How the fuck...
Voices, louder now. The others. Finn, somewhere close, called my name. I sensed them: Bronc pacing, Wrecker and Arsenal just staring down at me, with an “Oh shit” escaping Wrecker’s lips. Big Papa and Aspen were praying I think. Even the prairie dog was in on it, squeaking like a deranged CPR instructor.
And over it all, Lucia. Was she straddling me?
“Drink, Ryder, now. Or I will make you.”
Drink what? There was nothing left to drink. Did I even have a mouth? My blood was on the rocks, painting a masterpiece for the local vultures.
She leaned over me, so close I could smell the faint trace of rose and cold iron. “Do not make me repeat myself.”
There was a lot they didn’t tell you in medical school. Like how to handle the moment when a vampire is trying to force-feed you her own blood while your femoral artery still sprays out little decorative splattersonto the Texas sand. Maybe that was covered in some prestigious European program, but my instructors were more about the hands-on approach: figure it out, or die trying.
“Drink,” Lucia said again. I somehow sensed her face right above mine, lips already glossy with the stuff she was trying to pour down my throat. The compulsion in her voice was more than just the usual vampiric charm; it hit me like an anesthesia mask clamped too tight, filling up every available space in my mind with one simple command.
Do what, now? Yeah, that’s a no-go.
I’d sooner drown in my own blood than take orders from a vampire, even one who looked like she could have run Paris Fashion Week with one flick of her eyebrow. But my body disagreed. My jaw went slack, and the next thing I knew, she had her wrist pressed to my lips, the skin already split and leaking thick, arterial red.
The taste was not what I expected. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant—just iron, salt, and a bitter edge; but the idea of it made me want to retch. I coughed, tried to spit it out, but she was ready for that. She clamped her free hand over my nose, pinched it shut, and when I tried to gasp for air, all I got was her blood, filling my mouth, burning down my throat. For a moment I panicked, tried to bite her, but the flesh was as unyielding as steel cable.
“Good,” she crooned, her accent making it sound like “goot,” and pressed her wrist harder. “You must drink, or you die. Is simple, yes?”
I tried to tell her where she could stick her “goot,” but the words got drowned in the rush of blood. My stomach lurched, and for a split second, I thought I’d puke it all back up. But then the warmth hit, spreading from my core outward, flooding my arteries with fire.
That’s when the healing started.
I could feel my leg—my actual, ruined leg—start to pulse. It wasn’t like regular wolf healing, slow and steady, bone knitting over hours. This was accelerated, frantic, like every cell was a soldier in retreat, falling back tothe heart and regrouping in a panic. The muscle twitched, spasmed, then began to pull itself together, fiber by fiber, like time-lapse footage played at insane speed. I could almost hear the wet squelch as the artery zipped shut, the flesh knitting over it, the skin sealing so fast it left no scar.
All of this while Lucia still had her wrist in my mouth, pouring more of her blood in.
I should have been revolted. Iwasrevolted. But I was also alive, and as the blood took hold, the world started to look less like a bad fever dream and more like an actual place again. The night was sharp, every sound clear as a bell, the smell of blood and sand and spent gunpowder so intense I thought I’d drown in it.
I sensed my brothers around me. I didn’t care.
My body wanted more. A lot more.
I didn’t want to admit it, but the taste—now that I wasn’t dying—was addictive.Shewas addictive. All those years I’d wanted her and run the other way, gone and now I was consuming her. Like the first cigarette after a fifteen-hour shift, or the exact burn of a good rye on a shit-cold day. My hands, which had been limp and useless, clamped onto Lucia’s arm and pulled her closer, fangs breaking through my gums and slicing into her skin.
I heard her moan, low and throaty, and the sound sent a bolt of something electric right through my spine.
What the actual fuck? I wanted to let go, but I also didn’t want to let go. I drank, and drank, and with every swallow I felt myself getting stronger, the world coming into focus; the pain replaced with a kind of furious energy that made me want to run, to fight, to rip the goddamn moon out of the sky.
Her hand reached out and touched my cheek, and fuck if I didn’t lean into it.
I’ll just have a little more, I told myself. Just enough to make sure the bleeding’s stopped. Strictly survival.
Bullshit.
Every instinct in my body screamed for more. I drank until the world spun, until my heartbeat was a drum in my ears and the colors around me went too bright, too sharp, almost painful.
Then Lucia pulled away, tearing her wrist free with a flick of her hand. I spat blood, coughed, tried to clear my head. My vision swam, and for a second all I saw was her—her face flushed, eyes dilated, lips parted in something that was almost hunger.
She knelt over me, her mouth stained red, and stared down like I were the most fascinating thing in the world.
“You are stubborn,” she said, voice low. “But soon we will see how stubborn.”
I tried to curse her, but the words got lost in a new wave of sensation. My leg burned, then froze, then burned again. My teeth ached, my bones creaked, my skin prickled like it was crawling with ants. I groaned, doubled up, and hit the ground so hard I bit through my lip. The blood tasted different now—my own blood, but laced with something new, something ancient and hungry.
