Vlad appeared in front of the cell alone, though, keys jangling as he unlocked the door.
Val chuckled. “Did they give you those? Or did you take them?”
“What do you think?” He carried the tote bag from this morning, and tossed it to Val.
He had an easier time catching it this time. Stronger. Every meal, every drop of blood, every minute he was stronger than he’d been before. He felt almost like his old self – the version of himself that had killed Mehmet. That had fought sorties outside the walls of Constantinople.
God, Constantine…
No. Now wasn’t the time.
“What’s this?” he asked, peering into the bag.
“Clothes.”
Val reached in and drew out a pair of very soft, thin black sleep pants and a robe of similar material. He shot his brother a raised-brow look.
“Those are for before. The others are for after.”
Under the – well, they were pajamas, is what they were – he found a pair of jeans, t-shirt, leather jacket, and black sneakers. “Brother.” He felt a slow grin overtake his face. “Do you want me to look cool?”
“I want you to take this seriously.”
Val sighed. “I take everything seriously, I just don’t look as miserable as you while doing it.”
Vlad stared at him.
Val lifted his hands, palms-up. “I swear!”
Vlad studied him a long, tense moment. Then seemed to come to some sort of decision and nodded. “Before you go to your mortal, there’s something else we have to do.”
The baron and baroness edged into view, walking with small steps, pressed close together. Fulk, especially, looked pale and severe.
Val’s pulse hiccupped. “What?”
“You’ve gone walking,” Vlad said, “and you’ve seen much of the modern world, but you haven’t lived in it. Mia will be newly turned, and likely overwhelmed. You’ll need help – both to escape, and to continue to evade Talbot’s minions. You need wolves, Val. Strange and his wife have agreed to become bound to you.”
Val sat blinking, dumbfounded, hands clenched in the soft material of the robe in his lap. “But…” He turned to Annabel. “He doesn’t ever want to be bound again. You told me that.”
Fulk fidgeted, gaze caught between dark and frightened.
Annabel hugged his arm. “I don’t think you’d try to act like our master, would you, Val?”
“No.” His voice was faint. He couldn’t believe this. He swallowed. “I wouldn’t – but, Anna, dear girl…you don’t have to do this.”
She looked at him steadily, with nothing short of ferocity. “We do, actually. If we stay here, they’ll just keep using my safety as leverage to make Fulk do whatever they want. We have to leave. And…if we’re bound to you, then no other vampire can ever force us to work for them.”
“That…makes sense.” And it did. But. “Baron Strange. What are your thoughts?”
Fulk ground his narrow jaw, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Nostrils flared. “I think I want to get the hell out of here.” Val waited, but he said nothing else.
“You see?” Vlad said. “They are willing.” He waved and the couple shuffled forward, into the cell, until they stood side-by-side in front of him.
Slowly, struck hard by how surreal this seemed, Val set the clothes aside and smoothed his suddenly-damp palms down his thighs. His parents’ wolves had considered him pack, had protected him, listened to him, and he’d loved them in return. But he’d never performed a binding; never bound a wolf to himself, personally. He’d wondered, felt a tickling urge at the back of his throat several weeks back when he finally came face-to-face with Sasha…but that would have been wrong. Sasha was meant for another.
He hadn’t expected this.
“I would be honored,” he said, quietly, voice shaking. His breath trembled in his lungs and he wet his lips.
“Do it,” Vlad said.
Annabel shifted her weight–
And her husband caught her around the waist, held her still. “I’ll go first,” he said, and then slowly sank down so that he knelt on the cold stone floor between Val’s parted legs.
He breathed quick and harsh through his mouth, gaze darting, restless. Val could hear the rabbit-fast beating of his heart. He was terrified.
Val felt his own shaking ease. He cupped the baron’s chin in a gentle hand and tipped his face up. His pupils were pinpricks, sweat beading at his temples. The poor dear. He’d left off his usual red leather jacket, his neck long, and bare, and pale.
“It’s alright, sweetheart,” Val murmured. Fingers cupped carefully, but firmly under the wolf’s sharp jaw, and he touched the pad of his thumb to Fulk’s upper lip, lifted it up and sought the point of a canine. Pressed. Felt it elongate. Watched the blue eyes flare to life, a faint glow.
Val leaned in closer, and pushed every ounce of his crippling sincerity into his voice. “It really will be an honor to be a part of your pack. Will you accept me?”
Permission wasn’t necessary – a wolf could be held down and forced to choke on blood, and be bound against his will.
But something eased in Fulk at the question. He settled deeper into his knees, and swayed forward, eyelids drooping. He let out a quiet, lupine chuff. His voice was nothing human. “Yes, your grace.”
“That’s a good darling.” Val tucked his face down low, into Fulk’s neck, guided the wolf’s mouth to his own throat. They were pressed together, ear-to-ear, and their pulses pushed against one another there.
Val opened his mouth and bit with slow precision, fangs piercing skin. And Fulk did the same to him.
The first sip was an electric shove between his shoulder blades. But it quickly became a soothing warmth. He felt the baron, saw his wolf in his mind – great, shaggy black, blues eyes, a wary alpha. He held out a hand to it, smiled. Hello, beautiful boy. I won’t hurt you.
The wolf approached in fits and starts, raising and then lowering his head. He growled, once. But then he was close enough to press his cold wet nose to Val’s fingers and snuffle at them, breathe in his scent…and his intent.
Finally, the beast ducked his head and pressed the side of his face into Val’s palm. Acceptance.
Val blinked back to the present, and sat back, swallowing a last rich mouthful of blood. The wound on his own neck tingled pleasantly, and when Fulk drew back, he looked drunk, lips red and wet, eyes closed.
He sighed and went boneless, and laid his head down on Val’s thigh.
Val cupped a protective hand over his silky dark hair. And that was that.
~*~
Mia hated all this sleepiness, but she had to admit that this was a very nice way to wake up. She rose up out of a shapeless, unsettling dream to the sensation of someone petting a gentle hand over the crown of her head, again and again. She lay on her side, and the lamp was on, its light spilling over Val, who sat perched on the side of her bed, smiling down at her with so much warmth it made her throat ache.
She licked dry lips, and the first words out of her mouth were, “You look good.”
And he did. His hair was loose, falling over his shoulder in a golden curtain, his face flushed with health, eyes bright, the awful bags beneath them gone. He wore a loose black robe, its sleeves pushed up past his elbows, the front open, his chest smooth and bare beneath.
His cheeks pinked in response to her words. Oh, he was blushing. It was precious. “So do you,” he said, and smoothed her hair back from her face again.
Except there was no way she could. She’d seen herself when she first woke up. And here she was, face smushed into a pillow, possibly drooling on herself. Ugh.
She braced a hand in the sheets and eased up to a sitting position. Dizziness swamped her, and she closed her eyes against the sensation.
He put both hands on her bare shoulders – she wore nothing but a tank top and shorts – and steadied her. “It’s getting worse.”
No sense lying when that’s why he was here. She cr
acked her eyes open, wincing and smiling – trying to. “Yeah.”
His expression had grown serious. Grave. One hand slid up to her neck, holding her there. “Mia.” Voice heavy. “I want you to know that I’m doing this for you. That I want you to be healthy. If you don’t want anything from me beyond that, I’ll understand.”
Never been able to choose, Vlad had said. And he was choosing now. And he was going to do this monumental thing for her, save her life – even if she didn’t want him in return.
She leaned in and knocked their foreheads together, lightly. “Val. Sweetie. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t want to be with you.”
He pulled back, eyes wide. “Oh no. You can’t – it can’t just be for me. You have to–”
“I meant.” She laid her hands on his face, and he quieted. “That I trust you.”
He studied her a long moment, gaze shifting over every part of her face, his own expression held in careful check. A muscle flexed in his jaw; she saw it, felt it leap against her palm. “Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Yes.”
He smiled, slow and sharp, fangs too long, but it didn’t quite touch his eyes – which glimmered bright with tears for one fast beat before he blinked them away.
“Kiss me,” she urged, and he did.
~*~
In his cell, with two freshly-bound, blood-drunk wolves propped against one another at his feet, Vlad had seen fit to share some brotherly wisdom.
“Turning a human is a powerful thing. It’s intimate.”
He knew that. But rather than talk of Arslan, a little blood-drunk himself, relaxed and cocky, Val had said, “What sort of intimate are we talking here, brother?” And thrown an eyebrow waggle in for good measure.
Vlad had doubled down on his scowl. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Does that mean you fucked that little soldier girl when you turned her earlier?”
Vlad scoffed. “Intimate for others. Not me. You, since you care for the–”
“Love.”
“Since you love the girl, it will be powerful for you. And her, likely, if she’s sincere in her affections.”
“Brother dearest,” Val had said, “how is it that I’m the one who was used as a plaything most of my life, and yet it’s you who doubts true love?”
“I doubt most things,” Vlad had deadpanned. Then had come the truly terrible part: “Have you ever bedded a woman?”
Val had straightened up from his relaxed sprawl, trying to gather his dignity, thin though as it was. “Yes.” There had been a woman or two, during his long captivity. He’d been chained up, and they’d done most of the work, but he understood the mechanics of it. (And he knew the intoxicating heat and softness and wetness of the experience; desire coiled tight in his belly when he thought of having Mia like that, above him, hair loose on her shoulders…)
Stone-faced, Vlad had said, “You understand that you’re supposed to–”
“Yes!”
He didn’t want that conversation in his head now, one hand braced on the mattress, the other smoothing slowly up Mia’s bare stomach, but it had stubbornly taken root, fed by his sudden self-consciousness. Because here he was, and he knew he was beautiful to look at, but she was stretched out beneath him, unclothed, willing, looking up at him with soft invitation, and she was perfect. What if he couldn’t make her feel good?
Her hand slid up his naked shoulder – he shivered, leaned into the touch – and found his nape, fingers threading through the hair there. “Come here,” she said, so gently, and he leaned down, grateful, to kiss her again.
He loved kissing her. It was lush and unhurried. She lifted into him when he ran his tongue behind her teeth. Pressed her breasts to his chest, skin to skin, and – oh, that was…
He opened his mouth against hers, panting. Her pulse raced against his hands, under thin skin and rib bones delicate as a bird’s. He still wore his pants, but he lay between her parted legs, and he could feel the heat of her. Could smell that she was ready…ready for him to push through his doubt and touch her.
How many nights had he appeared to her as nothing but a conjuring? Wishing he could touch. And now he hesitated.
She pushed both hands through his hair and pulled him down to her, even closer. Took his lower lip delicately between her teeth, and bit.
He groaned. “God. Darling…” His response was immediate, and automatic; his spine moved like a whip-crack, a slow undulation that rubbed them together in all the right places.
The last bit of hesitance evaporated, and his hand slipped up the fretwork of her ribs to cup her breast.
She breathed a small, almost-startled sound into his mouth, and he drank it in; cupped her, squeezed, and drew out a whimper. He thumbed the hard bud of her nipple and she whimpered; her legs tightened on his hips.
She was reacting to him. She wanted him.
He trailed kisses down her throat, across her chest, moving over her like a panther. Bolder, hungrier. Salt taste of her skin blooming on his tongue, scent filling his nose; still sick, but not for long, no. He would heal her. He would make her his.
His hand slipped down between her legs and found her slick for him. He wanted to put his mouth there, so he did, shouldering her thighs wider apart, his hair falling around his face so all he could see, and smell, and taste was her.
He could have stayed there an hour, listening to the pleading sounds she made, feeling the rough scrape of her nails on his scalp. Giving her pleasure like this, hearing her ask for more, Val, oh God left him so hard he was panting against her sex, grinding his own hips mindlessly against the mattress.
When he lifted his head to take a breath, she tugged at his hair. “Val. Val, come here.”
His fangs ached, and he couldn’t take a deep breath, and he needed to come, and rational thought was out the window, and…That sounded like a brilliant idea.
He prowled back up her sweat-sheened body and cupped her face; kissed her. Too hard, too deep, too much – but she gave it right back, rising against him like the tide, nails dragging down his back. He could feel the scratches she was leaving; already wanted to turn and admire them in the mirror. That was his mate, his woman; she’d been the one so turned on she marked his flesh.
But later. Later.
Mia followed the lean dip of his back with both hands, until they slipped into the waistband of his pants and she could palm his ass. He gasped and his hips jerked, grinding down into her. She was so wet that her slick bled through the thin fabric. God, God.
He closed his eyes and panted against her mouth. “Please.” Tremors skated across his skin. He felt fevered. He felt everything. “Mia, please.”
“Shh, I know, I know.” Her voice was wrecked. She pushed his pants down his hips and wrapped a sure hand around his cock. Guided him, and then…
He growled when he entered her. She sighed, and she gave, and the hot, slick grip of her around him punched the air out of his lungs.
He hovered over her, unmoving, breath caught in his throat, for a seemingly endless moment, trying not to come right away.
She seemed to know it, murmuring low and soothing, words he was too overwhelmed to comprehend; petting his sides, and hips, and shoulders. Tucking his hair behind his ears.
Slowly, slowly, teeth clenched, he eased back from the edge.
“…Val. Val, I’m right here.”
He cracked his eyes open, and even through a blur of tears, he could make out her face, her half-lidded eyes, and her bruised mouth, and the long line of her throat, bared to him.
She was. She was right there.
With a low, deep purr, he settled over her and began to move. It was a rhythm engraved in his bones, even if he hadn’t often been the one to set it. His hips knew the way to hitch, and roll, and her thighs were strong around them, her heels digging into the backs of his thighs. He tucked his face into her throat, pressed open-mouthed kisses against her pulse,
where the scent of her blood was the strongest.
He’d been fucked more times than he could count, but nothing had ever been like this.
When he came, the astral plane tried to take him, its flickering stars and vast black reaches. But he fought it off; he wanted to stay in his body, to feel the wracking pleasure that shifted through him in tides.
Mia made a low, throaty noise, just after him, her walls clenching tight around him. He wanted to drown. And for a little while, he let himself, just drifting.
When his wits returned, he found that he’d slumped over onto his side, and that he’d hauled her up against him. His cock had softened, and he’d slipped out of her; they were wet and tacky, skin glued together. His face was buried against the side of her face; he had a mouthful of her hair. He snuffled and purred like a housecat, and couldn’t find it in himself to feel embarrassed about that.
Mia’s hand skimmed aimlessly up and down his arm. Her breath came in soft little puffs just beneath his ear. “That was…” she started.
“Mmm.” He pulled back so he could look at her: her flushed cheeks, and bright eyes, and kiss-pink lips. “I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time,” he admitted.
She smiled, lazy and sated, a little embarrassed. “Not as long as me, I can promise.”
He traced her smile with a fingertip. “I didn’t hurt you?”
“God, no.”
But what he did next would. A little. At least at first.
It should have been a sobering thought, but was instead electrifying; his eagerness, the rush of blood to his face and his cock frightened him in its intensity.
He peeled away from her, reluctant, and pushed himself upright. “Stay here.”
She didn’t argue, closing her eyes and settling down in the sheets with a little hum of agreement.
Val felt wobbly as a new colt when he got to his feet, his knees threatening to give out. He braced a hand against the bedpost, and memory threatened to intrude – a night centuries ago, legs shaking, lungs shaking, stomach aching; Mehmet rolling away from him, candle shadows leaping up the tent walls. But no, that wasn’t this. This was new and precious, and he wouldn’t let the past scar it.
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