Jaeger collapsed onto me with his head at the crook of my neck, breathing as heavily as I was, pressing soft kisses to my collarbone and shoulder. Gently rolling off me a few minutes later, he took me with him, stroking my hair lovingly as I rested my head on his chest.

Quiet emotion passed between us, my fingers trailing the hard lines of his worship-worthy abs and the dark tattoos that colored his skin.

I knew my idea was a good one, but I also had no doubt that he was going to need a ton of convincing that this was the right thing to do.

“What’re you thinking?” I asked him finally, catching him staring down at me. Lord, was he beautiful. Shadows made the dips created by his chiseled features more pronounced, while his eyes were relaxed and sleepy.

He blinked, smiled, his hand reaching to lift my chin as he murmured to me. “How lucky we were to have found you. What about you?”

Crap.

His reply didn’t bode well for the proposal I was about to make and I loved seeing him looking so happy and calm. He wouldn't be once I brought up what I knew I had, but I gulped my uncertainty down, my eyes dropping to the crescent moon on his chest.

I could’ve easily spent the next couple of years with him here, savoring him and exploring him, basking in that look on his face. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that. We were on a clock with the vampire hunters. Making a silent vow to put that look back on his face as often as possible for as long as possible, I gathered all my courage and shattered the moment.

“I think I know how I can help.”

Jaeger sighed and splayed his large hand at the small of my back. “Look at me, Starling.”

I did as he asked, my resolve faltering from the intensity burning in his eyes. The depth of emotion there was so much that I wanted to crawl into him and live there.

“We don’t need your help, love. We just need for you to be safe.”

“I want to help,” I whispered. “You asked me to be yours.”

“Yes.” The hand in my hair stilled and he stopped breathing as he waited for me to continue. 

Here we go.

“You said the other night that Beckham was struggling not to take my blood and that you all wanted to. I could tell how difficult it was for you not to while we were making love. And I can sense every time we’re all together that you want it. So why not do it? Why not turn me? That can be done, right?"

"No," he snapped immediately, his grip on me tightening. "Yes, it can be done, but no. I won't do that to you."

I fought through the sting of his immediate and total rejection and continued.

"Why not? I would be stronger that way, more helpful," I reasoned to Jaeger, who was still shaking his head. “If things go wrong, he’ll have a way harder time killing me if I’m like you, won’t he?”

Everything I’d read in my research, and everything I’d seen with the guys, supported that stance, but still, he shook his head, letting his eyes travel up the length of my body until they settled on mine.

"You don't understand. Being…no. Becoming what we are isn't moonshine and roses. The process is dangerous, difficult and painful, then to adjust to our lives... It can drive some people crazy."

Wincing as he said the words, he pressed a soft kiss to my forehead and leaned against the headboard with his eyes closed.

There was a story here, obviously. If I had any chance of convincing him to turn me, I needed to know what it was.

"What do you mean when you say that it can drive people crazy?" I shifted to look up at him, my hand resting on his heart and my leg twining with his.

A tortured expression crossed his beautiful face and he sighed, keeping his eyes closed for a long minute.

Without looking at me, he started speaking softly, deeply-seated pain seeping into every word. "Many years ago, there was a woman. She was my mate at the time. We’d been together for a few years when she first asked me to turn her. I refused her, knowing what the risks could be. Eventually, though, I gave in. I was young and in love, as I knew it then. She convinced me to change her and I did. But she was too fragile to survive the turn mentally intact."

The raw agony in his voice washed away the uncalled for stab of jealousy at hearing him call someone else his mate, leaving behind just sadness for him.

"The pain of turning and the constant, overwhelming fine-tuning of her senses made something inside her snap. She could see and hear everything--even the grass growing outside had a sound and eventually, it drove her mad. She wound up being dragged to an institution."

"That's terrible, Jaeger. I'm so sorry," I breathed, trying and failing to imagine what that must have been like for him.

My head rose and fell on his chest as he took several deep breaths. "When they finally allowed me to see her, she was a shell of her former self. The place she was in was awful. I couldn't stand seeing her like that. I knew that the people caring for her there had no idea what she was truly experiencing, so I stole her away and tried caring for her myself, but she was too far gone."

I didn't know what to say, so I just listened. Stroking his chest, I felt heart-wrenching pain coming off him in waves and it manifested in tears that rolled silently down my cheeks.

"She self-harmed and often tried to tear her own hair out. After months of watching her so tortured, nothing was getting better. It was only getting worse with time. I tried everything." Choking back emotion, he finally met my eyes and the guilt and devastation there nearly broke me. "Nothing I did helped her.”

Pausing, I felt him tense, and I knew that what was coming was going to be bad, but he pushed through to the end.

“One evening, I managed to convince her to come for a walk along the cliffs by the ocean. I turned my back for a moment and--” he broke off and paused for a long moment. “It happened to quickly. I jumped after her. Tried to find her in the massive, raging waves, but you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, no matter how hard it is for them to die.”

Tears of empathy and for him, that he'd had to experience something as awful as that, were coming faster than I could wipe them away. I held him close and waited for his breathing, which had become shallow towards the end of his story, to return to normal.

"Thank you for telling me that."

"You deserved to know," he said, looking drained and tired suddenly. "Do you understand now? I could never do that to you."

"I do," I said, because I really couldn't even begin to put myself in his shoes, to have to go through what he had. “And I’m so sorry that happened, Jaeger. I can’t imagine the pain you suffered.”

And still…

Tick tock, a voice whispered in the back of my mind, like I needed a reminder of the danger we were facing. He’d managed to push through what he’d had to say and I had to do the same thing.  

"You and the others were turned… Is that something that happens often? Where the mind snaps?"

Thinking for a beat before he answered me, he said reluctantly, "Rarely.” He rushed on to continue. “But I'm not risking it. I couldn't stand it if that were to happen to you. There’s no way I'm doing it."

Another flat-out rejection. At least this time I knew where he was coming from. "I understand, but if not that, and we all stay together, you do realize that you will have to watch me die eventually."

Jaeger nodded slowly, heartbreak so real, that it would've knocked me on my ass if I hadn't already been lying down, in his eyes before he screwed them shut. "I know, but at least we will have had a long time and a glorious life together before that happens."

"If we survive the hunters.” They were a bit of a hurdle to that long, happy life he was referring to right now. “The best chance of that, now that he knows who I am, is if I am one of you, isn’t it?"

Jaeger blinked his eyes open, his expression grim but determined.

"We'll protect you. Like you said earlier, we've defeated him once. We will do it again." He smiled, but it was forced and tight. "It's getting late, enough talk. Let's get some sleep."

For a long while, we lay stiff and silent, each lost in our own thoughts, but eventually his breathing evened out, though his grip on me remained. Try as I might, I couldn't fall asleep. Being in Jaeger's arms felt like being home and as I thought back over the last week or so, I realized that the same thing was true with all of them.

They'd turned my life upside down from the moment that I'd stumbled into that alley and Jaeger saved me. I knew now, without a shadow of doubt, that I could never go back to life before them.

It wasn't like I'd been unhappy with my life the way that it was, I'd been perfectly content. I loved my job and my sister and my cute little house, but I'd also never felt fulfilled. I’d always had the feeling that there was something more out there for me, that I just didn’t quite fit right into the world as it was.

That sense of belonging had never clicked into place with me and I'd kind of always figured that people were either over exaggerating when they said that it had happened for them or that everyone felt kind of lost and astray, but I knew now that that wasn't entirely true.

Melanie had found that in her friends and her job, and as early days as it still was for my relationship with these guys, and as loathe as I was to admit it so soon, I'd found it in them.

I just didn't know what to do about it. If I couldn't convince Jaeger to do it, I would have to find another way. I couldn’t comprehend the trauma that he must’ve suffered through, and I never wanted him to have to relive that period of his life, but I knew in my heart and gut and every fiber of my being that it wouldn’t be like that for me.

Why I was so sure, I didn’t know. I only knew that I was. And that once I was turned, I would be able to help them face the hunter in a meaningful way.

I wasn’t some kind of damsel and though we were all in distress, I didn't want to wait here in their equivalent of an ivory tower while they went out to slay the proverbial dragon. If we were going to make this relationship work, I needed them to accept that. They couldn't cover me in bubble wrap and protect me from the world while I waited out my days.

I wondered if Jaeger had ever thought about the fact that that girl had made the same decision. It had been her life, her choice. What had happened to her wasn’t his fault any more than it would be if something happened to me.

I wanted to be out on the front lines with them, fighting for my safety, for my sister’s and for theirs. But it was time to admit that my wish for them to turn me was about something more than just a vampire hunter we were facing. I wanted to be with them and I wanted it for more than just the meager few years that I might, or let's face it, might not, have left.

I wanted to be with them. For eternity.

How and when it happened, I wasn't sure, but lying here in Jaeger's arms and thinking back over the time I'd spent with them, picturing each one of them, it dawned on me what I felt for them was so much more than I’d been thinking it was.

I'd fallen madly in love with them. All of them. It didn't feel wrong anymore.

In fact, it was the only thing that felt right.

Which meant, I had some work to do.