“Zachary!” his older brother shouted again, only his voice sounded a million miles away.
“Pasha,” Zachary said, his voice hoarse.
“She is safe.”
Zachary floated from the floor, then was jostled roughly through a hall, and shoved through the open window into the sunlight. He squinted, barely making out the concerned faces that hovered over him. His brother’s, his uncle’s, his father’s. And Pasha’s…
He continued his journey, his body jostled back and forth, his mind drifting.
“Get him back to his father’s house!” Curt, one of his father’s cousins, shouted.
“Is he going to be all right?” a woman asked, her voice as sweet as honeydew melon.
He attempted to focus on her face. Dark hair framed her heart-shaped face, the long strands reaching her waist. Her dark eyes were filled with worry as she studied his. Pasha, the woman of his dreams. She was safe.
“Zachary,” she said, reaching her small hand out to him.
“We’re losing him!” Michael said. “Damn it. We’re losing him!”
Her sensuous brown eyes pooled with tears. Zachary reached his hand out to touch hers.
She grasped his hand in hers, warm and filled with love, and held on tight. She loved him too. She’d be his. Forever, she’d be his mate.
“You can’t die,” she whispered. “You saved my life more times than I can count. You can’t die.”
He was certain he smiled back at her. He was certain his lips curved up, and that he asked her to marry him. He knew that she said yes. She would be his forever.
Chapter 2
Pasha couldn’t believe Adonis and Rachael had managed to kill Piaras, and then one of Rachael’s hunter suitors had stabbed Adonis right after he had been stabbed by Piaras himself! The hunter stabbing Adonis in the heart could have killed him! She didn’t agree with the council’s decision to ban Gregory Devine from the region. He had been one of Rachael’s suitors, which was part of the reason he’d stabbed Adonis and also because Adonis had been a hunter turned vampire.
Gregory had nearly murdered a hunter, albeit Adonis was also a vampire, but Adonis hadn’t been fighting the hunters! He’d helped Rachael to take down Piaras!
She wanted to see Zachary, but he’d been asleep the first time she’d gone in to see him in the hospital bed in the clinic in his father’s home, his beautiful blond hair spread out across his pillow while her brother had also been asleep in the room. The doctor had assured her both men would be fine, lucky for their hunter ability to heal faster.
At least the hunter family that had taken her family in were all warm and welcoming. Already some of the bachelor hunters had come to see her though, when the only hunter she was interested in was the wounded one who had saved her life, Zachary Bremerton.
Zachary became aware of movement and harsh, hushed voices, and he opened his eyes. He was resting in the hospital bed in his father’s home. Next to him, Adonis slept in the other bed, a bag of blood dripping into his arm. Then Zachary realized he was attached to a bag of blood as well.
“What the hell do we do now, Tobias?” Dr. Stevens asked from the adjoining room where surgeries on injured hunters or huntresses were performed. “The others must be told.”
“No, no. Only you, my two cousins, Zachary’s cousins, and his brother Michael must know.”
Zachary heard Dr. Stevens pace across the floor as he listened to his father and the doctor talk.
“I don’t like this, not one bit,” the doctor said.
“I’m the head of the hunter family in Dallas. It’s my decision. As senior council members, Curt and Brent are the only other ones involved in the decision of this magnitude. Michael, as Zachary’s brother, is to know, too, so that he can observe his behavior. Zachary will have to be watched at all times.”
“He’s one of them now. He can invite others into your home, any hunter’s home. The other hunters will want him terminated. You know they will.” There was silence. Then Dr. Stevens began again. “Hell, what about the other one?”
“Rachael is marrying him. Adonis has proven to us beyond a doubt, he’s on our side. He and Rachael killed Piaras. He saved Michael’s life. He could have my position as head of the council, should he want it for his heroic feat. Besides, his being with us should give us an advantage. He has both vampiric and hunter skills.”
“He lied to us. All along he lied to us. Gregory had been right that Adonis had been a vampire.”
“Adonis had only fought the rogue vampires. He protected the hunters! If Gregory had done only half of what Adonis had done…” Tobias took a deep breath and let it out.
Zachary understood in part why Adonis had. How would he feel if he’d been a hunter turned, wanting to remain with a family, wanting to continue hunting the bloodsuckers?
“He still lied to us,” the doctor insisted.
“In part, yes. About his family, no. They were imprisoned by Piaras, and Piaras wanted Rachael. Adonis couldn’t very well have told us that he was a vampire. We would have killed him on the spot. And then what? My niece would still be at risk, and Adonis’s family would have been murdered.”
Dr. Steven growled, “This could be the end of our family!” He stormed out of the surgery room and raised his brows as he entered the recovery room. He considered Zachary as he stared back at the gray-haired doctor, his blue eyes narrowed.
Zachary’s throat was parched. His shoulder burned like it was on fire, but he didn’t feel any differently than he normally did when he was injured on a hunt.
Dr. Stevens glowered at him. But his father quickly came to Zachary’s bedside and patted his uninjured shoulder. Tears pooled in his father’s gray-blue eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Zachary choked out. His throat felt raw as if he had a bad case of strep throat.
His father turned to the doctor. “Let me speak with him alone.”
When the doctor stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him, his father said, “Zachary, the vampire who accosted you, he...he bit you.”
Zachary’s mind swirled with confusion. He stared at his father, turned his attention to the hospital room at his father’s house, felt the chill in his body, the cold blood dripping into his veins, and smelled the heavy odor of antiseptics. Then he remembered that. He remembered killing the vampire before…before he couldn’t.
“But I’m not dead.” Not unless his father was dead also. But Dr. Stevens hadn’t been at the battle. He never went to them, just took care of those who were injured in the fight.
“The vampire didn’t want to kill you. He wanted to turn you. They have the ability to do either, we have learned, but in this case, he wanted you to be his blood-bond. I don’t know that any have done this before. In all other cases, the vampires wisely killed the hunters, but Piaras had some notion he could control hunters through turning them.”
Zachary’s stomach churned with nausea, his head floating off the pillow as his thoughts grew clouded. “I…I can’t be.”
His father looked over at Adonis. “He is too. Piaras had turned him over a month ago.”