This Blood that Bonds Us (This Blood that Binds Us #4)

2. Two

Two

Aaron

Kimberly’s delicate touch stilled the relentless tapping of my leg. I faked a smile and tried to move my focus back to the road while my fingers pressed into the leather of the steering wheel. The tapping would come back. It always did.

The guy at the bar had lived, I think. We’d waited around long enough to see him get taken away in the ambulance at least. That on top of everything else just added to the weight in my chest and our mounting list of issues.

Snow flurries littered the windshield as we drove through frosted trees. Everything was white. Soft blankets of snow surrounded us. During the day, it was blinding, and at night, it was isolating. I preferred Blackheart. I had preferred a lot of things. The most glaring thing was not feeling like I would lose myself to the monster in my head. At first, I thought it was my grief, but as time went on, nothing about it was normal.

Akira’s blood caused a chain reaction of energy and restlessness in my body. The longing ache in my chest never went away and sometimes turned into a deep sadness that made me feel like my lungs would cave in. That wasn’t the worst part.

“I’ll need to hunt again soon.” I sighed, and her hand tightened on my leg.

She nodded. Her best effort at bringing me any sense of comfort, but I knew it scared her, because it scared me.

The hunger had gotten worse. I’d thought it was well on its way to getting better after hunting with The Legion. Until Akira. The unquenchable gnawing in my chest that longed for more blood was constant. No amount of hunting helped, and it was driving me a little insane. The queen’s blood in my veins had awoken the beast I’d tried so hard to tame. I hadn’t even noticed it until it grew closer to the two-week mark. Then I realized something was very wrong.

I’d wanted more blood even though I’d just fed. I craved the feeling of it. The warmth of blood in my mouth and the rush of euphoria it gave me. Only, the satiation didn’t last more than a couple hours.

I didn’t know what to do or why I was the only one between my brother and me who seemed to have that problem. I thought of Luke and shuddered. How he’d drank so much of Her blood and maintained his sanity, I’d never know. It all made sense now, the fidgeting and the pacing. He made it all look easy. It had been only two weeks, and I was already drowning.

I looked in the rearview mirror at Presley. His gaze was set on the snow, but his thoughts were anyone’s guess. I wanted to ask him if he was feeling okay, but even if it were possible to waterboard him, I couldn’t get it out of him. He stopped talking. Fully stopped. And of everything happening to me, that was the most worrisome. He was mad at me because I wouldn’t let him drive, but I had to drive. There was no way I could sit in the car with my thoughts and not think about blood. At least driving kept me occupied.

I failed him before I even started, but I was the one with the map. Luke’s message of a sequence of letters and numbers were coordinates. Even in his absence, he led us.

My chest was hollow, so I cleared away my thoughts of them like the wipers on the windshield pushing snow. I couldn’t let the grief in. Not until we were safe.