“Hawke, Lachlan,” Benedict said, baring his arms. “She’s telling the truth. Let her pass.”
Fear, actual terror churned in Lachlan’s gaze as he stepped aside. Not any fear from me, but for me.
Hawke moved, that shadow of respect still clinging to his eyes, but his voice was liquid steel as he said, “I go to Avianna. I’ll secure her safety in case Alek rips you to shreds.”
A shiver raced down my spine, but I took the words for what they were—truth. Alek had the capabilities to do more than that. He could shred my mind and my body with a few thoughts. But I was his mate, and I was the cure. An ancient bloodline so buried and secret it gave the Sons a run for their money. My blood was powerful, precious, and dangerous to the wrong people. It was no wonder it had been hidden and glazed over all these centuries. Naturally, only a witch as old and wise as Genevieve would even remember it.
I pushed open the door, the echoes of Alek’s growls leaking into the hallway.
“Lyric,” Ransom called, and I glanced over my shoulder.
“Don’t die,” he said, his eyes sincere but his lips flashing me that playful smile I’d grown so used to. “You’ve just made things interesting again.”
I forced a smile to my lips, and stepped into our chambers. I sealed the door behind me, the sound of the locking clicking enough to stop Alek’s growls for a few heartbeats.
“Oh, Alek,” I said, my voice a trembling whisper.
His biceps strained against his bonds, the silver chains around his wrist propelling his arms up to where the chains wrapped around the ebony posts. Shirtless, his immaculate chest was peppered with gauze, pink from the blood that continued to seep from his wounds. His leather pants hugged his hips, those V-lines just visible as he arched and thrashed on the bed. The steel dampened his power, his strength. And his eyes? Those burning blues that I loved so much?
They were wholly, incomprehensibly black.
Shivers raced over my skin, the cold penetrating all the way down to my bones.
Doubt threatened to creep in, icy fingers clenching around the hope in my heart.
Remediums possess a muted strain of DNA capable of curing almost any ailment known to supernatural kind. A product of deep experimentation and cross breeding, remediums are rare and often confused with Seers as glamors have no effect on them and their instincts are unapparelled. Faced with extinction due to capture for healing purposes, they all but erased themselves from our histories around the eighteenth century.
I took one confident step toward our bed.
I’d spent my entire life between the pages of a book. Books were my only constant in a sea of unknown. I trusted books more than I trusted most people. And sure, this book was written by an ancient witch who had a passion for history as much as I did, but I’d never not trusted my research, my books.
I would not start now.
Another step.
“Alek,” I whispered as I reached the edge of our bed.
His midnight eyes glittered with unhindered bloodlust. His muscles bunched and flexed as he jerked and yanked on those chains.
“Everything will be all right,” I said and smoothed my hands over his chest.
He stilled under my touch, not due to any recognition, but more like a deadly predator inviting in the prey stupid enough to get this close.
I shifted, straddling his hips, leaning over him slowly.
“I’m yours and you are mine,” I whispered, my entire body shaking as I positioned my neck a breath before his lips. “This life doesn’t make sense without you. Now, feed.”
I held his pitch-black gaze, my neck craned so I could see the shift in him.
One second he was a statue, the next, his features turned absolutely lethal.
His fangs sank into my flesh, the pain instant and searing. This wasn’t like the bites Alek had given me before. This bite was a hundred percent primal. Animal. And it burned.
Pressure tugged on my insides as he sucked and drank, biting me over and over again so much I whimpered through my teeth.
My instincts roared to run, to bite back.
I clamped those down.
The tome didn’t say how much of my blood was needed to heal a poisoned creature, and I wasn’t about to guess. Not with my mate.
He could take all he needed.
As long as he lived.
The iron chains rattled as he drank and drank, the blood gushing out of me and dripping from the corners of his mouth.
Beautiful.
He was hauntingly beautiful. I’d thought that from the moment I first saw him.
I love you.
I sent the words down the bond as the edges of my vision blurred.
My heartbeat slowed, hiccupping as if it couldn’t find its proper rhythm.
My arms fell to my sides, weak and limp.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Alek ripped his head back, the black in his eyes like pure night. I held his gaze and smiled. “Alek—”
He sank his fangs into the other side of my neck. My body jolted from the force of the bite.
My muscles seized, shaking with each deep pull he sucked from the wounds.
Icy tingles brushed over my skin as the shadows around my eyes pulled in and in.
When had it gotten so cold?
A wet growl skittered along my bones, and a tear raced down my cheek.
“Alek—”
Those shadows bled over my eyes, blanketing everything in darkness.
21
Alek
Blood.
But it wasn’t just any blood roaring down my throat. It was the finest, sweetest, sustenance on the planet. I could live another four hundred years and never taste anything quite this perfect again.
It was somehow familiar, spiced with cinnamon and sugared with honey. It was an intoxicating blend of sex and home and slid across my tongue like wine. It belonged to a female…I wasn’t sure of much, but that I knew.
And it wasn’t just the taste—that would be too simple. Every swallow somehow soothed the snarling, drumming need to destroy and drink. Each sip and pull felt like a hand extended to a rabid beast, a stroke of a kind hand along matted, bloodied fur.
The burn that now lived within me, that had its claws in every molecule, screaming at me to feed harder and take more—it eased just slightly. Cell by cell, the sharp talons of flame simmered, then cooled, then chilled and released. God, drinking this woman was relief.
My fangs bit into the silken skin of her neck again and again, trying to get closer in the only way I could comprehend. I didn’t just want to drain the female—I’d been fed so many bags of stale blood I didn’t even know if there was room in my body for another ounce—I wanted to be within her.
I wanted to crawl inside and make a home that smelled like vanilla and cinnamon. To breathe when she breathed and sleep when she slept. This woman contained my entire reality within her body and I couldn’t get enough. I wanted her peace, her calm, her love to live within me, to cancel out whatever I’d become.
I released her neck and she rose above me in waves of red, thermal energy that were chilling in places. Why couldn’t I see her? Why was my vision locked into predator thermals when the woman above me posed no threat and my need for blood was sated?
“Alek,” she whispered, her voice somehow simultaneously calming my errant heartbeat while stirring my cock with a different need. That voice was equally the sound of heaven and the temptations of sin.