“Kill me….” he gasped out. “You have to do it,” the hunter said.
“No,” Harrison told him.
“I’m dead either way.” The hunter opened his eyes. “Please,” he begged.
“Why, why should I kill you?” Harrison asked him.
“Because I don’t have any value,” he panted. “I knew I was going to die the minute I went back. My father already sees me as a failure.”
Duncan looked at Harrison, who was staring down at the hunter with a sad expression on his face and then it hit him.Mate!
“Please forgive me, but I can’t let you die,” Harrison whispered before he bent down and bit the hunter on his neck. Duncan stood and turned his back, giving them some privacy. Ryland and Parker did the same thing. The two men that came with Harrison did as well. “That’s it, my little one, drink,” Duncan heard a few minutes later. There was movement behind him and he turned to look. “Thank you, Alpha Pryde. I will be in touch with you in a couple of days. I need time with my mate.”
“Yes, I understand. I will keep you up to date on anything that I find out,” Duncan told him.
“Thank you,” Harrison said as he ran out of the woods at a sanguine speed.
Well, that was unexpected.There was nothing else for him to do but go home. It didn’t seem as if he was going to find out anything now that the hunter was mated to the vampire. Duncan hated to wait for something else to happen or for whoever was behind all the poisoned drugs to fuck up before he was able to track them down. He walked back the way he came, heading to the bunker. So, the hunter was dying? Maybe he was trying to get caught and hoped that Duncan would kill him?
“Where’s the hunter?” Blayze asked when he entered the bunker.
“Gone,” Duncan answered.
“I take it the plan didn’t go as well as you hoped.”
“It took a completely different turn. Listen, I can’t talk about it right now. I’m tired and hungry and I need to see my mate. Clean up in here for me and head home.”
“No problem.”
He left Blayze in the bunker and ran home on two legs, wanting to see his mate more than anything else. He did not like the way they’d left things, or the short conversation they had earlier. He needed to hold Jordan in his arms and make sure that everything was fine between them. Reaching his backyard, he stopped in his tracks when he saw Jordan sitting on the porch.
“What are you doing out here so late?” Duncan asked him.
“Ironically, I was waiting for you. Ryland told me you asked him to bring your car home,” Jordan answered.
Duncan walked over and sat beside him on the porch and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, Jordan leaned in close and rested his head on Duncan’s shoulder.
“Was your business taken care of?”
Duncan debated if he should tell Jordan about his friend being a sanguine, but thought better of it. That was Harrison’s duty to reveal who or what he was to Jordan himself. “Not really,” he answered truthfully.
“You know whatever it is, I’m here to help you with your problems. Isn’t that the job of a mate?”
Duncan smiled. “I don’t want to bombard you with my problems.”
“It was pack stuff, right?” Duncan nodded. “I noticed how carefully you worded your words the other night. I can tell you were trying not to scare them. But something big is going on, isn’t it?”
Duncan sighed and pulled Jordan closer to him. “Yeah,” he answered.
“Then don’t worry about censoring yourself with me. I can handle whatever you need to tell me. So, lay it on me,” Jordan assured him.
Duncan saw no need to hide what was going on with his mate. Sooner or later he was going to have to tell Jordan what was going on. “A couple months ago,” he started telling Jordan everything that had been happening since finding the first teenager dead.
“So aconite does affect your kind, I guess the movies aren’t wrong about that.”
Duncan chuckled. “I wish I could say it wasn’t true, but that’s one of the things we hoped wouldn’t have been known to the world. But aconite is dangerous to us just as holy water burns sanguines, or for you, vampires.”
“Huh, who would have thought. What else do I need to know?”
