~

 

“You don’t take a human to a bear fight.” Giles stood outside the nicest place that Rayner had ever been to in her life before and eyed Dane as if he thought he was insane.

“I didn’t take her, she followed me…”

“Well, if you can’t even control your pet human…”

“Damn, where’d you dig this guy up, and can we put him back there?” Rayner offered the vampire a look of pure contempt. “Pet human my ass.” She grumbled.

Her arm was hurting, and her temper was more than frayed. If the bloodsucker expected nice, then he’d learn that respect earned respect with her.

“She’s my mate,” Dane growled a long hard warning to the bloodsucker and Giles grimaced before he relented.

“The one and only damn time I’ll do this favor for you,” he said, tossing open the door to his house, and motioning for them to go inside. “Keep your damn brother on a chain if you have to before someone has to put him out of his misery,” he offered as Dane drew level with him in the doorway.

“I’m going to forget you said that because you’re helping her,” Dane growled, stepping in front of the vampire with Rayner at his back, and standing toe to toe with the man.

“Please don’t. Take it as a warning, and if it isn’t me, well, let’s just say that others have noticed Bowie’s behavior.” Giles informed him.

It wasn’t really anything that Dane didn’t already know, but he didn’t need to hear it, especially not then.

“Is that a damn threat?” Dane growled low in his chest.

“Well … yes,” Giles offered back with a caged smirk on his lips and laughter in his eyes.

“Let’s just leave,” Rayner rushed out.

She wasn’t feeling much like trying to step in between a shifter and a vampire. Her head was throbbing, and her arm was aching something fierce, and she just wanted to go to bed with a bottle of Jack and blot it all out.

“Not yet, little human,” Giles said as he drew his gaze from Dane and eyed the feisty female.

He’d been reading her thoughts, gauging her reactions, and generally stalking her persona since she’d arrived at his door.

Something was off, and he didn’t like it.

 

~

~

~

 

“It’s strange the way the world turns. One day a vampire is considered the monster in the darkness, the stuff of dreams and nightmares, a myth, legend, fairytale to write books and make movies about. The next, the world finds out that the supernatural element that it feared is, in fact, a waking nightmare, and sitting on top of the pile are the vampires.” Giles said as he busied himself pouring three large glasses of Scotch because he thought she looked like she needed it.

“Your point?” Dane asked.

The last thing he needed was a recent history lesson. His bear was prowling within him, clawing for freedom against the danger that the vampire posed at being that close to his mate.

“Bear with me, no pun intended, or maybe a little,” Giles offered with a smug smile on his lips that annoyed Dane to the point where he would willingly rip the man’s arm off and beat him over the head with it.

“Vampires, not particularly wanting to go to war with the human population — food source — decided that if they didn’t want to be hunted, caged, used her nefarious reasons such as warfare then they needed to make themselves indispensable. We became the unofficial gatekeepers of the supernatural world, and thereby taking our collective heads off the bloodied block.”

Giles turned his back on Rayner, allowed just one claw to elongate, sliced the razor-sharp talon across his palm, and squeezed his blood into her drink. Dane watched him do it without complaint or question.

“Good for you,” Rayner offered back.

She didn’t want to be there. She knew what was coming, Dane had told her in no uncertain terms, and the thought of it made her uneasy.

When the vampire turned, took a few step toward her without hesitation even when Dane growled a warning to him, and offered her a drink, she was more than happy to accept it.

“The point of the gatekeeper is to report wrongdoing. In some cases, we are expected to just deal with the problem…”

“I ask again, your point?” Dane growled.

He didn’t like it — the vampire’s blood was in the glass that he’d offered to his mate, and she was going to drink it without her knowledge. He didn’t see his mate as the squeamish type, but the vampire was probably right, and it was best that she didn’t know until the deed was done.

Rayner gladly tossed back the contents of the cut crystal glass and was glad that the feeling of fire that burned way down wasn’t from the cut from the bear. If she’d ever needed a drink in her life — it was then.

“Now we can get to the point,” Giles said. Taking the glass back from Rayner and offering her a second glass. “I think you’re going to need this.”

“I don’t know why you think I’m going to need this — but, I know why I need this,” Rayner said as she took the offering.

“You’ve already taken my blood. It was in the first drink,” Giles informed her, and her hand hesitated as the glass was en route to her lips. Her gaze fell to the liquid, and she didn’t appreciate the small chuckle at the vampire offered. “That one is just Scotch.” He assured her.

“Sure?” Rayner asked.

“I’m a man of my word,” the vampire offered back, and she cocked a shoulder, took the glass to her lips, and tossed liquid fire down the back of her throat. “Sometimes.”

“Stop playing with my mate, she’s not food,” Dane growled. That brought Giles’ attention right back to him.

“We have a problem.” The vampire wasn’t about to sugarcoat it for either of them. They were mates, in his mind they both needed to know what was happening.

“How so?” Dane asked, the growl of his beast still underlining his words.

“While my blood will heal the wounds, there is a fifty-fifty chance that it will not counteract the venom in her blood. Your brother didn’t just claw your mate — he must have bitten her as well…”

“I was there — he did not bite,” Dane was adamant.

He could remember the incident as if it was happening right in front of him, and he had played it over and over within his mind asking himself if he could have saved his mate from Bowie’s bear.

“Perhaps, he caught her unintentionally, but the venom is still in her blood,” Giles assured him.

“Okay, human here.” Rayner lifted her hand as if she was back in school, and waved it at the supernatural element in the room. She didn’t understand what they were talking about.

Dane turned his gaze upon. She had the immediate feeling that whatever it was, it was not good. That feeling was only made worse when he raised a shaky hand and ran it through his mop of unruly hair.

The low, deep, growl that rolled through his chest just put the cherry on top of the cake. Perhaps, in her line of work, she should have read up more on shifters, vampires, and anything that could do her harm.

“I should report this.” Giles kept his attention focused on the shifter.

“You know what will happen,” Dane couldn’t bear the thought.

Not her — not his mate — and not now.

“I do.” Giles didn’t like it.

With the bear venom in her blood, Rayner could transition. A bitten human into a bear shifter – that would bring unwanted attention to their area from outside influences.

Giles didn’t like that idea.

While it was true that the vampire blood could heal humans most of the time, a bite from a shifter was different. If the authorities found out that she was in danger of transitioning then protocol said that they should take her, cage her, so that she wasn’t a danger to anyone around her.

Giles certainly didn’t like that idea either.

Dane would not be allowed anywhere near her. His bear would go bat-shit crazy. A bat-shit crazy bear meant that Giles would have to step in and kill him.

While putting a frenzied bear out of its misery didn’t bother him in the slightest, it could be avoided.

And then there was Bowie. That psycho bear would be under an immediate death sentence.

Whether he’d intended to bite the human, or not, the fact remained that he would still have broken the human laws.