Chapter 10 #2
“Yes, no one.” I shoved the thongs in my hands into the pocket of my hoodie so I didn’t look like a crazy person when I walked back up to my apartment. “We’re supposed to be going back to our normal lives, remember? You said that us being fated doesn’t mean anything.”
“I said we technically could go back to normal, and that it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I never said I was going to let you go.”
My lips parted.
Maverick lifted a thong he must’ve snuck out of the clothes pile to his nose, and inhaled deeply. “Did I mention that I fucking love cherries?”
My face flushed. “I swear to god, Maverick, if you even think about jerking off—”
“Jerking off is the very least of the depraved things I could do with these.” He dragged his tongue over the center of them, winked at me, then drove away.
“Fuck you!” I yelled after him, the response slightly delayed by the intense heat between my thighs.
I should not have enjoyed that.
But I did.
I didn’t want to know what had to be wrong with me for that to be true.
Harper was back on the couch with her pasta when I shut the front door behind me a little too hard. My half-eaten dinner was still on the ottoman.
I picked up the box as I plopped back down next to her.
“That didn’t go great for you.” Harper popped a bite in her mouth.
“Of course you watched.
“That man is ridiculously attractive, Bloom. It would be a shame not to.”
I shoved my fork into my pasta and lifted it to my lips. “He’s an ass.”
“He licked that when you weren’t looking,” Harper added, gesturing to the fork after I wrapped my lips around it. “Sorry. Should’ve warned you sooner.”
I chewed and swallowed. “He just licked my fucking underwear. What’s a fork in comparison?”
“That’s the spirit.” She took another bite.
“We have a problem, though.”
“Another one to add to the list? It’s getting long.”
I nodded. “He wants me to bite him next week when I need to feed.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Yeah. Any ideas to get around that?”
“You need to find out how long he’s going to keep being possessive over you, first. Text him.” She gestured to my phone.
I sighed. “I really don’t want to.”
She picked it up.
It was the thing with Whimsy all over again. I trusted Harper to text for me, though.
She typed in the code, and I watched her text Maverick.
“He’s probably driving. I’m sure he won’t answer.”
“After that debacle, I bet he will pull over to read the texts when you message him.”
I didn’t respond.
Didn’t really want to process that thought.
Harper sent a quick message.
Me
How long is this ridiculous possessiveness going to continue?
He replied almost immediately.
Maverick
The pull of being fated will fade in a week or so
The possessiveness probably won’t fade with it, but I might get slightly more reasonable
“Dammit,” I muttered, as she lowered the phone.
“Let’s assume he’s not going anywhere in the near future,” she said.
“If we really need more bagged blood, the easiest way to get it is for me to seduce him into biting me again, so he doesn’t want me to bite him.”
“He doesn’t want a completed mate bond?” Harper checked.
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s good for us.”
“Surely we can come up with a better idea than me seducing him, though. My seduction skills are less than zero.”
She grimaced. “He’d probably wipe the floor with you if you tried to seduce him. The man is charming. There’s no way around it. He fucking winked at me.”
“He’d probably turn my seduction attempt around and seduce me.”
“You’d totally bite him.”
“Multiple times. After which I’d be addicted to his gloriously sweet blood.”
“It smells that good to you?” she was curious.
“You have no idea. I would bathe in it.”
Harper made a face. “Disgusting.”
“I know. We’ll keep brainstorming. We have time.”
She nodded.
Her expression changed, a little, and I knew where her mind had gone without asking.
We didn’t have time.
“Don’t,” I warned, speaking to myself as much as her.
“We need to talk about it, Bloom.”
“We don’t.”
“Yeah, we do.” She lifted her gaze, her smile sad. “We need to figure out how long I have before I start to devolve.”
“You’re not going to devolve.”
“I’m a turned vampire, and I already killed someone. Steven was an asshole, but he didn’t deserve what I did to him.”
“Don’t say that.” I set my food down, nausea churning my stomach.
She was right. We both knew it. I just couldn’t accept it.
“It’s true. We need a plan,” Harper said.
“Fine. We’ll… figure out who killed Arthur and pin Steven’s murder on them.”
“I won’t be much help. I can’t go back to work.”
“You need to. If you stay home, the hunger will get worse faster. You’ll have nothing to do but ruminate. You have to go back to work with me.”
“I’m too dangerous, Bloom.”
I scowled. “If you’re looking at it from that angle, I can keep an eye on you better from work, to make sure everyone around you is safe. And the werewolves will probably have people in the office, which makes it even safer.”
Harper let out a slow breath and looked back down at her food. “Fine. I’d like to know how much time I have left, though.”
“You can’t talk like that. We’re going to find a way out of this.”
“No one can un-turn a vampire.”
“But maybe there’s a way to control one. It’s not like our stories are always right. No one mentioned that I could end up soulmates with a werewolf. I’ll find a way to research it. Someone has to know something.”
“With what time? You committed to fixing the investment firm’s many problems with the law, remember? And you’re basically being hunted by a horny Alpha werewolf. It’s not like you could snoop without setting off alarms.”
She was right.
Shit.
“I’ll figure something out. Make a plan. Find a way.”
“Would your family know anything about turned vampires?”
“More than I do. I can ask them. Do you want me to?”
Harper nodded.
I opened my messages and, after a moment of debate as to how I should ask, went to my family’s group chat.
Time to come up with some bullshit.
Me
One of the humans at the gathering was asking me about turned vampires earlier and I didn’t know all the answers. How long does it take them to devolve, and how does it happen?
As expected, my overly-close family answered immediately.
Dad
They usually seem like normal vampires who require extra blood for three or four weeks after being turned, as long as they feed within a few hours of being changed. If they don’t, they spiral immediately.
Their descent to madness is subtle at first. They start zoning out and losing time, and their bloodlust slowly gets worse. They go from seeming normal to completely devolved in a matter of hours, which makes the process unpredictable
Mom
They’re the reason the humans fear us, honey
If a human ever asks for information about them again, report them to Neve and scare the living daylights out of them with gruesome stories
I bit my lip.
Me
Does anyone ever survive it and become a normal vampire?
Whimsy
No.
Mouse
Watching a human turn is an awful thing. I hope you never experience it.
Me
Me too
Thanks
Whimsy
Did you hear from your werewolf?
Me
Look at the time, gotta go.
There was a rock in my gut as I handed my phone to Harper.
She read the messages silently, then gave it back. “Could you screenshot those and send them to me?”
“You don’t want that.”
“I think we’re beyond what I want at this point.” She attempted a small smile, and mostly failed. “I’ll tell the Guild when I start blacking out so they can eliminate the threat. I can’t risk killing anyone else.”
By the Guild, she meant, my mom.
And by eliminate the threat, she meant, kill me.
Both of which just made the whole thing even more messed up.
“We’re going to find a way around this, Harper.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t say that like you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to. I can make Darkwood Investment compliant, solve a murder so I can pin Steven’s death on Arthur’s killer, and figure out a way to save you at the same time. I’ll be a total badass for the first time in my life.”
“You’re a badass… at paperwork.”
I threw my plastic fork at her, and she managed another small smile as it bounced off her.
“The skills still apply,” I said. “My lofty goals are going to take one hell of a detailed schedule.”
“Good point.”
I grabbed the blanket Maverick had picked up earlier—it smelled stupidly good—and sat down next to her, abandoning my pasta on the ottoman.
She turned on one of our favorite baking shows. We snuggled up under the blanket that smelled like the Alpha as if it was just a normal day and the world wasn’t actively falling from beneath our feet.
After she was asleep, I opened my favorite planning app, and got to work.