Roman (Vampire's Mate, #1)

by Grae Bryan

“What if I could stop the pain and still promise you a long, long life?” Soft fingers traced Roman’s face. It sounded too good to be true. A deal with the devil, but Roman was beyond caring. He nodded frantically. “Then yes. Please. Please help.” His voice came out gurgled this time, and he could taste the metallic tang of his own blood in his mouth. The stranger’s fingers stilled. “If I help you, what will you do for me?” “What do you want?” Roman would give him anything. “Will you promise to stay by my side?” It was a strange request, to come from a man he’d never met before, but easy enough to answer. “I promise.” The man smiled. Straight white teeth. “Close your eyes.”

But young Danny wasn’t anything other, was he? He was just a boy. A simple human man. One with a smart mouth and a smile that could take someone’s breath away. Not just boy, his demon snarled at him. Not just anything. Special. Perfect. Ours.

Roman looked at the boy—really looked at him. He took in the pale complexion, the dark bruises showing under his eyes, and realized how exhausted the young man must really be. Danny looked tired, not in the way of someone who’d just had a long night, but in the way of someone who had been working too hard for too long with no one to take care of him. And that, Roman decided, just would not do. Ours, his demon rumbled. Ours, he agreed.

Roman tightened his arms around Danny’s back, and his demon let out a contented purr as he allowed himself to close his eyes. And then his demon said what they had both been edging around, voicing it whether Roman was ready for it or not. Mate, it purred. Our mate. Goddamn it.

Roman slipped his hands into Danny’s curls, cradling his head, and gave him a look that could melt steel. “And for the record…my demon does not just like you. It craves you. Is obsessed with you. Wants to own you and devour you and never let you go. You would run for the hills if you could hear what it thinks about you. What I think about you.”

“That’s the thing though. That’s part of what makes it beautiful. You know it doesn’t last. So you do your best with the time you have. Help who you can, find comfort where you can, love as much as you can. It can hurt definitely. It can really suck sometimes, how quickly things disappear.” Danny was embarrassed to find that he was pushing tears back at this point, the discussion bringing up emotions he tried to keep buried around other people. “But there’s beauty in trying anyway,” he insisted, voice thick.

“You’re real, right?” Danny asked. “Tell me this is real. Tell me you’re not going to just disappear into the dark a week from now. Tell me you’re really mine.” His hands were gripping Roman’s shirt so tightly they were edged with white. “I am yours,” Roman vowed. “Always yours.” And it was true. Nothing in this world was going to take his mate from him.

He hadn’t realized quite how lonely his life had become until Roman had swept in, and suddenly there was someone else there, someone to hold him while he cried, to kiss his tears away. It would be so easy for Danny to depend on him. So easy to love him, demon and all. Danny was probably more than halfway there already. But what if Danny was just a fun diversion for Roman? A little blip of existence, like Soren had said. Roman said he would be there always, but what did that mean? Would Roman still want him when Danny grew old and decrepit?

“Ohh, mon Dieu. My lovely mate. Life has not been fair to you.” He gripped Danny’s chin a little tighter. Not hard enough to hurt but enough to make sure Danny was paying attention. “Listen to me, Danny. I am not leaving. Not ever. Not unless you want me to, and even then, I can make no promises. You are mine. I am yours.” Danny swallowed hard. “But—” “No buts, little king. I am realizing I have made an error. I have underestimated the trauma you hold. But if you need me to tell you every single day that I am staying, I will tell you. Gladly. Often. Always. That I am yours. Forever, if you will have me.”

Roman was afraid. He was afraid to bring up the prospect of turning to his mate. He was afraid the very idea would horrify Danny, a man who valued human life so much. And underneath that fear was the crippling doubt. The thought that Danny might turn and they would both find that the myth of fated mates was wrong. Roman hadn’t even believed in mates until meeting Danny, and he’d never met a fated pair himself. What if he’d been right all along and his mate woke up with a demon that was not soothed by Roman’s presence at all? Maybe Roman would ruin Danny’s life forever.

“If I’d known you were leaving, I would have…” Danny’s voice trailed off. “What would you have done, mon amour?” Danny made a strangled noise. “I mean, you could get really hurt, you know? What if Luc injures you or…or worse. And I never got a chance to say— Ugh, I’m really gonna have to say it over the phone, aren’t I?” “Say what, little king?” “I love you, okay!” Danny was shouting again. “I love you and your dumb vampire face, and I really thought I’d get to tell you that in person.”

“Tell me again why we can’t just nuke it?” Danny asked. Roman turned to him in horror, and Danny laughed out loud at whatever expression was on Roman’s face. “Oh my God, Rome. Is the aversion to microwaves a French thing or an ancient thing?” “It is a matter of taste thing, little heathen.”