I Don't Bite

Chapter 26: Mended Bonds

Vampire fangs on your neck isn't something you forget. The sensation of pin pricks so sharp they could just slide right into your veins. I rubbed at my neck as I sat with my feet dangling in the water. Maybe it was wrong of me to want to come to a spot Zack showed me again. Maybe it was worse that I brought Ryan to Zack's space, but did he really get to have a say in this when two months later my neck still itched and the feeling of his fangs on my throat still woke me up at night.

A chill passed over me and I stilled. I knew the feeling, had come to recognize that I was the only one that was cold all the time before because I was the only one hanging out with a vampire.

"Ryan is just getting something from the car." I told him, but even though the ghost of his fangs burned against my skin I wasn't afraid. "He'll be back in a minute." I'm not sure if that made me brave or stupid.

"You saved me." His voice had lost all its suave, it was just factual.

I shook my head. "I just wanted to go home, and I don't really want to see you right now.

"He would have ripped my head off." He said in that same tone.

"He wouldn't have—"

"I would have." His eyes weighed on me with the severity of that statement. Ryan and him followed different rules and Zack had intentionally went after me to break our bond.

Finally, I turned around to see him and he was much closer than I expected.

"If everything was reversed... if we were bonded and he took you from me." his eyes deepened from a burgundy to a deep red. "I would have killed him on the spot."

"Yeah well... you weren't going to bite me anyway." Even as I said the words, I knew I believed them. I was beginning to think I was just stupid after all.

"I was only trying to help my family... my sister." His eyes faded back to their normal color.

I nodded trying to see his side. Trying to understand because, aside from the first biting incident that he did apologize for and this last thing. He had been a good friend.

"But you used me to do it and you don't use friends." Or maybe he hadn't, maybe I was making it up because I didn't want to admit that I had been played.

"Are we still friends?" He asked, daring a step closer.

"I don't know." I pick up a semi flat rock and try to skip it across the water. "It kind of depends on why you're here."

"You saved my life." He says again simply. "He would have killed me."

"He wouldn't have—"

"I was dancing a fine line as it was." He admitted. "The technical law is kill but severing a bond would be significantly more painful than just killing one. If a paranormal kills another's mate then their coven, their pack, their whatever it is can't protect them. The penalty is death. The only one who can revoke that." He gestures to me. "Is the mate."

"Are you apologizing?" I asked because I didn't want to guess, and I didn't want to wait. Zack was just too confusing to be around after everything.

He nodded "That and do you know what saving the life of a vampire means?"

"I don't want anything." I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head because I couldn't take anymore at that moment.

"Of course you don't." He snorted. "But it's yours anyway."

I sighed and pushed myself up to my feet and strode over to him. My feet hesitated at first but somewhere inside me, I knew he wasn't there to hurt me. I stopped just a few steps away from him and met his gaze. "Take care of yourself, Zack. You weren't going to bite me, and you were upset when I got hurt. You're my friend."