Page 79 of Colin

Colin’s answering smile was a thing of beauty. “All right, then. I guess you’re keeping me.”

Dane and Fox brought him to Fox’s bedroom and cleaned the blood off his face, Fox licking his head wound closed, looking like a mama cat with a kitten. The broken arm, they couldn’t do anything for, but it would heal on his own, as he turned—the way Dane’s illness had, so many years ago.

As he watched Colin, surprisingly docile under Fox’s care, Dane’s devil was chanting inside him,Mate. Mate. Mate.He knew Fox’s was doing the same.

They wereturninghim. Finally. Making him one of them. Making himtheirs, even more than he was already.

Just like those two were going to make a child theirs?

Dane didn’t want to think it, didn’t want to even compare, but he couldn’t help the last stirrings of doubt—were they wrong, to take something just because they wanted it so badly? Were they really owed a happy ending? Was anybody?

“Dane.”

Colin’s voice brought Dane back to the present. Fox had finished his ministrations, and Colin was leaning back against a mountain of pillows on the bed, paler than usual and a little glassy-eyed, no doubt from the pain in his arm.

He smiled softly at Dane once he had his attention. “You’re worrying awfully loudly over there.”

The truth poured out of Dane as if compelled from him. “We were going to wait,” he admitted. “We—Iwanted you to come to the decision yourself.”

“You mean you didn’t plan on dropping to your knees and begging me?” Colin grabbed Dane’s hand, squeezing tightly. “I was going to ask you, after this mess was done.Iwas going to beg, to ask for more. I want to stay. I want—I want you to keep me.”

Some of the tightness in Dane’s chest eased. They weren’t pushing Colin or rushing him into giving up his humanity. Just as they wanted to keep him, he wanted to be kept. He’d been going to ask. Dane had just jumped the gun a little.

Fox rubbed a tendril of Colin’s hair between his fingers. “So brave, our lamb. We’ll give you more. We’ll give you everything.”

Colin’s brow furrowed as he stared up at Fox. “And if we aren’t mates after all?”

“We are.” The conviction in Fox’s voice was unmistakable. Dane was grateful for it, that Fox could speak for them bothwithout any hint of doubt. It was what Colin deserved, that certainty.

“But have you ever heard of three mates before?”

“I’d never heard of vampires until I was one,” Fox answered, tugging that lock of hair gently. “Lack of precedence doesn’t mean much to me.”

“What if my mate turns out to be someone else?”

Fox’s grin was vicious. “Then we turn them to get you tethered and chain them up in our basement for eternity. I don’t care who they are—they won’t fucking touch you.”

Colin scoffed. “One: this house doesn’t have a basement. And two: you are so not doing that.” But he leaned back against the pillows again, clearly reassured by Fox’s words.

And Dane finally—finally—let go of the last of his doubts. He didn’t give a shit what fate had to say, in the end. This was going to work. They just…fit. Colin, for all he claimed to have been uncertain, lost in his own life, had a self-assuredness, an easy acceptance of them that soothed Dane’s insecurities. And where Colin might falter, Fox was there, strong enough to steady them both.

He always had been, but for years—for far too many years—Dane had been too stubborn to let him.

God, he fucking loved him. A wave of it washed over Dane, and Fox clearly felt it, turning to him, for once without a smirk or scowl on his face. He was open, unguarded, letting Dane see every bit of his love returned in full force.

Dane’s brother. His soul.

Colin waved at them, apparently impatient with their sentimental moment. “Okay, get to it. My arm hurts like a bitch, and I’d like to be unconscious now.”

“You know how it works?” Dane asked him, stepping closer.

“Jay told me once.”

Right. Colin’s vampire bestie. It was almost funny to think of their jealousy toward him now, the strange little guy so clearly smitten with his own mate. And then Dane remembered that Jay had gotten to taste Colin’s blood first, and the jealousy made perfect fucking sense.

But now wasn’t exactly the time.

“You know it—that it… hurts?” he asked.

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