Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
There were all kinds of people around him now, hands biting into his arms, his legs, his shoulders, his ribs. It was like piranha snacking on him, and that was before they started walking him across the lawn.
And up the porch stairs.
He knew exactly when they got him inside. Light. Warmth. The smell of chocolate chip cookies.
Bitty’s voice barked out, “Call Doc Jane—”
She was right next to his head again, and for a female who was usually so quiet, she was giving orders tonight.
Especially as she announced, “He needs to feed—”
L.W.’s eyes popped open. “No, I’m good—”
The scent of her blood, delicious and enticing, burrowed into his nose, and in spite of the condition he was in—cold as a block of ice, probably hypoxic, definitely in clinical shock—he could feel himself getting aroused as his fangs dropped down from his upper jaw.
Bitty came into sharp relief, his panic giving his eyes the extra charge they needed to get with the fucking program: She was removing her wrist from her lips, her bright red blood running free from the twin puncture wounds she’d made in her own flesh.
A growl started to rumble through him.
And instantly, he projected into the future. What it would be like for her. How he would ruin her life, not just with what he did, but who he was, and what he brought along with him.
With a soul-deep conviction, L.W. knew if he took her vein right here, right now, there was no going back, for either of them. Yeah, they’d almost shared a kiss during that one date they’d gone on. But this feeding shit was…
Bad news. For her.
Between one blink and the next, he saw his mahmen, curled on her side on a twin bed in an empty room, crying with her hand locked over her mouth so she could be quiet enough not to wake him. And it wasn’t just the one memory. There were so many that they ran together, like a painting that had been sluiced with water.
She was going to be that female. On a bed. Curled up around herself.
Either because he was killed in the field. Or… because he did something out there so heinous, so extreme, she couldn’t reconcile his hatred and his actions with the male she thought she loved. If he took her vein now? If he learned her taste? He wasn’t going to be able to stop the bonding that was already happening on his side and save her from the car crash collision that was coming her way.
Better to quit this now—
“No,” he said as she brought her scored wrist forward.
With a fumbling, frostbitten hand, he pushed her arm away. “Anyone… but her.”
For all his eyes’ sloppy efforts, they didn’t spare him now. He was able to see with heart-wrenching clarity the shock, and then the hurt, transform the urgency in her face into a horrified shame. And the sight of how he’d hurt her was burned into him, a brand on his soul.
“No,” he repeated hoarsely. “Not you.”
Bitty fell back. Then looked down at her wrist.
As she brought the wound she’d made for him to her mouth to seal it closed, there was a sudden hush that came over everybody. That didn’t last, however. Another wrist was pressed against his lips, and biology took over when his freedom of choice would have denied the swallowing.
He drank, even though the deepest part of him was revolted.
More fuel for the rage, though.
Except it wasn’t like he needed it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Oh, you’re home! I thought you were going to stay out at your grandparents’?”
As Lyric entered her mahmen’s living quarters at the Wheel, the happiness she was greeted with made her feel like absolute shit. The Chosen Layla was at the kitchen table, her blond hair tied in a bun, her white robing the traditional dress of her station that she wore still because, as she said, “it’s more comfortable than PJs.” In front of her, all of her beading trays were lined up, a colorful display of Lucite boxes that glowed like a rainbow, and she had a half-made bracelet in her hands, a mug of hot chocolate at her elbow, and her favorite jazz music threading through the warm air.
It was such a common scene, something Lyric had walked in on for as long as she could remember. Her mahmen made the jewelry to support Safe Place and Luchas House, and Layla’s Baubles was a very successful store on Etsy. God only knew how much money she’d been able to donate over the years—and all from this bright, cheerful kitchen, sitting under a flowered light fixture.
As Lyric’s eyes stung, she felt like she hadn’t seen any of it for years.
And that included her fair-haired mahmen. Which was nuts. They’d spent time together here just hours ago.
“I…” Lyric cleared her throat. “I just wanted to come back here.”