by Isabel Wroth
“Two hundred and six bones under all that meat,” Virico amended. “I’d just apologize and get it over with if I were you.”
Hector scoffed incredulously. “Apologize? Nae a chance in hell! You think this is pain, ye wee festering cunt? I’ve suffered more pain in my life than ye have brains tae comprehend!”
Maksim hummed at her shoulder, his hand having slipped higher up under her shirt, his fingers spread wide across her belly.
“He does have an insanely high pain tolerance, love.”
Kerrigan opened her mouth to challenge that statement, but movement to her right caught her eye, drawing her gaze to where Thomas was just now emerging from the safety of the pantry.
She had half a mind to break him into little pieces as well for being such a coward, abandoning his own maker to his fate at Hector’s enraged hands, but then she remembered something that made her smile.
“Pain is fleeting,” she agreed, returning her attention to Hector. “Are you sure you won’t apologize?”
Hector’s chin shot up at a stubborn angle, defiance in his gaze.
“Go ahead, do yer worst, its nae more than a tickle.”
“My worst, eh? Alright, if you insist. Sponsam quin infirmus.”
The spell left her lips and winged across the distance, sinking deep into Hector’s body with enough force to knock his head back.
Like a marionette with his strings cut, Hector hit the ground with a jarring thud. Kerrigan lowered her arm, trying to shake off the cold grasp of darkness.
It felt harder this time. The shadows wanted to cling, thick and oily on her skin.
Kerrigan tried to breathe through it, feeling the slick slide of blood from her nose as she fought to open herself back up to the light.
Maksim slid around to her front, sheltering her from sight as she struggled. He seemed to immediately understand what the problem was without her having to say a word.
He tucked her face against his chest, shifting just enough to push her into the blood streaked across the torn collar of his shirt, disguising the flow from her nose.
Concealing her weakness, protecting her even as he leaned in and breathed across her ear, his words just barely audible.
“Breathe, my love. Just breathe. This is your monster to fight, but I’m with you. I’m right here with you.”
Kerrigan pulled the scent of him deep into her lungs, focusing on the warm amber and cognac smell, on the lapels of his torn suit crushed in her palms, on how it felt to be in his arms.
All of it steadied her, but it was the scrape of his fangs on the lobe of her ear that chased away all logic or sense of coldness. Heat and lust instantly replaced the shadows, and for a moment, she forgot they were being watched.
The illusion disappeared with a shout loud enough to wake the dead.
“What the hell did ye do?”
Kerrigan rubbed her face against Maksim’s chest again just in case. When she leaned back to look up at him, Maks clicked his tongue reproachfully.
“You’ve gotten blood from my shirt on your beautiful face, love.”
He made a show of wiping at her cheek with his yellow silk tie, shifting to the side as Hector made another demand to know what she’d done.
On his ass, Hector’s furious questions lost a bit of intensity. Kerrigan sighed, exhaustion pulling at her as she leaned on Maks. But, she wasn’t so exhausted that she couldn’t enjoy Hector’s suffering.
“Oh, nothing, really. Just a little curse to ensure the only person you’ll ever have sex or find any form of sexual pleasure with is your Bride.”
There wasn’t a single person in the building who didn’t hear Hector shout, “WHAT!”
“Yeppers,” Kerrigan declared with a sunny smile. It was kind of nice to see the armed security teams flinch when she circled her right hand out in front of her, managing to startle them as the papers strewn across the corridor floated up off the ground and zoomed back into their files with a flutter.
She plucked the files out of the air with a satisfied sigh and hugged them to her chest.
“Oh, and don’t bother bullying Veda or the other witches who work here to fix your little problem for you. Spoiler alert—” Kerrigan lifted her hand to her mouth and leaned forward like she was going to tell Hector a secret. “They can’t!”
His eyes were wide as saucers, naked horror on his face as he stared at her in disbelief.
“And if you’re thinking about oh, I dunno, killing me, I wouldn’t, because then you’ll really be screwed. Or not screwed, as it ‘twer. If you even think about touching Maksim or anyone else I care about, I’ll see to it you lose all feeling below the waist, forever. You come see me when you’re ready to apologize, okay? Bye-ee!”
Kerrigan waved at the vampire sitting with his broken legs sprawled out in front of him, his jaw swinging in the breeze.
She leaned sideways slightly to look up at her mate, still smiling away. “I’m hungry.”
A purring noise rattled in his throat as he met her gaze through the veil of his hooded lashes. “So am I.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Are you upset with me?”
Maksim hummed as he eased his fangs from Kerrigan’s silky throat, satisfied body and soul to hear the huskiness of her voice.
He hadn’t been able to make it farther than the kitchen, and once again, Kerrigan was perched on the counter with her legs hitched around his waist, her arms draped over his shoulders.
Maksim licked the last drop of her precious blood from her skin before rolling his cheek against her shoulder.
“Upset with you?”
“I got a little out of control when I saw Hector with his hands around your neck,” she confessed, tenderly stroking her hand down over his hair.
He touched a string of kisses up her throat to her cheek, drawing back just far enough to look at her.
“You reacted to protect me, nothing I wouldn’t do, haven’t done, for you. Hector might have busted a few of my bones and went on to rant like a madman, but he wasn’t going to—”
The gentle apprehension in her gaze turned diamond-hard in a flash, all traces of pleasure gone from her voice.
“Oh, yes, he was going to! I heard something crunch, Maks.”
“Ech,” he chuffed with a careless shrug. “Trachea’s crunch a bit when they collapse. It was nothing, love. Hector and I are the closest in age, and he has a rather brutal way of showing his affection.”
“Affection?” Kerrigan repeated incredulously, reaching up to put her hands over the long since faded marks Hector’s punishing grip left behind on his neck.
“You can’t be serious.”
He wanted to explain to her what it was like to be a new vampire, how insatiable the thirst was, how it felt like not even an ocean of blood could quench the gnawing hunger or banish the uncontrollable rage.
Austmathr reveled in watching his progeny struggle, proudly declaring that only the strong would survive the turning. Only the strong would deserve a place in his clan.
For all his wildness, all his loud, angry words, Hector had been the one to help Maksim survive those first few hellish years.
Hector taught him to speak Greek—which was the common tongue spoken by all Austmathr’s warriors—to distract Maksim from the pain of his hunger.
As laughable as Kerrigan might find it, Hector had been the one to teach Maks control. More than once, Hector held him steady when Maks slipped and fell off the wagon, and it had been Hector who explained Maksim couldn’t fight his nature or deny his hunger, but Maks had the power to channel it elsewhere.
If Hector disappeared without a trace and showed up again after twelve years, Maksim wouldn’t have attacked Hector, but he certainly would have harbored anger for Hector’s stupidity in not trusting him—of all their brothers—to have his back.
In rushing blindly after Kerrigan without contacting the one brother who specialized in retrieving kidnap victims, Maksim earned Hector’s angry words and his fists.<
br />
Considering what she’d seen today, Maksim couldn’t blame Kerrigan for reacting the way she did.
How could he be upset with her when only days ago he’d killed a man for touching her? Honestly, of the two of them, his wicked little witch showed far more control.
Maks brushed a silver strand of her hair from her cheek, following the curve of her jaw with his fingertips.
“Your eyes turned black, love.”
Said eyes narrowed to slits, darkening to a deeper lavender blue. “It’s been known to happen when someone I love is threatened with decapitation. Sue me.”
Her sarcastic reply made him grin. “I wasn’t reprimanding you, Wicked. Has it happened before?”
“What? Me being so consumed by dark magic my eyes go all freaky? Yeah. Once.”
“When?”
Kerrigan let go of his neck, her fingers nimble on his shirt buttons. She spread the two halves wide, her lips trembling as she drew a heart with the tip of her finger on his chest.
“Right after I shoved a dagger through your heart. Vivica did something to you before that, though. I heard the same hideous crunch of your trachea collapsing… the sound of it today… I couldn’t stop myself.”
The hoarse admission made him wince, regretting his attempt to brush off what was clearly a traumatic memory for her.
“I’m sorry, Kerrigan. It wasn’t my intention to be so dismissive of your feelings.”
Over and over, she traced the heart on his chest, focused there on the spot where the knife cut into his flesh. He was glad to note there wasn’t a single mark left from Vivica’s knife.
Kerrigan didn’t need to live with the visual reminder of their worst night together.
“I understand why he was asking me all those questions.”
Maksim’s brow furrowed, confused by her sudden change in topic.
“Who, love?”
“Even now, when I think about why, it hurts. It hurts every bit as bad as the day it happened, and I never thought to question it. Which isn’t like me at all. But I guess that was the point. A masterful skill, if you really think about it.”
“I’m not following,” he admitted with growing concern.
Kerrigan inhaled slowly and looked up; her pupils so dilated only the thinnest ring of blue remained. “I’m asking myself why I never thought to go back for your body, and despite the fact that you’re standing right here in front of me, all I want to do is crawl in bed and grieve your death.
“Thinking about that night has always caused me extreme emotional distress and severe, nearly manic episodes of depression. I chalked it up to post-traumatic stress disorder, but I think it was something someone intentionally did to me. Maks… he must have been there that night.”
A wild, haunted look chased across her face before the blood drained from her cheeks. Beads of sweat actually popped out on her upper lip, and she swallowed hard, lifting the back of her shaking hand to her mouth.
Maksim didn’t even finish saying her name before she was twisting out of his grasp, spinning around to bend over the sink just in time to be violently sick.
With one arm around her waist, Maksim fumbled for the cell phone in his pocket that had magically survived Hector’s attack.
Thomas picked up on the first ring. “Father, is everything—”
“I need a healer, now!” He didn’t wait to hear Thomas’s response, chucking the phone down on the counter in favor of keeping Kerrigan’s hair out of the sink. “You’ll be alright, love. I’ve got you.”
*****
“Your Bride is the worst patient I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something considering where I work,” the healer declared with a disgruntled huff, shoving her large spectacles up the bridge of her nose.
The woman was old and wrinkled, her white hair twisted up in a thick knot at the back of her head. Maksim thought it was impractical to wear a long-sleeved, emerald velvet dress around someone spewing their guts up, but Margaret Howe—grandmother to the intern they’d met earlier—wore it with the same comfort as a nurse who wore scrubs, blending in perfectly with the apartment decor.
Kerrigan sat on the couch with her head in her hands, exhausted, grouchy, a large bowl in her lap in case she needed it.
The smell of vomit was gone thanks to a bit of magic and Margaret’s peppermint incense perfuming the air.
He wasn’t surprised by Margaret’s assessment because even in the midst of being violently sick, Kerrigan fought to assure him she was perfectly fine.
“What brought on the vomiting? Can you tell?” Thomas asked with what seemed to be genuine concern. “Was it something she ate? I sent one of my personal assistants to stock the refrigerator, but if he corrupted the food in any way, rest assured, his punishment will not end swiftly.”
Margaret shook her head, her wrinkled hand fluttering as she waved Thomas’s concerns aside.
“She didn’t ingest any poison that I can tell. Overall, Mr. Gray, your Bride is perfectly healthy. I’ve given her a tonic to settle her stomach and made sure her body won’t reject it. Can you tell me what happened just before the incident?”
Maksim pulled his hand down over his face; his muscles clenched tightly to keep from quaking. Dangerously close to the edge of feeling out of control and helpless once more, it took everything he had not to give into the voice in his head, bellowing that someone was trying to take Kerrigan from him again.
His fear, his weakness was one more thing his enemies could exploit, and Kerrigan needed him to be strong, now more than ever.
“We were discussing memories from our past,” Maksim managed to grate out from between his clenched teeth. “In the moments before she became ill, her pupils were extremely dilated, the blood went from her face, and sweat popped out on her lip.”
“For the love of Three,” Kerrigan groaned. “I’m fine!”
Margaret turned a stern, motherly glare Kerrigan’s way. “Projectile vomiting doesn’t just happen to people who are ‘fine,’ dear. Now, be quiet and let that tonic do its job like I told you. Have you fed on your Bride this evening, Mr. Gray?”
Maksim nodded, admitting he’d finished perhaps five or so minutes prior to Kerrigan flipping over in his hold to hurl.
“I’m certain I didn’t take too much. We’ve shared enough blood that Kerrigan’s body should be over-producing at this point to meet my needs.”
Margaret confirmed the excess production, but Thomas reached up to rub at his neck, throwing an uncertain glance his way.
“Father, I hesitate to say anything, but perhaps her earlier uh… display might have caused her distress?”
Maksim didn’t want to confess anything with Thomas present that might allude to a vulnerability to be exploited, but at this point, Kerrigan’s health was of far more concern to him.
“What display?” Margaret demanded, looking back and forth between them with a stern frown.
Kerrigan hiccupped, pressing the heel of her hand between her brows with a groan.
“Hector thought it was a good idea to beat up my man, so I used a little dark magic to kick his ass. I’m 100% certain that’s not the cause of—”
“How little is ‘a little dark magic?’” Margaret pressed.
Thomas snorted and rocked back on his heels, stroking his hand down his tie with an appreciative, affectionate smile for Kerrigan.
“It lasted all of ten minutes, if that, but she flung Hector around like a ragdoll, broke a few bones, dislocated his shoulder, and cursed him to never again touch any female save for his Bride. It was glorious. Really, the things your mate could teach our people, Father—”
Maksim faced his progeny and bared his fangs.
“Not. Now.”
Thomas backed off immediately, putting his hands up in surrender. “Apologies. My timing is terrible.”
“Well, it’s nice to know someone around here has the balls to put that young man in his place. Hector has been completely unmanageable lately.” Margaret huffed, clearly try
ing not to laugh. “But as Kerrigan said, her magic is unlikely to be the root cause—”
Maks interrupted the healer gruffly. “Her eyes turned black, and her nose was bleeding as she tried to push back the darkness.”
Margaret’s lashes fluttered, a hint of discomfort, perhaps even fear, flickered briefly across her features.
“Such side effects are not uncommon when one uses more dark magic than they’re used to. I detected no physical damage to suggest anything more concerning.”
“Can anyone tell me what happens when someone tries to fight off the compulsion of a vampire’s thrall?” Kerrigan called out, sarcasm flavoring every word she spoke.
The answer hit Maks like a club, and he couldn’t believe the idea never occurred to him. Granted, he’d been a bit preoccupied with worrying for his beloved and trying to follow her confusing train of thought. It was no excuse.
He prided himself on his intelligence and absolutely should have realized sooner.
“Ah, well, depending on the strength of the compulsion and when it was initially given,” Thomas began, spreading his hands to express his meaning. “Anything from debilitating migraines and physical sickness, to madness, self-harm, or death.”
Kerrigan snorted, still staring into the depths of her bowl. “Hypothetically, how does one explain they’ve been mind-fucked by a vampire without triggering a reaction?”
“Most people who experience such tampering are rarely strong-willed enough to notice they’ve been violated at all,” Margaret responded, returning to the couch to sit beside Kerrigan.
The old witch pressed her palm to Kerrigan’s forehead; her eyes closed as her lips shaped the words of a soundless incantation. When she finished, Kerrigan gave a sigh of relief.
“Better. My head doesn’t feel like it’s about to split open.”
“Good.” Margaret shifted to rub circles on Kerrigan’s back, looking to Maksim with a stern lift of her brow. “See to it your Bride takes a nice hot bath before bed. A cool cloth across her eyes should help with any lingering aches.”
Maks gave a sharp nod and promised he would follow her instructions. To Kerrigan, the healer said,