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“Do they, now?”
She nodded. “In fact, if you don’t want to turn me, I could always ask Karoly.”
“Like fuck you will.” My mouth tightened, the possessive animal in me rising to the fore. No one, even a mated male like the Kral primus, was getting anywhere near Twilight’s pretty throat. “You’re my woman. I’ll be damned if I’ll let him drink from you. You can’t be turned without my permission. You know that, don’t you?”
“Because of the blood bond?”
“Yeah. Also, as your mate, I’m your primus, too.”
Her spine went rigid. “Are you going to play the boss-man card every time we disagree? Or do you want a partner, someone you can talk things over with?”
We glared at each other. Then she sighed.
“I’m a weakness. It’s not just your people. The other syndicates will know it, too. They’ll try to take me out to weaken you, like Matthew and Clarisse did with your mother. You’d have to put so much protection on me, I’d go insane. And I will not live in a fucking cage, not even for you.”
My fingers dug into her shoulders. “Ask me anything but this. If I lose you now…”
“But you will lose me.” She stroked the back of my neck. “Even if I stay, even if I let you put me in a cage, I’ll get old and die and you’ll still be a young man.”
“Angel.” I buried my face in her hair. “Please don’t ask me now. Give us some time together. Then in ten, maybe twenty years, we can talk again.”
“No. Right now is when you need a vampire mate the most.”
“Damn you,” I rasped.
Her throat worked. “I’m right. You know I am.”
I closed my eyes. Because shewasright. Turning her was risky, but now that we’d mated, letting her remain a human was even riskier.
Yeah, she was a kickass fighter, but as a human, she was vulnerable. As my mate, she might as well have a target painted on her back because taking her out would be the best way to get to me.
And I’d known that, even last night when I’d claimed her in front of everyone in the ballroom. I could say the emotions of the moment had overwhelmed me, but that wasn’t entirely true. I’d judged it was the ideal time to bind her to me in front of the syndicate’s inner circle.
In the back of my mind, maybe I’d even hoped that eventually, she’d agree to be turned. Just not so soon.
“Say yes,” she said. “You don’t have a choice and we both know it.”
She’d showered recently. I gathered her closer, drawing a lungful of her fresh, clean, necessary scent.
“Fine,” I said through a mouth that felt like it had been filled with sand and gravel. “I’ll turn you.”
31
TWILIGHT
“You understand what’s going to happen, right?” Brien stroked the line of my throat from my jaw to my collarbone.
We were on the curtain wall, the stars glittering in the midnight sky, the ocean a velvety dark cloth as far as the eye could see. I was barefoot, my hair in a loose braid, the wind whipping the skirt of my sleeveless red dress around my thighs.
I’d chosen to be outside when Brien turned me. Alone with him in this wild, open place where the two of us had first dropped our defenses.
“Yes.” I brushed a strand of wind-blown hair back from his tense face. “Do it. I want this.”
He kept talking, his tone as clinical as a doctor’s. “I’ll have to bring you near death. Your heart will stop—and that’s when I’ll feed you my blood. The magic will be what sparks the transition, and it’s not the same for any two people. But it hurts. Even if you don’t die, you might wish you had.”
“I understand.”
A week had passed since the challenge for primus. Brien had spent hours each night consolidating his power and cleaning up his father’s messes.
