Chapter 3
Chapter three
Vampire Bunny?
Nora
Sorren has the decency to wait until I’ve shoved him into the backseat before he passes out, his head awkwardly canted against the door, his legs stretched as far as they’ll go along the bench seat.
I’ll have to be careful when I open that door.
He might fall out and crack his skull on the driveway.
I make the ten-minute drive home in approximately eight minutes. When I pull in, I pause, glance back at the unconscious man, and decide to leave him where he is for now.
Sorry, buddy.
Mom comes first.
I take the stairs two at a time, calling her name the whole way up. When I burst into her bedroom, two sets of startled blue eyes meet mine.
Mom’s and my Aunt Renee’s.
“Are you all right? Everything okay?” I blurt out, scanning the corners of the room like I expect to find, what? A medieval rabbit assassin crouched behind the oxygen tank?
All I see are dust bunnies.
Which feels less funny than it should.
Mom raises her brows. “Of course we are, dear.” She gives me a pointed look. “Are you okay?”
“Okay!” I repeat, too high, too fast, a smile stretched painfully across my face. “Yep. Totally fine. Have you, um…seen anything strange? Noticed anything unusual today?”
The women exchange a look.
“Nothing,” Aunt Renee says slowly.
“What is it, Nora?” Mom asks. “You seem…flustered.” Understanding dawns in her eyes. “Is it about Seth and Easter weekend at his parents’ house? You know you don’t have to worry about me. Renee will be here.”
“About that—” I freeze and almost tell her about the breakup.
Almost.
Instead, a different plan slides into place. Probably unnecessary. Definitely overkill. But on the off chance Sorren isn’t completely bonkers…
“I was thinking maybe you should stay at Aunt Renee’s this weekend. While I’m with Seth,” I say, forcing my voice to stay casual. “It’s better for you there. No stairs. What if you trip? Fall?”
Mom purses her lips. “Really? I think we’ll be fine here—”
“No,” I cut in, then wince. “It’s just…it would make me feel better. Please? For a couple of days?”
Mom studies me for a prolonged beat, then nods. “We could do that.”
My breath comes out in a relieved whoosh, which immediately turns sour.
I feel terrible pushing her like that. Especially when I know Mom will do almost anything I ask these days.
She’s told me over and over how sorry she is that I gave up my life in Colorado to come back to Maryland and be with her.
My little condo. Weekends on the trails. Nights out drinking overpriced microbrews with friends who knew me when things were easy.
I told her it didn’t matter. That she was more important than any of it. And I mean it.
But sometimes, late at night, I miss that old life so much it aches like a bruise.
One I try not to poke at.
“Great.” I clap my hands together, loud enough to make us all flinch. My thoughts snap back to Sorren. The car is probably stuffy by now. “Well, um, I need to go take care of something.” I point behind me. “I can come back in a little bit. Help you pack.”
Renee is already up and moving. She pats my shoulder as she walks past. “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ve got it.”
I give her a soft, “Thanks,” and hope she hears the gratitude in it.
Then I’m out the door, flying back down the stairs and to the car.
Sorren wakes with some prodding, enough that he can walk into the house.
Thankfully, there’s a spare bedroom downstairs, one my mom and aunt never go into.
I tuck him into bed, tell him I’ll get a glass of water, but he’s asleep again by the time I come back, so I settle into the chair across from him.
I reach for my back pocket to pull out my phone and come up empty. Crap. No phone. I’d left it shattered in my classroom. Now what? How am I going to stay in touch with Mom while she’s at Renee’s house? I’m on my feet before the thought finishes forming, heading back upstairs.
Renee meets me in the hallway.
“My phone’s toast,” I tell her. “If something happens, if you need me—”
She presses her cell phone into my hand before I can finish. “Take mine. I’ll be with your mom the whole time. I still have the landline at home too.”
I give her a quick hug, breathing in the same citrus shampoo she’s used my whole life. “That’s the second time you’ve saved me today.”
A small shrug. “That’s what family’s for.” She leans closer. “You sure you’re okay? You seem a little…off.”
At this moment, I love and hate how well she knows me.
“Fine,” I say quickly. “Just nervous about Seth. Meeting his family and everything.”
“I’m sure it’ll go great, hon. And if it doesn’t…” Renee raises her fists like a boxer and throws a quick one-two punch. “I’ve got a mean right hook.” She bumps my shoulder. “You know I’ll fight anyone who messes with my girl.”
I laugh, because I love her and I know she actually means it. But along with my chuckle comes a stab of guilt for lying to her. I shove it down. There’s no time for that now. I need her to leave. To get out of here as quickly as possible.
“Thanks,” I tell her. “If anything feels wrong while I’m gone, anything at all, call me.”
“I will,” she promises.
The tightness in my chest loosens, just enough to breathe.
***
Sorren
I wake in a strange room with unfamiliar walls and sunlight that smells wrong. My memory of getting here is blurry. The monster Nora calls a car. Her hand braced at my waist. My back burning like fire beneath skin.
Low voices murmur down the hallway. Nora, her smell threaded with my own magic and someone else.
I lift my nose and scent. Nora and a blood relative, but not direct.
Not enough to be recognized by my uncle, the bastard.
Another slow inhalation tells me Nora’s mother is here as well, but farther away.
Her smell is tinged with sickness, the slow failing from the inside and the bitter taste of death in the distance.
I hate it, knowing the pain that is coming for this small family.
Her mother had been kind, had stroked my fur gently this morning.
If I could stop it, save her, I would, but even royal magic has limits.
I roll to my side and stare at the wall, my mind whirring. So much has happened in the last two days. My father’s death, grief fresh and raw in my mind. My uncle’s betrayal. How I fled, wounded and bleeding.
I prayed as I entered the portal. Asked Eldryn to guide my steps. Not for a sign. He does not give them. But for his will to be made known through the path that opened before me. Silently, I begged him to send me to a safe harbor.
And he did.
He delivered me to the Watcher at the threshold, the old man who tends the crossing places between our world and this one. The Watcher saw what Eldryn had already decreed.
He placed me in her path.
Nora.
My mate.
I knew it as soon as she stepped up to the table. As the wind lifted her hair and her scent wafted over to me. It settled deep in my bones, immediate and unmistakable. The recognition of her. Like something inside me sliding into place. The click that echoed through my mind.
Still echoes even now.
But she does not trust me. Does not feel the same way I do.
To her I’m an unknown. A threat. A problem to be solved and then disposed of.
She’s right to feel those things. To be suspicious.
Magic is hidden in this world. A secret known only to a chosen few. If I did not already feel the bond between us, I might question Eldryn’s wisdom myself.
Why would he pair a royal lagomorph with a magicless human?
But in my world, we do not question Eldryn’s will. Not because he speaks to us. He does not. But because the crossings, the portals, exist. Because the bonds between mates take hold. They cannot be forged by spell or hand.
They simply are.
I did not create the bond when I bit Nora.
That happened before we were born. When Eldryn tied our fates together. Long before she ever laid eyes on me. Before she reached into my cage with those gentle, human hands.
The bite only allows me to use the bond.
Magic thins in this world. I cannot access it. I cannot shift without aid.
Nora’s blood is that aid.
Each time I bite her, I can change.
Man to rabbit. Rabbit to man.
Each time I draw on her, our bond deepens.
And as it deepens…she will begin to feel it too.
The pull.
The awareness.
The way my presence settles somewhere beneath her skin and refuses to leave.
Each time I take from her, I anchor myself more firmly to her and her to me.
Each time I do it, I make it easier for my uncle’s hunters to scent her. Easier to follow the thread that runs between us. I am meant to shield her from my uncle’s reach. Instead, I am the beacon that will draw him straight to her door.
That knowledge settles heavily across my shoulders.
A drowning weight.
Nora
“Happy Easter.” I wave good-bye as Mom and my aunt drive away, my eyes on the car until it turns the corner and disappears.
I slip back into the house, which is far too quiet. When I step into the bedroom, Sorren is awake, lying on his side and staring into space like he’s lost in thought.
“Hey, sleepyhead—” I tease gently but cut off when I see the tremors that roll through his body, the way he struggles to keep his eyes open. I sit on the bed beside him and put the back of my hand to his forehead, another kindergarten teacher trick.
With a hiss, I jerk my hand away. “You’re burning up.”
I rise to get some medicine, although I don’t know the proper dosing on a man-rabbit.
If that’s really what he is.
Sorren grabs my hand, pulls me back. “Don’t go,” he pants.
“You need something. To make you better.”
I come back and sit beside him. The mattress dips under my weight, and I slide back until my spine bumps his shoulder.