by Brianna Jean
She was lying in the center of his bed, the black sheets pooling around her body as she stared up at the ceiling. A heavy breath left her lips before she turned her head to look at me.
Those pretty eyes were sad and confused. My heart hurt seeing the look in them. She was dealing with so much, and we weren’t really helping her understand.
“It’s not me you should be checking on, it’s your brother,” she said, looking back up to the ceiling. Her eyes traced the exposed beams.
“Why? He’s a grown man; what could he possibly need from me?” I questioned, confused. “What happened, Anna?”
She took a breath and blew it out, her lips fluttering with the intensity. It felt like an entire decade had passed before she finally spoke. “How well do you know me, Cabe?”
My heart skipped a beat as my stomach dropped into my ass.
This was not the time to talk about my visions. The answer to that question was loaded with so much information, and I was afraid she wouldn’t like the truth.
The fact that I’d spent the last eleven years falling in love with a version of her I didn’t see now was more than I could bear, but I couldn’t lie to her. I didn’t have it in me. So instead, I went with the truth. “I used to think that I knew you very well.”
“Used to?” she questioned, turning to narrow her eyes at me.
“Yes, used to. Now that you’re here and I’m not seeing you through rose colored glasses, I’m realizing that I might not know you at all.” I was starting to sweat, her gaze never leaving my face. She was searching for lies, not trusting that she’d never find any. Not from me.
“But you know about my foster father?” she questioned.
“Yes,” I bit out. I hated thinking about that bastard. I saw the fucking aftermath, I saw the bruises, the blood, the fucking tears. I saw her shatter before my eyes, and I was forced to watch, for years, as she crumbled. I must have missed the part where she put herself back together with jagged edges and brutality.
“So you know that I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have a reason to be?” She paused as if she were considering how she wanted to articulate her thoughts. “I wouldn’t put myself in this situation unless I had a reason to. And if you know me, you know that my reasoning is completely selfish and one hundred percent for my own gain.”
I smiled. Turned out, I knew her better than I thought. All of that was a lie. “Do you want my honesty, or do you want me to make you feel better?”
“Never fucking lie to me, Cabe,” she snarled, sitting up in the bed and turning her body so that she faced me.
I was so fucking elated at the revelation that I had to force the smile away. I wanted to close the distance between us, to sit on the bed and pull her into my lap, but I held back because she needed to see me as someone that was strong enough to handle her bullshit.
She lived in a glass house, much like Lanier.
She wanted me to believe that she was too fucked up to care about anything but herself, but that wasn’t the truth. I felt it in my bones. She was the girl I saw in those visions; I’d just have to work harder to get her to come out. “Fine, I know that’s not the reason you’re here. You are here because you’re confused and terrified, and you know that if you left, you’d never get all the facts. You’ve accepted what you are, but you want to know how you became something other than Human.”
She thought I was done and got ready to reply, but I cut her off by continuing. “But you’re also here because you feel Lanier. You already know that you two are perfectly matched, even if you don’t want to admit it. All of us can feel your power, and it matches his. Not to mention, your mind is equally jaded…you already know that. And Quint—you have a connection to him because he’s just as crazy as you. Broken, damaged. And me? You’re staying because I see you. I’ve seen you for years, and you know that I am a potential friend, someone you could trust with your secrets and your past. Someone you wouldn’t have to hide from.”
I paused, gathering my thoughts as Annalise shifted but never looked away. “But you’re here, hiding from us in Lanier’s bedroom, because you’re not sure you can believe any of this. It’s all fresh and new and completely out of the fucking blue, but it’s your life and you know that. So you stay. You came to this room because you’re mad, but you didn’t go home, because you still want to know if you can trust us.”
She started to say something, but I cut her off again, “Don’t lie to me again, I’ll know. It turns out that I know you better than I thought.”
With that, I turned around and walked back to the door, pulling it open. “It’s only ten a.m. Get some sleep, and I’ll come wake you in a few hours. Then we can talk about the things you want to know. I understand that what you’re feeling is new and foreign, and I’ll do my best to answer your questions, but please, don’t try and run from me until you know for sure that I’m worth running from.”
I closed the door behind me and walked down the stairs and into the living room where Quint and Lanier sat staring at the TV. They must have been waiting for me, because as soon as I sat down, they both turned in my direction.
“How is she?” Lanier asked, his voice pained and guilty.
I had to rein in the fierce rage building inside of me. I wanted to throttle him for upsetting her. I was this close to showing him who had the real power in our family, but I saw a look in his eye that I’d never seen before: worry.
“What happened out there?” I questioned, glaring at him.
“I—” he started, stopped, shook his head, and started again. “I got fucking fangs, guys. Annalise got them during her Transition, and we forgot about it or simply didn’t question it. I didn’t even remember until she threw me across the field, and I landed on my hands. They were scraped and bleeding when I came back to her, and all of a sudden, she couldn’t focus on anything but the blood. She started to shift immediately. She was unhinged. So I tested my theory.”
“What fucking theory?” Quint questioned, his eyes simmering with rage. Whoa, that was a scary look. His molten eyes flared bright as they zoomed in on Lanier’s face.
Lan looked up at me then, staring into my eyes. Honesty shone within them. “That she wanted to drink my blood.”
Time stopped for a minute, as I wasn’t sure I heard him right.
“She what?” I whispered.
“She wanted to drink your blood?” Quint’s voice was now multilayered as his beast came forward to hear the conversation.
“Yes. And I needed to see if it was just her, or if the same thing would happen to me if she was the one bleeding. So I threw her into the same spot she threw me, and in the process, her fangs bit through her lip, making her bleed.”
He stopped talking as his eyes shifted, a new shade of silver covering the seafoam green. “Lanier!” I shouted, stepping back.
What the fuck?
“I bit her.” He stared at me, silver eyes and fangs on full display. His skin started to change color, shocking the hell out of us. He realized his mistake and shook it off, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I bit her, guys, and then…she bit me. We fed from each other, and it was completely out of our control. It was like a new instinct took over and we were wild fucking animals.”
When he looked up again, his eyes were back to normal, but the agony was still written all over his face. He hated what had happened.
“Vampirism?” Quint questioned to himself. He went into his own head, no doubt reliving his three hundred years to find a moment in time where vampirism made an appearance. He wouldn’t find any, we all knew that. “Vampires don’t exist.”
“No, they didn’t exist,” Lanier corrected, sitting back in the love seat, his hands steepled over his chest. “But they do now. Two of them.”
I sucked in a breath and blew it out as his statement sank in. Would they need to feed from Humans then? How bad was it? How did this happen?
I suddenly understood Annalise’s attitude and why she wanted me to check on Lanier before checki
ng on her. She thought this was all her fault and figured that he was mad at her for changing him into something he didn’t want to be. But none of us knew how it happened; it might not have been her.
“Do we think this is Annalise’s fault? She told me to come check on you, as if she didn’t need checking on as well.” I narrowed my eyes on him. “As if she blamed herself.”
Lanier’s head snapped in my direction before he stood up. “Yes, it’s her fucking fault! Whose fault would it be, Cabe, if not hers?”
I stepped forward, getting in his face, with warning written all over my tone. “Calm the fuck down.”
“Cabriel, get out of my way,” he said through clenched teeth, his skin tone changing again before my eyes.
“No,” Quint added from his place in the corner of the couch. “We don’t know jack shit. You can’t go in there and make things worse.” He hadn’t moved, just continued staring at his hands as if he was out of place.
His energy felt different ever since Lanier and Anna left hours ago, like he was feeling left out or didn’t know what to do without the two of them in the same room. Even though he kept me from going after her, I could see that he was holding himself back too. If I had gone, he would have followed.
“What do you two propose we do then?” Lanier shouted. I prayed it didn’t wake Annalise. She didn’t need to hear us argue like this—especially when it was about her. It may have been two against one, but the one we were up against didn’t have a losing track record.
“I will talk to her when she wakes up,” I stated, trying to diffuse the situation. “She needs to know my history with her, and then I will try and get some information about how she’s feeling. We don’t know what this is. It doesn’t even make sense that she’s at fault here, she can’t possibly be that good of an actress. A week ago she didn’t even know that she was Nephilim. I need to talk to her; I know how to get through to her.” At least, I hoped I did. It was a solid plan in my head, but Quint then jumped up from the couch, unwavering decision in his eyes.
“No, I go in first. I talked to her the night I dropped off the invitation to Hellhound. I was cloaked, of course. She had no idea it was me, but she still talked—answered my questions. If I do it again, she might be more comfortable.”
My blood simmered beneath my skin. He spent actual time with her that night? She knew he was there? He had to be fucking joking. “You did what? You were supposed to drop off the invite and then leave!”
“Don’t fucking start with me, Cabe. You’ve had access to her for years. I saw her once, and now she’s everywhere. I can’t get rid of her. I look like I’m playing the kinky playmate, but I feel the same shit you two do. Lanier just took her ass out of here, fed from her, and changed the game on me. Now you want to go in and give her all kinds of reasons to fall for you first? No. Get the fuck outta here,” he nearly shouted, angrier than I’d ever seen him. “I’m going in there now, cloaked. When she wakes up and feels me, I’ll let the glamour drop and just talk to her. I’ll see what she tells me, but don’t you fucking dare interrupt. She needs time, and if she drank from Lanier, then we are working with some sort of dark magic. I am a fucking Demon; I drink dark magic for breakfast. Leave this to me, and do not interfere until I call for you.”
He stormed away from us, cloaking himself before he hit the stairs so all we saw was blank space where he once stood.
Lanier turned to me, shaking with rage. “I’m going out.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, already knowing.
“Where the fuck do you think I’m going?”
I sighed, hating the entire situation. Something told me that he would regret this decision. Annalise was too fragile, the bond between us all seemed to be a living thing. My feelings for her, toward her, teetered on the edge of sanity. Some of my feelings weren’t my own, and I was leaning more and more toward thinking she really was our mate. All of ours.
I was a mess when they were gone. I couldn’t stand Lanier for causing her confusion and insecurity. I wanted to shred him, and he was my brother, my best friend. This bond felt like it lived between us, with a mind of its own, but none of us were willing to look at it yet.
We wouldn’t until Lanier recognized it for what it was.
It was a twisted system we had, but Lanier always influenced our decisions. He made sure that we didn’t get into shit we couldn’t get out of, researched other options, ensured our safety, stuck to the plan—whatever it was—and he never steered us wrong.
But now…
He was leaving Anna here alone, scared and confused. The only person who understood what she was going through was leaving her to deal with it by herself. And to top it all off, he was going to find a girl. He was going to find anything with two legs and a pair of tits to attempt to fuck Annalise out of his system.
The bond wasn’t going to like that.
I left the room, knowing that tonight I could have killed both of my best friends. I wanted to. My beast was out of control, thrashing and wreaking havoc in my mind. He hated that both Lanier and Cabe had a connection to her that I lacked.
I had nothing but my own feelings. They chewed me up and spat me out confused and vulnerable.
I was a Demon, and the two of them were the Angels. They were the good guys, the ones who would be destined for her. She wouldn’t choose a Demon like me, someone she couldn’t relate to or understand. With them, she’d be able to do both.
It confused me because I felt like I already belonged to her, like she belonged to me, and when she left with Lanier…I went to war with myself. I couldn’t think past her safety.
It wasn’t normal, none of this was.
My beast claimed her, I wanted her, and I didn’t even know her.
I was spiraling.
I held the glamour as I entered Lanier’s room and nearly choked on the emotions that floated in the air. Anger, resentment, confusion, loneliness, uncertainty, fear.
It was a feast.
I walked forward and stood motionless beside the bed like a creepy fucking ghost, but she was awake, staring at the ceiling.
And she was breathtaking.
Still wearing my hoodie, her hands rested on the pillows above her head, her legs stretched out in a straight line. I examined her face, taking note of her high cheekbones, the curve of her lips, the tip of her nose, the way her eyelashes curled. I wanted to bathe in her scent—both sweet and spicy—she was flawless.
“Don’t just stand there and be a fucking creep, Quint. Lie down.”
I didn’t move, her voice stunning me into shocked silence.
She could feel me.
“Yes, I can feel you,” she replied to my inner thoughts, zero emotion in her voice, shocking me further. “I can’t read your mind, but it’s like all of a sudden, I’m always aware of where you are and how you’re feeling. When you were downstairs, I knew you were struggling with something, and I wanted to go down when it got really bad, but then I felt you start to come this way. I trailed your energy up here. No, it wasn’t like that earlier, and no, I have no idea how I’m able to do it. Now, just lie down.”
I obeyed, not saying anything.
I frowned in the darkness, feeling a little bit like a child for the first time in my life. She commanded and I obeyed, but it was more than that. She wasn’t looking to talk or fuck or do anything but lie next to each other and continue staring at the ceiling.
Did that make me weak?
To want to just lie with her?
I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t care either way. I’d spent three hundred years without really feeling anything, and even though this was torture—sharing a bond with my best friends, seeing her struggle—I would endure it any day if it meant she was still around.
We’d just found her, but already she was moving into my headspace, making room for herself without even knowing it. It had to be because of the bond, the fucking mating bond that showed up as soon as we met. It hadn’t gone away, instead only gotten stronger.
I feared what would happen if we all accepted it, recognized it for what it was. If we agreed to share this bond, what would become of my relationship with my friends?
I shook my head, turning off all thoughts of the future. She was here, lying next to me, and I was going to take advantage of that.
“I know you don’t want to talk, but I just want to know that you’re okay,” I said into the room, still invisible.
I hadn’t noticed before, but she had found the little remote that controlled the shades that fell over the windows, blocking out the morning sun. The room was dark, but once our eyes adjusted, we could see pretty well.
“I’m not okay,” she replied in a soft voice. “I’m not even fucking close to okay.”
I didn’t reply right away, thinking over my next words. I needed to be honest with her, but not scare her away. If I lied, she would know. “I’m not okay either.”
“I know,” she said monotone. “You’re hungry.”
I whipped my head to hers on the pillow we shared, causing some of her hair to fly in my face. Still invisible to her eye, I shook off the strands and stared at her.
She knew I was hungry? How the fuck?
“I can sense it, Q. Just do whatever you have to do to feed.”
I cleared my throat, suddenly turned the fuck on.
She was going to let me feed—without knowing what it meant. Even after she found out that drinking blood was a form of feeding. Would she let me drink her blood if I asked?
I wanted to know what Lanier had tasted—so badly it hurt.
What would she do if I told her I needed to feed off her orgasms, off her screams, her moans? Would she let me fuck her?
“Whoa there, Q. I’ll fuck you when I’m not trying to keep my fucking cool. Tone down the sexual tension, or things will get ugly in here.”
I laughed, unable to help it. “Fuck, Minx, you’re something else.”
“So I’ve heard,” she deadpanned. “Are you going to…eat…or not?”
“You’re really going to let me feed from you?” I asked, needing to hear it again.