“Why?” Ari demanded. “Why should you not take what I wish to freely give?” His accent—which was part Spanish and part something else, probably Drake—seemed to get thicker when he was upset, I noticed.
“But why do you want to give it? Just out of obligation?” I demanded. “That wouldn’t be enough for most guys to take on some ugly little scarred girl who—”
“Stop!” Ari actually put a hand over my mouth, stopping the flow of self-hating words. “Don’t,” he told me, his eyes blazing. “Don’t ever speak of yourself that way, Kaitlyn! I will not allow anyone to talk about you that way—not even you.”
I shook my head, indicating I would stop and he took his hand from my mouth.
“I don’t understand you,” I said to him. “I don’t understand why you want to do this—why you care.”
“You’ll understand more when you get to know me—and my Drake—better,” he said firmly.
I recoiled when he said that—I couldn’t help it.
“Get to know your Drake?” I asked faintly.
“He won’t harm you, Kaitlyn,” Ari assured me quickly. “He would never do such a thing. He wants only to protect you, just as I do.”
“Why?” I asked again. I shook my head. “I just don’t understand.”
“You will,” he said again, firmly. “For now, drink from me again. You haven’t had nearly enough yet.”
I shook my head, though I was already eyeing the vein pulsing in his neck. He seemed to heal immediately after I bit him which was a big plus. It would have been really awkward if he was bleeding all over the place—especially considering how I felt about blood now.
But the thought of taking his vein still made me shy. I licked my lips nervously.
“I…I’m fine. I had enough just now,” I lied, trying and failing to drag my eyes away from his vein.
Ari scowled at me.
“This is not a good way to start our relationship, Kaitlyn, with you lying to me.”
Relationship? I looked up at him, more confused than ever. Why did he want to do this for me? To feed me? Protect me?
The vein in his neck throbbed and the thirst tore at me. I had no answers—I had nothing but the thirst which seemed to have been only awakened by my first drink from him and now was much worse. Suddenly, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had no idea why Ari Reyes was doing this for me, but at the moment, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was easing the dry ache in my throat.
“Kaitlyn,” he said, more softly this time. “Tell me the truth now—are you thirsty?”
“Yes.” My voice was so low I could hardly hear it myself but it seemed to satisfy the big Drake.
“Good,” he murmured, nodding. “Then drink.”
And he pulled me close to his chest and bared his throat for my fangs.
I couldn’t dissemble any more—couldn’t lie to myself that this was exactly what I needed. I nuzzled against his strong throat, breathed in his spicy scent—and struck.
42
Ari
My little human—or as I must now call her, my little Nocturne—at last drank her fill.
I held her to me as she swallowed my blood, feeling my own strength and the strength of my Drake flowing into her as the intense emotion surged through both of us.
Dios! She felt so good in my arms—so right I can’t even describe it. It was like two pieces of a puzzle fitting together, like a key finding the right lock at last…
Like a Drake finding his mate.
Within me, my own Drake roared his agreement. He also wanted to know when he would be able to meet Kaitlyn in person. Saving her from the Guardian didn’t count—he hadn’t gotten to speak to her then. He was certain that she wouldn’t fear him anymore if only he could meet her face-to-face and they could look into each others’ eyes.
Privately, I doubted that. His eyes were bigger than her entire head and though my little Nocturne was brave enough in some ways, she certainly didn’t seem to like Drakes or for that matter, our distant cousin, the Guardian.
Thinking of that made me frown as I remembered what he had told my Drake. I would have to warn Kaitlyn to stay away from the bridge unless I was there to protect her, I decided. In fact, I didn’t want her going anywhere without me. I wished that we had every class together or better yet, that I could keep her here in my private den with me so no one else could hurt or touch or even see her…
I pulled myself up short, recognizing my Drake’s possessiveness and treasure-hoarding tendencies in my own thoughts. When humans talk about Drakes—or dragons as they call them—they always tell stories of giant, scaly lizards who looked not unlike the Guardian amassing golden piles of treasure which they guarded jealously from the rest of the world.
But the humans only get half the story right.
Yes, our Drakes are incredibly possessive and protective but the treasure we hoard and guard so jealously isn’t anything as useless and cold as gold or gems. No, our true treasures are the females who are chosen to be our fated-mates and we do, indeed, keep them close in order to keep them safe.
Doubtless this is where the ridiculous human fairy tales of the fair maiden being locked in a tower and guarded by a dragon come from. The valiant knight always comes riding on his steed, all ready to save her from the beast’s scaly grip, but did any one of the fairy tale tellers ever consider that the maiden might not want to be rescued? That she might belong to the dragon and be happy with him—happy to be protected by such a strong and relentless lover?
Of course not—humans think only of themselves. The idea of the maiden loving the Drake—excuse me, the dragon—would never have occurred to them. All they see is something they don’t understand—a beast so big it cannot possiblly care for one so small and delicate. They don’t understand that the love of a Drake is forever—that it never wanes or falters—that a Drake will kill or die to protect the one his heart has chosen as the only female for him.
I thought all these things—as well as I was able through the deep pleasure that ran through me—as my Kaitlyn drank from my vein. I wished I could tell my thoughts to her but when she pulled back from me at last, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand with an almost guilty expression, I knew she wasn’t ready.
Instead, I looked at her, trying to make certain she’d gotten her fill this time.
“Did you get enough?” I asked her and she nodded—a quick little jerk of her head.
“Good. And will you come to me from now on if you need blood? Between the breakfast and dinner feedings, I mean,” I added, wanting to make sure she knew those were non-negotiable.
“I…I’ll try,” she said at last. “Though I still don’t understand…any of this.” She shifted on my lap. “Thank you for the blood but can I get down now?”
I wanted to say no—I wanted to hold her to me and never let her go—wanted to keep her safe next to my heart and never let anyone hurt or bother her again.
But again, that was my Drake talking.
And more than all those things, I wanted her to come to my arms willingly and of her own volition. I wanted her to need me the way I needed her.
If you love something—set it free. That’s a human expression, I think, but it was very apt in this case.
I opened my arms and Kaitlyn slid out of my lap at once.
“Thank you,” she said again, ducking her head and hiding the left side of her face, though to me it was as beautiful as the right. I wished that I could make her see that—could make her understand that her beauty, to me, was so much more than skin-deep.
But these things take time.
“I’ll see you later,” she said and turned to go.
“I’ll see you here, just before dinner, L’lorna,” I told her, the name slipping out again before I could stop it.
She looked at me with wide eyes and then nodded again—another quick jerk of the head—before she pushed through the heavy wooden door and was gone.
43
Kaitlyn
>
I honestly didn’t know what to think about any of it—I guess I felt dazed. I wandered back to my History of Magic class, only to find that the bell had rung while Ari fed me and I was now late for my next period.
I retrieved my books and hurried to the next class which I thankfully didn’t share with the big Drake. I was glad to have a little time to myself—I needed it after all the crazy, confusing things that had happened to me lately.
The thought that kept going round and round my head was why?
Why would a big, handsome, important Drake like Ari Reyes want so badly to feed me his blood? Why would he care about a scarred little human—no, I corrected myself—a scarred little Nocturne—enough to make an oath to slake my thirst and then go out of his way to be certain he honored that oath?
And why were the emotions when I bit him—when he held me in his arms and let me take his vein—so incredibly intense? Of course, Griffin had warned that they would be and Megan had confirmed it often enough, blushing when she told us how good it felt when Griffin sank his fangs into her flesh. But I had never expected to feel what I felt when I took Ari’s vein with anyone—except maybe my husband if I ever got married and we had sex, anyway.
Seriously it was that good.
Or maybe it was better—I didn’t honestly know, being a virgin. But all this better-than-sex biting felt strange, especially when it was happening with a boy I hardly knew—a boy who was so far above me on the social scale of our school he might as well be a prince while I was the pauper.
So the question remained—why?
I no longer believed Ari’s wish to care for me was really about the awful things his fellow Drake had done to me in PE class. Surely even the Drake sense of obligation couldn’t run that deep.
But if that wasn’t his motivation, what was?
It couldn’t be because he cared for me in any way. He didn’t even know me and even if he had, how could someone like him care for someone like me?
He couldn’t, I told myself flatly. There was just no way in H-E-double hockey sticks as Avery liked to say when he was being funny.
So again, I had no answers—and it didn’t look likely that I was going to get any in the near future, either.
44
Kaitlyn
“Maybe he genuinely cares for you,” Avery suggested at lunch, when I hesitantly told my Coven-mates what had happened after I collapsed in History of Magic.
I had no choice—it was already all over the school, apparently. How Ari had swooped me up to take me to the Healer and how neither one of us had ever come back to class. All of Nocturne Academy was buzzing and I saw plenty of interested faces turned in my direction as people who had never given me a second glance now openly stared and speculated about what was happening between me and the big Drake.
“No, that can’t be it,” I said, looking down at my tray with its greasy cold French fries covered in several layers of weird goop.
Today the Lunch Ladies had attempted a kind of poutine—the Canadian dish where you ladle brown gravy and cheese curds over fries and serve it up piping hot. It’s actually a delicious dish when done right—but unfortunately the Lunch Ladies had gotten it wrong.
Instead of brown gravy, they had used some kind of fish sauce—or that was what it smelled like to my newly sensitive Nocturne nose. And Instead of cheese curds, there were chunks of canned tuna. Though there was, of course, still the obligatory layer of melted orange-crayon cheese that they apparently thought was one of the four food groups here.
The whole mess smelled fishy and wrong and totally awful. And even if I had still been human, it wouldn’t have been an appetizing sight, either.
Now that I was Nocturne, human food disgusted me—just looking at the mess on my tray nearly made me puke. I had only gotten it in order to avoid suspicion about my new state of being but now I wished I hadn’t.
I pushed the tray as far away from me as I could, praying I wouldn’t throw up because that would give away my new status as a Nocturne for sure.
Nothing quite says “Hey, everybody, look—I’m a vampire!” like puking a huge gout of blood in the middle of a crowded Dining Hall.
“How do you stand it? Being around human food, I mean,” I asked Griffin, ignoring Avery’s nonsensical statement that Ari actually cared for me. “I mean, how do you keep from being disgusted all the time?”
Griffin looked thoughtful.
“You get used to it, after a time,” he told me. “It’s difficult for you now, because you are so new, but after a while you’ll be able to block out the smells. Once you manage that, it is simply like watching the people around you eat sand or dirt—you don’t want any yourself and you know that it couldn’t nourish you, but you are no longer disgusted or appalled by watching others eat it.”
“Disgusted and appalled?” Emma asked, lifting her brows.
“Eating dirt?” Megan cried, putting a hand on her hip and glaring at him.
Griffin shrugged.
“Forgive me but that’s how it is. For me, anyway—I can’t speak for other Nocturnes.”
“We’re getting off the subject here,” Avery said, frowning at me. “Very clever, Katydid, trying to get us all talking about something else, but I believe we were discussing how Ari swooped in and rescued you yet again in your History of Magic class. So go on…” He made a gesture with one hand. “Do tell.”
“There’s not really much to tell,” I mumbled, looking down at the table. “He caught me and took me to the, uh, Drake Den and—”
“Wait a minute—the Drake Den?” Avery interrupted, clearly excited. His eyes were shining with curiosity, as they so often are when he’s talking about other people’s relationships. “You mean that really exists?”
“I guess so, since I was in it. Why?” I asked, mystified at his excitement.
“Because it’s one of those semi-forbidden rooms in the castle that only certain people can access,” he said. “I mean, it only opens for the Drakes at the very top of their social order—the crème de la crème as it were. In fact, some years it just doesn’t open at all—if there are no high-ranking Drakes to use it.”
I sighed. “Well it opened right up for Ari.”
Megan looked thoughtful. “I guess he really is a big deal in the Sky Lands. I mean, you hear all those rumors about him being some kind of a prince but this kind of confirms it, right?”
Of course, the only thing it confirmed for me was my feeling that Ari was too important to be interested in insignificant little me.
“He said it would open for me, too,” I told them. “He said it only opens for him or whoever he invites in and it seems like I…” I cleared my throat. “I have a permanent invitation.”
“You do? What does that mean?” Emma asked, interest lighting her plain but sweet face.
I sighed again. “I means that he expects me to meet him there thirty minutes before breakfast and again right before dinner every day so he can, uh, feed me.”
Just saying those words made my cheeks get hot, especially when I remembered the intense emotion that flowed between us when I took his vein.
“See?” Avery exclaimed, pounding on the table with one hand. “Didn’t I tell you? He does care for you, Kaitlyn!”
“He doesn’t even know me!” I protested. “He’s just, uh, keeping his oath—that’s all.”
“And he is keeping it very well indeed, too.” Griffin sounded approving. “I have heard it said that the honor of the High Drakes is beyond reproach and Ari is proving that to be true.”
“I wish he wouldn’t,” I mumbled, looking down at my hands again. “I wish he could just…just leave me alone.”
“Kaitlyn, you don’t mean that!” Megan protested. “If he wasn’t being faithful and giving you his blood, you’d dry up and blow away! You nearly did that this weekend.”
“I know,” I said looking up at her earnestly. “And I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I mean, his blood tastes amazing and it feels so good when I
drink from him…too good, actually,” I went on in an embarrassed whisper. “Like…like we ought to be married in order to have feelings like this flying between us good.”
“Wow…” Megan looked at me speculatively. “That’s how it is when Griffin bites me, too. But we’re Blood-Bonded.”
“As if you could ever let any of us forget it,” Avery said dryly.
“No, seriously Avery—it sounds like Kaitlyn is having, uh, feelings with Ari that shouldn’t be possible unless the two of them had marked or bonded each other,” Megan said.
“I agree.” Griffin frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose it could just mean that the two of you are extremely well-suited for each other.”
“But we don’t even know each other!” I protested, though that was no longer strictly true.
Griffin shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. Sometimes it happens—this extreme affinity—when a Nocturne or another Other finds their fated-mate—”
“Fated mate?” I exclaimed, giving him a horrified look. “You must be kidding! That can’t be right.”
He shrugged. “I do not know if it is or not—I was simply putting forward possible explanations for your extreme affinity for him and his for you.”
“Well, that’s not it,” I said firmly, frowning. “I don’t know what it is, I only know it makes me uncomfortable. Especially because I don’t know the reason for it.”
“Couldn’t the reason just be that Ari likes you?” Emma asked. “I mean, why is that such a crazy idea, Kaitlyn? We all like you—hell, we love you.”
“Very much,” Megan chimed in and Griffin nodded gravely.
Fang and Claw: Nocturne Academy, Book 2 Page 17