Chapter Twelve
SLOANE
The world is so much clearer now.
That’s the first thing I notice as Crave guides me through the wreckage of the clubhouse toward a hallway I’ve never seen before.
Everything is sharper, more alive, more dangerous.
The broken glass on the floor glitters, each shard catching the light with diamond-bright edges.
The blood, so much blood, doesn’t just look red anymore.
It glows, pulsing with residual life force that makes my mouth water in ways that terrify me.
And the sounds.
Oh God, the sounds.
I can hear everything.
Every heartbeat in the building thrums through my skull, heavy and inescapable.
Rogue’s pulse is fast, aggressive, and animalistic.
Scorch’s is slower, steadier, heat rolling through each beat.
Eden’s flutters like a bird’s wings, rapid and light.
Each one distinct, each one calling to something dark that’s unfurled inside me, opening petal by petal, a flower closing in reverse.
“Focus on my voice,” Crave says, his hand steady on my lower back as we walk. Even through his leather vest and my blood-soaked shirt, his touch sends electricity racing up my spine. “Block out everything else. Only listen to me.”
I try.
I really do.
But there is an orchestra in my head, every instrument playing a different song directly into my brain.
“I can’t—” My voice comes out wrong again, layered with harmonics that shouldn’t exist. “There’s too much. Too many—”
“Heartbeats. I know.” He opens a door at the end of the hallway, revealing stairs leading up. “It gets easier. You’ll learn to filter.”
“When?” The word breaks on a sob I didn’t mean to release.
“Eventually.” He glances back at me, and those silver eyes carry centuries of understanding. “I’ve had thousands of years to adjust. You’ve had two minutes. Give yourself time.”
Time.
Right.
Because apparently I have all the time in the world now.
We climb the stairs, and I’m acutely aware of how my body moves differently. It’s lighter, stronger, as though gravity has loosened its grip slightly. When I stumble on a step, Crave catches me before I consciously register falling, and the speed of my own reflexes shocks me.
“What am I?” I whisper.
“Awake.” He pushes open a door at the top of the stairs. “Finally.”
The room beyond is clearly his. I know it instantly, not from any obvious markers, but from the way his scent saturates every surface. Leather, whiskey, and something darker, older, that makes my newly awakened blood sing in recognition.
It’s massive. There is exposed brick walls, floor-to-ceiling windows with blackout curtains drawn tight.
A king-size bed with black sheets that look like they’ve never been slept in, sits in the middle of the room.
Minimal furniture is scattered with no personal touches except for a single painting on the far wall, a murder of crows descending on a burning village.
The image hits, and my stomach knots tight, while through our bond, Crave’s guilt crashes into me, open and agonizing.
“That’s from before,” he says quietly, following my gaze. “A reminder of what I was. Who I’m trying not to be anymore.”
I want to ask him about it, about the village, about the crows, about the evil I can taste in the painting coating my tongue in filth. But then he closes the door behind us, and we’re alone, and the bond between us intensifies so violently I gasp.
Oh fuck.
I feel him.
Not just his emotions, but him.
His presence floods through me, forcing its way into every crevice and weakness I didn’t know I had. The hunger that defines his existence wraps around my consciousness, ancient and insatiable. But underneath it, I feel something else. Something he’s been hiding.
Loneliness.
Bone-deep, millennia-old loneliness that makes my chest ache.
“I know,” he murmurs, and I realize he’s feeling me too. My fear, my confusion. The wild exhilaration humming beneath both. “The Heart Bind. It’s… invasive.”
“That’s one word for it.” I press my palm to my chest, feeling my heartbeat—our heartbeat—thunder against my ribs. “I feel your hunger, Crave. I can feel how much you want—”
The words die as my vision blurs, everything turning a crimson haze without warning.
The world shifts, colors bleeding away until everything is rendered in shades of blood and shadow. And Crave—
Oh God, Crave.
I don’t see a man anymore. I see what he is.
A living web of ancient, dark blood that pulses with power so old it makes my newly awakened magic recoil and reach for it simultaneously.
Veins of pure darkness thread through him, glowing with that terrible Bloodfire Oracle mentioned.
His form is human-shaped, but underneath, I see the monster.
The predator.
The thing born from evil itself.
And it’s beautiful and utterly mesmerizing.
“Sloane?” His voice sounds distant, concerned. “Your eyes, they’re glowing. What do you see?”
“You.” The word comes out reverent. “I see you. What you really are.”
He takes a step toward me, and I watch the darkness inside him surge, reaching for me through the space between us. His Bloodfire recognizes something in my blood. Because I think I have it, too, that Bloodfire.
Maybe it’s why we’re so connected?
The Crimson Sight fades as quickly as it came, and Crave is just a man again. Devastatingly handsome, undeniably dangerous, and he stares at me, both the answer he needs and the question he’s afraid to ask wrapped in bloodstained leather.
“What you saw…” he says carefully, “… that’s what every Blood Witch can do. You see bloodlines. Truth. Power…” He moves closer, and I feel the pull between us intensify. “And right now, you’re learning to control it. Learning what you’ve become.”
“A monster.” The word tastes like acceptance.
“A survivor.” He steps in front of me, close enough that I see the silver flecks in his eyes, and the way his pupils dilate when he looks at me. “You were dying, Sloane. I gave you a choice. Live as something new or die as something ordinary.”
“You didn’t give me a choice. You made it for me.”
“Yes.” His voice doesn’t waver. There’s no apology, no justification, just brutal, unflinching truth. “Because losing you wasn’t an option.”
The words linger, charged and volatile. And then I feel it, an ache blooming in my chest that doesn’t belong to me alone.
His sincerity presses close, carrying the vulnerability he never lets anyone see.
Underneath it all, a quiet dread pulses steady and insistent, braced for the moment I might pull free from what he bound us with.
I should be angry.
I should be furious.
But rage doesn’t come.
Something else does.
I step into him slowly, deliberately, and I slam my lips to his, and the second our lips meet, the world detonates.
Not gently.
Not subtly.
It hits with a supernatural shockwave. A violent surge of heat blasts outward from our mouths and ripples through the air, making the atmosphere shimmer as if reality itself can’t withstand the force of us.
The bond, already a pulsing thread between us, snaps taut and then expands, wider, deeper, binding us in a flood of sensation that knocks the breath from my lungs.
His hunger slams into me in a tidal rush. It crashes into my own need, and they fuse instantly, becoming something bigger and impossible to separate. It’s not just desire, it’s compulsion, pull, a gravitational force.
The kind of need that shakes the earth.
Crave grips my waist, dragging me against him with a strength no mortal body should ever contain.
Vampire power radiates through his touch, terrifying in theory, devastatingly gentle in practice.
His fingers dig into my hips just enough to anchor me, to hold me steady as the magic between us ignites and swirls around our bodies in a storm of ember-bright sparks.
The kiss deepens, and a pulse of crimson-gold light erupts between our chests, shooting outward through space in widening waves. The walls vibrate, the lights above us flicker and surge, and the air hums with electricity, every inch crackling with the force shaking its way out of us.
It’s not just a kiss.
It’s the bond claiming us, reshaping us, rewriting the space between our bodies and the meaning of our touch. And for the first time, it feels as though the world isn’t big enough to contain the two of us.
My hands slide up his chest, feeling the muscles beneath his shirt, and power sparks between us.
Crimson and gold light pulses from my palms, and where I touch him, his veins glow in response.
The Bloodfire and my magic are tangling together, feeding off each other in a feedback loop that makes us both groan.
“Sloane—” He tears his mouth from mine, breathing hard despite not needing air. “If we do this, if we go further, the bond will deepen. We’ll be—”
“I don’t care!” I cut him off, my newly layered voice carrying power that makes the windows rattle. “I feel what you feel, Crave. I know you want this as much as I do.”
It’s true. His desire burns with the fury of a star about to go supernova. I know how badly he wants to claim me, mark me, make this bond permanent in every way that matters.
And I want it too.
God help me, I want it with an intensity that should frighten me but doesn’t.
He growls, actually growls, and suddenly his vampire speed carries us across the room, and my back slams against the brick wall hard enough to crack the mortar.
But I don’t feel pain, I feel alive.
His mouth finds my throat, and I tilt my head instinctively. Not to be bitten, not yet, just to feel his lips against the pulse point, to feel him fighting his hunger, his Bloodfire screaming at him to take, take, take.
“Not yet,” I whisper, somehow knowing what he needs to hear. “Not until I say.”
The restraint costs him. His control is fracturing, the monster inside him rattling its cage to break free.