What has been done to you, min älskling?
“Don’t talk inside my head,” I snapped. “And I’m not your darling.”
My gaze shot to Micah and I suddenly understood what was about to happen. “What have you done?”
“What I needed to do to keep you alive.” He spoke through clenched teeth.
“I don’t understand,” Hannah’s voice trembled.
Dante rose with Hannah in his arms. His large hand pushed her damp, tangled hair off her face and I heard the rumble of his voice as he exited the room. “Let’s get you back to bed and let them sort this out. Ella’s gonna be just fine.”
Micah closed the distance between him and Julian. My sire straightened his shoulders. They faced off and the spike in tension was palpable.
“You did this on purpose, didn’t you?” Micah accused. “All of this was some elaborate plan so you could come in and save the day. You lousy piece of shit.”
“Micah,” Castro warned.
“Me?” Julian laughed. “You did this, mongrel. If it was me, I wouldn’t have let her face off against Lizbeth alone. What was so important that you left your ‘mate’ unprotected?”
Micah’s growl bounced off the walls.
“Ella cannot last much longer,” Castro said very calmly. “Julian is the only one who can save her. Let’s stop this game we’re playing and solve the problem at hand.” He gave Micah a pointed look. “You would rather her die than drink his blood? If she dies, you die.”
“I don’t give a fuck about my life!” Micah yelled.
“What will Elijah do? You’re all he has,” Castro said.
“I’ll do it,” I said weakly.
Micah turned to me, green fire in his eyes. “I thought I would do anything, but I won’t force you to touch him. You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do. It’s blood, Micah, that’s all.”
“It is not just blood,” Julian interrupted.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Micah hissed.
“I don’t do anything without a price. You want Ella alive and I want her by my side. I save her, I keep her.”
“You manipulative fuck.”
“No,” I said and tried to lift myself into a sitting position. I didn’t get any farther than I had the first time. “I’d rather die.”
Julian looked at me and for the first time, I saw such sadness in his eyes. “You would choose death over me?”
“Yes.”
Julian’s mouth went tight. “A compromise, perhaps.”
“Talk,” Micah growled.
“If she drinks from me, she becomes my queen.” When I opened my mouth to protest, he raised his hand. “Stand at my side when I need you there. A couple of parties, a few meetings. If I plan to step into the role of king, I need a strong show of power. If I had my fledgling by my side, it would convince the court. You’re a queen, Ella. With or without me, Lizbeth’s death solidified your position. It is the vampire way to keep what you kill. Her throne, her money, her houses, her bodyguards, they’re all yours.”
“I don’t want any of it,” I snapped.
Micah spoke over me. “No sex, no blood.” His voice was a low growl.
“You’re actually considering this?” I looked at Micah.
“What are our options?” Micah held his hands up.
I bit my lip.
“Do it, Ella,” Castro ordered.
“‘What’s the catch, Julian?” I asked.
“No catch. We are at an impasse, min kärlek. I want you, you want the mongrel. If I kill him, you die. And if I let you die… Well, there is no other that would replace you.”
That wasn’t exactly true. If I descended from the living vampire line and inherited their genes, then so did Hannah. If she were turned, would the same thing happen to her?
“I never knew you were so sentimental.” I coughed and tasted more blood in my mouth.
“Practical, isn’t that what you always call it?” Julian asked.
“Time is an issue.” Castro’s hand landed on Micah’s shoulder. The demon squeezed, pulled Micah back and whispered something into his ear. I tried to make out the words, but they were spoken too softly.
Julian removed his jacket and slid onto the bed next to me. He pushed strands of hair from my face and cupped my cheek. The cool caress of his finger stroked over my skin and my body heated from the inside out.
I closed my eyes. “Don’t.”
“What, no foreplay?” Julian pressed the length of his body against my side.
My gaze met his and I imagined the sight was like two blue flames merging. “Were you really sent to kill me?”
“Yes. But I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because for the first time in four hundred years I felt. Even devastated over the death of your father, you radiated life. I know you never wanted this curse,” he touched the corner of my eye, “but I couldn’t let you go. Jag älskar dig, Ella. Always. Forever. When you realize your hunter isn’t the one for you, I’ll be here.”
Tears blurred my vision. I tried to lift my hand, to grasp his hair and pull his neck to the side, but I was too weak. My gums pulsed at the knowledge of blood, but my fangs didn’t lengthen. I looked up at Julian, hated the way he looked back. Hated it because of the way his love swirled unwanted sensations deep inside me.
“My fangs won’t come out.”
“Tyst, oroa dig inte. You’ve lost too much blood.” Before I could protest, Julian brought his mouth to mine. Against my lips his fangs lengthened into sharp points. He swiped his tongue against one razor edge and the blood dripped into my mouth. The blood coaxed out the fangs he’d given me but he didn’t pull away.
Julian titled his head and sealed our lips together. He pushed his fingers through my hair, deepened our kiss. Memories swarmed me. The two years we’d dated came at me in a rush. Every kiss, touch and stolen moment played over my body and I gasped against my sire’s mouth.
Julian pulled back, his eyes hooded.
“There now. Bedövning.”
I looked over at Micah and guilt flooded me. Castro restrained him. The muscles in his forearms bulged with the effort of holding him back.
The few drops of blood Julian had shed moved through my veins, gave me strength.
“I’m sorry Micah.” I lifted a hand, threaded my fingers through my sire’s hair. I tugged, hard, pulled him close. Julian made a sick sound of pleasure in the back of this throat. I refused to think about it.
I sank my fangs into his neck and the initial urge I had to tear out his throat faded. The fist of hair I held was soft, silky. My fingers lost their grip, gentled as instinct took over. I cupped the back of his head as Julian moved over me and settled between my spread thighs. Blood fell faster onto my tongue. I slurped at the warmth running into my mouth. Julian moaned and rubbed the thick length of his cock against my core. Pleasure spiked and I fought it. This wasn’t the man I wanted.
“Enough!” Micah bellowed.
Julian was ripped from my grasp. Through narrowed, glassy eyes, I watched my sire get thrown across the room. Micah loomed over him, fists balled. Blood ran down the side of Julian’s neck, disappearing into the collar of his shirt. The once-pristine white cotton was now marred with crimson.
From the floor, Julian threw his head back and began to laugh. Micah pounced on him. His fist in Julian’s face shut him up. Castro was across the room in a blink, pulling Micah off before he could get in another punch.
“No,” Castro said firmly.
Julian rose to his feet. With the back of his hand, he wiped the blood from his mouth. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his gaze slumberous. I knew that look, had spent two years of my life obsessing over it. When he flashed me a half grin, he looked drunk. Or well fucked.
“If you say one word, I swear to god…” I warned.
Strength returned to me. Each breath came easier than the one before. I looked down, parted my shirt and watched the dark line of cauterized fle
sh fade to pink. Then the sweats started. I fell back to the bed, gasped at the unbelievable pain inside me. I could feel my damaged organs begin to repair and heal.
Micah rushed to my side, all the while glaring at Julian.
“What did you do to her?”
Julian smiled, reached for a hand-rolled cigarette in his pocket. “She’s healing.”
The awful fluttering against the walls of my stomach faded and I found I could breathe. I sat up, cringed at the tight, pulling sensation of my belly.
“I’m fine.”
Micah pressed his lips against my forehead, my cheek, my nose, my lips. His mouth consumed mine and I welcomed it. Our kiss deepened. Micah didn’t erase the remnants of Julian’s taste, but he helped ease it. No matter how much I’d once loved Julian, it didn’t change the fact that he’d broken my heart and stolen my life.
“I love you,” Micah said against my mouth.
“I love you too,” I whispered.
From across the room, Julian’s laser-hot gaze cut through my moment with Micah. Anger and hatred filled the bond with my sire. I turned to look at him, but he was already striding out the door.
I’ll be in touch.
I think I hurt his feelings.
Too. Fucking. Bad.
Chapter Twenty
“Ah babe, don’t be such a chicken shit,” Micah said as he removed me from the elevator.
The slick metal doors dinged shut behind me. My heart started to race.
I looked up and down the deserted hallway. “Maybe I should have let you fly solo on this one. Eli doesn’t need us both here for this.”
Micah readjusted the small, wrapped box in his hand so he could sling an arm around my shoulder. The weight of him settled my right side a little lower than the left. When I went to pull away, he drew me even closer. As a wobbling unit, we began advancing down the corridor.
He pressed his lips against the side of my head. “Shut up, babe.”
As we walked, our boots squeaked on the freshly mopped linoleum floor. The sharp lemon scent of disinfectant drowned out the stench of blood and sickness. I wiped my wet palms on my pants. Although the hospital we were in was pristine, I couldn’t help the flashback to the asylum. Instead of smooth, white walls there was flaking paint. The shiny beige floor morphed into chipped, dirty concrete. The closed doors of the patient rooms became dented metal.
Apparently, one week was not enough for me to shake the constant replay of my time in that hellish sanitarium. I’m still a demon hunter and now, supposedly, a vampire queen. Despite this, I’m scared shitless of hospitals. My new phobia is embarrassing, really, considering the vampires and demons I’ve come face-to-fist with. I’d sworn Micah to secrecy and threatened him with dismemberment if he told another living soul.
The only thing keeping me moving was Micah dragging me past one closed patient door after another.
The smooth baritone of Micah’s voice eased some of my tension. “Eli and I aren’t like you and Hannah. We aren’t going to cry, we aren’t going to hug and we sure as hell aren’t going to ‘express our feelings’.”
I scoffed but on the inside, my panic was losing its grip. “There was no crying or hugging.”
Micah’s rich, throaty laughter echoed down the hall and earned us a nasty glance from a gray-haired nurse. With a plump finger against her glossy lips, the nurse shushed us as we passed.
Totally unrepentant, Micah raised his voice just a little. “That’s ’cause you, Ella, are a heartless bitch.”
The fist aimed at the hard curve of his bicep was intercepted. He spun out of reach and turned to face me, walking back so he could look into my eyes. In the fluorescent overhead lights, his irises looked more blue than green. I focused my attention on him and ignored the parked metal gurney. Yellow mattresses. Rusted bedpans. Archaic wooden operating tables…
I gave Micah a dirty look. “Nothing says heartless like matching coffee mugs that read, ‘Stand back. I’ve got fleas’ and ‘Demons do it better’. That’s a really thoughtful gift, Micah.”
His grin was pure rogue. He lifted his package and gave it a gentle shake. Porcelain clinked together.
“How else am I supposed to tell him he’s going to turn furry once a month? Or that his brother isn’t exactly human?”
For a second, Micah’s smile faltered. Over the course of the last week, Eli’s condition had gone from critical to miracle. The doctors had no explanation for the rate at which Eli’s body was mending the damage the pack of wolves had done. We had an explanation—lycanthropy. I put my hand over Micah’s to stop him from opening the door to Eli’s room. Lip between my teeth, I looked up at Micah and wondered if he saw how helpless I felt. Weren’t things supposed to get better when the bad guy—or girl—was dead and you were in love? “You forgot the mug that says, ‘Your dad is an asshole and we’ve all been evicted. Surprise! You’re homeless’. How can the Agency do this?”
A few hours ago we’d gotten notice, in the form of a dozen heavily armed paramilitary hunters, to vacate the premises and hand over all Agency property including weapons and research material. Apparently, the saying I’d grown up with, “once a hunter, always a hunter”, didn’t apply when you were fired.
Our plan was to get Eli off the grid before the Shadow Agency came to intervene. With Richard at the helm, neither Micah nor I knew what he would do.
Micah swept his thumb over my abused lip and gave me a soft smile. “That’s too long to put on a cup.” He bent, pressed his lips to mine. “We aren’t homeless. You own a dozen different houses. And considering they belonged to Lizbeth Tepes, I’m sure they have plenty of weapons until we can get our own made. You’re alive, Hannah and Eli are going to be okay and we’ve got Roy on our side. We don’t need anything else except each other.”
Moisture filled my eyes and my nose tingled. I cupped the back of his head and ran my fingers through his hair as I gazed at him. “I totally fucking love you.”
He slid his hand down my back, cupped my ass and pulled me tight against him. Our mouths met for a long, lingering kiss with lots of tongue and just a little bit of teeth. He pulled away and grinned. “Let’s do this.”
Micah didn’t bother knocking before he opened the door to Eli’s room and strode in as if he owned the place. The second my gaze landed on the bed, images flashed before my eyes. Hannah, naked and restrained. Bleeding. Bruised. Dirty.
The memory cleared until the only thing I saw was the clean, white room and Eli. With his freshly shaved head bowed toward the hands folded in his lap, he sat sideways on the newly made bed with his long legs hanging over the side. The green hospital scrubs he’d most likely charmed from one of the nurses strained tight over muscles that hadn’t been there a week ago.
Eli glanced up at our entrance and his eyes brightened. The smile that curved his lips could have powered a small village. Micah showed the exact same expression on his own face. The two brothers looked at each other, and in those few silent moments, I heard all the things Micah couldn’t say out loud. I love you. I’m damned glad you’re alive. You’re my life.
Micah strode over to the bed and smoothed his hand over Eli’s nonexistent hair. I felt the affection gesture to the tips of my toes—that was, until Micah pressed a palm to the middle of Eli’s forehead, pushed and pitched Eli back.
“I can’t get used to the hair.” Micah all but dumped the gift he’d brought into Eli’s lap the moment his brother regained his balance.
Eli ran his own hand over his scalp and winced. “Me either.”
“I like it, makes you less geeky and more badass.” I walked across the room and pressed a soft kiss on Eli’s forehead. His skin was hot. Unfortunately, his temperature had nothing to do with a fever.
“How’s Hannah?” he asked.
I shrugged. Hannah still hadn’t made it out of the Vault. With Castro and Dante, wrapped around her little finger, who could blame her? “They removed the stitches yesterday and her cast will come off in a few weeks. It�
��ll be a while before she can sleep with the lights off, but she’ll pull through.”
Eli’s jaw tightened. “It’s my fault she got taken. I should have seen them coming, kept her safe.” A range of emotions flashed in his eyes. Hatred. Guilt. Anger. The normally dark shade of his irises had lightened into a clear amber. Already the changes were taking effect. Was the wolf already inside him? I didn’t quite understand the logistics of shape shifting.
I picked up his hand and squeezed until he met my gaze. “I’m the one who should have kept her safe. My job, not yours. Castro warned us and we didn’t move quick enough. Lizbeth was a sadistic bitch, Eli, don’t blame yourself for that.”
He shook his head. “You don’t get it. When I went to pick her up she was flirting with the guy she went out with the other night, the quarterback. That guy is a total moron and it pissed me off that she was letting him paw all over her like she was some bimbo. So I told her as much. We argued. She slapped me. Then I kissed her. I never saw them coming. I should have been paying attention and I wasn’t.”
“She slapped you? That’s hardcore, bro,” Micah said just as I blurted, “You kissed her?”
“It doesn’t matter. Lizbeth is dead, right?” Eli asked.
Micah nodded. “Makes a man wish he could bring her back from the dead only to kill her again.”
Eli’s eyes dropped to the gift in his lap. He shook the package and gave Micah a skeptical look. “If these are coffee mugs, I already have a dozen.”
“Just open it, douche bag,” Micah teased.
With one long arm, Eli reached for something tucked into the two-drawer cabinet next to his bed. He pulled out a blue bundle of tissue paper and tossed it to Micah. The somber mood shifted.
“It isn’t exactly wrapped,” Eli said as Micah caught his present.
I looked between the two now-grinning idiots, who looked like kids on Christmas morning. “What is wrong with you guys?”
Neither answered. Micah tore at the tissue paper until he found the blue porcelain mug beneath. He lifted it up, read the large green letters that announced, I’m a Blood Donor.
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