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Chapter 15
Piper
My heart caught in my throat at the sound of my vampires' name. Fear for their safety saturated my very core, but at the same time, my stomach quivered with anger.
They couldn't let me do this one thing, could they? They had to go and screw it all up. I was a grown-ass woman. I could go into a nest of vampire hunters without having them up my ass the whole time, expecting me to screw up. After all, it was me who saved Marcus. It was me who kept Rayne from having to take Morpheus's payment. I didn't see them doing anything useful this last year but running around in circles, except sometimes stopping by my house for a little hump and dump.
I was tired of not being in control. Tired of vampire politics and being in danger all the time. A small part of me just wanted to go back to my normal human life and forget all of this. But a bigger part of me, the part that was head over heels for the Durands, would break. I'd be irrevocably damaged for any other man and would likely end up drinking myself to death to stave off the loneliness.
Shaking away the dark thoughts, I pulled myself back into the present. Spinning from the president to take in the scene happening around me, I found myself in the middle of a big ass fight between the hunters and the Durands.
"Piper!" Drake shouted, as he dodged a hunter coming at him with a knife. "Come on, let's get out of here."
"Piper," Vincent's voice cooed in my ear. "You could end this all now. Just say yes."
My hands gripped the handles of my daggers as I struggled with what to do. He was like the devil whispering in my ear, which made me wonder where the fuck my angel was. I wouldn't be surprised if he had quit because of what a disaster I was.
"What the hell are you doing?" Allister called to me, fighting two different hunters at once while trying to see me. "We have to go now."
I searched the mob of bodies in the auditorium crowd and found a familiar dark head of hair. Wynn, even now, fought lazily as if it were all a big joke. How he was able to put in minimal effort while still winning was beyond me. He would always be a mystery to me. One that I planned to spend the next hundred years or so unraveling.
Shifting my gaze, I found Marcus. He, of course, had the most hunters surrounding him. Perhaps it was because they had already caught him before and wanted payback for his escape. Perhaps it was just because he was the biggest one there, but either way, Marcus was holding his own.
As I searched the crowd, I questioned myself briefly, wondering where Antoine was before settling my gaze on Rayne. Out of all the others, he was the fastest. Since he could anticipate their attacks, it was hard for the hunters to even make a scratch on him. The hunters fighting were getting agitated by this and were going at him full force.
They wouldn't last much longer. I could feel it. While I wanted nothing more than to pull myself from vampire politics and keep to my own little world, that wasn't going to happen. The only way I was going to keep these men in my life without fear was to make the deal.
"No!" Rayne knocked a hunter to the side and started for me, panic in his eyes. "Don't do it, Piper. You don't know what you're signing up for."
I pulled my lower lip between my teeth and shook my head at him, tears burning in my eyes, but I didn't dare let them fall. I had to be strong. I wasn't that klutzy woman who knocked over a priceless vase anymore. I had to face my problems head-on, not back away like a coward. That's what got me into this in the first place.
Besides, I had an eternity to figure out another way to save them. This was a bandage, a salve on a festering wound. If I could stop it, at least temporarily, then perhaps we could find another way. Maybe.
It was that promise of maybe that had me turning back to Vincent. He stood behind me with a bored expression on his face, the female hunter at his side. The hunter seemed poised to strike me at any moment. As if I posed a threat to her precious leader.
For a moment, I looked over the woman. She kept her long dark hair braided and out of the way, her dark eyes narrowed on me with growing suspicion and dislike. The pale olive color of her skin almost glowed from the moonlight beaming into the auditorium.
From her black combat boots to her crimson-colored pants that barely touched the hem of her tight-fitting black shirt and the large silver cross around her neck, every inch of her screamed badass hunter. Would this be me one day? Would my very being cause fear in humans and vampires alike? I held back a shudder. It was a scary thought.
"Mizuki," Vincent purred, placing a hand on her arm. "Stop glaring at our newest recruit. You'll scare her off before she even gets started."
My eyes snapped to his face. "I didn't say yes yet."
Vincent laughed. "Oh, but you are about to. I can see it in your eyes. You want this even if you hate it." My jaw tightened at his words, but I didn't argue with him. "You need something that doesn't revolve around being the Durands' lover."
"I'm not just—"
He clicked his tongue, interrupting me as he cocked his head to the side. "What are you if not that? Their maid? Their employee? Do you think you'd be happy with that for the next hundred or even thousand years?" I opened my mouth to argue. "And forget about keeping a human job. You're above that. Besides, do you really want to restart your life every twenty years or so to hide the fact that you don't age? Pfft. That's no way to live at all."
He had a point and I hated it. Ever since I'd begun falling for the Durands, I'd started questioning what I was to become. I couldn't be their maid forever. Darren may be happy with his position, but cleaning toilets and folding other people's laundry had never been my idea of a perfect life. The job was always meant to be temporary. I was supposed to be temporary, and now I'd bound myself to a vampire and everything felt oh so permanent.
While the battle raged on behind me, I dropped my daggers back into their sheaths. The sound they made as they slid home seemed more resounding than anything else in the room. As if with that very action, my fate was sealed. In a way, I suppose it was. I had, after all, just made a deal with the biggest evil in the room.
Locking my gaze with his, I lifted my chin and snapped out, "Deal."
With a glee-filled expression, Vincent clapped his hands together once and shouted, "Stop. The Durands are no longer to be hunted."
I shifted around to watch as all the hunters in the room immediately sheathed their weapons and stepped back from my vampires. Drake punched a guy, unable to stop himself mid-swing, making everyone flinch.
