Jack muttered under her breath over me, and then her eyes lifted to someone else. “Please, if you ever loved me, help him. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll even let you kill me, but please save him.”
I grabbed Jack’s wrist tightly. “No.”
Jack’s gaze locked with mine. “You’re dying. I don’t think now is the time to argue.”
I opened my mouth to protest further, and then a coughing fit came over me. More blood came out, and I knew I didn’t have long. The bullet had likely punctured a lung, and it was only my hunter healing abilities keeping me from dying faster.
“Jack,” I lifted my hand to brush a knuckle across her damp cheek. “I wonder… what your… fathers would… say?”
“My fathers?” She blinked down at me. “Wha—? Oh, oh!” Not speaking to me anymore, she said in her haughtiest voice. “You just wait until my fathers hear about this.”
Several people laughed, while Jack clung to my hand. What felt like a lifetime later — which in reality was probably only a minute — the doors burst open around the building, slammingagainst walls. The familiar sound of boots hit the floor, and I knew the calvary had come.
I might die here. Rationally, I was losing too much blood and would die soon. But at least Jack would be safe, and the mission would have been completed. I could go happily knowing that.
My eyes slid closed, the pain having numbed, and a coldness had taken over. Still, I clutched Jack’s hand on my chest for as long as I could. I knew one of us would die on a mission together. And if I was honest, I always knew it would be me saving her ass.
A shadow covered my face and then something was pressed against my lips. Wet and sticky, the copper scent burning my nose.
“Open your mouth,” a gruff voice ordered.
I turned my head, away. I didn’t know what it was but knowing I didn’t want it.
“Julian, please.” Jack’s soft hand touched my jaw. “You have to drink.”
Drink?
I weakly forced my eyes opened. The wrist above me was Kyren’s, and blood seeped from a bite mark on his arm. She wanted me to drink his blood. The very bastard who had just betrayed us, and a vampire on top of that? My parents would roll over in their grave.
“No.”
Jack huffed. “Now is not the time to be stubborn.” Her hand gripped my jaw, trying to urge me to open it. “I know you have this thing against vampires but… I need you.”
My body felt as if it were floating. I knew the end was close. But I couldn’t make myself in those last moments go back on everything I believed in.
Vampires had killed my parents. My whole life, I’d been taught to hate and despise them. ‘The only good vampire as a dead one’ had been my motto for so long.
It had taken everything in me to be around Jack’s parents without the visceral need to drive a stake through their hearts. There was no way, now, when it all came down to it, that I’d do the one thing that would destroy the very foundation I stood on.
“I won’t lose you. Not again.”
I wanted to laugh as she repeated the very words back to me. The ones I’d used to get her suspended from the guild. It was like she knew the very thing that would break all my resolve. Shatter every reason I had to not take the vampire’s blood, to heal and save myself.
Using every ounce of energy I had left, I opened my eyes, staring up into Jack’s grief stricken ones. “Okay.”
Kyren pressed his wrist to my open mouth, and his blood trickled down, covering my tongue with the sickly sweet taste of him.
I’d never had vampire blood before. I wasn’t sure how it was supposed to taste. I’d tasted my own blood and knew it was nothing like this.
My stomach tried to reject it as I forced myself to swallow. I gasped and pulled away, turning my face. The numbness in my body slowly ebbed away, and the pain returned.
“Was that enough?” Jack’s voice asked, her hand still on me, trying to check me over.
“I don’t know.”
My eyes widened, and my mouth gaped open. The pain was more than anything I’d ever felt before. I suddenly sat up, my hands finding the front of Kyren’s shirt. Spittle flew as I silently tried to ask him what the hell he did to me.
“No, stop.” Jack grabbed my wrists, trying to dislodge me from Kyren. “He saved you.”
