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“Too long.” Her words were barely above a whisper. “I wish they had targeted me instead. She’ll survive the hunger… but it’ll take her time to get there. At least I know my brothers would be there, if it was me. They’d teach me everything there is to know, even if they had to knock a few heads in to do it.”
“We’ll have to be your brothers for her, then.”
“We’ve got this.” There was doubt in her voice, and I laughed softly when I heard it. She did too. “I’ll work on the confidence. By the time we get her back, I’ll be ready.”
“We both will be.” I finished up in the shower, dried off, and then pulled on a sleep shirt Brynn had grabbed from her room.
When we stepped out of the bathroom, I heard Rafael’s voice downstairs, and stopped in my tracks.
Brynn grabbed my arm again and pulled me down the stairs, whispering, “Hiding isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
I made a face at her, and her lips curved in a small smile.
Rafael was on the phone in the kitchen when we made it down, and he ended his phone call as we went straight for the takeout food. He’d ordered from what he knew was one of my favorite places; obviously, he was trying to soften me up.
It wasn’t going to work.
Brynn grabbed plates and silverware, and I carried the bags to the kitchen table. Rafael followed me. His hand brushed my hip so lightly, I wasn’t sure whether he’d actually touched me, or I just imagined it.
Goosebumps broke out on my arm anyway. It had been almost ten hours since he last touched me… not that I was keeping track.
“We need you to tell us everything about vampires,” Brynn told Rafael bluntly, as she dished food onto her plate.
Raf took my plate and started filling it. When I tried to take it back, he shot me a warning look, and I sat back down. I wanted to argue with him about it, but I knew if I did, it would take longer to get to his explanation about vampires.
The bastard was still going to insist on taking care of me, like he had at the resorts.
“Vampires are very similar to demons, but they function on blood instead of lust. They have a vampire form, and the men are insatiable, like male demons. Unlike demons, a vampire sating their hunger can get violent, given that blood is involved. If they’re careful, feeding causes no pain and actually brings pleasure to whoever they’re drinking from.”
Rafael set my plate down in front of me and started filling his own. “The biggest difference is that vampires can be made by draining a human’s blood while they have vampire blood in their system. The vampires we hunt and kill are those who turn humans without reason, and those who feed violently enough to maim or kill the humans they’ve fed from. Without someone keeping them in line, there would have been many more deaths. A vampire without control can kill a dozen humans a day without batting an eye.”
I fought the instinct to raise my eyebrows.
A dozen humans a day?
He definitely hadn’t mentioned that bit when he was explaining it to me, and I was calling him a murderer.
“Damn. You guys are heroes, then.” There wasn’t any sarcasm in Brynn’s voice, just respect. “Why did they throw you in jail?”
He rehashed his story about the ancient vampire woman they had killed, and how he’d taken the fall for it so his brothers could walk free.
“And August is watching you to make sure youdon’tkill more vampires?” Brynn’s eyebrows were raised high in her forehead.
“Dragon shifters are neutral when it comes to human and supernatural conflicts. They don’t respect humans the way demons do, because they don’t need you,” Rafael said simply.
Her eyebrows dropped, and her gaze did too.
We all ate in silence for a minute, until I spoke up. “Do dragons have human mates sometimes, too?”
Raf looked at me, his gaze unreadable as it slowly moved over my face. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“As you’ve gathered from Brynn, dragon shifters are secretive. I’ve heard legends of a place deep in the Scaled Mountains, past the prison, where they take their mates. It may or may not be accurate. Most stories don’t have a name for it, and just call itMate Mountain.”
Brynn’s gaze snapped back to him, her eyes wide.
She didn’t say a word, but something told me he was right.
