Hot Vampire Next Door: Season Two (Midnight Harbor Book 2)

My sister is Julian Locke’s blood mate? That can’t be right.

“Approach the bench, Mr. Locke,” the vasill instructs and Julian walks passed us to the front of the courtroom.

He looks over his shoulder at Damien for the briefest of seconds and I swear I catch a flicker of triumph on his face.

That mother fucker.

The vasill takes the blood mate license from Julian and reads it over. “Ms. MacMahon,” he says, “did you perform the blood mate ceremony and sign this license?”

My sister sputters beside me. “I…that’s not…no, your honor. I wouldn’t—” She looks at Damien. Her breathing is labored and her eyes wide. “I wouldn’t,” she says low and beneath her breath.

When he meets her eyes, Damien’s expression is blank, but his hands are fists at his side.

The vasill hands the license to one of the courtroom guards. “Take that to Ms. MacMahon please.”

The guard, another vampire, brings it over and holds it up for all of us to see.

“Is that your signature, Ms. MacMahon?” the vasill asks.

“Fuck,” Kelly whispers.

It is her signature. My sister has very distinct handwriting. It’s half print, half cursive, with tall, skinny letters.

Her K dips down far on the signature line and her Y loops with a curl on its tail.

“As you can see,” Julian says, “as my blood mate, Kelly MacMahon should be returned to me and this matter resolved immediately.”

“Even a blood mate has rights,” I blurt.

The guard hands the license back to Julian. I want that piece of paper so I can burn the damn thing.

“While that may be true,” the vasill says, “dissolving a blood agreement is much more complex than dissolving a simple pledging.”

“Bran!” My voice rises, near hysteria. “They can’t do this.”

“You can re-petition the court to dissolve the blood agreement,” the vasill adds, “but that matter needs to be sent to the civil court and they’re not open on Mondays.”

Bran looks over the top of my head to his brother. He says something in French.

Damien responds the same.

They go back and forth over us ignoring the vasill as he drones on.

It’s hard to tell what the Duval brothers are discussing. Their voices are even, their expressions distant, almost cold.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Bianca standing to her feet. Horror is rising on her face. It’s the same expression a man might wear when he watches the ocean pull back right before a tsunami hits.

Bianca speaks French.

My stomach drops.

Oh shit.

“Damien!” she calls across the courtroom, “you can’t—”

Damien and Bran are a blur.

The sound of cracking bone reaches my ears like a gunshot, but it isn’t until the body hits the floor that I realize it’s one of the guards.

I yelp in surprise.

A second guard drops.

The vasill drops next.

Julian’s eyes burn bright blue, ready for war, but Julian isn’t fast enough.

Julian isn’t a Duval.

His head twists to an unnatural angle beneath the massive strength of Damien’s capable hands.

One second Julian is snarling with rage and the next he’s motionless on the marble floor.

“What the fuck?” The other vampire, the second councilman, kicks his chair back and lurches to his feet. “You can’t do this.”

“Yes, I fucking can.” Damien crouches beside Julian’s temporarily lifeless body and plucks the blood mate document from his pocket.

“You’re going to start a war!”

Bran takes another step behind the bench. There is a hunger burning in his eyes that has nothing to do with blood and everything to do with carnage.

“Come on, man.” The vampire backpedals. Bran advances. “Okay!” The man holds up his hands. “All right. Fuck, Duval. All this over some pussy?”

Bran’s nostrils flare. His gaze is on the other vampire, but he says something in French.

Damien answers, “Oui,” and Bran’s hand sinks into the other vampire’s chest and tears out his heart. Blood splatters across his face as his fangs turn razor sharp in his mouth.

Adrenaline rushes through my veins, sending a flash of warmth all through my body.

The councilman blinks at his heart in Bran’s hand right before he bursts into ash.

The air goes still and silent. I can taste the cinders on the tip of my tongue.

Bran lets the heart drop from his grip and it bursts into ash mid-fall. He gives Bianca a quick tip of his chin and she races out of the room. The wolf shifter is already gone.

“Time to go,” Damien says, his voice even and calm like they didn’t just decimate an entire vampire court and start a war.

Bran comes over. There’s a trail of blood from the bench to us where it dripped from his hand. Blood like bread crumbs. I can’t seem to look away from it. I am entranced by it.

The brothers discuss something in French and Damien sweeps Kelly into the wide span of his arms.

“Wait, my sister—”

“Is coming with me,” Damien says, barely looking at me, and they disappear from sight.

“Better if we go separately,” Bran explains.

I don’t move. I can’t seem to move.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I…we…” Pinpricks of light dance in my eyes. My stomach is full of wings.

“It had to be done,” Bran says. “Can you walk? If you can’t, tell me now because we need to move.”

How is he so calm?

“Mouse.”

“Okay.” I nod. “I can walk.”

“Then go. Now.”

I don’t know how we get out of the courthouse. It’s all a dark blur.

One minute I’m staring at the blood on the marble floor and the next Bran is racing down a desolate street in the Bimmer.

The radio is off. It’s just the silence and the pounding of my heart.

I want to crawl out of my skin.

“All of that was because of me.”

“No,” he corrects. “That’s been meaning to happen for a very long time. Long before you.”

“You just killed a vampire. Not like, pretend killed. Killed-killed.”

He looks over at me briefly, the light of the dashboard liming him in an eerie glow. “Yes. And?”

“And he’s dead. You tore out his heart.”

He frowns, slightly exasperated with my need to state the obvious. “You wanted your sister, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“No, mouse. You need to realize the gravity of what’s happening here. Julian must know what you are and he’s willing to use your sister against you to get to you. If we had let him walk out that door with Kelly, you might not have ever gotten her back. That needed to happen. It was unfortunate how it did, but I’m not going to dwell on the death of a vampire when he blatantly disrespected you.”

“Who cares what some vampire says about me?” I mutter.

“I do, mouse. I fucking do.”

I knew Bran was capable of violence. But up until now, I assumed, for the most part, that he followed the rules. All of this tonight—the court, the death, the blood—proves he doesn’t.

His disregard for the rules is both frightening and fucking hot as hell.

Because Bran Duval doesn’t give a fuck. He knows there are so few who could stand against him.

The power is intoxicating.

He is flesh and blood and walking fucking carnage.

And he’s mine.

All fucking mine.

The headlights cut across a sharp turn in the road and Bran pushes the clutch and downshifts, the tendons in his forearm rising, flexing.

There’s still blood coating his hand, drying in flakes around his fingernails.

The sight of it makes me yearn for something I have no name for.

Now I’m that man standing in front of a tidal wave.

“Stop the car.”

He narrows his eyes. “Why?”

When I don’t elaborate, he downshifts again and slows, steering the car onto the dirt shoulder.

I climb out and he meets me at the front and I jump into his arms without warning and he catches me easily, hands hooked around the backs of my thighs. I wrap my legs around his hips.

The wind picks up and the boughs of the hardwoods creak, the leaves rustling against one another.

“Thank you,” I say to him, my hair hanging like a curtain around us. “Thank you for helping me save my sister.”

“You don’t have to thank me.” He licks his bottom lip, his gaze going to my mouth. “I fucking enjoyed it.”

I shiver beneath his words. “Even though it was terrifying, there was something overwhelmingly hot about it.”

I would never admit that to anyone other than Bran, and I’m only just now realizing that the tingling I’d felt in my bones wasn’t fear, but exhilaration.

And when I watched the blood drip from his hand, distantly, in some far corner of my subconscious, something dark stirred.

“Wicked little mouse,” he says with a growl.

I can feel him growing hard beneath the center of me. He drops me lower on his hips, rocking me against him and a thrill pulses through me.

I sink my mouth to his, claw my hands into his hair, trying to get closer. Never close enough.

Our breathing quickens. I slide my tongue over his and catch the sharp edge of a fang. Blood fills my mouth, coppery and sweet, and Bran whirls me around and slams me against the car door, ravenous for the taste.

“Fuck me,” I say, panting against him.

He lowers me to the ground, wraps his hand around my neck. His grip is rough as his eyes burn in the night.

“Bend that ass over the hood then.” His voice is raspy and thick. “And be quick about it, mouse.”