Chapter 3

“Holy shit!” Mark whispered as he and Abbie peeked out of the door. They were supposed to keep it shut. Abbie figured as slow moving as the zombies were, he could get the door shut and locked long before any of the grotesque creatures even reached the porch.

Abbie couldn’t take his eyes off the scene outside. Vampires were tearing zombies to bits under the full moon’s light. It was…gory and fascinating.

And if Abbie couldn’t stop watching one vamp in particular? Well, no one but him had to know that.

“You’re drooling,” Augustin muttered in his ear. “Open the door a little more.”

Okay, so maybe Augustin had noticed. Other than opening the door wider, Abbie ignored him.

Not that that stopped Augustin from talking. “Man, it’s like the Apocalypse out there. All those years hearing about the end of the world in church when I was growing up, and wow. They left out the zombies. Well, the vampires too. Are the zombies even getting any hits in? I swear, it looks like they’re just rolling in to die.”

“They are,” Mattie chimed in. The oldest human there, he refused to admit to just how old that was. He didn’t look a day over twenty-five, though. “Seen it before, once, right before I agreed to be Sylvia’s mate. The zombies only fight enough to make sure they get killed.” He shrugged. “They probably get tired of living like that.”

Abbie grunted but other than that, he remained silent. The battle lasted a while only because so many zombies showed up. Once the landscape was littered with enough body parts that there was hardly a foot of gore-less space to be seen, the fighting came to an end.

It didn’t slip Abbie’s notice that Zeb had never shown up to help his fellow vamps, either.

And damn it all, but Claude looked stunning when he spun around in the air, his hair still perfectly styled, his shirt and pants as clean as when the whole shebang had started.

The way the moonlight reflected off his dark hair, the slender, beautiful lines of his body, the impeccably tailored clothes… Abbie couldn’t possibly have been the only one aroused watching him.

Claude turned and looked right at him, their gazes locking together. Abbie’s heart did some weird pounding thing and it made him think for a second that he might just keel over.

But instead, a flood of heat raced down to his groin. His cock filled from one heartbeat to the next, and dizziness made his vision blur. He blinked, and though he expected Claude to have looked away, Claude hadn’t.

“Jeez, the sexual tension…”

Abbie didn’t even know who’d said it—didn’t care, either. He’d tried for years to be more circumspect, but lately his unhappiness had begun to erode his self-control.

And now he stood at the door, his entire body throbbing with desire for a man he couldn’t have.

If only the bond between mates made them love each other, want each other… Unfortunately, all it did was make them dependent on one another for survival, as far as Abbie could tell.

Although, he and Zeb seemed to be the only mated pair in such a situation. Everyone else was happy. In love.

He tried to turn away, but as long as Claude stared at him like that, Abbie had to stay in place. It was a sweet torture, a submersion into desire that Abbie hadn’t felt with Zeb, ever. Every particle of his being ached to be with Claude, to tousle that perfectly styled hair and tear the clothes off his body. He wanted to see Claude come apart for him, feel Claude tremble and shudder, hear him scream out Abbie’s name as pleasure pulled him under.

The pain the admission caused him was almost a physical one. Abbie flinched, and with that, Claude spun away.

Abbie pressed his forehead to the doorframe and closed his eyes. He felt people brushing against him here and there was they walked past him. He couldn’t summon the energy to see why they were going outside. His own worries were racing around his mind, holding him in place.

What was he going to do? Could he really spend the rest of his life in a relationship with someone he didn’t even like? What if he lived for hundreds of years?

But death scared him, and if he walked away from Zeb, he’d start aging. He’d live out the rest of his life from age twenty-nine on, and maybe get cancer, have a heart attack or die from any number of diseases. He probably wouldn’t even get to be old. He’d die.

“Die,” he rasped. The word itself terrified him.

It was why he’d sought out vampires in the first place. He’d wanted to be one, once upon a time. Then Zeb—

Abbie cut the thought off. He opened his eyes when brightness flared through his closed lids. Outside, the zombies’ remains had been piled together and lit on fire. None of the vamps were anywhere to be seen. Some of the human mates were tossing burning bits of paper and other flammable items onto the remains.

Augustin wasn’t among them. Abbie assumed he was off with his mate somewhere.

Abbie turned around and yelped before he could stop himself.

Claude stood not a foot behind him. Being a vampire and all, the man had made no reflection in the glass.

Claude slowly raised one hand, then, as if assured Abbie wouldn’t run away, gently stroked his cheek. There was an indecipherable expression on his face, in his eyes, that Abbie desperately wanted to understand.

“You can’t look at me like that, Abernathy,” Claude said softly. “Like you want to come into my arms.”

Abbie’s heart did the weird thing again, and he gulped. “You didn’t want me.” He hated to admit it, tried so hard to never think of that time.

Claude shook his head. “Oh, Abernathy.”

He said nothing else, just continued to stroke Abbie’s cheek for another minute or two before lowering his hand, then walking away.

Abbie wanted to call out to him, wanted to demand an explanation.

His pride and the remembered pain of rejection held him rooted in place.