Chapter 14 Saskia
Relief floods through me as the warm liquid fills my mouth, parching all that thirst and starvation in my throat. There’s something vaguely bitter about it, like I’m swallowing the earth itself, but I don’t care. Not as the nightmare leaks away and all my senses slowly return to me.
Sound first. A rough, masculine voice saying, “That’s it. Keep drinking. There you go, baby.”
My eyebrows furrow as I obey instinctually, trying to understand who it is, what’s happening—and why I suddenly feel ashamed. But the hunger overpowers me, forcing me to keep drinking, to keep sucking on…
Then the sensation of touch, of me touching, jolts through me.
With a gasp, my eyes flash open, and I wrench myself away.
“Lucan!” I cry, blinking rapidly as my vision finally clears.
His face looms over mine, tight with concern and something else I can’t place at the moment. One of his arms circles my neck, and the other is held out in front of me, two thick streams of blood trickling from his forearm and plopping onto my chest.
At the sight of that blood, a peculiar ferocity steals over me. Mine. This male is mine, and somebody fucking hurt him.
“Who?” I ask sharply, struggling to sit up.
“Who what, Saskia?” Lucan asks, a trace of amusement flickering over all the strain on his face. Pain. That’s the other expression I’m reading besides concern. Lucan’s in pain, despite the hardened mask he’s trying to wear for me right now.
“Who did this to you?” I hiss, nodding at his forearm and surprising myself with the venom spitting from my tone. My head pounds. My gums ache. And that hunger is welling up again, confusing me even though the knowledge from my nightmare begins to nudge at my brain.
Lucan exchanges a quick glance with Taika over his shoulder, then squints down at the blood streaming down his arm, eyebrows ticked up as if surprised. “Well, you did. But it’s okay,” he adds quickly when my face crumples. “You need it.”
“No.”
The word is barely a breath wafting out of my lungs as everything comes crashing back.
What I learned about myself from my dead mother who must have derived from a figment of my imagination.
What I suspected about my lineage as soon as I read that last passage in the journal, right before I fainted.
But there’s no way. It’s not possible. I don’t need to drink blood to survive. I need a simple tray of food and water. Like a normal human. Like always.
I’m supposed to heal, not hurt.
My chest heaves as I drag in breath after shaky breath, and my mind spins with panic. I can’t take in enough oxygen, which only makes me more frantic, more lightheaded.
Maybe if I deny it hard enough, this will all go back to normal.
“No,” I say again, this time louder, and I hoist myself up so quickly that Lucan actually jerks back, letting me rise into a sitting position on the bed, even though he keeps his good arm around me.
I look wildly around the room, as if a solution to this awful new reality might be hiding in the cracks of the windowsill or in the tears in the wallpaper surrounding us.
My eyes land on the bedside table, where my necklace lays in a sad heap—the vial snapped off the chain.
How did that happen? I don’t know, can’t remember… but the brokenness of it seems to signify a severed bond between Lucan and me. How we can never go back to the way we were before.
I look at Taika, who only smiles at me sadly, then return my gaze to Lucan. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I whisper.
“If you don’t,” he says plainly, the amber in his eyes cracking open with emotion, “you’ll die.”
My breath comes out ragged as my eyes rove over his clenched jaw, the tendons straining in his forearm as he curls his fist, the rigidity of his posture. “But you’re already in pain.”
“But I’m giving my permission,” he argues immediately, as if he knew that was the retort hovering on my lips.
“It’s not going to damage me long-term, like it would a human.
” His voice takes on an edge of a growl, authority lacing through each syllable as we size each other up.
“Now, I don’t want to ask you again, little nightmare.
Drink from me until you’re fucking satisfied. ”
Staring at him, I consider all my options.
I could bolt. That seems like the safest one—just run away in my new body now thrumming with a different kind of energy, until I collapse from exhaustion and starvation all over again.
But Lucan would catch me if I did, of course, and then we’d be right back in this same situation.
And even if I do have the potential for more strength now than I did as a human, every one of my bones and muscles scream in fatigue and weakness at the present moment, hunger still licking the lining of my throat.
I didn’t get enough blood. Not nearly enough. And until I do, I won’t be strong enough to defy his orders.
“Drink,” Lucan commands again, holding his bleeding arm out to my lips.
As soon as the smell hits, I can’t help it anymore.
Denying it doesn’t stamp out the fire building in my chest, the deep urge to bite.
His utter dominance over me coupled with the need for more join forces until I’m sinking my teeth back into his skin, pulling in the nutrients, gulping life back into me.
His blood doesn’t taste good, exactly, not sweet like how I imagine a human would taste, but it tastes right.
If this is going to be my life from now on, I don’t want it to taste so sweet that I could get addicted.
This bitterness seems to anchor me to the earth, giving me exactly what I need and nothing more.
But my stomach still buckles at the reality of what I’m doing.
Finally, when it feels like some strength has returned to the very tips of my fingers and toes, I wrench myself away again and wipe his blood from my mouth.
“I’m satisfied,” I lie.
Lucan peers at me for a handful of seconds, as if assessing my honesty.
Apparently, he decides he’s satisfied, too, because he jerks his head at Taika, who hobbles forward with some kind of cottony material to press against his wounds.
I open my mouth to suggest that they just wrap it, but when Taika removes the material seconds later, the pinpricks in Lucan’s skin melt away. As if his body healed it that fast.
“How do you feel?” Taika asks Lucan.
“No different than all the hundreds of times I’ve tried to climb the Wall.” Lucan’s gaze reverts back to mine. “How do you feel, Saskia? That’s the more important question.”
I flex my fingers, glancing down at my body.
I’m still in that dress from Vivian, albeit with bloodstains streaking the front of it now, but otherwise, I feel like I’ve been doused with cold water and electricity all in one.
Energy hums in my veins, a sense of invincibility whispering at me to run, jump, tackle the male before me to the ground and…
No. Not letting myself finish that thought with Taika in the room, although I’m vaguely pleased at the notion that I’d still rather kiss Lucan than kill him.
Aren’t we supposed to hate each other on an instinctual level? Maybe he does hate me now that he thinks I’ve turned into one of them—the Guardians. I look up and meet the amber of Lucan’s eyes, and I can’t read the worlds of emotions behind the mask of his tight-lipped face.
“I feel,” I start hesitantly, honestly, “like I’m truly awake for the first time in my life. But Lucan, I swear, I didn’t know. I don’t even know how this is possible—”
“The Thirteenth Guardian,” Lucan answers gruffly, picking up the fallen journal I hadn’t noticed until this moment. “He must have been your ancestor…”
“Who passed the vampire gene to my father, who passed it to me,” I finish, sliding a hand through my sweat-dried hair. “Arad said he didn’t want a bunch of little Guardians running around, but he didn’t realize he already had one—maybe several—right under his nose.”
“Don’t,” Lucan growls.
Taika stiffens at the sudden charge in the room, but I merely cock my head at Lucan. “Don’t what?”
“Say that parasite’s name in front of me. I only want mine coming out of your mouth.”
Every particle of my new body seems to freeze, as if the world hangs in the balance of his next answer. “Still?” I ask carefully. “You still… want me? Even though…”
“Still.”
His answer isn’t just firm. It’s the center of gravity itself, anchoring me to him even more than before. “Why?” I whisper.
When he leans toward me, the air crackles.
“It was never a question of why, Saskia. It was only a question of how long. Because mere hours ago, I thought you were going to be nothing more than a stone corpse in ten years’ time—the blink of an eye, for my kind.
Ten minutes ago, I thought you were going to be dead by the end of the night.
Now?” His lips drag up in a smile. “Now you’re mine forever, little nightmare. ”
Tears well in my throat, but before I can figure out why he would want to have me forever now that we’re enemies, Taika clears his throat.
“The others in the pack, however, might need some convincing.”
The others. Shit. I’ve only known I’m a vampire for five minutes, and now I’ve got to think about how I’m going to face dozens of angry, ferocious werewolves who already think I’m a traitor once I step out this door.
They’ve been thirsting for a Guardian’s blood for centuries, and now I’m fresh meat served to them on a shining platter to abate their hunger for justice.
Even if I feel ten times stronger than I ever have before, I’m not stupid enough to think I could fight all of them by myself.
But Lucan rounds on Taika, practically vibrating with restraint. “The pack won’t touch her, because they’ll be unconscious before they can so much as lift a finger in her direction. Our target is the Guardians, and she is not a Guardian.”
“But she is…”