by Sofia Daniel
He ran a shaky hand through his hair. “I thought it would help—”
“Making me think that I’d been brought up without love would help?” A shrill laugh bubbled out from my throat.
Right now, I couldn’t tell which was worse. Being turned into a hunter who craved vampire blood but could make do with werewolf cum, or having the veneer of lies ripped from the truth of my past.
Raphael took a step toward me. “Alicia…”
“Well, you certainly stopped me from falling apart that night,” I snarled. “But did you think of the long-term repercussions? I kept wondering why I felt no grief when I thought about their deaths. I thought I’d turned into an unfeeling monster!”
A noise from overhead made me flinch. I snapped my gaze up into the branches and found the chakras of two large birds flying through the canopy. My shoulders relaxed, and I turned back to Raphael.
His shoulders sagged, and he clasped his hands in front of his chest. “If I could fix my mistake, I would. But we can’t split up now. We’re mated.”
I raised my chin. “Radu broke the bond.”
Raphael’s mouth dropped open. “When?”
“Hours ago.”
“That can’t be right,” said Gates from behind.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Raph went out to hunt rabbits earlier this afternoon.” Gates stood at my side and rubbed his chin. “If they broke your bond, wouldn’t he have turned back into a vampire and fallen unconscious in the sun?”
My brows rose. I hadn’t known that Raphael had confided in Gates about our bond. Perhaps with Dante and Nero so sick and needing to sleep during the day, the pair had become close.
Raphael took a few more steps toward me. “What will you do?”
“About what?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “About us. My brothers still need healing, and we still have the hunters after us.”
The sounds of twigs and leaf litter cracking under unsteady footsteps made me stiffen.
“They’re coming,” said Gates.
I was about to ask who, but the breeze carried an intoxicating scent that made my mouth water. It could only be the other two Stryx brothers — the ones whose blood I craved. Saliva flooded my mouth, and I licked my lips.
“They shouldn’t be moving in their condition.” Raphael stepped back around the blueberry bush.
My stomach rippled in anticipation of drinking vampire blood, and the pulse between my legs pounded as though urging me to stalk my prey and feed. As I followed after Raphael, Gates grabbed my bicep.
I turned around and glared into his amber eyes.
“What are you planning?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” I tried to snatch my arm out of his grip, but he held on tight.
Gates flared his nostrils. “You want to drink their blood.”
“No, I don—”
“You’re a hunter, and you’re still hungry,” Gates growled. “If you feed on those sick vampires, you’ll set back their recovery. They might even die.”
Bristling at his words, I tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip. “I’m not biting anyone.”
His brows rose. “Then why do you have bigger fangs than a dire wolf?”
My stomach dropped, and I clapped my hand over my mouth.
Gates turned me around and placed both hands on my shoulders. “Look, I don’t completely understand what Raph did, and it sounds awful. But we’re all in the biggest trouble of our lives, and we need to work together. At least until we find a way out of this shit-hole.”
I dipped my head, shame, and anger and self-disgust rippling through my system. Gates was right. Grieving and angering over my family wouldn’t bring them back, and neither would clinging onto Radu’s words.
Radu wanted me to believe the Stryx brothers had violated me for their own ends. He’d probably gotten Justine to set things up with Zarah to accelerate my transformation into one of them. Even though their plans had worked, I couldn’t succumb to Radu’s influence.
Gates wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me into his warm, hard chest. The acceptance in his embrace melted my heart. “Even if you never forgive them again, you can’t leave them in this condition. Dante and Nero need your help.”
Although Gates’ embrace was precisely what I needed, guilt twanged at my heartstrings. How could I hold a grudge when the boys had gotten themselves injured trying to protect me from Lady Mantis? The mouth-watering scent of vampire blood filled my nostrils and made my heart skip several beats. They were coming closer. I drew back, trying to control my frantic breathing.
“Alicia?” Dante emerged from behind the blueberry bush with his arm wrapped around Raphael. His golden hair hung limply over his face. “We’re so sorry for how we treated you.”
A lump formed in my throat. Sweat glistened on his skin from some kind of fever, and the tiniest flash of light flickered in his soul-star chakra. Had they always been this sick, or had my transformation into a hunter allowed me to see the full extent of their injuries?
Nero stumbled on Raphael’s other side. He was practically doubled over with a curtain of dreadlocks covering his face.
Harsh breaths wheezed from his chest, but he managed to croak, “We’ll spend every day of the rest of our lives making it up to you, but please, don’t break up with us.”
The black patch that used to be his soul-star chakra no longer seemed so dark. I swallowed hard. Gates was right. The two boys were edging toward death, and I’d preoccupied myself with my hurt feelings.
“What are you two doing out of bed?” I asked.
“We overheard your conversation with Raphael,” Dante rasped. “And we had to come over and beg you to stay.”
“But you’re injured.” My gaze dropped down to the bandages wrapped around their middles. Brilliant white shards of light shone within their solar plexus chakras. A breath caught in the back of my throat. I hadn’t been able to see this as a regular frumosi.
“Please,” Nero rasped. “Complete our mating bonds. You’re the only one who can save us.”
“I’m not sure it’s possible anymore.” Shame crawled over my skin, and I tried to form the words. The thing I had become was parasitical, not healing. All four boys were probably better off without me.
“Because you’re a hunter?” asked Nero.
“How did you know?” I snatched my gaze away from the glowing lights in their chakras and forced myself to look into their faces.
Nero raised his head. His bronze skin shone with sweat, and his full lips trembled with the effort of forming words. “You smell different. Like a predator.”
“It’s like you said.” I stared at my feet. They were sole-deep in leaf litter with tiny bits of debris clinging to my borrowed slingbacks. “When I look at you, and your scent fills my nostrils, it’s a struggle not to pounce.”
“It doesn’t matter what you’ve become,” said Dante. “We still need you.”
“But I crave your blood.”
“We craved yours,” he replied.
My head snapped up. “What?”
Dante leaned heavily on Raphael’s side. “Every day you lived with us, we wanted to taste your blood. It drove us mad that you didn’t consent, but we still managed to keep our fangs off you. I’m sure you can do the same”
“That’s different,” I said.
“Why?” asked Raphael. “Because you can feed on us whether we want it or not?”
“I can’t drink day-walker blood.”
All three boys gaped for several moments.
My insides squirmed with a mix of discomfort and the desire to sink my teeth into Nero’s neck first then feast on Dante. As I licked my lips and salivated over the injured vampires, Gates held me tighter.
“Very well,” said Dante.
“What?”
He gulped. “If you want to keep us as blood whores, we consent.”
My mouth dropped open, and I
turned to Nero.
He nodded. “We just want to stay by your side.”
“You can’t abandon your pack,” said Gates.
I turned to Gates, who gave me a sad smile. I supposed that a werewolf would see a group of supernatural males gathered around a supernatural female as a pack. His own had banished him, but with the amount he had helped me in the previous term, I wondered if he had ever felt like he belonged.
The next words tumbled out of my mouth. “I want Gates to join us.”
Gates drew in a sharp breath through his teeth, and his grip on my arm loosened.
Nero’s brows drew together. “Can hunters form bonds with werewolves?”
“Not all bonds are magical or sealed with blood,” said Gates. “Some are based on friendship and loyalty.”
“Very well,” Dante sagged against Raphael’s side, sounding resigned. “I have no objections to Gates.”
“Me, neither,” added Nero.
I stared at Raphael, waiting for him to object, but he blew out a long breath. “We all owe our survival to you, Gates. If you hadn’t turned against the vampires and your pack, the hunters would have caught us and farmed for our blood.”
Giving Gates my warmest smile, I raised my brows in question. Throughout my time here at the academy, he had been a supportive friend and my inspiration to attain freedom. “What do you say? Will you join us?”
Gates squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips together. His chest heaved with an inward breath. After a long exhale, he opened his amber eyes and said, “Thank you.”
A cool breeze blew through the trees, its eucalyptus scent filling my nostrils and dampening my appetite for vampire blood. My head cleared, and my gaze snapped to the glowing shards within Dante and Nero’s guts.
“Both of you, lie down. The infrared weapons left something inside you, and I think that’s why you’re not healing. Let’s try to get it out.”
Raphael threw the cashmere blanket to Gates, who spread it on the ground between two oaks. Then Gates wrapped his arm around Nero’s middle and helped him lie on the blanket, while Raphael assisted Dante.
“What are you going to do?” Nero croaked.
I knelt at their sides and placed a hand on Nero’s fevered brow. “Before I transformed—”
My mind dredged up the memory of Zarah lying on the ground, a whitened husk. I shook it off and focussed on the boys. If the hunters had followed me down to the basement, they were probably still looking for the Stryx brothers. I needed to hurry.
After clearing my throat, I said, “Around the time of my transformation, I developed magical appendages that can delve into people.”
Nero groaned. “Thank the stars for that.”
I doubted he would say that if he knew what I could do with the tendrils. Closing my eyes, I let them emerge from my fingertips. They snaked into Nero’s solar plexus chakra, making him hiss.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Keep going,” he said, his voice strained.
The tendril skewered a shard of light and eased it out from where it had lodged deep within the yellow chakra. With the greatest of ease, I pulled it through Nero’s body. As soon as it emerged from his stomach, the light flared.
“Bloody hell,” said Gates. “It’s like sunlight.”
I didn’t bother to open my eyes. My memory of the light emerging from the weapon and embedding itself into the boys’ guts had been vivid enough.
As the artificial light floated up into the forest, I focussed on some smaller fragments, which had lodged around the edges of his solar plexus. This time, instead of working with one tendril at a time, I placed all ten into Nero and pulled out the offending light.
He cried out as it left his body, then released a long groan.
“How does that feel?” asked Raphael.
“Less intense.” Nero reached out and squeezed my hand. “Thank you.”
“I hope that’s going to be enough,” I murmured.
Dante stared up at me with hope brimming in his aquamarine eyes. “We’ll appreciate anything you can do to get us on our feet.”
His injuries were a little more complicated than Nero’s. Some of the shards of light had wandered into his meridians, the energy pathways that stretched throughout the body.
My chest tightened with sympathy. A mere moment ago, I had wanted to drink Dante’s blood, not caring about the amount of pain he was suffering from that amount of artificial sunlight festering through his insides.
Dante’s brows drew together. “Why haven’t you started?”
“It’s going to be tricky,” I whispered.
Dante moaned.
“Please, try,” said Raphael.
I gulped. “Alright.”
Using the same method I had applied for Nero, I eased out the foreign light from Dante’s solar plexus. But grabbing onto the smaller pieces that had invaded his meridians was like trying to catch grains of sand rushing through veins. Sweat beaded on my brow, and I had to absorb the tiny shards into my tendrils the way I had stolen Zarah’s life-force.
Gates rubbed my back, helping me to stay calm, while Raphael held his brother’s hand to help him handle the pain. By the time I fished out the last shard, the tendrils had retracted into my body, exhausted.
“Thank you,” said Dante, with tears of gratitude shining in his eyes. “I no longer feel like I’m burning from the inside-out.”
I glanced at Raphael, who knelt beside Dante with his head bowed. How many days had he spent in the infirmary with sunstone in his digestive tract? He had been weak, unable to absorb his food, and in agony until the boys had gotten me to heal him.
My chest tightened. In all that time, he had never blamed me for deliberately hurting him. Raphael had understood that I had thought it was him who had trapped me with a newly transformed werewolf. And when it was my turn to show him some forgiveness, I hadn’t looked at the situation from his point of view.
“Raph,” I whispered.
He raised his head, pain etched on his handsome features.
“I’m sorry for being so unforgiving.”
Raphael swallowed. “Are you just saying that?”
I pulled myself to my feet and shook my head. “It was foolish of me to have let the hunters mess with my head. They twisted things around, so it looked like you’d violated my mind for your own benefit.”
His forest-green eyes softened. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“After seeing you sacrifice yourself when Lava wanted to murder me, I should have given you the benefit of the doubt.”
Raphael rushed to my side and swept me up in a tight hug. “I thought we had lost you.”
“Never,” I whispered.
Another set of arms wrapped around me from the left, accompanied by the delicious scent of spices. Warmth spread across my chest. Nero. Dante joined on the right and pressed a kiss on my temple.
We stood in a group hug for several minutes. Dante and Nero still had to be sore from having shards of artificial light removed from their chakras, but neither of them showed it.
“Do you still want to taste our blood?” Dante’s low voice sent a tingle between my legs.
“I’m aching for it.”
“Let’s start the bonding process,” said Nero. “Before the hunters catch up with us.”
We broke our hug, and Raphael helped his brothers settle onto the cashmere blanket. He turned to me and said, “They’re still not a hundred percent. You’ll need to get on top.”
“Alright.” I toed off the slingbacks and hitched up the skirt of my borrowed dress.
Gates backed in the direction of the blueberry bush. “I’ll leave you alone to kiss and make up.”
“Stay,” said Dante. “You’re part of our pack, now.”
Gates beamed. “Thanks, guys. It means a lot.”
Licking my lips, I let my gaze drop down to his crotch. “Besides, you still need to finish feeding me. I need filling up before I bite these vampires!”
<
br /> Chapter 13
The rustling of squirrels chasing each other through the branches made my head snap up. While this patch of the woods wasn’t visible from the castle, it also wasn’t completely secluded.
I wanted to suggest we move somewhere else, but nowhere within the academy’s wards was safe. Besides, leaving Nero and Dante as vampires for a moment longer wasn’t an option. They needed to restore their health and remove the vulnerability of falling asleep during the day.
Both vampires lay on the cashmere blanket, only clad in their boxers, and staring up at me with hope shining in their eyes. They seemed to think I was their salvation. Maybe they would feel differently if they discovered what I had done to Zarah.
Raphael knelt on the right at Dante’s side, and Gates stood on Nero’s left, his brows raised with expectation.
Nero furrowed his brow. “Do you still want to go ahead with the bond?”
“Of course.” I padded onto the blanket, straddled Nero’s hips, and placed a hand on his cheek. He no longer felt clammy, and the feverishness from earlier had gone, leaving behind cool, smooth skin.
My hand snaked down to the erection straining through his boxers. “Will your solar plexus hurt if I ride you like this?”
Nero grimaced as he raised his hips off the blanket. “As long as you don’t touch it, I think I’ll be fine.”
Ignoring the pang of sympathy clutching at my chest, I slid my fingers into the waistband of his boxers and pulled them down his hips.
Usually, Nero would already be rock hard, but he had spent so long in agony that his dick only stood at half-mast. I wrapped my fingers around his thick length and stroked it to full arousal.
Nero squeezed his eyes shut and moaned. “That feels so good.”
I hummed my approval. “Once I’ve finished, you’ll feel a whole lot better.”
Gates rubbed the bulge in his crotch and grinned. “If you can handle two cocks, I’m ready.”
A smirk crossed my features. I licked my lips and reached out for the fly of his jeans. “Bring it here.”
He wrapped a hand around my wrist. “Let me check you for fangs first.”
Swallowing back the saliva gathering in my mouth, I bared my teeth, making sure to run my tongue along its blunt edges. “Satisfied?”
