Page 10 of Vampire Pack

I stared at her. "Are you serious?"

"You'd agree if you saw it," she said.

I tried to process that.

Couldn't.

So, I went into my room.

After the world's fastest shower, I was tugging a comb through my hair while I padded back out into the open-concept living room/kitchen. I'd put on one of our team's t-shirts and a pair of spandex shorts. Somehow, my body hurt even worse after washing up.

"The internet isn't technically wrong about you being together," Mallory pointed out, when I made it back out there. "You guys have been fucking since a few days after you met."

"Are we still talking about this?" I asked.

She nodded.

I looked at Paige, who gave me a sheepish look.

"Fine. Yes, we have," I said grudgingly. "But there's a difference between regularly having sex with someone you don't like, and being with them romantically."

"You know you're playing with fire, though," Mal said. "Vampires and werewolves who fuck regularly always end up mated. He's been biting you for a long time. We've seen the marks."

I didn't answer.

We all knew it was true. I'd tried to bite him back a handful of times, too, but he'd always stopped me.

Being bitten by a vampire was incredible. Their venom felt like liquid pleasure.

It was risky, though. Common sense tended to vanish when a vampire's venom coursed through your system, and it was extremely easy for a vampire and werewolf to end up mated.

All it took was two bites.

There were no vows. No agreements, either.

When a vampire was already biting you, the mating process only took one very, very tempting nip.

Then boom.

You were mated.

It wasn't technically permanent. There was a way to end a mate bond. It was just horrifically painful, and the pain lasted until you took another mate. So, people really only did that when they'd gone through years and years of trying to make things work as a couple.

An immortal lifetime of pain was fucking brutal.

We lived in peace with the humans, which was obviously a good thing. But there were laws. Specifically, laws around unmated vampires and wolves.

Werewolves had a tendency toward rage, as I was evidence of.

Vampires had a tendency toward bloodlust.

There were other unique things about each of our species, but the rage and the bloodlust were what made us dangerous for humans.

So, the laws prevented us from interacting with human society until we took a mate from the opposite species. Vampire bites stabilized werewolves, and werewolf blood kept vampires from getting bloodlusty and snacking on humans.

The problem?

Immortality was a long time to be mated to one person, and we could all be a little flighty when it came to choosing the person we would be spending immortality with.