Enthralled - 6. Chapter 6

06

 

The forest was cold, damp, and aggressively, unapologetically woodsy.

It smelled of decaying pine needles, wet, loamy earth, and the distinct, musky tang of wild animal life—absolutely none of which appealed to Andy's refined, hyper-urban sensibilities. For three hundred years, he had perfected his existence in the shadows of great cities. He was a creature of cobblestone streets, of thick London fog, of gaslit Parisian alleys, and neon-drenched modern skylines. He thrived in architecture, in artifice, in the pulsing, chaotic thrum of human civilization. He was emphatically, permanently, not a creature of nature.

And yet, here he was.

Standing in the middle of a godforsaken, freezing forest in the pitch-black hours of a Saturday morning, Andy was currently wearing a bulky, blaze-orange hunting vest that clashed violently with his carefully cultivated, brooding aesthetic. To make matters infinitely worse, perched atop his perfectly pomaded dark hair was a thick, plaid flannel hat with fuzzy, synthetic wool earflaps that tied beneath his chin.

The hat had been Lucas’s idea.

Lucas was currently standing next to him in the clearing, wearing his own neon orange vest and a matching, equally ridiculous hat, looking like he had just won the state lottery.

The werewolf pack—Marty the linebacker, the tight end with the buzz cut, and three other massive, letterman-jacket-clad athletes—were spread out in a loose, tactical formation around them. Their eyes were bright with predatory excitement, their wide, toothy grins reflecting the faint moonlight filtering through the canopy. Their collective enthusiasm was absolutely nauseating.

"This is a nightmare," Andy muttered, his breath pluming in the frigid air. He was gripping a borrowed, double-barreled shotgun with the exact same revulsion he would reserve for a dead, plague-ridden rat. "This is, without exaggeration, the single worst idea in the history of human and supernatural ideas."

"Relax, bloodsucker," Marty boomed, stepping into Andy’s personal space and clapping the vampire on the back with enough force to make his teeth rattle. "You're gonna love it. There is absolutely nothing like a good, honest hunt to get the blood pumping."

"I am a vampire," Andy said flatly, his dark eyes narrowing into lethal, crimson-tinged slits. "I do not need my blood pumped. It is already dead. The pumping ceased centuries ago. Furthermore, I do not hunt deer. I hunt humans. I hunt them in cities. Where there are buildings. And paved roads. And central heating. And indoor plumbing."

"Yeah, yeah, urban hunter. We get it. You're very cosmopolitan." Marty waved a massive, dismissive hand, the leather of his letterman jacket creaking in the cold. "But you gotta get in touch with your inner beast, bro. You gotta embrace the wild. Peel back the layers of civilization and let the animal out."

Andy’s left eye twitched violently. "My 'inner beast,' as you so inelegantly put it, is a three-hundred-year-old apex predator who has survived global wars, continental plagues, and the Spanish Inquisition. My 'inner beast' is currently screaming at me to leave this wretched forest, return to my heated garage, and never, ever speak to any of you again."

"Your inner beast is an inner squirrel," Marty countered, grinning broadly and crossing his thick arms over his chest. "Look at you. You're all tense and shivering. You're holding that gun like it’s gonna bite you. You've got the fuzzy earflaps tied under your chin. You look like a goth chipmunk."

Lucas, who had been bouncing on the balls of his feet with hyperactive energy, suddenly burst into loud, ringing laughter. He nearly doubled over, pointing at his boyfriend. "Oh my god, he's right. You look exactly like a goth chipmunk. The cheekbones really sell it."

"I am going to drain you," Andy said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, subsonic register that usually sent mortals fleeing in primal, weeping terror. "I am going to drain every last, miserable drop of blood from your body, and then I am going to bury your desiccated corpse under a pile of these wretched pine needles."

"Empty threats, Vampirella," Marty said, completely and utterly unfazed by the immortal lord of the night. "You've been saying that for weeks. You threaten to kill him at least three times a day. You still haven't done it."

"The night is young," Andy hissed, glaring at the linebacker. "And my patience is growing remarkably thin."

"And yet, here you are." Marty clapped him on the shoulder again, nearly knocking Andy into a fern. "You're here, wearing the orange vest, wearing the fuzzy hat, holding the shotgun, and supporting Moo-Juice as we take him through his official pack initiation."

Andy’s head snapped toward Lucas so fast his neck popped. "Initiation? What initiation? You said we were going for a walk."

Lucas’s grin was absolutely incandescent, radiating an unearned, proto-frat boy swagger that seemed entirely out of place in the wilderness. "I'm becoming an honorary member of the pack! It's a whole thing. There's a ceremony. And a hunt. And if I kill a deer, I get a cool nickname. A permanent title."

"You are not becoming a werewolf," Andy said, his voice rising in genuine panic. "I absolutely, categorically forbid it. The shedding alone would be catastrophic."

"It's not like that, bro," Marty intervened, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. "We're not gonna turn him. Biting him is a logistical nightmare with the Council, and honestly? He's too scrawny. He doesn't have the bone density. He'd probably die from the transformation, or at best, he'd turn into a very annoying, hairless chihuahua."

"Hey!" Lucas protested, looking deeply offended. "I have excellent bone density. I drink a lot of milk."

"Regardless," Marty continued smoothly, ignoring the teenager, "he can be an honorary member. It's a symbolic thing. A brotherhood ritual."

"Symbolic," Andy repeated, the word tasting like ash in his mouth.

"Yeah, man. He's our mascot. Our lucky charm. He's Moo-Juice. We won regionals because of him. He's part of the pack now. In spirit. We look out for our own."

Andy stared at the massive werewolf. Then he turned his dark, centuries-old gaze back to Lucas. "You are not becoming a werewolf. You are a human. A fragile, squishy, remarkably uncoordinated human who can barely navigate a high school hallway without tripping over your own untied shoelaces."

"I'm not becoming a werewolf! I'm just getting a cool nickname!" Lucas argued, adjusting his shotgun strap with exaggerated bravado.

"What nickname?"

"We haven't decided yet," Marty said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Depends entirely on what he kills today. The forest provides the title. If he gets a ten-point buck, he's 'Moo-Juice the Slayer.' If he gets a doe, he's 'Moo-Juice the Gentle.' If he gets a turkey, he’s 'Moo-Juice the Fowl.'"

"And if he misses entirely?" Andy asked dryly.

"Then he's 'Moo-Juice the Pathetic,'" the buzz-cut tight end chimed in from the back, earning a chorus of snickers from the rest of the pack.

"That's not a nickname," Lucas protested, his face flushing with indignation. "That's just a direct insult."

"It's a nickname with layers," Marty said sagely. "It builds character."

Andy pinched the bridge of his pale nose between his thumb and forefinger. He had survived the horrors of the French Revolution. He had navigated the treacherous, blood-soaked politics of the European vampire courts. He had once talked his way out of a stake through the heart using nothing but pure, aristocratic charm and a well-timed distraction.

And now, he was standing in a freezing forest, wearing fuzzy earflaps, while a pack of teenage lycanthropes debated what to call his boyfriend after he inevitably failed to shoot a woodland creature.

"Listen to me very carefully," Andy said, dropping his hand and leveling a glare of pure, unadulterated ice at the football players. "Do not dare turn him into a werewolf. I barely have him house-trained as a human. I do not need him shedding all over the leather upholstery of my Impala, and I certainly do not want to be responsible for taking him on walks during a full moon."

Marty let out a loud, booming laugh that echoed through the trees, startling a flock of crows into the sky. "House-trained! That's rich, man. You've got him better trained than we could ever hope to manage. He actually showers every day now. He uses deodorant that doesn't come out of an aerosol can. I heard from Amanda that he even makes his bed. You've successfully domesticated the untamable."

"I have not domesticated him," Andy argued, crossing his arms defensively. "I have merely... channeled his inherent chaos into more hygienic avenues."

"Same thing, bro. Embrace it. You're a dad now. A goth, chipmunk dad."

Andy opened his mouth to deliver a scathing, historically accurate curse, but before he could form the syllables, a sharp rustle came from the dense underbrush to their left.

The entire pack went completely, instantly silent. The shift was terrifying. One second, they were obnoxious high school athletes; the next, they were apex predators, their postures lowering, their heads tilting to catch the scent on the wind.

Lucas tensed, his eyes going wide. Marty raised a single, massive hand, signaling for absolute quiet.

A deer stepped out of the treeline.

It was a buck. A massive, magnificent creature with a sprawling rack of antlers that caught the early morning light. Its coat was thick and healthy, its dark eyes scanning the clearing with cautious, majestic grace. It was beautiful, perfectly evolved, and entirely unaware of the lethal company it had just wandered into.

Andy stared at the creature. He felt a strange, deeply unfamiliar pang in his dead chest. He had killed hundreds of humans. He had killed monsters, ghouls, and rogue fledglings. He had killed things far more dangerous and far more intelligent than this deer. But something about the animal's quiet dignity, its innocent place in the ecosystem, made him hesitate. He felt absolutely no desire to see it dead.

Lucas, however, harbored no such philosophical qualms.

His blinding grin returned, fierce and determined. He raised his shotgun, pressing the stock against his shoulder. His hands were trembling slightly with the sheer, unadulterated adrenaline of the moment.

"Okay," Lucas whispered to himself, his voice barely audible over the rustling leaves. "I've got this. I've got this. I'm gonna get it. I'm Moo-Juice the Slayer. I'm gonna—"

He pulled the trigger.

The blast was deafening. The concussive boom shattered the tranquility of the forest, echoing off the trees with terrifying force.

The deer, possessing the basic survival instincts that Lucas entirely lacked, bolted instantly, vanishing into the thick underbrush like a phantom.

Lucas’s shot went wildly, spectacularly wide. It hit the thick trunk of an oak tree approximately fifteen feet to the right of where the buck had been standing. A massive shower of splintered bark, shredded leaves, and acorns rained down on the werewolf pack.

The silence that followed the gunshot was heavy, ringing, and deeply judgmental.

Marty slowly turned his head to stare at the mutilated oak tree. The tree, naturally, did not respond.

"...Nice shot, Moo-Juice," Marty said, his voice completely flat, devoid of any inflection whatsoever.

"It was a warning shot!" Lucas protested loudly, lowering the smoking barrel of the shotgun, his face flushing a catastrophic shade of crimson. "I was establishing dominance in the territory!"

"You were establishing that you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if you were locked inside it," the buzz-cut tight end muttered, brushing a piece of exploded bark off his letterman jacket.

"I can hit the broad side of a barn!" Lucas defended, gesturing wildly with his free hand. "Just not... moving things! Things that are alive! Things with legs that run away!"

"So you can't hunt," Marty summarized, nodding slowly. "Good to know. Excellent survival skills."

Lucas’s face was now the color of a ripe, heirloom tomato. "I can hunt! I just... I got nervous! There was a deer! A real deer! With massive antlers! It looked at me!"

"Your boyfriend is a three-hundred-year-old, blood-drinking creature of the night who sleeps in a car," Marty pointed out, gesturing a massive thumb toward Andy. "You literally want to let him bite you. You have seen things way, way scarier than a woodland herbivore."

"That's different!" Lucas argued, his voice cracking slightly. "Andy is cute! And broody! And he has great hair! Deer are... deer-shaped! They’re unpredictable!"

Andy sighed. It was a long, weary, profoundly defeated sigh. He had spent three centuries cultivating an aura of absolute, terrifying intimidation. He was the Scourge of the Carpathians. He was the Lord of the Night. And now, he was standing in a damp forest, watching his teenage boyfriend try to logically justify why he missed a stationary mammal the size of a small sedan.

"If you manage to shoot a single rabbit," Andy said flatly, cutting through the banter. "I will be deeply, genuinely impressed, and I will officially stop teasing you about touching my balls."

Lucas’s head whipped around so fast his hat nearly flew off. "Wait, you'll stop teasing me about—"

"If you get a rabbit," Andy repeated, his dark eyes locking onto Lucas’s. "Not a deer. Not a bear. A rabbit. A small, furry, easily catchable, practically defenseless creature. If you manage to hit one of those, I will wipe the slate clean. I will stop bringing up the fact that you played footsie with your father at a Sunday family dinner, and I will never again mention the biology tutoring session where you proudly declared yourself to be Homo-Erectus."

"Deal," Lucas said immediately, his eyes burning with renewed, unholy determination. He pumped the shotgun, ejecting the spent shell with a satisfying metallic clatter, and began frantically scanning the treeline. "I'm going to find a rabbit. I'm going to find the biggest, most obnoxious, most arrogant rabbit in this entire forest, and I'm going to bag it."

"That's the spirit, Moo-Juice," Marty said, clapping him on the back and nearly sending the boy sprawling into the dirt. "Go get 'em, tiger. Make the pack proud."

Lucas didn't wait for another word. He charged off into the woods, his bright orange vest bobbing erratically through the dense green underbrush like a frantic, neon buoy.

The werewolf pack watched him go, their expressions ranging from mild amusement to deep, genuine concern for the local flora.

Marty turned to Andy, crossing his massive arms. "You know he's not gonna hit a rabbit, right? He has the hand-eye coordination of a concussed pigeon."

"I know," Andy said, his voice hollow, his eyes tracking the rustling bushes where Lucas had vanished. "But it gave him purpose. It directed his chaos away from us."

"He's got a lot of purpose. Just zero aim."

Andy stared into the dark, shadowy depths of the woods. He could hear the boy crashing through the underbrush a hundred yards away, snapping twigs, swearing loudly when a branch snapped back into his face, and shouting something unintelligible about "crikey" and "conquering nature." It was the most absurd, undignified, loudly human, and oddly endearing thing Andy had ever witnessed in his immortal life.

"I hate all of you right now," Andy said, his voice a flat, deadpan monotone.

"No you don't," Marty said, grinning, his sharp canine teeth catching the light. "You love us. You're pack-adjacent now, Vamp. You're family. Deal with it."

Andy sighed again. Another long, weary, defeated sound.

But he didn't argue.

Instead, he hitched his borrowed shotgun over his shoulder, adjusted the humiliating fuzzy earflaps of his hat, and began to trudge slowly into the woods, following the path of destruction his boyfriend had carved through the ferns.

Andy’s solo trek through the forest was a masterclass in misery.

He trudged through the dense underbrush, his expensive, vintage leather boots sinking an inch into the damp, moss-covered earth with every agonizing step. The forest was a sensory nightmare of noise and organic chaos. Birds were shrieking at him from the canopy. Insects buzzed annoyingly near his ears. The wind whipped through the trees, carrying the damp chill of impending winter.

And somewhere in the distance, he could hear the unhinged, chaotic shouting of Lucas Cooper crashing through the treeline like a wounded, hyperactive rhinoceros.

Andy had spent three centuries perfecting the dark art of stealth. He knew how to move through shadows like a whisper, how to tread upon old floorboards without making a single sound, how to be utterly, terrifyingly undetectable to his prey.

And now, he was stomping through the mud in a neon-orange vest, loudly cursing a bramble bush that had just snagged his jeans, accompanied by a pack of teenagers who treated him like a particularly amusing, grumpy house cat.

"I hate this," Andy muttered to himself, using the barrel of the shotgun to aggressively swat a low-hanging branch out of his path. "I hate everything about this. I hate the trees. I hate the dirt. I hate the complete lack of pavement. If I ruin these boots, I am going to hold that boy over a running pressure washer."

SNAP.

A heavy twig broke directly behind him.

Andy spun around, his ancient, dormant instincts flaring to life in a microsecond. His pupils dilated, swallowing the crimson irises. His fangs descended, pressing sharply against his lower lip. His muscles coiled like steel springs, his aristocratic posture dropping into a lethal, defensive crouch.

He was ready for a fight. A territorial bear, perhaps. A rogue wolf. A rival vampire. Maybe even that pathetic vampire hunter with the balsa wood stake and the Toyota Tercel, back for round two.

What he was not ready for was a flying blur of neon orange.

Something massive, ferocious, and incredibly warm launched itself at him from the dense ferns.

Andy didn't even have time to hiss. He went flying backward, the impact knocking the air from his dead lungs. His shotgun spun harmlessly out of his grasp, landing in the dirt. His body tumbled head over heels into a thick patch of damp moss and ferns, his vision spinning into a kaleidoscope of green and orange.

He fought back instantly, pure survival instinct taking over. He threw a blind, desperate punch, his knuckles connecting solidly with soft flesh. He heard a sharp, pained "Ow, fuck!" but the attacker didn't let up.

The beast was everywhere. Its hands were all over Andy, pinning his shoulders to the dirt, yanking aggressively at his clothes. Andy’s orange hunting vest was torn open. His flannel shirt was somehow, impossibly, already unbuttoned halfway down his chest. His leather belt was being unbuckled with frantic, practiced efficiency.

"Get off me!" Andy snarled, bucking his hips in a desperate attempt to dislodge the attacker. "I will drain you! I will rip your throat out! I will—"

His cotton underwear suddenly sailed entirely over his head, caught on a low-hanging pine branch, and fluttered gently in the cold morning breeze.

Andy froze.

The struggle ceased instantly.

Lucas’s face filled his vision. The teenager was grinning like an absolute maniac, his dark eyes bright with adrenaline and unholy triumph. His backwards baseball cap was gone, lost somewhere in the ferns, replaced by a smear of dark mud across his cheek. A distinct, purple bruise was already rapidly forming around his left eye where Andy had just punched him. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving, and he looked entirely, magnificently feral.

"Gotcha!" Lucas crowed, shifting his weight to straddle Andy’s hips securely, pinning the immortal vampire to the forest floor. "I bagged the most dangerous predator in the woods!"

Andy stared up at him, his ancient brain completely short-circuiting. The cold mud was seeping into his shirt. His pants were around his knees. His boyfriend was sitting on his chest.

"Lucas?" Andy gasped, his fangs retracting in sheer confusion. "What are you—this isn't the place—this isn't the time—"

"Best time," Lucas declared proudly, leaning down, his warm hands sliding under Andy's open shirt to grip his freezing, pale waist. "Best place. I'm a hunter now, Andy. I bagged my prey. Now I'm going to—"

"DO NOT put that inside my—" Andy started, his eyes going wide with panic as he realized exactly what Lucas was doing with his free hand.

"—consume you," Lucas finished, his grin turning absolutely wicked as he thrust his hips forward.

Andy opened his mouth to protest. He needed to argue. He needed to remind this reckless, insufferable teenager that they were in the middle of a public forest, lying in the freezing dirt, surrounded by a pack of werewolves possessing superhuman hearing who were currently less than half a mile away.

But then Lucas did exactly what he had been threatening to do since he launched himself from the bushes.

Andy’s protests dissolved instantly into a ragged, breathless, entirely involuntary gasp.

"Ohhh," Andy moaned, his head falling back against the damp moss, his fingers digging desperately into the dirt. "Ohhh, God, Lucas—"

"That's right," Lucas purred, his voice dropping into a raspy, dominant register that made Andy’s dead heart flutter. His hips rolled against Andy’s with punishing, rhythmic perfection. "Say my name. Let the whole damn forest know exactly who you belong to."

"I hate you," Andy choked out, his spine arching off the ground as a wave of white-hot pleasure rushed through his cold veins.

"You love me."

"I—" Andy’s hands flew up, abandoning the dirt to grip Lucas’s hips, his long fingers digging possessively into the boy's flesh to anchor him. "—yes. Yes, I do. Faster, you brat."

Lucas laughed, a dark, victorious sound, and happily obliged.

A decent, entirely unquantifiable amount of time later—Andy adamantly refused to calculate exactly how many minutes had passed, because that would require acknowledging the horrifying reality that he had just been thoroughly, enthusiastically, and messily conquered in the middle of a muddy forest—Andy was sitting on a rotting, moss-covered log, grumpily attempting to pull his clothes back on.

It was a disaster.

His flannel shirt was buttoned entirely wrong, mismatched by two holes. His expensive leather belt was missing, swallowed by the ferns. His boots were caked in mud. And his underwear was still dangling stubbornly from the pine branch above his head, fluttering in the breeze like a sad, beige flag of complete and total surrender.

Lucas, meanwhile, was leaning casually against the trunk of a massive pine tree, looking exactly like the cat that had not only caught the canary, but had eaten it, plucked its feathers, and used them to craft a jaunty little hat.

In fact, Lucas was currently wearing Andy’s hat with the fuzzy earflaps. It sat slightly askew on his messy hair, framing the rapidly darkening black eye, and he looked absolutely, disgustingly delighted with himself.

"I am never going to recover from this," Andy said, his voice entirely hollow as he tried to wipe a smear of mud off his cheek. "This is, without exception, the absolute lowest point in my three-hundred-year existence."

"Lowest point?" Lucas scoffed, adjusting the earflaps with a smug grin. "You just had the best orgasm of your undead life in the middle of a beautiful, scenic forest. That's not a low point, Andy. That's a high point. Literally. We're at a high elevation."

"I am going to murder you."

"You love me."

"I am going to murder you, bury you, wait for you to rise as a ghoul, and then murder you again."

Before Lucas could respond with another infuriatingly cocky retort, a massive rustle came from the dense underbrush to their right.

Andy froze. Every muscle in his body locked. His hand instinctively reached toward the dirt, searching frantically for his missing shotgun.

The ferns parted.

And the entire werewolf pack emerged into the clearing.

Marty was at the front, his massive, letterman-jacket-clad frame parting the foliage like a human bulldozer. The tight end with the buzz cut and the rest of the pack flanked him, their arms crossed, their grins impossibly wide, and their eyes sparkling with entirely too much amusement.

They had clearly been waiting.

Andy’s face went through several rapid, catastrophic shades of pale—a truly remarkable physiological feat for a creature who was already the color of skim milk. He stared at the pack of high school athletes, his mouth opening and closing silently like a landed trout.

"You," Andy finally managed to say, his voice cracking into a high-pitched squeak. "You... you were watching that?"

"We're werewolves, bro," Marty said, shrugging his massive shoulders, completely unapologetic. "Superhuman hearing. Superhuman eyesight. Enhanced olfactory senses. We couldn't exactly miss it. It was highly educational."

"Educational?" Andy whispered in horror.

"Yeah, man," Buzz Cut chimed in, nodding earnestly. "Never watched live, outdoor gay sex before. Especially inter-species. It was very informative. Lots of... creative techniques. Very athletic."

"You've got good form, Andy," Marty added, giving a supportive thumbs-up. "Great hip mobility for a guy who's three centuries old."

"I want to die," Andy said, burying his face in his cold, muddy hands. "I want the sun to rise right now and burn me to ash."

Lucas, however, was absolutely glowing. He puffed out his chest, stepping away from the tree and adjusting the fuzzy earflaps with an air of supreme, unassailable confidence.

"You see that, guys?" Lucas declared loudly, pointing a dramatic finger at the miserable vampire sitting on the log. "That's my prey. I bagged him. I tagged him. I absolutely destroyed him."

"You definitely tagged him, Moo-Juice," Marty agreed, nodding toward Andy's chest. "We saw the tag from the bushes."

Andy lifted his head from his hands, his brow furrowing in confusion. He looked down at his chest.

There, clipped securely to the lapel of his torn, neon-orange hunting vest, was a tag. It was a bright yellow, official state hunting tag—the exact kind used by hunters to legally mark a successful big-game kill before transporting it out of the woods. Lucas must have unclipped it from his own pocket and attached it to Andy’s vest while the vampire had been... violently distracted.

"You tagged me," Andy said, his voice entirely flat, staring cross-eyed at the yellow piece of plastic. "Like I was a deer."

"Like you were a trophy," Lucas corrected, his grin widening into something triumphant and impossibly fond. "The most dangerous, elusive predator in the entire woods. And I took him down. With my bare hands. And, you know, other parts."

"GO MOO-JUICE!" the tight end suddenly shouted, pumping a massive fist into the air. "THE ANAL DESTROYER!"

The entire pack erupted into chaotic, deafening cheers. They were howling at the sky, clapping each other on the back, high-fiving, and celebrating Lucas’s "victory" with the exact same frenzied energy they would use if he had just scored the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl.

Andy stared at them. His face was a perfect, frozen mask of absolute, unadulterated horror.

"Oh god," Andy moaned, dropping his head back into his hands, his long fingers tangling in his muddy hair. "I was the prey. I was the prey the entire time."

"You were, bro," Marty said, walking over and patting Andy sympathetically on the shoulder, leaving a smear of dirt on the vampire's shirt. "You walked right into it. He set the whole thing up like a master tactician. The deer was just a decoy. He was hunting you the whole time."

"I was hunting you," Lucas confirmed, walking over and standing between Andy's spread knees. His grin was blinding, utterly devoid of any shame. "The deer was just a distraction to get us out here. I knew you'd follow me into the woods to make sure I didn't shoot my own foot off. I knew you'd be distracted by the whole 'hunting' aesthetic. And I knew that if I just got you alone, in the dirt, I could—"

"Bag me," Andy finished, his voice hollow and defeated. "And tag me."

"And claim you," Lucas added softly. He leaned down, placing his hands on Andy's cold cheeks, and pressed a firm, lingering kiss to the vampire's muddy forehead. "You were very feisty, by the way. You gave me a hell of a black eye when you fought me off before you realized it was me."

He gestured to his left eye. Sure enough, the dark, swollen bruise was blossoming menacingly around the socket, a physical, painful testament to Andy’s brief, panicked resistance.

"I thought you were a bear," Andy said weakly, staring at the bruise with a mixture of guilt and exhaustion.

"A bear wearing a neon orange safety vest?" Lucas raised an eyebrow.

"I wasn't thinking clearly! I was in a state of primal panic!"

Lucas laughed, a bright, joyous sound, and pulled Andy into a tight hug, burying his face in the crook of the vampire's neck. "You're cute when you're dismayed," he murmured, his breath warm against Andy's icy skin.

"Stop," Andy protested half-heartedly, not making any actual effort to push the boy away. "Not in front of the werewolves."

"Why not? They're family now."

"They are not family! They are a pack of oversized, voyeuristic dogs who just stood in the bushes and watched me get—"

"Bagged and tagged," Marty supplied helpfully from a few feet away. "And claimed. Don't forget claimed. It was very romantic, in a filthy, outdoor kind of way."

Andy made a sound that was trapped somewhere between a pained groan and a high-pitched scream. He turned his face to look at Lucas, his dark eyes filled with the desperate, hollow plea of a man who had been thoroughly, utterly, and permanently defeated by a teenager.

"I am never going to live this down," Andy whispered. "This will follow me for centuries, Lucas. Centuries."

"Good," Lucas said, pulling back to flash his bright, toothy grin. "That means you'll never leave me. You're too embarrassed to show your face anywhere else."

Andy stared at him. He looked at the mud on Lucas's face, the ridiculous earflap hat, the swelling black eye, and the sheer, unshakeable confidence radiating from every pore of the boy's body. And then, despite everything—despite the profound humiliation, the torn orange vest, the cheering werewolves, the yellow hunting tag, and his cotton underwear still dangling from a tree branch above them—Andy felt the corners of his mouth twitch upward.

"I hate you," Andy said softly.

"You love me."

Andy sighed. It was a long, weary, deeply defeated sigh.

"Yes," Andy admitted, his voice barely a whisper. "God help me, I do."

Lucas leaned in and kissed him—properly, deeply, and passionately, in full view of the howling werewolf pack—and Andy closed his eyes and let him.

When they finally broke apart, both of them breathing slightly heavier, Marty cleared his throat loudly.

"Alright, lovebirds," the linebacker said, clapping his massive hands together like a coach calling a huddle. "We've still got an actual hunt to finish. Moo-Juice, you bagged your prey. Andy, you got bagged. Congratulations to you both on a successful mating ritual. Now, let's go find that deer so the rest of us can actually have some breakfast."

"I am not eating deer," Andy said flatly, standing up from the log and brushing a futile amount of dirt off his jeans. "I do not eat solid food."

"More venison for us," Buzz Cut said cheerfully, tossing Andy his discarded shotgun.

Andy caught the weapon effortlessly, looking at Lucas. Lucas looked back at him, wearing Andy's earflap hat, sporting a violent black eye, and absolutely glowing with the triumph of a victorious conqueror.

"I have made a terrible, terrible mistake," Andy muttered.

"Best mistake of your immortal life," Lucas corrected, stepping forward and lacing his warm fingers through Andy's cold ones.

Andy squeezed his hand tightly. "Yes," he agreed softly. "It was."

Together, the werewolf pack—and their newly tagged, highly embarrassed vampire prey—headed deeper into the forest.

---

The Cooper kitchen was a sanctuary of mundane, domestic peace.

It was mid-morning. Ruth Cooper was humming a soft, upbeat tune as she wiped down the granite countertops with a lemon-scented disinfectant wipe. Art Cooper was sitting in his worn armchair in the adjacent living room, half-asleep, the faint, polite murmur of a televised golf tournament drifting through the open floor plan. Amanda Cooper was sitting at the kitchen island, meticulously painting her nails a violent, glossy shade of crimson while ignoring her phone as it vibrated with text messages.

It was perfectly normal.

And then, the back door burst open.

Lucas strolled into the kitchen first. He was radiating a smug, unearned, radioactive level of confidence that practically hummed in the air. He was wearing Andy’s hat with the fuzzy earflaps. And, blooming spectacularly around his left eye, was a dark, swollen, purple-and-black bruise.

Andy trailed in slowly behind him, looking exactly like a man marching reluctantly to the guillotine. He was missing his orange vest. His flannel shirt was buttoned incorrectly, revealing a pale stretch of collarbone. His belt loops were empty. He was covered in dried mud, and he was walking with a rigid, slightly awkward, stiff-legged gait that he was trying desperately to hide.

Ruth dropped her disinfectant wipe. Her maternal radar flared instantly. Her eyes locked onto Lucas’s face, and all the fierce, protective instincts of a suburban mother went into overdrive.

"Lucas Cooper!" Ruth gasped, rushing across the kitchen and grabbing her son's face in both of her hands, examining the bruise. "My baby! What on earth happened to your eye?"

"Oh, it's nothing, Mom," Lucas said, his grin widening despite the obvious wince it caused when his cheek moved. "Just a little hunting accident in the woods."

Ruth’s gaze snapped away from Lucas and locked onto Andy.

The 300-year-old vampire immediately stopped breathing.

Ruth’s eyes narrowed into terrifying, judgmental slits. She crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly radiating an aura that was significantly more dangerous and intimidating than the entire werewolf pack combined.

"Andy," Ruth said, her voice dropping ten degrees into a freezing, maternal absolute. "Did you hit my son?"

"Mrs. Cooper, I assure you—" Andy stammered, holding his hands up in immediate surrender, his pale face flushing with unprecedented panic. "It was entirely instinctual! I was ambushed from the underbrush! I didn't realize it was him until it was far too late!"

"You hit him," Ruth stated, her tone flat, uncompromising, and heavy with guilt-inducing power.

"I thought he was a bear!"

Amanda paused mid-stroke with her nail polish brush, looking up from her cuticles with sudden, intense interest. "You thought he was a bear? Andy, he weighs a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet. And he talks constantly. How do you possibly mistake that for a bear?"

"I was startled!" Andy pleaded, looking desperately at the ceiling, wishing for the sweet release of true death. "I was in the woods! The woods are full of hazards and unpredictable wildlife!"

"You are in the dog house, mister," Ruth declared, pointing a stern, manicured finger directly at the immortal creature of the night. "I don't care if you're three hundred years old. I don't care if you drink blood. You do not lay a hand on my son. You can sleep in the garage tonight. Oh, wait, you already do."

"Mom, seriously, it's fine," Lucas said, pulling out a barstool and sitting down at the kitchen island with a noticeable wince. "I won the fight. I bagged him. We had a really great time."

The rustle of a newspaper shifting came from the living room.

Art Cooper shuffled slowly into the kitchen, his eyes fixed dead ahead on the refrigerator. He didn't look at Andy. He didn't look at his furious wife. He didn't look at his battered son. He simply opened the freezer, rooted around behind a box of frozen waffles for a moment, and pulled out a bag of frozen peas.

He tossed the bag underhand. It arced through the air and hit Lucas squarely in the chest.

"Put that on your eye," Art grunted.

Lucas caught the bag and pressed the frozen vegetables to his face. His smug grin was still firmly in place beneath the plastic.

"Art, tell Andy he's in the dog house," Ruth demanded, putting her hands on her hips. "He punched our youngest son in the face during a hunting trip."

Art leaned casually against the counter, cracking open a fresh can of domestic beer. He took a long, slow sip, his eyes finally drifting over to the vampire standing stiffly by the back door.

Art looked at Andy's incorrectly buttoned shirt. He looked at the missing belt. He looked at the mud on the knees of his jeans. He looked at the rigid, incredibly awkward, carefully measured way Andy was holding his posture and attempting to stand perfectly still.

"Leave the kid alone, Ruth," Art said mildly.

"He gave Lucas a black eye!"

"Yeah, well," Art said, taking another sip of his beer. "They were playing rough. Lucas got a black eye. But look at Andy."

The entire kitchen went completely, utterly silent. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator.

Amanda squinted at the vampire, her eyes narrowing as she assessed the visual evidence.

Ruth turned to look at Andy, her brow furrowing in deep confusion.

Andy squeezed his eyes shut, his fangs digging into his lower lip as he prayed for the earth to open up and swallow him whole, dragging him back to hell.

"Andy's walking funny," Art pointed out, his voice utterly devoid of inflection or judgment, merely stating a mechanical fact. "And he's missing his belt. And his shirt's on wrong. I'd say Lucas definitively won the fight."

The silence in the kitchen stretched, heavy, thick, and suffocating.

Ruth stared at Andy's stiff, mortified posture. She slowly turned her head to look at her son. Lucas was sitting on the barstool, icing his eye with a bag of peas, wearing a fuzzy earflap hat, and radiating the unholy, deeply satisfied swagger of a victorious Roman conqueror who had just returned from a highly successful campaign.

The gears in Ruth Cooper's head turned. The realization hit her with the concussive force of a runaway freight train.

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her face cycled rapidly through confusion, dawning realization, profound shock, and finally, absolute, soul-crushing maternal mortification.

"Oh," Ruth squeaked, her face turning a vibrant shade of scarlet.

"Yep," Art agreed calmly, taking another sip of beer.

"Oh, dear Lord." Ruth clapped both hands over her mouth, her eyes wide with unadulterated horror as she looked between the ancient vampire and her teenage son.

The fierce maternal fury had vanished entirely, replaced by a desperate, immediate, overwhelming need to scrub her own brain with industrial bleach.

"Told you I bagged him," Lucas chirped cheerfully from behind his bag of peas.

"Do not speak!" Ruth shrieked, throwing her hands up in the air as if warding off evil spirits. "I do not want to hear another word! I am a good, respectable woman, and this is a respectable, god-fearing house, and I cannot deal with the biological implications of this!"

She spun around, practically sprinting toward the front hallway, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum.

"I am going to church!" Ruth yelled over her shoulder, grabbing her purse from the hook. "I know it is Saturday, but I am going to find a church that is open, and I am going to pray for your immortal souls! Both of you!"

The front door slammed shut a moment later, the sound echoing through the suddenly quiet house.

Amanda slowly screwed the cap back onto her crimson nail polish. Her shoulders began to shake with silent, uncontrollable laughter. She pressed her lips together, but a snort escaped anyway. "That was... without a doubt, the greatest thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life."

Andy let out a long, ragged exhale, his shoulders slumping as he leaned back against the doorframe. His dignity, which had been on life support since the ambush in the woods, had officially, permanently flatlined.

"Mr. Cooper," Andy said, his voice completely hollow, staring blankly at the kitchen floor. "I would like to formally request that you use the pressure washer on me. Immediately."

"Nah," Art said, finishing his beer and casually tossing the empty can into the recycling bin. "You've suffered enough today, Andy. Just... take some ibuprofen. Both of you."

Art shuffled slowly back into the living room, settling into his recliner as the golf tournament continued to murmur on the television, leaving the two of them alone in the kitchen with Amanda.

Lucas lowered the bag of frozen peas. His left eye was puffy, swollen, and turning a vibrant, painful shade of violet, but his grin was absolutely, devastatingly radiant.

He looked at Andy, completely unapologetic, entirely unbothered by his mother's trauma, and incredibly, disgustingly smug that he had gotten laid. Again.

"So," Lucas said cheerfully, leaning his elbows comfortably on the granite counter and winking his good eye at the devastated vampire. "Want to go up to my room and see if we can make my other eye match?"