Chapter 29 Luna
Chapter twenty-nine
Luna
After hours of poking, prodding, and various scans that left my ankle tingling, Dr. Felix had finally departed, leaving me blissfully alone.
Well, mostly alone.
My thoughts were insistent, leaving me breathless, twitching, squirming, and all of them centered around Damien. Our time together in the jungle. His lips on mine. The ferocity of how he tore my clothes off so he could ravage me.
And ravage me he did. I hadn’t been fucked like that in…ever. I thought Ryder had been great, but he’d been my first and only. But Damien had brought me to my knees and had ruined my body in the best way possible.
By week three at the Repository, I left little snail trails everywhere I went, my whole body flushed with heat. If I didn’t find a way to ease this wanton ache between my legs, I would spontaneously combust.
Late that night, that feeling drove me from my bed to wander the sterile corridors. With Felix’s magic, my ankle was fit for racing through the Paris catacombs, but my zapped energy kept holding us back.
Felix did report that Aria and Jade remained stable, their conditions neither improving nor worsening. Part of me stupidly hoped that they’d start to recuperate with the single piece of the Shadow Fang we’d brought back.
But they didn’t.
I paused at a large window overlooking their room and admired Aria’s perfect, relaxed face and the slightest smirk on Jade. God, I loved them. Sometimes it scared me how much.
“I look like I could use a good wank, don’t I?” Jade’s imaginary voice asked.
I snorted. “Don’t we all?”
“Don’t we all what?”
I startled at the voice, turning to find Damien approaching.
He moved with that distinctive grace, silent and purposeful, dressed in dark jeans and a simple black henley that did unfair things to his broad shoulders.
Since our arrival, we hadn’t found ourselves alone.
I suspected he was trying to give me distance so I could heal and rest. At least, that’s what I told myself.
“Just restless,” I replied, turning back to my family to avoid meeting his eyes. “Felix says I’m cleared for travel tomorrow. Is Elliot holding up okay?”
“He’s stable, but the progression continues. Time is becoming our enemy.” He joined me at the window, his presence a cool, solid weight beside me. “Which is why I’ve been making arrangements. Paris will be complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“Let’s just say my welcome in certain vampire circles has long expired.” His jaw tightened, a muscle there flexing beneath the skin. “Parisian vampires have particular reasons to want my head.”
“Great. So we’re walking into another trap?”
“Not a trap.” His lips curved into something too sharp to be a smile. “More like a viper’s nest I lit on fire, put out, lit on fire again, and now the vipers are after my head.”
I blinked at him. “That’s…oddly specific.”
“It was 1793. It was the Reign of Terror, and I was tracking a vampire spy, who turned out to be a double agent.” He shrugged, like it was the most normal thing to talk about. “The viper’s nest was metaphorical. The fires, unfortunately, were not.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, which earned me a surprised look from him.
“You find the idea of my beheading amusing?” he asked, but there was something warmer in his eyes now.
“I find you amusing,“ I corrected. “It sounds like you also have a knack for getting into trouble.”
“I do. Some habits transcend mortality.” He looked down at Aria through the glass. “She looks just like you.”
I nodded. “She’s always been a stubborn little thing, too. Just like her mother.”
His gaze shifted to me, something unreadably intense in his expression. “I can imagine.” He studied my face with such focus that my pulse quickened. “She has your strength in her. I can see it even now.”
The silence returned, less comfortable now as the weight of both our spoken and unspoken tensions pressed between us.
“Would you like some air?” Damien said suddenly. “I know a place.”
“God, yes, I love air,” I blurted.
Nice, Luna. Always the coolest of cucumbers.
With his hand on my lower back in a way that clenched my thighs together, he guided me through a series of less-traveled corridors and up a maintenance stairwell that opened onto a stunning rooftop space.
The roof garden had a wild, almost feral beauty.
Dense flowering vines climbed trellises, exotic night-blooming plants released heady perfumes, and in uncultivated corners, shadows pooled like liquid darkness.
“Have you been up here often?” I asked, breathing deeply of the fragrant air.
“I rarely sleep,” he reminded me. “Three weeks here provided time for exploration.”
Shoulda come to me for exploration.
I rolled my eyes at my immaturity. But still. He could’ve. And I couldn’t decide what it meant that he hadn’t.
I traced patterns in the cool rooftop tiles with my socked feet as we moved deeper into the garden.
The natural environment soothed something in me that the medical part of the building had aggravated.
I guessed it was the echoes of my wolf that longed for connection to growing things.
Once a shifter, always a shifter, at least in that regard.
“I love it here,” I admitted, reaching out to touch a luminescent bloom.
“I can tell Felix understands the importance of balance,” Damien said. “Knowledge in the basement, clinical precision on the first floor, wild growth above.”
I nodded. “It’s like he knows his patients too well.”
I found a stone bench partially covered with climbing jasmine and settled onto it, suddenly aware I was wearing only sleep shorts, a thin T-shirt, and no bra. Damien remained standing, his tall figure outlined against the star-strewn sky.
“So…Paris,” I said to fill the silence.
He turned to face me. “Yes?”
“Vivienne will be there?”
“Yes.” He moved closer, his shoulders tensing at the mention of her name.
“And you still trust her?” I asked, something tightening in my chest.
A flicker of darkness crossed his features. “Trust is a luxury vampires rarely indulge in. Vivienne and I understand each other’s motivations. That’s usually more reliable than trust.”
“And what are her motivations regarding us?”
“Curiosity, primarily.” He finally sat beside me, though maintaining a careful distance. “She’ll want to understand you.”
“And what about your motivations?” I asked, unable to keep the edge from my voice.
His eyes met mine, startlingly direct. “They’re evolving in ways I didn’t anticipate.”
I looked away, my pulse humming. A night bird called from somewhere in the garden, the sound oddly mournful in the warm evening air. Above us, the stars shone with unusual clarity, perhaps enhanced by Felix’s magic.
“Vivienne’s maker is part of the Vampire Court, so she has survived centuries of court intrigue,” he continued. “She’ll view you through that lens, assessing what you represent rather than who you are.”
“And what do I represent exactly?” I asked.
“A former shifter. A skilled tomb raider. And someone I’ve chosen to work with outside established vampire channels.”
“That last one being the problem?”
“Yes. Vampires rarely form working partnerships with anyone, especially shifters, given our rocky history.”
“Because you’re all control freaks with centuries of baggage?” I said.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Not inaccurate.”
“Except like it or not, we’re more than just partners, remember?” I asked, turning to face him. “I can’t get your engagement ring off my finger even if…”
Even if I wanted to.
I winced, simultaneously scolding myself and wondering where that thought had bloomed from. Because that part of me needed to shush. I didn’t want to be engaged to anyone. I wanted sex with Damien. Only sex. Plain and simple.
He turned away, his profile sharp against the night sky. “I know. And that complicates things even more.”
“What were you like?” I asked, eager to move on to easier topics. “Before you were turned?”
A humorless smile lifted his lips. “Arrogant. Privileged. The entitled son of the Summer Court fae king.” His expression darkened. “I thought myself invincible, untouchable by consequence. And then I left, and every day since, I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked softly.
He went silent for so long that I didn’t know if he’d heard me. Then, “Love.”
That one word sounded so raw and honest that my chest ached for him.
“She was human. She died”—his voice caught slightly—“and shortly after I left my kingdom, war broke out. My father, my mother, my sisters…all killed in a conflict that I wasn’t there to prevent.
” His hands curled into fists on his thighs.
“And our supposed allies, the shifters, didn’t lift a claw to help. ”
“What? Shifters?“ I heaved out a breath and shook my head. “I’m so sorry, Damien.”
Those words seemed too empty for his obvious pain, but that was all I had. That, and a hundred questions, none of which I wanted to ask if they hurt Damien even more.
His gaze drifted to the horizon. “For centuries, I’ve wondered what would have happened if I’d stayed. If I’d done my duty instead of following my heart.”
I nodded, having wondered the same thing countless times.
“And after? When Elliot turned you?” I asked softly. “What were you like then?”
“I was…feral. Lost in bloodlust for a long while.” His voice grew distant, as if seeing into that long-ago past. “Elliot could have destroyed me. He should have, by vampire law, since I couldn’t control myself.
Instead, he saw something worth salvaging.
He taught me to control the hunger, to adapt to immortality, to find purpose beyond mere survival. ”
His admissions felt almost painfully personal. I found myself wanting to offer something equally vulnerable in return, though the impulse terrified me.
“My dad performed the separation ceremony himself,” I said abruptly, the words emerging before I could reconsider them. “When he banished me from the pack.”