I obeyed, not saying anything.
I frowned in the darkness, feeling a little bit like a child for the first time in my life. She commanded and I obeyed, but it was more than that. She wasn’t looking to talk or fuck or do anything but lie next to each other and continue staring at the ceiling.
Did that make me weak?
To want to just lie with her?
I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t care either way. I’d spent three hundred years without really feeling anything, and even though this was torture—sharing a bond with my best friends, seeing her struggle—I would endure it any day if it meant she was still around.
We’d just found her, but already she was moving into my headspace, making room for herself without even knowing it. It had to be because of the bond, the fucking mating bond that showed up as soon as we met. It hadn’t gone away, instead only gotten stronger.
I feared what would happen if we all accepted it, recognized it for what it was. If we agreed to share this bond, what would become of my relationship with my friends?
I shook my head, turning off all thoughts of the future. She was here, lying next to me, and I was going to take advantage of that.
“I know you don’t want to talk, but I just want to know that you’re okay,” I said into the room, still invisible.
I hadn’t noticed before, but she had found the little remote that controlled the shades that fell over the windows, blocking out the morning sun. The room was dark, but once our eyes adjusted, we could see pretty well.
“I’m not okay,” she replied in a soft voice. “I’m not even fucking close to okay.”
I didn’t reply right away, thinking over my next words. I needed to be honest with her, but not scare her away. If I lied, she would know. “I’m not okay either.”
“I know,” she said monotone. “You’re hungry.”
I whipped my head to hers on the pillow we shared, causing some of her hair to fly in my face. Still invisible to her eye, I shook off the strands and stared at her.
She knew I was hungry? How the fuck?
“I can sense it, Q. Just do whatever you have to do to feed.”
I cleared my throat, suddenly turned the fuck on.
She was going to let me feed—without knowing what it meant. Even after she found out that drinking blood was a form of feeding. Would she let me drink her blood if I asked?
I wanted to know what Lanier had tasted—so badly it hurt.
What would she do if I told her I needed to feed off her orgasms, off her screams, her moans? Would she let me fuck her?
“Whoa there, Q. I’ll fuck you when I’m not trying to keep my fucking cool. Tone down the sexual tension, or things will get ugly in here.”
I laughed, unable to help it. “Fuck, Minx, you’re something else.”
“So I’ve heard,” she deadpanned. “Are you going to…eat…or not?”
“You’re really going to let me feed from you?” I asked, needing to hear it again.
“Yes, what harm could it do that hasn’t already been done?”
“Well, that’s a loaded question seeing as how twenty-four hours ago, vampires didn’t exist. What other supernatural creatures are you hiding in that body, Pup?” I wanted to lighten the mood, but I felt her stiffen next to me. Fuck. “Don’t do that, I’m just joking.”
She didn’t say anything for a few moments, but eventually she asked, “How do you feed? What do you eat?”
“Negative emotions.”
She chuckled. “Oh good, so I’m going to be a five-star meal.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, not liking the resentful sadness in her tone.
“Can you take them away?” she asked just as quietly.
“I wish I could.”
“So you’re useless.”
I was the one to chuckle then. “Basically.”
“Good to know.”
She was quiet for another moment, then asked, “How old are you guys?”
“The guys are both twenty-four,” I said, not sure how she would handle my age but again, not willing to lie to her. “I’ve been alive for three centuries.”
I held my breath.
“Cool.”
Her voice was bored, resigned, all together disengaged.
We settled into silence, and I felt her emotions reach new heights as she fell back into her thoughts. The anger she held within her was like a never-ending feast. Add confusion and loneliness to the mix, and it was almost too much for me.
Almost.
I fed in silence, pulling the emotions deep within my core. The darker parts of me, the demons I carried on my back, danced as they ate, loving the potency of Anna’s torment.
Then suddenly I was full.
In all my three hundred years alive, I’d never once felt full. I fed for hours on end from strangers, stalked funerals and whore houses, anywhere that emotions ran high, and never once had I ever been full.
Annalise managed to feed me, satiate me, and still have enough left over to continue if I needed to.
“Why are you so angry?” I couldn’t resist asking.
She turned her head to look in the direction she felt me but couldn’t actually see me. “I might tell you if you show me the animal inside you.”
Man, this girl was fucking me up tonight. She saw my animal too? Felt him? He perked up, ready for the shift, to show himself, but I held him back for a moment. “You see him?”
“Yes,” she whispered, as if speaking too loudly would shatter our moment. “He’s strong. Just now, when you were talking, I could only feel you, and then when we fell silent, and you got lost in your thoughts, I started to feel him. I want to see what he looks like.”
I didn’t give her the chance to change her mind, too wound up from feeding, too excited about the idea of her seeing the other half of my soul, the other being that lived within me.
I was the only one who had a physical animal.
They had wings, but I had my Bull.
I shifted.
A seven-foot-tall white Bull was now standing next to the bed, and I didn’t move, didn’t flinch. Wasn’t even shocked.
I was numb.
My eyes momentarily glanced at the nightstand, where I placed the gun that Lanier gave me. This was my life now.
I now drank blood? Sweet.
I had fucking wings? Amazing.
Quint could turn into a fucking animal? Perfect.
Sounds. Fucking. Good.
I rolled my eyes at myself, annoyed. I needed to pull it the fuck together. Lanier thought I was in enough danger to need a gun, and that meant that I couldn’t waste my time feeling sorry for myself. I couldn’t change my situation; I couldn’t even figure it out. I had to ask the questions, search for the answers, dig to find the truth. A week ago I was just a Human girl with a shitty childhood, and now I was something else.
It was time to move on from the shock and figure this shit out. Lanier was pissed, I knew that, he knew that, the boys probably knew that by now, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from asking him for help.
Cabe would help me. He was loyal, almost to a fault, and he wanted me here because he believed he knew me.
Yeah, okay.
I’d let him think that as long as he helped me figure out how I went from being no one, just a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, to this.