“No more feeding tonight,” Aiyanna said seriously. “Let your body rest.”
Part of why it was so hard to heal her was because that significant blood loss affected the whole body, not only one part like a broken finger or a shallowly cut heel. Aiyanna had had to speed up blood cell production, ensure the blood pressure was the level it needed to be and then heal the puncture wounds on Jen’s wrist. The human had no business participating in any more feedings for a good forty-eight hours.
When Aiyanna said so, she aimed her words at Christian, who nodded solemnly. As the leader here, it was his responsibility to uphold the rules Aiyanna set regarding the humans’ health. If he didn’t, she would probably turn into her panther form and attack the lot of them.
The men here with her would back her up.
The next vampire, Oren, went next, drinking from the human man who had to be Bradley. He took more than either Ira or Charlie, and Aiyanna made the executive decision Bradley would be finished after Oren released his wrist.
She also knew she was in a bit of trouble less than a minute into healing Bradley. There goes my chance for oysters.
Her healing capacity was rapidly declining. If the last two vampires each drank as much from the final human, Lena, as Oren had from Bradley, Aiyanna wouldn’t be able to do much for her. A warning for them to be cautious reached the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed the notion when she released Bradley. Instead she gave him the same instructions she gave Jen, the people before her becoming fuzzy, the lights in the room casting a glow over her vision.
I can do this. It would require a recovery period for her—more so than the humans, even—but it would be worth it if these vampires were able to get their nourishment without causing lasting harm to humans in the process. They didn’t seem so bad. If anything, the vampires were quiet, respectful.
They treated the humans as, well, humans, not as food, or anything less than themselves. More than anything else, that was the reason why Aiyanna didn’t hesitate to stretch her capabilities for them.
Despite her avoiding Cael’s eye, she knew he was watching her more closely than anyone else. He always did, observing her with such intensity it made her feel like she might burst from her own skin. He would know she was reaching the end of her abilities. Worse, he might try to stop her before she’d used herself up.
While Porter, a thin vampire with white-blond hair, sank down in front of Lena, a human woman with light hair that gradually became fire-engine red toward the ends, Aiyanna finally allowed herself to meet Cael’s gaze.
Of course, his eyes were already fixed on her. He shook his head slowly, almost imperceptibly. Don’t do what I think you’re about to do. Cael’s movement made her dizzy, and she had to plant a hand on the couch, locking her elbow to steady her. He didn’t miss the movement; his eyes flashed bright.
Please, she mouthed to him. Her plans hadn’t changed, but she didn’t put it past Cael to bodily carry her away before she could finish healing. He’d done it before, more than once.
Aiyanna hated leaving someone hurting, no matter her loyalties to them or lack thereof.
Cael closed his eyes, giving her the answer she was hoping for.
Porter stood, squeezing Lena’s hand gratefully before Christian took his place. Aiyanna liked how the leader fed last, once the rest of the group had their fill. It showed how much he cared for them, that he would sacrifice for them if needed. From the lines of worry around his immortal eyes, Aiyanna knew he had sacrificed for these people. She couldn’t read auras like Briony, had no psychic abilities, but she could tell when someone had and would give the shirt from their back for those they loved.
Christian was one of those people.
By the time he finished, spilling no blood much like Charlie, Aiyanna caught her second wind. Her body had recovered only enough in the past half an hour or so that she knew she could heal Lena completely. She focused on the green veins running up the human’s arm when she laid her palm over her wrist.
Unlike Bradley and Jen, Lena was talkative. She’d chattered with the vampires, Emmanuel occasionally chiming in, while Porter and Christian fed. Now, with healing energy filling her, strengthening her, she spoke even louder. Faster.
It made Aiyanna’s head spin.
“This feels so good. It’s like waking up after a really great sleep, only better, because it lasts longer. Did it feel that way with you, Jen?”
Lena’s voice faded, and the veins Aiyanna was watching multiplied. She knew she was close to passing out, indicating the limit to her powers, but no matter how great Lena felt now, she’d wake up ill tomorrow if Aiyanna didn’t push herself a little farther.
There. Lena was healed as much as the other humans…almost completely. Aiyanna allowed herself a smile, and she thought she heard Lena gasp before she saw nothing, and that incessant voice went away.
Without a doubt, she knew at least two hands caught her before she leaned off the couch and hit the floor.
Cael would never let me fall.
Chapter 6
IN the moments before Aiyanna passed out, Cael moved behind her, certain she would be out soon. He recognized that expression, both weak and utterly determined. The only reason he didn’t stop her was the tension between them. He didn’t know if he could afford to anger her again, at least not so soon after their last fight.
It was easy to catch her when her head lolled, her shoulders slumping. It was much harder for him to watch her lose energy, the light inside her draining into three perfect strangers. She’d done it in front of him so many times, when all he wanted to do was take her by the arm and vanish with her, something he didn’t have the ability to do in the first place.
She had that effect on him, making him wish he could accomplish impossible feats to keep her safe, to keep her near him hale and whole.
“Did I kill her?” Lena asked guiltily. Behind her, Raphael cracked a smile, and Emmanuel raised an eyebrow.
The idea of an unarmed human killing a shapeshifter was laughable.
Christian, however, didn’t seem as amused. “Will she be okay?”
His expression was haunted, as if he’d seen someone die because of his kind’s eating habits and didn’t want to witness it again. It didn’t lessen Cael’s resentment toward the group.
They’d trapped Aiyanna into helping them. Being the way she was, so dedicated to helping anyone she could, there was no other option for her.
Those vampires should have kept the hell away.
“She’ll sleep it off.” Cael lifted her so she was cradled in his arms. His senses went haywire, her scent rolling off of him like an addicting drug.
He was too pissed off to enjoy it. “Tomorrow she’ll be hungover, but she always bounces back.” Like always, Aiyanna had ensured those she healed would be better off than her. Damn her for it.
“This isn’t a first for her,” Raphael said wryly. “Unfortunately, there’ve been too many incidences when she gave everything she could to fix up our pack. She’s saved all of our lives at least once.”
The price Aiyanna paid didn’t seem to bother Raphael. Cael growled, causing Charlie and Oren to stare. Another one of the vampires, maybe Ira, grinned.
“She won’t be helping you anymore.” Cael held her head to his shoulder, ignoring the softness of her hair against his hand. “How can you expect her to do this what, every two weeks?” He shook his head vehemently and nodded at the woman in his arms. “I won’t allow this to continue.”
“That’s not your call.” Emmanuel held his arms behind his back, but his stance wasn’t aggressive. It was intended as an insult, as if Cael was no threat to him.
Wrong.
“Obviously it shouldn’t be her call. She’d do this every day if it meant helping those humans. Someone has to protect her from herself.”
“Every week,” Christian murmured quietly. Neither Cael nor Emmanuel so much as glanced at the vampire.
“Yo
u might be right,” Raphael acquiesced, “but you aren’t in a position to make the decision either. You aren’t her mate; you aren’t even her boyfriend.”
The Alpha’s words were said with no malice. His friend was being honest; Cael was neither of those things to Aiyanna, and he would never be.
They were something other, protector and friend, a man and a woman circling around one another with no true aim.
Cael wanted the power to make decisions about her when she couldn’t, and until now, he’d thought he had that power.
“She’s not coming back here.”
Emmanuel reached for her, and sharp pricks in his hands indicated Cael’s freed claws. He held his fingertips away from her skin, afraid he’d accidentally cut her.
“Let’s see what she thinks when she wakes up. If you hand her over, I’ll take her home so she can rest.”
He’d been so distracted by her, the words he’d planned to tell her running through his mind on repeat, that he forgot the man who came with her was the man she was staying with.
To get away from him. She spent the night with Emmanuel.
If he wasn’t holding her, he would’ve gone for Emmanuel’s throat. And he wouldn’t have missed.
“Aiyanna will stay with me.”
“That’s not what she wants.”
A feminine throat cleared. “Not that it’s any of my business,” Charlie started, her green eyes shining with amusement. “But maybe she should stay here until she wakes up and can tell you what she wants. You know, so you two won’t have to speculate.”
Raphael nodded. “I’ll wait here with her, take her wherever she wants to go once she’s up.”
Christian quietly murmured to Jen, most of his words too low for even Cael to make out, before he addressed the room. “We’ll set her up, make her as comfortable as we can.” He paused, his expression turning pleading. “None of us are familiar with healers—Aiyanna is the first any of us have met. We’ll do whatever you want us to for this to work. We need her here once a week. There has to be a solution so she won’t overexert herself every time she comes.”
“It’s her first time healing vampire bites, right?” Oren chimed in. “There were bound to be kinks to be worked out.”
“This could kill her,” Cael said harshly. A few feet away, Christian appeared stricken, but Cael was addressing Raphael, not the vampire. “Do you understand that? Ever wonder why healers are so rare? Because they do things like this, over and over again, until they’ve given so much there isn’t anything left. If it continues, someday she won’t wake up.”
Every time he found literature about healers, or heard someone speaking of the like, Cael had made a point to learn everything he could. Over and over, he’d been told exactly what he’d just informed Raphael, Emmanuel, the vampires and the humans. Healers’ biggest weaknesses were their huge, giving hearts. There was no way he’d let Aiyanna find her downfall the same way most healers did.
It was almost more dangerous for her because she was immortal. From what he knew, it allowed her to heal much more than mortal healers could. She had no hard limits, her immortality giving her the confidence to push herself too far, too often.
Like today.
“Maybe she’ll have some ideas about how to help us without harming herself,” Charlie suggested hopefully. “None of us, even Ira here, want her hurt.”
“We’ll discuss it when she’s awake,” Emmanuel said. There was such an air of assurance about him, Cael lost it.
“Here.” Gently, he placed Aiyanna in Raphael’s outstretched arms, noting she was far more limp than she should have been. By now, she should have stirred, if only a little.
The moment she was safely away, he ran for Emmanuel. The kelpie saw him coming; he threw out his arms before he reached him. Cael felt like he was suffocating.
Behind them, more than one vampire offered to step between them. Sounding far away, Raphael urged them to keep their distance instead.
When Cael shoved out, he knew it was sloppy. His breathing was labored, likely because Emmanuel was using the only defensive mechanism kelpies had: drowning his enemy.
The punch Emmanuel landed to his jaw threw him back. Something broke against his hip. He gripped a nearby table tightly and wood splintered under his fully clawed hands.
He was almost certain one of the human women screamed.
As quickly as his airway closed, it opened again. He and Emmanuel stood about ten feet apart, him with bleeding hands and a throbbing back, and the kelpie utterly unharmed.
“You chose not to gain your powers back.” Emmanuel shrugged. “That doesn’t mean I can’t use mine against you, and I’ll win every time. Do you really think you can protect her with threats and aggression?”
Tonight, Cael had changed his mind about freeing his bound powers, but he wasn’t about to tell Emmanuel that. He wanted to beat the man just to see him fall. No one could stand between him and Aiyanna. Why did Emmanuel think he was an exception?
“Cael,” Raphael warned. From his expression, he was very aware of what Cael planned. “Don’t.”
Cael paused only because Raphael was his Alpha. For a fraction of a second, before he launched himself at Emmanuel so quickly the kelpie wasn’t expecting him. His claws sliced through flesh, and the scent of fresh blood permeated the air.
The vampires stirred. One may have snarled.
Emmanuel didn’t touch him, but he couldn’t breathe again. His claws met only air, no matter where he threw them until he understood his movements were drunken, and his sight was dimming.
The kelpie really was going to drown him.
“Take care of Aiyanna,” he ground out hoarsely, using the last bit of air left in him. He crashed onto his knees, something hard ramming into his shoulder before he lost consciousness.
* * * *
Leila Newman stared at her textbook, the words in front of her crystal-clear, yet holding absolutely no meaning. It had been fifteen minutes, and she was still reading the same section of “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
It was the first paragraph of the short story, which she needed to write a paper on before classes met again on Ash Wednesday. It was an easy assignment for a class she could make an A in with little effort…yet she was struggling to keep her average up.
She was struggling to care, really.
Over Christmas break, her boyfriend died. She’d only been dating Alex for a little over seven months, but she knew he was The One. Most likely, he was her mate and she his, like her sister, Mary, and her mate, Raphael. But Leila couldn’t have a happy ending, only death.
Alex had been ripped away from her and killed by a group of warlocks, just like her parents were murdered right before she started college. The brutal nature of her life was almost too much to bear. Sure, before her parents’ deaths she’d known of people who’d been killed in New Orleans.
It was a dangerous city, after all. Most people she knew were careful for that reason, traveling with pepper spray or a Taser. Rarely did she go anywhere alone at night, and the house she shared with two friends, Mia and Lily, was surrounded by a wrought-iron gate with an electronic lock.
Even by the standards she was used to, losing both her parents and Alex was more than extreme. She didn’t fear for her life—she’d already died, and as a result was an immortal banshee. No, she was terrified for her sister, the werewolf pack that adopted her into their family, and for Wish and his young daughter, Molly. Wish was a haint, a type of vengeful ghost who could take a corporeal form. Molly’s stepfather killed him before his daughter was even born.
Who would be next?
No matter how concerned she was for those she loved, her grief was far stronger. She still found herself expecting texts from Alex composed only of emoticons, which he’d expect her to decipher without his help. She missed his presence at her dance recitals, where it used to be constant, either in the wings or the first row of the audience.
; He’d been her best friend, the sole person she could completely let her guard down around. She never had to censor her words for him or worry he misunderstood her. Because he got her. Even with Mary, she had to be fully dedicated to her schoolwork and dancing. She never wanted her sister to think she was slacking off or taking her education for granted.
When their parents died, inexplicably leaving them nothing but a house the bank immediately claimed for itself, Mary had given up everything, including her chance to graduate from Louisiana State University, to ensure Leila was taken care of and received a college degree. The semblance of normalcy Mary had provided, paying for her tuition and putting a roof over their heads, was the only reason Leila hadn’t fallen into a pit of despair after being orphaned and murdered by the same group who’d killed her parents right in front of her.
Maybe she’d been in shock, or hadn’t grieved as she should have, because now, close to four years later, she had nightmares about her death almost every night. It wouldn’t be a big deal, but one morning Mia had woken her up, screaming that their house was about to collapse from an earthquake.
That wasn’t quite true. Leila had no doubt the house had been shaking—especially after seeing the shattered mug and plate that had been jarred off the kitchen counter—but it wasn’t because of an earthquake. It was because she was a deaf banshee, and that was a lethal combination. Every time she produced any vocal sound, she had to be cautious. If she wasn’t, she could seriously hurt or kill someone with the power of her voice.
Banshees weren’t meant to be deaf.
Still, accidents in nature happened. Banshees were sometimes born deaf, or, like her, developed meningitis that took her natural hearing away. Now she had cochlear implants, one for each ear, which allowed her to hear the world almost like it was through a radio. It wasn’t the same, but she could understand conversation. Before she died, she spoke with hardly any indication of deaf speech.
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