“Yeah, why now, Parasite?” Alec punched the vampire’s chest. “Because you fucking turned her!”
Asher replied with a shove on both my brother’s shoulders. “It’s your dumb ass who bit her first. I had to give her my venom to neutralize yours.”
“What?” I questioned.
“You told me she wasn’t turning that day, but she was. The hunger, the sex drive, the mark that hadn’t faded, all details you’ve failed to notice while I have. Unlike you, I was saving her. Like always.” Asher squared his shoulders, adjusting the sleeves of his suit jacket. “Belle is not turning, you idiots. She has both our venoms in her blood, giving her a hint of our powers for a short while until her blood is clean. Just like drugs.”
The bloodsucker could be right. And until her blood is clean, if Belle didn’t feed on blood, she wouldn’t turn into a vampire. And if she didn’t kill anyone—yeah, that was what it took to trigger the beast—she wouldn’t turn into a shifter either.
“Is that why you’re here? To show us what a fucking hero you are?” Alec scoffed. “What a way to do it, Leech, traumatizing an innocent woman like that.”
“I called for this meeting because Damien Pattison finger fucked Belle!” Asher exploded.
“What the fuck? He’s not allowed to touch her. Doesn’t that break the deal as well, make him lose his claim on her forever?” I exclaimed.
The vampire clenched his fangs. “Practically, he didn’t touch her. The devil went into her subconscious. He fucking made her like it.”
My brother growled and howled and rumbled. Then he writhed and shifted into an angry wolf.
Instantly, my stare went to Belle. Her body became rigid, her lemur eyes on. A choked scream ripped through her chest, barely muffled behind her hand.
I saw the scene from her eyes for a moment. All she was seeing was a giant terror of fangs and claws and fur standing a few inches from where she sat. Then she screamed and screamed, collapsing onto the dirt.
“Isabella!”
Alec shifted back in a split-second. “Belle!”
I held a hand up, stopping them from running to her. “Damn it.” I strode to her limp body and bent my ear to her chest. “She passed out. I’ll take her home. Neither of you is allowed to touch her, to even see her until all this is sorted out.”
CHAPTER 25
BELLE
Was it another daydream? A daynightmare was more like it. Vampires, werewolves and a devil after my cursed blood? I’d got to stop reading those books.
I opened my eyes to find myself tucked in my bed, and golden eyes glowing at me in the dark.
No no nonono. It wasn’t a daynightmare. I was in one. Living it to the very core.
Panic surged through my legs. I stumbled over the bed as I darted out of it, feet tangling in the loose sheets, screaming as I fell. “The fuck?!”
“Belle!”
In a flash, I picked myself up, darted to the bathroom and locked myself in there.
“Belle, wait. It’s just me, Kayden.” His voice came muffled behind the bathroom door.
“Go away. You’re not real.”
“Uh… Hate to disappoint you, Professor, but I am.”
“You can’t be.” I seriously needed psychiatric help. But even if I went to therapy, what would I say? Monsters were real. They’d lock me up.
“Except that I am real. Alec, Asher and Pattison are, too,” he said.
I crumbled to the cold tiles, my back against the door, terrified I’d been fucked up so badly I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. I didn’t know what was worse, my imagining supernatural beasts or for them to be real.
“Listen, Belle, I know you’re afraid. You have every right,” he said, his voice low and soothing—and right behind me, as if he was crouching next to the door at my level. “But you can choose to stick to what you’ve been taught in science books, ignore the truth and live with the irrevocable consequences…or you can open up your mind to accept there’s another world out there so you can save yourself from a destiny worse than death.”
