Chapter 20 – Locheran
Farrah almost passed out again. The strength of our connection is still too overwhelming for her body. Thankfully, she wasn’t pulled under this time. I suppose I did overdo it with pleasuring her.
Having my vibrating cock and finger inside her was already a lot but adding my bite? Yeah, not the best idea I’ve had.
But it sure felt fucking amazing.
After drying my mate off from the impromptu shower, I bring her to the bed and return to the bathroom to clean myself up.
I grab a washcloth and bandage and head back to the bedroom to find Farrah with one arm splayed over her head while the fingertips of her other hand graze over the bite on her neck.
I'm no better than a fucking vampire. I can’t help it, though. Everything about her tastes amazing: her lips, her cunt, her blood.
She sighs dreamily and chews on her bottom lip.
I’ve fucked her into bliss.
“Let me clean you up,” I say, and she jerks at the sound of my voice. Her eyes fall to the washcloth and bandage, and her brows pinch together. “Hasn't anyone taken care of you after sex?”
She shakes her head.
I join her on the bed and inspect the bite.
Huh. It’s not bleeding anymore, and the holes from my fangs are nearly closed as well.
She’s healing a lot faster, even for a mate.
It must be her hunter DNA. While hunters are not immortal, they’re definitely cursed with some sort of supernatural component.
Researchers of all monster species have tried to study hunters, but catching one is pointless.
They always have a kill pill or some other way to end their life before information can be extracted.
They’d rather die than share their secrets.
I wipe dried blood off Farrah’s neck, then kiss the mark. It sends a zing of pleasure throughout my body. Farrah felt it too, gasping at the sudden sensation.
“Is the bond solidified now?” she asks as I move between her legs.
“Not even close,” I say with a smirk.
I run the warm washcloth over her thighs and along her slit. Some of my cum is starting to leak out of her, and I desperately want to push it all back inside where it belongs.
Not that it matters. Her body won’t allow a pregnancy if it's something she doesn’t want. Though, everything about this situation breaks the rules of what we’ve been taught about mating bonds.
“Go pee, then come back and cuddle with me,” I say.
She smiles and jumps out of bed.
While she’s gone, I glance at the door and notice Potato sitting at the threshold staring at me.
“I think your cat watched us fuck again,” I say, loud enough for Farrah to hear me from the bedroom.
“Then close the door next time,” she calls out.
I’ll close the damn door right now.
I get up and Potato tries to slip past me, but I grab the ornery fucker. He squirms in my hands, but I manage to successfully place him in the hallway and close the door.
I’m back in bed when Farrah finishes in the bathroom.
“I like seeing your mark on me,” she says, crawling up the mattress to where I lie with one arm resting underneath my head. My wings are spread out, and once Farrah is in place at my side, I tuck them around her, cocooning us inside.
She sighs and rests her head on my chest, placing her palm on my stomach and rubbing it up and down. Of course, every pass makes my cock jump.
“Can I bite you next time?”
I chuckle. “Do you have a biting kink?”
“Oh,” she says and snorts. “Maybe. Is that a thing?”
“It is, and you can definitely bite me. Anytime.”
She hums and moves her hand to my chest, over my pecs, then back down to my stomach. She repeats the action over and over and over. My palm does the same, skimming along her side and hip, then across her ass and back around.
“Why can’t I stop touching you?” she asks.
“That urge will fade once the bond is satisfied.”
“How will we know? You talk about the bond like it’s sentient.”
“It’s magic.” I kiss the top of her head and inhale her sweet scent.
“We’ll know when it no longer aches to be apart.
We’ll be able to touch without that electric energy zapping us with lust. We’ll be able to control our urges better.
I’ll be able to kiss you without the desperate need to have my cock deep inside you. ”
She snorts. “So it’s like any relationship. We’ll slowly get bored of each other. We won’t be attracted to each other—”
“Farrah, that’s not what I'm saying at all.” I grab her chin to see her face as I say this. “We are bonded for life. I will always need you. It just won’t be a debilitating need.”
“Evangeline told me you’ll be able to know where I am at all times through the bond?”
“Yes, and you’ll be able to find me as well.”
I let go of her chin, and she sighs before returning her head to my chest. Of all the partners I’ve had in my lifetime, I've never felt content to lie here and cuddle with them. I’ve never wanted to have small talk to learn more about them or their life.
Because I knew it was never meant to be.
Now I have this incredible woman by my side, whose heart beats in rhythm with mine. A woman who isn’t scared of my monster. She grew up learning my kind was evil, yet she’s never seen anything but good in me. In us.
“Tell me about your childhood. How did you learn about what your family does?”
Her body tenses in my arms but instead of refusing to revisit painful memories, she clears her throat and speaks.
“I always knew we were different. We moved around a lot when I was young. We were living in Texas, some small town south of Houston, when I was told about the family secret. I was just five years old, but that’s when I began learning about monsters and how to kill them.
Each week’s lesson was dedicated to a different species.
When I was seven, I went on my first mission with the family.
Well, not by choice. I was used as bait.
Isn’t that messed up? I was a child, and they stuck me out on a dark road with a fresh cut, hoping my blood would attract a vampire.
“It did, but he didn’t attack me. I think he was trying to help me find my parents.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t harming me.
My mom, dad, and older brother swooped in to capture the vampire.
I watched as they tortured him. They bled him dry, then gave him just enough blood to keep him awake.
They repeated that several times, trying to force him to give up vampire den locations.
It didn’t work. He held out, and my parents decided he was no use to them.
My dad and brother stormed off, leaving me and my mother to deal with the vampire.
I followed her as she brought him outside to wait for the sun to rise.
She wanted me to watch him burn. Isn’t that sick?
A seven-year-old child shouldn’t witness such horrors. ”
I hum, agreeing.
“Mom underestimated the vampire’s strength even in his weakened state. He attacked her. Ripped out her throat and killed her.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, caressing her arm with my fingertips.
“That vampire was defending himself. My mom… I didn’t realize until that moment that my family was the real monsters.”
She pauses, but I stay quiet, knowing she has more to say.
“Seeing my mother bleeding out on the ground was traumatic. It didn’t seem real at first. Then the smell of blood, that metallic scent, nearly made me puke.
So, I ran. I ran into the woods as fast as I could.
I didn’t care what creatures were out there.
If they found me and killed me, I told myself I deserved it.
Instead, I found the vampire they tortured.
He was on the ground, and he wasn’t healing.
Or not healing fast enough. My family gave him something to slow it down. ”
She doesn’t say what was used, but it could have been anything. A spell-infused herb. Blood infused with wood chips.
“The sun was set to rise in ten minutes, so I knew the vampire needed to take cover. I remembered a hunting cabin in the woods nearby and managed to wake him long enough to lead him inside.”
“He didn’t attack you?”
“Surprisingly, no. Maybe he saw my face as they tortured him. How I tried to stop them. I begged them to stop.”
She shivers, possibly seeing the memory replay inside her head at this moment. I’ve been trying to stay out of her thoughts as she relives this part of her life.
Sucking in a breath, she continues. “I offered the vampire my wrist. I knew he needed blood to heal. He tried to refuse, but I sliced my arm with the knife my parents gave me for protection and shoved my cut against his mouth. He couldn’t resist. He knew he couldn’t.
He only took a little though. It must have been enough, because when I went back at sunset to check on him, he was gone.
I didn’t know his name or remember what he looked like.
But when I returned home, my father and brothers were in revenge mode.
They were desperate to find the vampire, barely pausing to bury my mother.
“After weeks of searching, they gave up.
Then my father packed up our life and moved us to Upstate New York.
He went into a deep depression, and I was left to take care of my younger brother.
He was only two at the time. My older brother helped but not much.
And once Ethan turned five, per tradition, my father took over and began teaching him how to hunt.
I was also forced to continue my training.
“My father and older brother taught me how to fight. I spent years learning their ways and only joining them on missions when they forced me to—though I refused to kill. When I turned fifteen, I had enough and told my father I didn’t want to be part of the hunt anymore.
I think I didn’t say something sooner because I was too scared of how my grief-stricken father would react.
He was pissed, as expected, but he never laid a hand on me.
His abuse was all verbal. He called me selfish.
A brat. A disgrace to the family. I realized then that I lost both parents the day my mom died.
“When I announced I didn’t want to hunt, I was cut off from all hunter business and when I turned eighteen, I moved away and went to college. But not too far from home so I could still check in on my younger brother.”
She stops talking, and I use the moment to place another kiss to the top of her head. The way her body nearly vibrates anytime I do this lets me know to keep the head kisses coming.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. How strong you had to be to stand up to your family for what’s right.”
“Yeah,” she says, her voice quiet and laden with tears.
“I always wondered what it would have been like to have a normal life. Instead of coming home from school to an empty house, my mom would be there with open arms. Or my father would be on the couch watching some sports game while trying to explain the rules to me. A life where my older brother picked on me for being a brat but protected me from bullies.”
She shrugs against my side.
“I don’t regret it though. I don’t regret stepping away.”
“Because you’re a kind, beautiful soul,” I say.
She doesn’t respond to that, but I sense it through the bond: love and devotion.
“What about you? Tell me about your family,” she says.
I can’t remember the last time I shared my life with anyone. Possibly Thorne, but he still doesn’t know the deep-down stuff that Xander does. Xander and I grew up together. He knows everything.
“I’ve been a soldier nearly all my life.
I joined Xander’s father’s army in Paris when I turned eighteen, but we began training years earlier.
I was following in my family’s footsteps.
They were all soldiers: my parents, brother, and sister.
I fought alongside them for decades before they left to protect London.
They’ve been gone for hundreds of years now. ”
“I’m sorry. How did it happen?”
“My mother was killed during a battle with an army of demons who wanted to claim the souls of all the humans in London. That was in the 1300s. My brother died a hundred years after that, killed by a hunter clan in the English countryside. My sister died by decapitation during a battle with a rogue dragon. That was shortly before I flew here to America to join Xander’s army.
And my father died a little over a hundred years ago. He was captured by a hunter.”
Farrah sits up and places her hand over my heart.
“That’s horrible, Loch. I’m sorry.”
I cover her knuckles with my palm.
“It’s not your fault. Even if the hunters who killed my brother and father were O’Herns—and they weren’t—it wouldn’t have been your fault.”
“Do you know anyone who was killed by…”
“I do. Some friends and fellow soldiers.”
I wipe away a tear streaking down Farrah’s cheek.
“I’m going to make this right,” she whispers.
“My love,” I begin and her eyes jerk up to mine. It’s not quite me saying I love her but it’s close. “You were a child when you rescued the vampire that killed your mother. You stepped away when you were fifteen. You’ve agreed to help us. You don’t have to convince us you’re not like them.”
She nods but doesn’t speak.
“And to be honest, the daughter of a hunter being mated to a gargoyle is like some sort of karma bullshit.”
This makes her laugh, and I pull her on top of me, hugging her head over my heart.
It beats faster in response to her nearness, and I hope she knows that every beat, every breath of life I take now belongs to her.
She owns my heart, and I hope she’ll forgive herself enough one day to give me hers.