Wolf Blood (At First Bite #2)

1. Harper

CHAPTER ONE

harper

The face reflecting back at me in the mirror was mine, but... different.

Sharper.

Sadder.

Hungrier.

I'd been looking at it for months, and it still didn't feel like me.

I didn't feel like me, either.

"Can I come in?" My best friend’s voice crackled through the speaker between my room and the viewing area. There was no lock on the door, and Bloom knew she didn't need permission.

Technically, the room wasn't mine at all. Not anymore.

Rhone, the Beta who I despised with at least a small piece of my soul (assuming I still had one), kept moving my stuff back to the apartment the werewolves had given me in their tower.

Which was why everything I needed lived in a hiking backpack that weighed almost as much as I did. It currently sat right next to the observation room’s door.

I used to weigh more than it.

I used to be strong, and healthy.

Now I was a shell of my past self, both figuratively and literally. A strong breeze could've knocked me over, if not for Rhone’s ridiculously delicious blood running through my veins at the moment.

I waved Bloom in.

The hair I used to keep platinum blonde and cropped sharply to my chin had grown out to the middle of my throat. The cut was weird and mullet-ish without my regular once-a-month visit to the hairdresser I loved.

The professional but sexy wardrobe I'd spent so long piecing together was tucked away in the closet of the apartment I didn’t want, replaced by faded cotton shorts and baggy t-shirts that had holes in them from when I wore them in high school more than ten years earlier.

Even the socks on my feet were old, worn, and slightly ripped.

My bloodlust was so constant that I didn't have the energy to fight my clothes too. It took everything I had just to stay lucid most of the time. Even my best friend had to run away from me and call my nemesis to take me down again last week.

The person I had been before was gone, even though no one around me wanted to acknowledge that.

The door opened without a beep. It had been unlocked.

My tan-skinned, brunette friend stepped inside the room. Her red eyes were bright and cheerful.

Mine glowed like something out of a hellscape, brighter, less natural, and more deadly. Paired with my pale, sallow skin and the threadbare black clothes that hung off my bony frame, I looked more ill than vampy.

Vampirism was a disease for me as much as it was natural for Bloom. She had been born a vampire, and I had been turned into one.

I should be dead.

I could be dead, if I'd chosen to be.

Unfortunately, I'd decided to fight the endless bloodlust for a while. It would've been nice to have an empty bottle of self-preservation rattling in my chest, but mine was at least half full.

"Wrestling with existential dread again?" Bloom checked, plopping down onto the bouncy, uncomfortable mattress with me.

"Like it's my full-time job."

"Is Rhone still trying to force you to play executive assistant?"

"From my self-imposed prison cell, yes."

"We should drain him," she declared.

"Don't pretend you could successfully kill someone."

"I'm a far more experienced vampire than you, Harper."

"I’m more vicious, though."

"Fair." Bloom leaned back against the wall. "Maverick wants us to go back to the gym."

"I'd rather die." There was no sarcasm in my voice.

Bloom grabbed my hand and squeezed it. "I'll find you a werewolf other than Rhone to bite. It might help. You just can't tell Mav, because he told me not to get involved."

"He knows you're not going to stay out of it."

"Probably. At least he has plausible deniability with his best friend if he tells me to stay away."

I nodded.

"What did Rhone say the last time you asked him why you weren't allowed to drink from anyone else again?" Bloom checked.

"You just want to hear my Rhone impression."

She flashed me a grin. "Maybe."

"Definitely." I cleared my voice, making it as low and scratchy as possible. "Trouble, if you bite anyone other than me, they'll lose their throats."

"His lack of confidence in you is truly insulting."

"Insulting, but reasonable."

God, I was hungry.

My fangs descended at the thought of biting someone, and I'd already fed from Rhone that morning.

I missed my humanity.

Diseased immortality sucked balls. Hairy, saggy, smelly balls.

"I think you could bite someone else without losing control. And if you pick one of the enforcers, it's not like they would be in danger. Ryker has basically been begging Maverick to let you bite him since you managed to stay lucid for five minutes."

Ryker didn't sound appealing, but his blood did.

All blood did.

I tried to remind myself that the sex with him had been somewhat enjoyable, before I finished turning. Maybe if we tried a repeat, I would start feeling alive again.

"What does Maverick say, when Ryker begs?" I asked.

"You just want to hear my Mav impression."

A small smile managed to break free from my typically bleak expression. "It's so terrible."

"Truly awful," she agreed, but cleared her throat anyway. "Rhone's making the calls here, Ryker. I'm along for the ride just as much as you are. If you think you could do it better, challenge him."

I snorted at her attempt to mimic her mate's overconfident drawl. "You spend so much time together that you should have that down."

"The paperwork keeps distracting me."

"It's always the paperwork."

"Or the murders."

"Or the bloodlust." My mind went back to blood, and any amusement I'd been feeling faded. "Do you think it helps to drink from a few different sources? Switch it up a bit? Oren never tried it, so he doesn’t know. He keeps telling me not to push Rhone."

"No one wants to push Rhone, but someone has to do it."

"Do they?"

Bloom considered it. "I guess not. We should, though."

"I don't want to cause problems for you."

"Oh please, I'm the Alpha's mate. I have a get out of jail free card."

"Could Rhone take Maverick down, if he tried?" I asked, looking sideways at Bloom.

She shrugged, her expression tightening a little. "It would be a close fight, but Mav has won way more challenges than Rhone has even watched. Especially since we sealed our bond."

I patted her arm lightly. "He's happy to fight for you guys. He's always grinning. It's annoying."

Since she’d mated with Maverick, she smelled even less appealing to me. The scent of sex just sort of lingered around both of them all the time.

I'd been there for her way back when she was boning Timber, so it wasn’t like I had a problem with the sex. It was just a scent thing.

Fuck vampirism.

Her face softened a little. "It's not annoying."

"It is." I patted her arm again. "Ignore the prejudiced dickfaces and let Maverick make the other werewolves eat dirt."

"He has to kill some of them."

Images of the man I'd killed flickered in my mind.

The way Steven's heart had slowed, then stopped, against the fist I had curled around his button-up shirt while my fangs were buried in his throat.

The way his body had slumped to the floor.

My fangs throbbed despite my disgust.

I had no control over my body anymore.

My mom's voice rang through my mind, the way it always seemed to when my fangs hurt.

"KILL HER."

I forced myself to breathe through the flashes, like I always did. That was how I survived. They would fade enough that I could ignore them after a few minutes

"I'm thinking about dying my hair black," I said.

"Black? Please don’t. You'd look like death incarnate in your current condition, and your hair would be super orange when you tried to get it back to blonde."

"I am death incarnate. Or murder incarnate, at the very least."

She patted my hand like I'd patted hers. That was kind of our thing. "How about red?"

"The last thing I need is something else in my life that reminds me of blood." It was the only thing I could think about.

"Okay... well, blue is calming. Green is basically peak chill."

"I don't know how you can possibly think having hair in either of those colors would look better on me than black."

Bloom brightened. "Here's a real idea—pink. Cotton candy pink. You'd look at yourself and think about sugar. Bloodlust would die at the sight of your terrifyingly pink hair."

"I'll think about it."

"I'll buy it. Just say the word."

Rhone didn't let me leave the tower. Maverick didn't either, even if he'd never said as much aloud. Like Bloom said, Rhone was making the calls when it came to me.

Even if he’d been willing to let me leave, I wouldn’t have gone.

I was stable for the most part, but I still zoned out once a day or so. Over the past month, I’d fully devolved at least once a week. The last week, it happened three times.

No one said it out loud, but I couldn't be trusted around humans.

I knew it as well as they did.

"I shouldn't take the risk with Ryker. I don't want to hurt him," I said.

"No offense, but Ryker could pin you down in like three seconds flat if you did something he didn't want you to. He could probably kill you even faster. He fought in the war for ages, so he’s kind of an expert. Pretty much everyone in the pack did."

I considered it. Biting him just didn’t seem worth the additional horrible memories that would accompany accidentally attacking him.

At least I didn’t feel bad when I went all monster on Rhone. He was an asshole, and therefore kind of deserved it, even if he was also solely responsible for my current lucidity.

"I think it's worth the risk. Feeding from someone other than Rhone might help. I know you don't want to hear it or acknowledge it, but you're withering away. You need to eat, and you need more blood than you're willing to take from him," Bloom said.

That was another thing we hadn't talked about.

The way I pulled away from Rhone as soon as I'd taken enough blood to clear my mind.

It infuriated him, but it prevented me from losing control the way I wanted to.

And from fucking him.

Whenever I drank from him, I really wanted to fuck him. As opposed to the rest of the time, when I only mostly wanted to fuck him.

"Okay. Fine. I'll bite Ryker," I grumbled.

"After we work out."

"I'm going to bite someone long before we get to Ryker if you make me go to the gym again."

"Blame my mate."

She successfully dragged me to the gym, where we followed Maverick's ridiculously detailed workout plan.

Loosely.

Like most days, I stopped whatever I was doing halfway through the workout, and plopped down on my back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Bloom didn't protest or tell anyone when I did that. Not that I knew of, anyway.

At least I hadn't lost my shit completely in the past twelve hours.

There was a shower in my observation room, and Bloom didn't protest when I told her I was going to clean up in there before we met up with Ryker.

No one other than me liked that I still lived in the room that was basically a cell, but Rhone was the only one who actively tried to stop it. My observation room had padded walls and a one-way window, which ensured zero privacy.

I didn’t need privacy. I was going to lose my mind with or without it.

Other people needed protection from me, which was why I kept going back.

Bloom tried to talk me into living in the apartment the wolves had assigned me to.

Maverick told me that no one thought I was a threat.

Oren said there was no one in the tower I could really hurt if I devolved and went on a rampage.

I didn't care what any of them thought, though.

I was too dangerous.

Too unstable.

After Bloom was satisfied that I'd made it out of the curtainless shower without anyone coming in to steal my nonexistent virtue, she headed down to her apartment to wash up.

I didn't trust myself enough to leave my room on my own, so I waited on my bed until Bloom was at the door again forty minutes later, her face flushed and the scent of sex around her even stronger than usual.

"Sorry. I got distracted."

"By Maverick's dick?"

"It's very distracting. You'll understand during breeding season, if anyone talks you into spending it with them."

"Huh?" I flashed her a look that should've conveyed that I understood approximately no part of what she'd just said.

Her face flushed brighter red. "Hasn't anyone told you about breeding season?"

"No. You're the only person here who tells me things. You, Oren, Nolan, Rhone, and Maverick are the only people I talk to at all."

"And Sutton. We need to make you some more friends, though. Elise is pretty cool. Remember her?"

"You changed the subject."

"We're running late. I'll tell you the specifics later, but breeding season is this month.

The wolves started feeling the first effects of it today.

It makes them even crazier than usual. This is the only time of the year that they can, you know, breed.

Everything changes for them. There are two mated pairs in the pack who are actually trying for a baby. It's pretty exciting around here."

"Female werewolves can only get pregnant this month?"

"Only during a few days toward the end, but yeah."

"How does it affect them the rest of the month?" I asked.

"Oh, they're just super horny all the time. They go at it like animals the whole month. People will be screwing in closets and stairwells and elevators. If you smell sex, run in the other direction." She paused. "Unless there's a werewolf behind you. Don't run from them."

"I assume that's also sexual."

"Yeah."

"Fabulous."

She flashed me a grin. "Just think about how many perfect, chiseled werewolf asses you're going to accidentally see this month."

I tried to smile.

The way her grin fell told me I didn't sell it.

I just wanted blood.

"Buy the pink hair dye," I said. "Make it as bright as possible."

Her eyes lit up again. "We can do it tonight."

"If all of the wolves are crazy horny, Maverick’s not letting you out of your room tonight."

"He doesn’t own me."

"You’re going to want to fuck him."

"I already did."

"I’m aware."

She sighed. "Fine. We’ll do it tomorrow morning, after you bite Rhone."

"I might not need to, if it goes well with Ryker."

She crossed her fingers.

I crossed my whole fucking heart.

If I still had one, buried beneath the bloodlust and trauma that came with my incurable disease.

Seriously, fuck vampirism.