Page 43 of Protected by the Vampire

People drifted off or started to clean, almost like things were back to normal.

Like I hadn’t nearly died on this floor. Like monsters hadn’t torn each other apart in the same space where people were chatting and laughing.

Maybe it should’ve felt weird, but it didn’t.

Because Soren was here.

He was the most important part of my life, and I needed to tell him how I felt. Sure, I’d told him I loved him, but those words didn’t do justice to everything I felt in my heart.

“We’re gonna hit the showers,” I called, taking Soren’s hand in mine.

Riker snorted. “We won’t see them again. Deacon, call in the cleanup crew. I don’t want to do all this.”

I didn’t hear the reply; I was too busy dragging Soren out of the room.

I needed him to myself.

We’d both been wound too tight, and I couldn’t get the image out of my head of his face after he’d realized the blood on me had been mine. That split second where something inside him broke.

He’d thought about how he could’ve lost me, and it’d destroyed him.

The way he’d reacted, the way he’d ended Patrick, it hadn’t been just in anger; it’d been fear. It was raw, vicious, and uncontrolled.

Soren was powerful—stronger than anyone I’d ever known—but I never wanted to see that kind of fear in him again.

Not because he couldn’t handle it, but because I couldn’t handle what it did to him.

And there was only one way to make sure I could stand beside him—like, truly stand beside him—in this world.

I was going to ask him to make me reborn.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Soren

The bathroom filled with steam faster than I expected. Theo stood under the spray, head bowed, water gliding over his skin in rivulets that carried streaks of blood down the drain. Some of it was his. Too much of it.

On the way up here, he told me about Riker saving him before… Before he almost got murdered and I would never have had the chance to be around him again.

My chest ached at the thought.

I wanted to slaughter Patrick all over again.

My jaw tightened as I stepped in behind Theo, closing the glass door with a quiet click.

For a moment, I just watched the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. The way his shoulders still held tension, like his body hadn’t quite realized it was safe yet. The bruises—fading now, but still there—as Dashiel’s healing magic continued working through his system.

My hands curled at my sides.

I had seen centuries of violence. I’d dealt it, endured it, and survived it.

None of it had ever felt like that moment, seeing him covered in blood and?—

“Soren.”

His voice was softer than usual, but still rough around the edges, pulling me from the spiral of my thoughts.

I stepped forward without answering, my chest brushing his back as I reached past him to grab the soap.