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Outside, the night air felt colder than it should. He wandered the dimly lit streets, craving the ruin he’d once tried to flee. Footsteps echoed behind him—too deliberate, too many. Rival vampires. Their scents hit him like a warning. They were filled with a sour hunger mixed with opportunistic glee, drawn by the lingering aura of Mathias’ claim and the weakness of a fractured soul mate.

“Go away,” Carson muttered, but his voice shook. Gooseflesh erupted violently as one of them closed the distance, moving closer, nostrils flaring. Another appeared on his left, eyes gleaming with feral interest.

“Mathias’ pretty toy,” one hissed. “Abandoned and ripe for the taking. The bond’s fraying—his loss will be our gain.”

Carson’s back hit a brick wall, heart hammering. The rattling vibrations intensified into full-body tremors as clawed hands reached for him. He closed his eyes, the high of terror and craving twisting together into something darkly familiar.

A roar split the night—familiar, furious, wrapped in shades of blood red.

Mathias.

Chapter Seventeen

Carson

Mathias exploded from the shadows like a force of nature, feral snarls tearing from his throat as he slammed into the first rival with bone-crushing force. The vampire’s scream was cut short as Mathias’ claws raked across his throat, dark blood spraying in a hot arc across the alley wall. Another shifted in from the side, but Mathias moved with lethal grace honed through decades of experience, snapping the attacker’s arm with a sickening crack before driving his fangs into his neck and drawing deeply, then flinging the broken body aside like discarded prey.

“Mine!” The anguish-filled roar echoed off the brick walls, possessive and primal, vibrating with centuries of barely leashed power. The remaining rivals scattered into the night, recognizing the sire’s fury and the deadly claim behind it.

Carson slumped against the wall, trembling violently, when Mathias turned to him. Their eyes locked—Mathias’ blown black with rage and hunger, Carson’s glassy with terror and overwhelming craving. No words passed between them. Mathias crossed the distance in a blur, crushing Carson against his chest before lifting him and carrying him into the nearest shadowed alley alcove, away from prying eyes and the cooling bodies.

Clothes tore away in a frenzy. Skin met skin with desperate violence. Mathias pinned Carson face-first against the rough brick, yanking his hips back as he freed himself. One brutal thrust seated him to the hilt, stretching Carson wide in a burning, perfect claim. Carson cried out, the sound raw and broken, his body shuddering as Mathias set a punishing, animalistic rhythm—hips snapping with feral force, ache and relief in the same fingers, bruising his hips hard enough to leave marks.

“Needed you,” Mathias growled against his ear, fangs grazing the healing marks on Carson’s shoulder. “Couldn’t stay away.”

He struck then—fangs sinking deep into Carson’s throat with no restraint. The feeding was no gentle sip; it was deep, ravenous, pulling life in heavy, greedy draughts that matched the savage pounding of his cock. Red-tinted climaxes crashed through Carson almost immediately, his vision whiting out as he spilled against the wall, convulsing violently around the thick intrusion. Mathias drank harder, his dead heart thundering back to frantic life against Carson’s back.

The high was devastating. Ecstasy bordered on agony as Mathias took and took, feral snarls vibrating through Carson’s bones with every thrust. Another shattering orgasm ripped through him, then another, until his legs gave out completely and only Mathias’ unyielding hold kept him upright. The world narrowed to the wet, obscene sounds of feeding and fucking, the metallic flood of blood, the taut pulses in his groin that never seemed to end, and the coppery taste flooding his own mouth as he bit his lip to keep from screaming.

Carson felt his mind slipping into a bewildered haze, his heart slowing dangerously, breaths shallow and ragged, and the edge of death creeping close like a cold, seductive fog. The three-night turning ritual hovered in his fading mind. The draining near death on the first night, mutual essence on the second, final bite under moonlight on the third. High failure rate. Madness or cinders for most who attempted it. He was on the brink, hovering between ruin and eternity, every pulse of Mathias’ cock and pull of his fangs pushing him closer.

Mathias wrenched his mouth free with a guttural, agonized sound, licking the wounds closed even as he continued thrusting with desperate, animalistic need, chasing his own red-tinted release. He spilled deep inside Carson with a roar that echoed through the alley. Then he spun Carson in his arms, holding his limp, trembling body close, forehead pressed to his.

“You’re dying, love,” Mathias rasped, voice shattered with terror and love. Blood smeared his lips and chin. “I’ve taken too much. I can finish the turning—three nights to bind you to me forever. Or I can stop. Let you go. Break the bond while there’s still time.” His hands trembled as they cradled Carson’s face. “The choice is yours, beautiful one. Break free...or surrender to forever.”

Carson’s vision swam, his body racked with aftershocks and a languorous fading strength. The connection between them was strong, filling his being with echoed longings warring with the cold pull of oblivion. Freedom or ruin. Human shadow or eternal craving.

His lips moved, the decision falling from him in a faint, breathless whisper.

“I choose...”

***

Rolf

Rolf lingered in the shadows at the mouth of the alley, half-hidden behind a rusted dumpster, unable to tear his gaze away. He had followed the pull of the bond—the same instinctive draw that had once led him to Joe—and now he stood witness to something raw and sacred.

Mathias and Carson were locked together against the brick wall in a frenzy of need. The wet sounds of flesh meeting flesh, the low, feral snarls vibrating from Mathias’ chest, the broken cries torn from Carson’s throat—each vivid sensation was overwhelming. Rolf’s fangs ached in sympathy, but it was the scent of blood, thick and desperate in the air, that made his stomach clench with unease.

He realized with a sharp, cold start that Mathias had taken the frail human too far.

Carson’s heartbeat was thready, dangerously slow. The man’s skin had gone pale and clammy, his breaths shallow and ragged. Rolf could smell death hovering close, waiting to claim the soul mate before the sun ever rose again. The thought twisted something painful in his chest.

No. Not this.

He hated the idea of Mathias losing this—the one person who had brought him back to something resembling life after decades of careful detachment. Mathias, the honorable sire who had saved Rolf from the worst of his own turning, who had shown him control when Rolf had been little more than a beast. Losing Carson would shatter him.

Rolf shifted restlessly in the darkness, claws digging into the brick behind him. What can I do? The question burned. He was still exiled, still untrusted. Interfering now could make everything worse. Yet the image of Mathias broken and hollow, another Elias lost to the sun’s cruel harvest, refused to leave him.