They were sixteen when I saw them playing, and I looked to be in my twenties, so I couldn’t approach them without looking like a fucking pedophile. I also didn’t know how to talk, think, or act around them.
It wasn’t until I saw Cabe and Lanier interacting with each other, the friendship they had, that I wanted to figure out how to have that myself. Growing up and living in Hellfire didn’t teach me about how the Human brain worked. I had one, but I hadn’t grown up around normal children. My siblings were Demons, evil. I didn’t like being around them.
I needed to learn how to be a friend, how to make the guys like me. It sounds creepy if you think about it too hard, but at the time—I was simply trying to survive inside my own head. The two of them, the relationship they had, made me see what I was missing. So I watched… the joking and laughter. I was fascinated by the games they played.
I waited two years, until they were eighteen. When I approached, I kept the little secret to myself and pretended like I was just a neighborhood kid coming to play basketball. We clicked instantly.
I told them I was a Warlock—a Demon—and explained who my father was, confirmed that I was a helluva lot older than them but that I stopped aging when I hit twenty-one just like they would in a few short years. Sure enough, when they did hit the golden age, we celebrated together. I was there for their Transition; I was there for every occasion. It wasn’t long after their Transition that my father bought us the penthouse, they moved in with me, and then just like that, we were a family.
I never told them that I had spent time learning how Humans interacted with one another, using them as my example. I never told them how bad it was in Hellfire. I didn’t want to seem weak, or worse—creepy. No, I kept it to myself, but it didn’t matter, they were my brothers as much as I was theirs. None of us were related by blood, but we were brothers by choice.
We still didn’t know why my father was so accepting of the three of us together, but we never questioned it. Lanier lost his father at a young age, and Cabe had no known family, so they lived in an orphanage that was run by two Nephilim. Our friendship was natural because, in a lot of ways, we were the same.
Our brotherhood was built on a foundation of resentment. We all resented who we were, what we were capable of, what life had handed us. I couldn’t explain the feeling I lived with every day, but they lived with the same one. Their pain echoed mine. Abandoned. Alone. Angry.
“Any news on the mating bonds?” I asked, breaking the silence. I moved my hands through my hair, pulling on the strands.
Lanier stood up and moved to the stark white kitchen, passing by the modern steel appliances and over to the wet bar in the corner. He poured himself a glass of something brown, sucking it back in one go.
He hung his head, the weight forcing his shoulders to drop.
He didn’t like what he was about to say.
“She’s the reason, isn’t she?” His voice was dirty with defeat. “She’s the key to the mating bonds coming back.”
He had been searching for the reason the mating bonds had stopped forming for the Nephilim as well as the Warlocks.
When the guys Transitioned, we expected mates to pop up for both of them over the course of the year. It wasn’t surprising when mine didn’t show up. Warlock mates were hard to come by—very few had them—but Lanier was ready to do the ceremony and turn the bond down to become Fallen. Three years later, we still had no answers, but Lanier did find out that it had been twenty-one years since the last mating bond was confirmed. We planned to confront my father and ask for help finding the reason for the absent bonds. Then she came into the picture and threw a five-foot-two, hundred-and-thirty-pound wrench in our plans.
She was my goddamn wet dream in the flesh. She was everything my hollow heart hoped for. Even now, as I sat on the couch, watching Lanier toss the glass into the sink in the island and bring the bottle to his lips instead, my animal was clawing at my insides, trying to get out. Aching to find her, protect her. He wanted to rip into her soul and stake his claim on her wild beast.
The thought of any Demon getting near her at the party tonight sent him into a tailspin. He was gearing up for a fight, and I was ready to let him loose.
“This feeling? It feels exactly like it’s been described to me,” I replied, forcing my voice to sound neutral. “It feels like a mating bond.”
His back stiffened, his head lifting to the ceiling.
“Fuck,” was all he said before he threw the half empty bottle of whiskey clear across the space.
I watched with hunger in my eyes as his anger bled into the room, his torment leaking through the air like the scent of fresh bacon in the morning. I bit back a groan of pleasure, the hunger pains in my stomach evaporating as the bottle slammed into the glass window and shattered. Lanier’s emotions blew like smoke from the impact.
Glass rained; whiskey poured.
I fed.
“Alright, so here’s the plan,” Cabe said as we sat around our kitchen table later that night. His blond hair hidden under a black and white snapback, blue eyes bright and determined. We each had a beer and a slice of pizza in front of us. Mine was folded in half, dripping grease all over the marble tabletop. I think I dripped some onto my green joggers too, but I couldn’t care less.
“Hit me, baby,” I said around a mouthful of pizza.
He rolled his eyes, narrowing them at my caveman eating, but continued, “We don’t know much about this mission, only that we’ve been asked to get her back here so we could protect her. We don’t know what we’re protecting her from, so while this plan is horrible—it’s our only fucking shot.”
Lanier groaned, crossed his big ass arms over his chest, and closed his eyes, a mixture of unwanted concern and total annoyance on his face. My Bull was ready to burst through our barrier and take over just to find her himself. I couldn’t allow that. We had to get her through the Transition, and it would start in a few short hours.
Cabe took a bite of pizza and quickly wolfed it down before taking a large drink of his beer. “We need to let someone approach her. The only way we can get to her is if she realizes she needs help. That means we let her need us.”
I didn’t like it, not one bit. But I knew he was right.
I put my elbow on the table and set my chin in my palm. “And what do we do to make sure that just one Demon approaches her? You know the whole place will be clawing their way toward her. She’s fresh meat, totally clueless,” I stated, really fucking hoping this plan was more than just throwing her to the wolves and hoping she’d be able to handle it.
“That’s where we come in,” he nodded. “We can individually protect her by just being around her. Rile her up a little bit. The angrier she is, the better chance she will stand against someone coming at her. But we have to make sure we protect her without her knowing, or she’ll get spooked. She doesn’t trust us as it is, so if we’re hovering over her, it will only make it worse. Luckily for us, it’s our bar, so we make the rules. We fend off anyone that we don’t want near her, but we have to make sure we let at least one through. Just one. It’ll be enough for us to show up and save her. Then hopefully, we can get her to at least listen before it hits midnight. The Transition has already begun, so she’s probably feeling weird tonight—she will be hyper aware of her surroundings.”