Chapter 44
Cole’s jaw tightened as he watched the unstable power moving through the woman on Rhen’s bed.
“You are going to have to find a way to anchor her,” he said. “Your blood has started something, and none of us knows what happens if the connection continues forming without anything to stabilize it.”
Rhen paced beside the bed, his fury held beneath such rigid control that each movement appeared calculated.
“You are assuming there is a bond.”
“I am saying the transition is responding to you.”
Cole kept his voice level despite the tension gathering inside the chamber.
“The old accounts are inconsistent, but they agree on one point: when a witch survives transformation through a specific vampire’s blood, that blood-source can become the only stable thing her magic recognizes.”
“That does not tell us what she needs.”
“No,” Cole admitted. “It tells us that you may be the only person capable of helping her discover it.”
The witch cried out as another convulsion seized her. Her breath tore free in ragged gasps, and every brother in the room shifted instinctively before remembering Rhen’s warning not to approach.
Rhen looked toward Cole.
“She is not capable of agreeing to anything.”
“I know.”
The answer came without hesitation.
“Nobody is suggesting otherwise. You keep her alive, keep her anchored, and wait until she is lucid. If she chooses the connection after that, you decide what happens together.”
Rhen’s jaw tightened until pain moved along it.
He hated every part of the uncertainty. He hated watching her body fight his blood and the storm simultaneously, while he remained unable to tear either force from her through violence.
Cole’s expression remained grave.
“She has survived more than she should have been able to survive tonight. I believe she can finish the transition, but whatever she becomes afterward may depend upon whether she wakes with something familiar to hold on to.”
Rhen’s gaze returned to the bed.
The connection between them had been strengthening since she drank from him, pulling tightly beneath his ribs whenever pain moved through her. He could not determine whether it came from his blood, her magic, or whatever Diablo Levélle had concealed beneath her skin.
He knew only that it existed.
The woman’s hands twisted in the sheets while another tremor passed through her. Her dark hair, even beneath the cloaking, clung damply to her face and throat, and every stolen breath seemed to require an act of will.
Rhen moved closer.
He had already given her his blood and accepted the possibility that she would wake as something dangerous. What he had not accepted was anyone claiming that her body now belonged to the magic, the transition, or him.
If another step became necessary, she would choose it while conscious enough to understand.
Nothing happened before then.
* * *
The transition continued through the remaining hours of darkness.
Rhen stayed beside the bed, tracking each change in the woman’s breathing while pain repeatedly dragged her between consciousness and oblivion. His expression remained controlled, although every cry worked beneath that control like a blade searching for a weakness.
She was suspended between the human life she had known and whatever Rhen’s blood was remaking her into. The transformation might strengthen her enough to contain the elemental power, or it might fuse that power with the Diablo Levélle magic and create something none of them understood.
Rhen refused to look away.
His attention followed every tremor and every shallow breath, not because he had consciously decided that she mattered, but because something beneath thought demanded proof that she remained alive.
At times, the connection pulled hard enough that his body responded to her presence in ways that infuriated him. Awareness moved across her skin, the warmth of her scent, and the line of her body beneath the sheet, but he shut the response down before it could become anything more.
She was suffering. Yet she ached for him. He could sense it, he could smell it.
The blood he had given her continued forcing change through her body, while her witch magic fought to retain its original shape. Neither force yielded easily, and their collision made the transformation far more violent than an ordinary turning.
Even so, she continued breathing.
Rhen saw strength in every moment she dragged herself back from the edge and in the stubborn refusal of her body to surrender, despite the agony cutting through it.
She would survive because he had decided she would, although some quieter part of him understood that his decision had very little to do with her endurance.
Another cry escaped her, and a growl gathered low inside his chest.
He wanted to stop the pain, but there was nothing available to kill, threaten, or dismantle. All he could do was remain beside her, keep her attached to the room, and wait until she was capable of making her own choice.
If she woke and reached for him with full understanding, he would not deny the connection already forming between them.
Until then, he would touch nothing she had not knowingly offered.
* * *
The worst of Veya’s convulsions had eased before Dax agreed to leave the eastern suite. The pain remained, buried deeply enough to keep her curled beneath the blankets, but the worst of the tremors had eased and the violent heat beneath her skin was no longer climbing.
Two medics remained with her, while Malakai confirmed that the wards surrounding the room had settled.
Dax had still refused to move until Veya caught his wrist.
“Go,” she whispered.
His expression hardened. “I’m not leaving you while his blood is doing this.”
“Then find out what is happening.” Her fingers tightened weakly around him. “Make sure it cannot get worse.”
Dax had left only after making the medics promise to send for him at the first change.
He and Malakai returned to the corridor outside Rhen’s chamber, where Cole waited while dawn gradually lightened the windows at the far end of the hall.
The woman’s cries had become less frequent, although each one still tightened the silence between them.
Malakai positioned himself where both brothers could see his hands.
She is stronger than we expected. I have never seen someone endure a transition this long after entering it so weakened.
“She may survive,” Cole said, although uncertainty remained beneath the words. “The worst of the elemental discharge appears to be passing.”
Dax leaned against the opposite wall.
“And the connection to Rhen?”
Cole looked toward the closed door.
“It is strengthening, but I cannot tell whether it is stabilizing her or simply becoming another pressure upon her system.”
Malakai signed, The Diablo Levélle magic is still inside her.
“Yes.”
Cole crossed his arms carefully, protecting ribs that had not fully healed.
“We have no idea what it will become once Rhen’s blood completes the physical transformation.”
Dax’s expression darkened.
“He has already decided he will stay with her.”
That is not the same as deciding what happens afterward, Malakai replied. He will wait until she can choose.
Dax glanced toward him.
“You sound very certain.”
Malakai’s expression became dry.
Rhen would kill any male who touched an incapacitated woman. He is not going to become the thing he would execute.
The answer ended that particular concern.
What remained was far less manageable.
The unknown woman might wake as an ally, an enemy, or a weapon designed to appear as both. She was connected to Diablo Levélle, carried unexplained glyphwork beneath her skin, and had spoken through a voice that knew about Sule’s bargain.
Yet she had also saved Cole at the cost of almost destroying herself.
Dawn continued gathering beyond the windows while the brothers listened to the transition reach its final stage.
Whatever emerged from Rhen’s chamber would alter the clan, although none of them yet understood how completely.
* * *
The woman’s cries softened as morning approached, and exhaustion gradually pulled her toward a quieter state.
Rhen remained close to the bed while her breathing steadied. The violent convulsions had weakened into intermittent tremors, and the feverish strain across her face had begun to ease.
Cole entered once more with Dax and Malakai behind him.
Rhen did not turn from the bed.
“She will survive.”
His voice carried the certainty of a command, but Cole heard the question beneath it.
“I believe so.”
Rhen’s gaze remained fixed upon the woman.
“When she wakes, I will be here. If this connection requires anything more from either of us, she will decide it while fully conscious.”
Nobody challenged him.
The brothers understood that their presence no longer served a useful purpose. They had confirmed that the transition was no longer immediately fatal, and whatever followed would have to begin between Rhen and the woman without three witnesses studying every breath.
Malakai caught Rhen’s attention before leaving.
Call us if her magic changes.
Rhen inclined his head.
One by one, the brothers left, and the door closed behind them.
The chamber settled into silence.
The worst of the physical torment appeared to have passed. The woman lay exhausted beneath the sheet, her chest rising with slow, labored breaths while her eyes moved restlessly beneath closed lids.
Rhen sat on the edge of the bed.
The mattress shifted beneath his weight, but she did not recoil. He watched her carefully, waiting for some indication that the person inside the body had returned.
The connection between them continued building beneath the quiet. It no longer felt like the violent hook that had formed during the transition. Instead, it had become a steady awareness of her presence, threaded through his blood and pulling him closer whenever he attempted to retreat.
Rhen distrusted it completely.
Her skin remained pale and damp, while dark hair framed her face in tangled waves. She looked both fragile and feral, as though survival had stripped away every unnecessary part of her.
Her eyes opened.
For the first time in hours, they found him directly.
Exhaustion clouded her gaze, but awareness existed beneath it.
Rhen leaned closer.
“Do you know where you are?”
Her lips parted, and the first attempt at speech produced only a dry breath.
“In your room.”
“Do you know who I am?”
She studied him for several seconds.
“Rhen.”
The sound of his name in her voice tightened something inside him.
“What do you remember?”
“Pain.” She swallowed with visible effort. “Cole.”
“He survived.”
Relief softened her face.
Rhen waited until her gaze steadied again.
“You drank my blood because your human body was dying. The transformation has nearly finished, but something has formed between us that none of us understands.”
Her eyes remained upon him.
“I feel it. You.”
The admission came quietly.
Rhen’s shoulders tightened.
“You are exhausted, and your thoughts may not be clear. Nothing happens because of that connection unless you understand what you are asking for.”
Her hand moved weakly across the bed.
The effort caused her arm to tremble, but she continued until her fingers reached toward him.
Rhen did not take them.
“What do you want?”
Her eyes closed briefly while she gathered enough strength to answer.
“Want…”
The word faded.
Rhen leaned closer without touching her.
“What do you want?”
Her gaze returned to his, heavy with exhaustion but no longer empty or delirious.
Her fingers moved toward him again.
“You.”
Rhen became completely still.
The connection between them tightened, but he refused to mistake magic for consent or exhaustion for certainty.
“You do not yet know what asking for me means.”
Her lips moved faintly.
“Then tell me.”
The answer was weak, but it was conscious.
Rhen held her gaze while every instinct he possessed urged him to close the remaining distance.
He did not.
“Not until you can say it again without the fever speaking for you.”
Her hand remained extended between them.
Rhen finally closed his fingers around it, giving her the anchor she had requested without taking anything else.