Absolution (24 page)

Krys seemed like the type of girlfriend Glory had always wished for—she and Melissa both. The three women and Mark planned to watch movies while Aidan and Mirren dealt with their Tribunal guy.

Glory hoped the man—Lorenzo something—really was on their side. She could tell from his expression that Mirren didn’t trust him as fully as Aidan did. But it would be worth talking to Satan himself if it would mean getting Matthias off their backs. She wanted to see what she and Mirren could have together, if anything, once he wasn’t feeling obligated to protect her and she wasn’t afraid to leave.

“Hey there.” She and Krys hugged as the taller woman reached the doorway, and Glory stepped back to let Aidan inside.

“Hi, Glory.” He stopped next to her and paused, examining her with a frown. He shifted his stare to Mirren, and his eyes widened. “Holy hell.”

“What’s wrong?” Krys and Glory asked the question in tandem.

Mirren frowned at Aidan. “What’s the problem, A?”

Aidan grinned. “Hell, I should have brought champagne.”

Glory looked at Mirren with raised brows. He shrugged and asked, “What have you been smoking?”

Aidan’s smile faltered, and he stared at Mirren a moment before shaking his head. “Never mind, my mistake. You ready to go talk to Renz? He’s meeting us downtown.”

Krys and Glory exchanged questioning glances. Something weird had just happened, but Glory wasn’t sure what, and Mirren’s face could appear in the encyclopedia next to the word
puzzled
.

“You don’t want to feed first?” Melissa had stood up when Aidan arrived, but hesitated now. Whatever had happened, she wasn’t in on it, either.

“Not now. I’ll find you later.” Aidan turned back toward the door. “Mirren and I need to get going.”

Mirren gave Glory a heated wink on his way past, which made her heart do a flip-flop. Good grief. The man made her feel like a giddy teenager. Car doors slammed, and a few seconds later, Aidan’s car pulled out of the drive.

“What the heck just happened?” she asked Krys.

Aidan’s mate shook her head. “I have no idea. Vampires—who can figure ’em out?”

Melissa and Glory laughed.

“Seriously.” Krys threw up her hands. “I might be one, but I still don’t understand them.” She settled on the sofa and crooked a finger at Mark. “Aidan can abstain all he wants to, but I’m a baby vamp and I need you.”

Laughing, he sat next to her and rolled up his sleeve. Glory watched, fascinated, as Krys took his arm, licked a spot over the vein on his inner arm, and bit. He flinched but then settled back on the sofa with his eyes closed while Krys fed.

So that’s how it was—not nearly as sensual as feeding from the neck, body to body. Glory hadn’t realized that she and Mirren had gone the intimate route from the start, whether consciously or not. She didn’t think he’d intended to make her his fam, not at first. Their chemistry—or whatever it was—had gotten away from them, and they fell into it naturally.

She was glad. It had taken that intense experience to erase the fear and pain Matthias and his brutal little clique had instilled in her about feeding. She knew now how easy it would have been for them to make it at least bearable for her, but they hadn’t bothered.

Krys’s cell phone rang, and she released Mark’s arm with a sigh, licking the wound to heal it. She dug the phone out of her pocket, glanced at the screen, and pushed the talk button. “Hey, Aidan.” She nodded a couple of times, blinked twice, and turned to stare at Glory.

What the heck is going on?
Glory took the armchair next to the sofa, waiting for Krys to end the call. When she did, she set the phone on the coffee table and bit her lip, trying hard not to laugh—and failing.

“Mark, Aidan asks if you and Mel can get a suite below the clinic set up for Renz Caias to use tonight,” Krys said. “I need to talk to Glory about something.”

Glory shifted in the armchair, fidgeting. First, Aidan had acted weird, and now Krys was about to bust a gut over whatever he’d told her on the phone. What could have happened?

CHAPTER 23

M
irren slammed a fist against the dash of Aidan’s car, denting the door to the glove compartment. “What do you mean, mated? I’m not mated to Glory, or anybody else. You have to, I don’t know,
do
something to be mated. Vampires can’t be
accidentally
mated. You’re so full of shit.”

Aidan shook his head, grinning. As soon as he’d broken the news to Mirren, he’d called Krys so she could talk to Glory and explain what it meant for a human to be mated to a vampire. Krys had still been human when they’d been joined, although his brother’s attack had changed their status to a vampire union not too long afterward.

Mirren clutched the door handle like he was about to bolt out of the moving car and run all the way to Atlanta, so Aidan pulled off on a side street a block from their rendezvous spot at the municipal building. They had a little extra time—he’d planned to feed before leaving Mirren’s, but as soon as he realized Mirren and his new mate didn’t know what they’d done, he thought he’d better get the big guy out of there. Who knew how he’d react?

“Look, not to put too fine a spin on it, here’s all it takes for a vampire mating.” Aidan killed the engine and turned toward Mirren, who frowned straight ahead, his body as stiff as if someone had stuck a two-by-four down the back of his shirt. “One, a strong chemistry that involves some kind of vampire hormonal shit I can’t explain, but chemistry works as well as anything else I could use to explain it. Two, you gotta have sex. And three, there has to be a blood exchange that takes place either during the sex or really close. Those three things had to have happened because those mating bonds are in place. If I can sense them, I guarantee you Renz will be able to as well, because he’s so old. Not to mention Randa and Tanner—everyone who’s blood-bonded to you.”

“But we didn’t…” Mirren stared at him a moment, then closed his eyes and beat his head on the back of the car seat. “Aw, fuck me. We did.”

Aidan laughed. “Only you could get mated by accident. Man, that’s seriously screwed up.” He wasn’t sure how the situation would turn out in the long run, but it had at least added a moment of lightness to a stressful week. Hell, a stressful two months.

Mirren stared at the overhead light as if mesmerized. In shock, more likely. “How do we undo it?”

Aidan studied him. It was a knee-jerk reaction on Mirren’s part; he’d probably have the same one if his and Krys’s mating had happened this way. God knows he’d fought his own mating long enough. “Don’t even think about trying to undo it—not for a while, anyway.”

Mirren twisted in his seat, as much as a man his size could twist in a car seat. “But—”

“Seriously, man. She’s good for you. Wait a while. See how it works out.” Aidan tried a different tack. “How many of those sorry vampires did you off last night?”

Mirren shrugged. “Twenty. Why? What does that have to do with my
mate
?” He spat the word as if it tasted sour on his tongue.

“How many scars did you make on yourself with that acid of yours after last night’s battle?”

Mirren frowned and didn’t answer.

Aidan was determined to drive this point home. Glory was good for Mirren. He probably thought she was a distraction, but sometimes a little distraction was healthy. “When was the first time there were people at your house besides me that didn’t involve some vampire crisis?”

Mirren grunted and stared out the window.

“Uh-huh.” Aidan nodded. “Tonight, that’s when. Don’t throw this away before you’ve given it a chance. Things happen for a reason.”

“Whatever.”

The man hadn’t broken anything yet. Might as well push it further. “How up to speed are you on vampire mating and what it means?”

No answer.

Fine, Aidan could play it that way. “Each of you will know where the other one is, and if one of you gets in trouble or is hurt, the other one will know. It’s like a strong blood bond in that way.”

No response.

“If you need to, you can pull power from her the way strong bonded vampires can pull from each other. Remember when Owen attacked me behind the old mill and I accidentally pulled energy from Krys? She keeled over in a dead faint in the middle of the clinic?”

“Humph.”

Well, that was a response, at least. “Glory’s life span will be much longer. She’ll be less vulnerable to any kind of disease. If you work at it, you’ll probably be able to communicate mentally, at least on a basic level. Krys and I could, and from what I’ve seen, Glory’s every bit as mentally tough as Krys was before she was turned—maybe more so. Think how strong she’s been to hang onto the info about her abilities despite everything Matthias put her through and us keeping her enthralled for a week while she detoxed.”

Mirren didn’t answer at first, but he was no longer sitting ramrod straight and staring at the car ceiling. He’d kind of slumped in the seat and had his eyes closed. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Anything else I need to know?”

Aidan cranked the car again. Crisis averted, for now. He hoped Mirren accepted it, because he honestly didn’t know if a mating bond could be broken, short of death. “Just this—if one of you dies, the other one could die as well, particularly the weaker of you. These bonds go deep. So, for Glory’s sake, take care of yourself.”

They rode the rest of the way to city hall in silence, parking beside a black sedan with dark-tinted windows. The type of car a chauffeur might drive around as he carted some head of state to and from official functions. The man who got out of the backseat to greet them was polished enough to be that head of state.

Aidan exited the car first but stuck his head back in the door and gave Mirren a warning frown. “Play nice. If you can’t converse without name-calling, keep your mouth shut and nod.”

Mirren barely heard Aidan’s words. His head spun with the idea of Glory being his mate. She’d bit him in the shower and again when he’d clapped a hand over her mouth to shut her up. Both times, she’d taken in some of his blood, and he’d certainly fed from her, and they’d had sex. More than once.

Had he felt any differently afterward? When he’d fed from her tonight in the upstairs bedroom, he’d felt relaxed but needy—needing his hands and mouth on her. Needing to play with her. Was that what happiness felt like? He didn’t know.

“You OK?” Aidan still had his head stuck in the open car door. “You can bail out of this meeting if you want to go back and talk to Glo—”

“I’m good.” He didn’t want to talk to Glory. He didn’t want to talk about Glory. He didn’t want to even
think
about Glory.

Mirren unfurled himself from the cramped front seat of Aidan’s car, nodded at the short, slim man standing beside the sedan, and then followed Renz and Aidan up the stone steps of the city hall building.

Renz didn’t look starved by the pandemic, stressed out by power politics, or anything other than the polished bureaucrat he was. Mirren understood Aidan’s loyalty to the man—he’d taken the emotionally ruined vampire Aidan had been in Ireland, brought him to America, and taught him how to survive with his brains instead of just his fangs. Aidan owed him a lot.