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Oh, please. Please, please, please. Just this once, I’ll give him a pass. For following behind me, for chasing after me, for going against what I asked him. If the tug on my bond can be trusted, I’m not alone, and if that’s so, I’ll never, ever bitch about Ryker’s overprotective nature again.
Just then, the vampire pulls something out from beneath his dark jacket, and he has all of my attention.
The moon reflects off the blade, revealing that it’s a knife. The sinking pit in my stomach when I see it tells me that it’s asilverknife.
If he gets me in a vital organ with that sticker, I’m dead. No amount of regenerative properties will heal a fatal wound made with silver.
“He doesn’t want you dead,” the vampire tells me. I have no doubt in my mind who the ‘he’ he’s referring to is. “You know I could kill you with this and no one would stop me. If I have to I will, but I’d rather you come quietly.”
“How do I even know that’s real silver,” I call out, buying some time for Ryker to get here. “You could be bluffing.”
Real smooth, Gem. I was trying to distract him, but I failed to remember how freaking quick a vamp can be. Within seconds, he’s closed the gap between us, lashing out at me with the blade.
He wasn’t trying to kill me. If he wanted to, I know he could’ve. The strike was just a warning, and he did it perfectly. With just the tip of the silver blade, he cuts through my shirt, digging into my side. Immediately, I bend over, gasping as a scream rips out of my throat.
My side feels like it’s on fucking fire for seconds that, as I suffer, feel likehours.
He whirls around me, returning to his place. My eyes are glazed over in agony, so I only hear his taunts as he says, “There. Now you know I was telling the truth. Fight me, and I’ll stab deeper the next time. Be a good little girl and—”
I never discovered what would happen if I was a good little girl. His words cut off just as I’m able to blink away some of the subsiding pain. It still hurts, but it’s manageable, and I force myself to stand straight just in time to see Ryker attack the vamp from behind.
I want to shout out about the silver knife, but I don’t need to. Ryker already knows about the dangerous blade. The first thing he does is use his claws to slice through the tendons at the vamp’s wrist. Blood sprays across the sidewalk, but he loses his grip on the knife.
Ryker uses the side of his foot to kick it out of the vamp’s reach. He made sure it hit the handle, leaving him unharmed as he turns his attention on the vampire’s killer fangs next.
The only way Ryker was able to disarm him so easily was because, this time,Iwas the distraction. The vamp was too cocky to realize that Ryker had snuck up behind him until it was too late. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s going to lay down and make it easy for Ryker to fight him. Not like Aleks did. This vampire might be working with my dad, but it’s obvious he despises shifters.
He wants to kill Ryker as much as my male wants to kill him. Ryker just wants it more, and he proves that by wrapping his hands around the vampire’s throat. Before the vampire could snap his fangs and try to bite Ryker’s hands off of him, Ryker uses all of his brute strength to pop the vamp’s head off of his shoulders like he’s a freaking dandelion.
Without a second thought, he throws the head as far away from us as he can, letting the vamp’s body crumple to the sidewalk behind him. Then, his predator’s gaze locked on me, he runs right over to where I’m standing, stunned at the quick yet brutal way the fight just ended.
“Are you okay?” His hands are running up and down my arms, leaving streaks of blood where he touches. “Where did he get you?”
“Just my side. Not deep enough to do anything but hurt like fucking hell so, yeah, I’m okay. I swear.”
Ryker pulls me into his arms, squeezing me so tight I gasp out a breath. “I heard you scream. Damn it, Gemma, I didn’t think I’d get to you in time.”
“But you did,” I point out, lowering my voice in a bid to help calm my riled-up alpha mate down. “You came back for me. Yousavedme.”
“You’re my mate. You’ve always been my mate. I’ll never let anyone hurt you.”
Like so many times before, when Ryker calls me ‘his mate’, I know he means it to the depths of his soul.
We could wait. I never want to go into a bonded mating for the wrong reasons. That’s what I’ve been telling myself formonths. But then he touches me and I forget all the reasons why I wanted to wait, why he agreed. Why I thought I was proving something—to him, to me, to the freaking Luna, for all I know—by refusing to tell him how much I love him.
Tomorrow’s not promised. The dead vamp proves that. If I want him to know how I feel, there’s only one way I can do that.
“I love you.”
I don’t need him to say it back, either. I just watched him rip a head off of a vamp with his bare hands for daring to slice me in the side with a silver blade. If that doesn’t scream ‘I love you’ as a shifter, then I’m being thick on purpose.
He pulls back just enough to get a good look at me as his brow furrows in concern. “What did you say?”
That I love him. Why does he look so confused, too? It’s not like this is the first time I’ve been honest and open and confessed my feelings to him. He should know that I love him by now, right?
And, okay. Professing my love to him when he’s not in the middle of mating me is different from me doing it in the middle of the street, with two pieces of a vampire corpse turning to ash behind me.
My side twinges but not bad enough that it can keep me from rising up on my tiptoes so that we’re eye to eye.
