a chance to do it your way first,” Mama Daphne told him.
“And if I don’t succeed?”
Mama Sybil gave his shoulder a tight squeeze. “Then, darling, we’ll do it for you.”
It was as much of a threat as it was a promise.
Sometimes it really sucked having vampires for parents.
11
SETH
Seth hung up the phone and folded his hands on the table in front of him, covering the card he hadn’t yet let out of his sight.
That had been an illuminating conversation, to say the least.
It wasn’t that Seth hadn’tbelievedBenny. He’d believed him with an immediacy that was almost absurd, actually. But he’d had more questions than answers in the end, and Seth’s cousin wasn’t the most straightforward source of information, even on a good day.
So after somehow getting through the rest of the workday—thanks in large part to Violet, to whom Seth owed approximately one thousand favors—Seth had called his friend Sascha.
It had been the right move to make. Several hours later, Seth no longer felt like a joke. And he wasn’t worried anymore that everyone back at Seacliff had been laughing at his ignorance all along. It seemed instead to be a very tangled web of paranormallives they were navigating, and as Sascha had told him, “It wasn’t my secret alone to tell.”
On top of that, apparently therehadbeen discussion about letting Seth in on things further down the line, before the group of demons and their mates had to leave Seacliff due to a lack of obvious aging. (Benny had conveniently forgotten to tell Seth about the whole prolonged lifespan thing, but then again, Seth had hung up on him pretty quickly.) But then Seth had decided to move away, and they hadn’t wanted to blindside him right before he made such a major life change.
Had Seth noticed his friends failing to grow noticeably older over the last six or so years? Not really. They were all young enough that it would be hard to tell for a while. And in this day and age, who knew what kind of cosmetic work people were getting done in secret?
But maybe Seth had noticedsomething, at least subconsciously. Maybe that explained some things, actually.
Because Seth had always thought he’d stay in Seacliff all his life. And then suddenly he’d decided otherwise.
Was it because he’d gotten some strange, unknown feeling, surrounded by all these otherworldly men, that he’d decided there was more out there for him? A sense of being a perpetual side character to people who were living lives more magical than he could imagine?
And then somehow, in the midst of his quarter-life crisis, Seth had landed himself smack in the middle of a vampire den.
Out of the frying pan and into the fang, as no one had said ever.
That was what it was called when multiple vampires lived together in one community, Seth had learned: a den. Sascha’s brother-in-law was part of one in Colorado.
Seth wasn’t sure if a den of three counted, actually, but maybethere were more vampires than Riley and his moms living on that property. Maybe there was an entire horde of them, lying in wait.
Seth could feel the sharp edges of the card under his palm. The address Sybil had given him. Seth had looked it up on his phone—it was about a twenty-minute drive from town, straight into the woods. From what he’d been able to tell via map sleuthing, there weren’t any other houses nearby.
So there would be no one to hear Seth if things went very, very wrong.
He wouldn’t exactly be going in blind though. Sascha had told Seth as much as he could about vampires. As much as Saschaknew, at least.
Like, for example, how newly turned vamps were volatile and dangerous until they settled into their new being, unless they already had a mate to ground them.
Because oh yes, vampires had fated mates—kindred souls that would tether them to their humanity and keep them from going feral and getting lost to bloodlust.
So maybe Riley was newly turned, and that was why he kept jumping on Seth at every opportunity. Or maybe he was very, very old, and had gone too long without a mate, andthatwas why he couldn’t seem to keep his fangs to himself.
Wouldn’t that be funny, if Seth had been worried about being too old for his new friend, and Riley was secretly a thousand-year-old geezer?
Seth grimaced down at his folded hands.Funnywasn’t exactly the right word.
