52. Dimitri #2
“Work on it. I’m not stopping you.” I watch them, unable to look away as he runs a gloved hand down the side of her face, the soft look in his eyes like nothing I’ve ever seen from him. I wouldn’t have even thought him capable of being soft if I weren’t witnessing it for myself.
I both envy and pity my old friend, but when his gaze flicks to mine, I see the smirk on his lips, and I know he’s teasing me on purpose.
Fucker.
Wren’s eyes flick to me before she quickly looks away.
“Felix, this isn’t appropriate,” she murmurs, trying and failing to climb off his lap, but he holds her tighter, nuzzling his face into the crook of her neck and breathing her in.
It’s the most docile thing I’ve ever seen him do, and I’m not the only one who watches in shock.
She fights for another minute or two, but when neither I nor anyone else says anything to help her, she seems to give up and goes back to working. Felix settles in, looking more content than I’ve ever seen before.
Until Rose tries to ruin it.
“Dimitri, Wren is asleep.” Just her voice grates on my nerves, but knowing what she did to sabotage Wren, the fact that she dares to say anything makes my beast stir.
Felix isn’t as forgiving, though, and Rose sees it a moment too late. Shadows whip out, wrapping around her and stopping her dead.
“Let me go. Do you know who I—” she hisses before another shadow whips out and wraps around her mouth, shutting her up.
In a panic, I look back and sigh in relief when I find Wren still on his lap, asleep.
Strange.
“The next time you hurt Wren, or even look at her wrong. I. Will. Kill you.” The threat is clear, and she should count her lucky stars that he’s giving her a warning. I wonder if it’s because he can’t hurt her with who her father is to the king, or if he simply didn’t feel like it.
Something tells me it’s the latter. Unless he has explicit directions not to kill her, he wouldn’t give a shit who she was to anyone.
Well, maybe if Wren asked him not to, but I’m guessing she didn’t.
With that, he drops his hold on her, and she scrambles out the door, looking pale and shaken. I know better than to think this will be enough to stop her; people like her think they're untouchable. She’ll no doubt bounce back worse than before.
She’ll have to learn her lesson the hard way, something I’m sure Felix will have no issue teaching her.
The rest of the class goes back to work, and the hour passes without any other incident.
This is the last week for them to work on this assignment, so I get a lot of questions, and before I know it, the class is over.
Most of the students file out in a hurry, survival instincts kicking in and telling them to put distance between them and Felix.
“What did you do to her?” I ask, nodding to Wren. Felix doesn’t look up, his attention on Wren as he gently brushes her hair back off her face. This time, it’s impossible to miss the longing in his eyes, something I can relate to, but in a different way.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. She hasn’t been sleeping, and you just expect me to believe that you’re what she needed?”
“Maybe she just needed to be wiped out. It’s been a long week. Maybe it finally caught up with her,” Julian says as he walks into the room, Titus shadowing him as always.
The second he walks in and sees his brother, he stops dead, his brows pulling together and his jaw ticking.
“Tell me you didn’t,” he snaps, stalking toward Felix, his eyes blazing, chest heaving.
“What did I miss?” I look to Julian, but he looks as confused as I feel.
Felix holds his gaze, unblinking and unfazed, making no move to deny whatever it is Titus has just accused him of.
“Someone want to fill us in?” Julian asks, a bit of annoyance seeping into his voice after another minute of their silent, staring contest.
He could pop into their minds and get his answer for himself. It’s one of his many gifts, but he doesn’t do it often unless he has to. I get the feeling he’s getting pretty close now, but that doesn’t help me.
“Felix blood bonded with her.”
“What!?” Julian and I both yell, then cringe when Wren shifts in her sleep.
When she settles again, Julian storms across the room, the only one who might be able to take Felix in a fight, but even so, it’s a might.
“Hush, she needs some sleep,” Felix says, glancing between us with a serious look on his face that promises violence should we not heed his words.
When neither of us argues, he continues. “It was an accident.”
He says it as if that explains everything and just makes it okay.
It doesn’t, not even a little bit; if anything, it makes it worse.
“How do you accidentally suck someone’s blood?” I ask before I remember that he and Titus are vampires.
But a blood bond isn’t just drinking someone’s blood, or every vampire would have one, seeing as they need blood to survive.
From my understanding, a blood bond is formed in pieces.
The vampire will drink from their partner, no matter the species they are: fae, sorcerer, troll, you name it.
And while doing so, the vampire in question must feed their blood back to them.
It creates a connection, but the bond isn’t cemented until the partner willingly drinks from the vampire while the vampire's blood is still inside their partner.
It’s a lengthy process, one that must be done 100% right or it won’t work.
Thank the gods for that, because a bond that doesn’t stick is deadly.
Let’s try that again.
“How do you accidentally form a blood bond with a mortal?”
“Did you know the sight of blood throws her off the deep end?” He answers my question with a question, and I pause because I didn’t know that, but then again, how would I?
Better question: how does he?
“She was going through pictures, telling me about her brother when she got the cut. She smelled divine, and it took some effort, but I was able to keep myself in check until she started to panic.”
Shit.
Her file didn’t say she had an issue with blood specifically, but it did say she had episodes from the crash that killed her parents. I’d bet that has something to do with it.
“So I fixed her bleeding issue—”
“Which doesn’t require you to feed her your blood,” Titus seethes, looking like he wants to strangle Felix, though I guess he often looks at him like that.
“I didn’t.”
“What?” Julian asks, looking as confused as I feel.
“If you didn’t, then how did you start a blood bond?” I ask, wishing he would just spit it out.
Instead, he shrugs, still without looking away from Wren.
“Bullshit,” Titus snaps after a minute, and this time Felix does look up, meeting his brother's gaze for a moment.
“I didn’t feed her my blood.”
I watch the two of them, eyes bouncing back and forth as Titus holds his gaze, looking for something that clearly isn’t there.
“Fuck!” Titus shouts before he stomps away, only to turn around and pace right back, glaring at Felix.
“Father called. I have to go and meet the king,” Felix says without so much as looking up.
I might not understand everything that’s going on with these two, but that I understand.
“How long will you be gone?” I ask, and the frown that pulls at the corner of his mouth lets me know his answer without him needing to say anything.
“Shit.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I have no doubt he’s telling the truth, seeing as the idea of leaving seems to pain him.
I’ve never understood why he still does everything his father asks, not when he knows what kind of man he is, but I assume he has his reasons.
Not to mention, now would be a hell of a time to tell him to get fucked, now that he finally has something worth losing.
He leans in, breathing her in before pressing a kiss to the soft skin behind her ear. She makes a sound that goes straight to my cock before he closes his eyes and pulls on the shadows in the corner, making the room darker for a moment before he disappears into them.
“Why does he still jump when your father says?” I ask Titus, unable to get past this nagging feeling that something about this isn’t right.
He’d just admitted to starting a blood bond with Wren. I can’t imagine he would willingly leave her; it can’t be comfortable. Even if not for himself, she’s mortal, and I have no idea what the effects of this bond will be.
“He doesn’t have a choice.”
I’m about to ask him what he means by that when Wren stirs. That’s all the distraction Titus needs to storm out of the room, taking his answers with him.