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“Marcus, are you…” Ethan started to ask, but he stopped himself, the words seeming to get caught in his throat.
“What?”
Ethan suddenly snapped his mouth shut and shook his head. “I’m just…worried about you and your brothers. That’s all.”
Marcus smiled at him. “My brothers and I are going to be fine.”
“Are we still going to have lunch together…like we have been?”
“I would like that very much.”
Ethan breathed a heavy sigh, his smile returning. “So would I.”
Marcus nodded. Even if he never got to kiss Ethan again, he would be content with being able to share lunch with him, to sit across the table and share their thoughts with each other. To laugh.
“Do you mind if we push it back to six? I just need to check a few things in my office.”
“No problem. I really need to make some more progress today. We could also see if Bel is awake so he could join us.”
“I think he would like that,” Marcus murmured and then left to go to his office. He was torn by the surge of warmth he felt at Ethan’s suggestion to include Bel, but there was also an angry possessive surge that didn’t want to share Ethan with anyone, even his brother.
Definitely not Rafe. He didn’t want Rafe anywhere near Ethan.
Marcus scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to clear his mind. He was a fucking disaster, and he needed to get his thoughts in order. He needed to find out why the threats against his family were growing and figure out how to protect them. Ethan was only cluttering things up and putting himself in danger by remaining in the Varik household. The sooner this move was done, the better they’d all be.
Chapter Thirteen
Ethan slammed the door behind him when he arrived at his temporary apartment. This was a fucking nightmare!
Nothing was working out the way it was supposed to. He wasn’t supposed to give a shit about these creatures. These people.
And they were people to him. Not animals that needed to be put down. They had lives and family they cared about. They had hopes and dreams and feelings.
Did he have any actual proof that they were vampires?
For Marcus, no. So the guy was allergic to the sun. There was a rare disease called xeroderma pigmentosum that made people extremely sensitive to the UV rays of the sun. Maybe he had that. It certainly didn’t make him a vampire.
Bel?
Ethan would stake his life on the fact that Bel was a vampire. No one healed that fast. No one.
Marcus had talked Bel into eating with them and when he appeared in the kitchen, all the long scratches on his face were completely gone. His movements were a little stiff, but he definitely didn’t look like a man who’d lost a few liters of blood across the floor of Marcus’s home just the night before.
After talking to Marcus about his mother, Ethan felt pretty sure that she was one as well. If she were a human and ill, he liked to think that Marcus would at least get her some psychological help. Maybe some drugs to calm her a little. She was threatening their lives!
But drugs probably didn’t help vampires, and you certainly couldn’t lock one up in the psych ward of a hospital. It was the only reason that made sense of why the burden was on Marcus and his brothers to watch over her.
Ethan had no idea if Rafe was a vampire, and he’d never even seen Winter.
He walked into the kitchen, jerked open the refrigerator, and glared at the contents without really seeing them. He had no idea what he was looking for or why he’d even gone in there. He slammed the door shut again, leaned against it, and slid to the floor. What the hell was he supposed to do?
Didn’t Macy and Lucy deserve justice? His sisters had been young and innocent. They deserved to have a shot at life too, but it was stolen away by some sick fuckers. He wanted to stop dreaming about them. He wanted to stop dreaming about walking down the blood-soaked hallway and finding their lifeless bodies staring up at the ceiling, their open hands outstretched as if they’d died reaching out to him.
Resting his elbows on his bent knees, Ethan rubbed his eyes roughly. He shouldn’t have been the one to survive. Why couldn’t the killers have gotten him and spared Lucy? She was smarter and more determined. She would have known exactly what to do. No one would have escaped her.
But he was just useless and weak.
Someone strong would have killed all the vamps by now. Didn’t matter if they were involved in the murder of his family. A strong person would have exterminated them all so no one else could have ever been hurt.
He couldn’t hurt Marcus, though. Marcus with the sad eyes and nervous smile. The man who was fighting to protect his own family and keep them safe even at the cost of his own life if necessary.
