Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
“No!” A cry broke from my lips. In an instant, guards were on me, holding me back from reaching Warwick. I didn’t even realize I had been moving to him.
“Te geci!” You son of a bitch! Whipping my head to see Istvan with a haughty smirk on his face. Thrashing against my wardens, I pitched myself toward him. “Mi a fasz van veled?” Why the fuck are you doing this?
“Because I can,” Istvan replied honestly.
“If this man is what all the stories claim him to be—deadly, powerful, can escape even death—what father wouldn’t want that for their son?
I would think you’d want it for the boy you claimed to love so deeply.
” He peered at Caden, then to Warwick, his tone mocking.
Challenging. “Oh, how fleeting young love is. So ardent in the moment, so flimsy to time.”
“You should talk,” I spat. “Where’s Rebeka? How fast did you toss her over for some young girl for political reasons?”
“The only reason marriage is even worth anything is to strengthen holds between countries and claim more land. Rebeka was no longer of use to me.”
I blanched at his words.
“Don’t give me that look. You are not so na?ve. Rebeka used me as well to achieve a higher position in life. But before you think me so heartless, I did love her. I will always love her, but my country, my people, come first.”
“You mean your ego comes first,” I seethed. “Look around, this has nothing to do with humans or helping anyone.” I motioned to the test subjects in the tanks, the people being tortured on the tables. “This is solely about you. About your hunger for power.”
His chin lifted. “I don’t expect you to be wise enough to see the bigger picture. To understand the cruelty of life and know sacrifices always have to be made to advance.”
“I. Don’t. Know. Sacrifices?” I spit out each word with venom. All the people I’d lost, what I had been through, forced to do, to survive.
“You are young. You have no idea how cruel life can be.”
I rejected his implication that arrogance and misogyny in youth meant you were impervious to pain, and being a woman meant I never experienced hardship.
What was sick was he did know the torture, assaults, and heartbreak I had been through, and yet I was still na?ve and foolish to him. He was the one who had no idea.
“I don’t get you.” I wagged my head. “You claim to hate fae, but all you want is to be one of them.”
“I don’t want to be one of them.” His lip curled in disgust. “I want to be better than them.” he replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The best of human and fae together.”
“Isn’t that just a half-breed?” I blinked in confusion. “The people you called an abomination?”
“Not a half-breed, but our own species. A super-soldier.” He peered purposely at me. “Neither fae nor human.”
Neither fae nor human. Ice slid down my vertebrae, my pulse pounding in my ears.
“What do you mean?” I licked at my dry lips, sensing the answer but hoping I was wrong.
“Dr. Karl ran your blood work this morning.” Istvan turned to me. “Do you know what he found?”
No sound made it out of my throat.
“Your Immunoglobulin M levels are even higher than last time, which were already past any level of survival.” He tucked his arms behind his back, strolling closer. “I know you are not human anymore after taking the pills. However, your levels even eclipsed the fae we tested here.”
Pills have nothing to do with it. I’ve never been human. I could hear the gulp I swallowed down resonate in my ears.
“You know what we found when we tested his blood?” Istvan flicked his head at Warwick, my gaze following. Something about him made an alarm go off in my head, but Istvan’s voice drew me back before I could analyze it. “The same thing . . . not just close to your level, but the exact same.”
Not a muscle moved; no expression passed over my face.
“You know what else we found?”
Silence.
“Neither of you fell under human or fae.”
Fuckfuckfuckfuck.
“I no longer need this nectar to make my army. I have it right here.” He nodded at us. “You and Warwick are ground zero. The start of a new race.”
My mouth opened to rebut his claims when movement from Warwick shot my attention to him. His legs dipped, and he stumbled back into the guards.
Blinking, my regard went over him—limp, eyes glazed, unsteady. I realized this whole time he hadn’t said a word or even tried to fight against the guards.
“What the hell did you give him?” Alarm ticked at the back of my throat.
“Come now, Brexley. I taught you better. Do you really think I wouldn’t sedate the man known to be a legend? The one called The Wolf?” Istvan strolled closer to Warwick, examining the beast of a man. Greed blossomed in his eyes, excitement at what Warwick could provide him. What he could create.
“Please . . .” I wrestled the group of guards, getting a few steps closer. “Don’t hurt him.”
Istvan’s head snapped back at me, understanding creeping over his face. “You love him.”
The claim made me suck in. I didn’t respond. Istvan wasn’t allowed to know my heart. To have access to my thoughts and emotions. Though, even as I locked my expression down, I knew it was still written all over me.
The word seemed so tiny. Four letters couldn’t contain what I felt for Warwick. What we had together. Time and space couldn’t even hold us. Only to each other were we bound.
We bled in bed. We loved in battle.
We defied nature and eluded death.
Love was insignificant compared to what I felt—what I would sacrifice for him.
“Use me instead.” The proposal shot from my lips. “Take my blood. Use it on Caden or whomever you want. Just leave him out of this.”
The thought of Istvan ripping his essence, taking away everything Warwick was, the part of me inside him, the link we shared. It was the worst of violations. I’d rather be skinned alive than feel Warwick being shredded, the bond between us snapping forever.
“I’m taking it all—from both of you.” Istvan’s arrogance was mocking and cruel.
His claim kicked me in the chest, my lungs wheezing. He would drain Warwick of his essence and blood.
Anger sizzled my veins, forging and building back my broken pieces. “Don’t. Fucking. Touch. Him.”
Scarlet burned over Istvan’s cheeks, his boots stomping to me until he was an inch away. “You have the audacity to tell me what to do?” Ire strained the muscles in his cheek. “I will take what I want, when I want.” He stepped back, spinning for Warwick.
Wanna bet? I heard a voice inside me. A power living between life and death—a potency which rattled my bones.
The cuffs around my wrist whined as I pulled on them, a sweep of wind whipping through the underground room, flicking my hair.
I leveled my gaze on Istvan. I could feel my connection to Warwick like a hot wire running between us, though instead of more power accelerating my magic, a slight sluggishness tapped at our connection.
Istvan turned back to me. Instead of fear in his eyes, I saw smugness.
Pain shot into my arm, and my head snapped over my shoulder.
Dr. Karl stood there, a syringe in hand, pushing liquid into my arm.
The wave of drowsiness kicked in almost instantly, swaying me forward, forcing the guards to stumble with me, trying to keep me up, the fire dampening inside me like a bucket of water.
My lids batted to stay open but muscles going lax, as a haziness crept into my vision.
“I am always ten steps ahead, Brexley.” Istvan tugged on his cuffs. “Always.”
Whatever Dr. Karl injected me with kept me awake, but left me fuzzy, barely clinging to anything substantial. I had no understanding of anything. My mind couldn’t hold on to thoughts for long; they floated away into the ether like dust. Forgotten.
A vague memory of being removed from the main room and brought to a smaller lab filled with medical equipment still hovered somewhere in my brain. I recalled them strapping me down, cuffing my wrists and ankles to a gurney before poking me with needles.
I could have been here minutes or days; I didn’t know.
I was tranced by the red liquid coming from my arm, coiling in the tube and filling a blood bag.
Dr. Karl had changed the bag a handful of times so far.
There was a fleeting thought telling me this was abnormal that so much blood shouldn’t be taken from me at one time.
No one would survive with so much blood loss.
It made me sad. I wanted to keep my blood. It was mine.
“How is it going?” A familiar voice stirred me from my trance. Istvan strolled into the room, his question directed at the doctor.
Dr. Karl’s head jerked up from the microscope he was peering into, his gray brows furrowing. “It is remarkable. Completely impossible.” He shook his head. “But I’ve tested both of theirs several times to make sure.”
“What?”
“The more I take, the more her system protects itself, replacing itself faster than I can drain her of. Her antibodies are so off the charts, but each time they rise, she seems to get stronger.” He threw an arm out at me.
“I’ve had to secretly sedate her four times already.
Her body is healing itself, burning through the drug. ”
Istvan blew out his nose. “We’ve had to re-sedate him over a dozen times.”
Him.
Warwick.
“The blood you brought me of his last time . . . It was the same as hers . . . again.” A slight hysteria upped Dr. Karl’s voice.
“Every time, no matter how little or how much I take, they are always the same level. Exactly. It’s so strange.
” He rubbed a hand over his sweaty forehead.
“It’s as if they are linked. Some telepathic connection or something. ”
“Life connects you, but death binds you.” Tad’s sentiment flickered into my head. There was no science to what was between us. It was in our DNA, made up of our bones, of our blood. Our lives twined and twisted around each other. Protective and defensive.
“Warwick?” I called to him in my mind.