He was quiet for a moment, and I considered opening my eyes to let him know that I was awake. But I didn’t, because I didn’t have anything to say to him. I still loved him, but there was something wrong. I just couldn’t handle everything at the moment.
“I promise you Alanna, I will never hurt you again,” he said, kissing my forehead. He pulled away, got off the bed, and climbed out the window. When I was sure that he was gone, I opened my eyes, feeling confused. What had he meant by that?
*****
In the morning, I found Ray and Jax seated at the table. They both looked up at me, and Ray’s face hardened instantly. I knew what he was seeing; my entire throat was one large black, purplish bruise. Quinten had very nearly strangled the life out of me. If he hadn’t come to his senses when he did…
“Have you seen Quinten?”
“No,” Ray said tightly. “I threw him out last night.”
“Dad!”
“Alanna, he could have killed you last night, just because he decided to defend your mother instead of you.”
“Dad, he can’t help it,” I said, surprised that I felt that way. I should have been angrier at him than ever before, but in fact, I was just sad. He was so lost and confused, with only Carmen to help get him on the right track.
I’d been angry last night, and I was still kind of angry now, but I needed to sit down and talk things through with him. Carmen kissed him, and he’d pulled away, without kissing her back. The feelings were one-sided, and that had to count for something.
Right?
“Do you know where he’s at now?”
“No, and we don’t care,” Jax said angrily. “How can you even think of going to him after what he did to you?”
“Did you even stop to think for one moment that Carmen might have been messing with his mind? He has a connection to her that he can’t escape, and that is not his fault.”
Ray sighed. “Alanna, I love Quinten like a son, and it hurts me to see him in the place that he is right now. But he’s incapable of controlling himself and until he gets some more control, I can’t allow him to be around what’s left of my family.”
“He’s not dangerous whenever Carmen isn’t around. It’s her fault he’s like this. If she didn’t have this creepy maker hold on him, he and I would be fine right now. We’d be happy, and together, without a care in the world.”
“Alanna? I think Quinten slept in that tree house of yours last night. I passed him in the woods, and he looked pretty upset. What happened between the two of you? Did you fight?”
“That’s not really any of your business!” Jax said angrily.
“Jax, be nice,” I said, looking at him. Turning to Darren, I said, “Carmen kissed him, and when I got in her face, Quinten reacted to protect her.”
“He hurt you,” Darren said, frowning. “I’ve seen that before with makers and their fledglings. It’s a very creepy bond, but it goes away after the first couple of months.”
“What do you mean, it’s a creepy bond?”
Darren shrugged. “I just mean that I’ve seen makers talk their fledglings into doing anything, even if they’d never do it before. Do you think that Carmen wanted him to hurt you? That’s the only reason I can think that he might have done it.”
“She could make him do something he didn’t want to do?” Ray asked.
“Well, I don’t think she can force him to do anything, but she can definitely suggest it. It’s kind of like if she was whispering directly into his ear, and he was forced to listen to her. After a while, it would be all that he could think about. How often are they alone together?”
“All the time,” Ray said, frowning. “I just assumed she was trying to teach him something. Do you really think she could have told him to hurt Alanna?”
“I’m not sure,” Darren admitted. “She’s your mother, right? What does she gain from having you get hurt?”
I frowned. “Ray would throw him out of our lives if he hurt me. Carmen would be free to take him with her. But I don’t think she’d hurt me for that, would she?”
“I don’t know, Alanna,” Jax said with a grimace. “She let you blame yourself for her death for years. There’s no telling what that kind of woman is capable of. And let’s not forget that she threw me across the room when I got in Quinten’s face before. She’s definitely overprotective of him.”
“Do you think she’s in love with him? They’ve only known each other for like two weeks. Maybe it’s obsession, but it’s definitely not love.”
Ray sighed. “Alanna, none of this changes the fact that Quinten is dangerous. Even if you find him and manage to reconcile, he will not be staying here anymore. I can’t risk it.”
“Then he and I will just have to find someplace else to stay, together. Away from all of you. Because you know what, he’s important to me.”
“Speaking of people who are important to someone, Ray, where’s Jenna?” Jax asked.
Ray choked on his orange juice, and I almost laughed. Jax motioned for the door while Ray was wiping his face, and I snuck out. Apparently Jax wasn’t sure whether or not he should be mad at Quinten. Maybe he thought he deserved another chance.
The path from the house to the tree house was overgrown with moss and other green plants. It had been year since anyone other than Darren had been out here, and it definitely showed. I caught myself on a thorny bush, tearing my shirt and drawing a thin line of blood along my arm.
I winced, and rubbed my arm.
I stopped at the foot of the ladder, and looked up. “Quinten? Are you there?”
“Go away,” he said quietly.
I shook my head, and began to climb. When I reached the top, I pulled myself up onto the old deck. “Quinten, we need to talk.”
“Alanna, please,” he begged. “Just go away. I don’t want to hurt you.”
I stepped into the small room. Quinten was crouched low in the corner. His head was in his hands, and I could see his shoulders heaving with each breathy sob.
I walked over to his corner and sat down across from him, careful not to touch him. The way he was feeling right now probably wasn’t very sociable. I wanted to say some magic word that would cheer him up, but I wasn’t sure where to start.
“Quinten, I understand what you’re going through.”
“No, you don’t!” He exploded, standing angrily. He was glaring down at me, but I didn’t shrink back. “You have no idea the horrible, disgusting things that go through my mind.”
I stood and grabbed his face, pulling him towards me. “Quinten, there is nothing that you can say that will change the way I feel about you. You have to understand that. You have to know that everything is going to work out for the best.”
He sighed, and leaned his head down against my shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said quietly. “If anything were to happen to you, that would be unbearable. But if I was the one to do it…”
“Quinten, I couldn’t live without you in my life. Believe me; any pain that comes from us being together is worth it, whether or not you’re the one causing the pain.”
“I wish I could have the faith in me that you do.”
“Just try. Quinten, you seem to think that I’m expecting you to be perfect. You’ve been thrown headfirst into this new life, with only my mother as a teacher. I can’t begin to imagine how horrible all of this must be for you.”
“At least I have you. Even if I can’t understand why you would want to be with a monster.”
“You’re not a monster,” I argued. “You just need some time to get everything under control.”
He buried his face in my shoulder, and I could feel him frown. Suddenly, his tongue reached out and ran up the side of my neck, causing me to shiver. “I can hear the blood in your veins, Alanna. You have no idea how badly I want to rip your throat out right now,” he whispered. “I’ve been thinking about killing you since you set foot in this stupid tree house.”
I turned my head a little, giving him better
access to my neck. “I’m yours, whenever.”
His breath froze, and I could feel his immediate hesitation. “Alanna–”
“I love you, Quinten. This is what our kind does when they’re in love. You need the blood, and I want to give it to you.”
He sighed against my neck; his warm breath tingled against my bare skin, and I felt him lower his head farther. When his lips touched my skin, I shivered in anticipation for what was to come. It was strange, being so excited for this, when my only experiences with it were bad ones, but I trusted Quinten, and he had to understand that.
There was a near-silent click as his fangs grew and extended, and I felt the pressure against my neck increase. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of torture, they broke the skin and, when his saliva mixed with my blood, the pleasure began.
As he took my blood, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders to pull him closer. One of his hands twisted roughly in my hair, and the other snaked around my waist and under my shirt, quickly warming the area.
Everything felt so perfect and wonderful, like a slice of pure heaven. As his lips pressed tightly against my throat, I had the strangest sensation that I was sustaining him, giving him life, and I was doing it of my own free will.
That one little thought made the whole experience a thousand times better than it already was, and that was saying something, because by the time he was finished, my breath was coming fast and harsh, and I could feel my heart pounding throughout my entire body.
And what was even more amazing, I could feel Quinten’s heartbeat too. It was in perfect sync with mine, just as it had been since we’d been reunited, and it was as if I could feel our very souls entwined together.
I’d never been happier than I was in that one, short, brief moment.
When Quinten pulled away, he wiped his red lips with the back of his hand, and he smiled. “That was…”
“Amazing.”
He sounded as out of breath as I felt, and I instinctively knew that he’d gotten as much from it as I had. The fact that something like that could be so intensely pleasurable told me that it wasn’t bad, like everyone else thought. It was just misunderstood.
None of the old werewolves on the council had probably ever been fed on willingly before and, until they did, they couldn’t judge.
I lifted my fingers to the puncture marks in my neck, and felt them throb pleasurably. Quinten sighed, and leaned his forehead down on mine. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said, nuzzling his neck.
When I opened my eyes, the worst possible thing that could have been waiting for us to return to our own world was there, and she was smiling triumphantly at me.
Ilene.
She was on the ground, near the trees, watching the two of us. Judging by the smirk on her face, she’d seen our entire exchange, and she was obviously planning to find a way to use it. But how could she? What I’d done was by choice, and–
If you ever harm anyone in this community, you will be staked, do you understand?
I understood what her plan must have been. In the eyes of the council, this was hurting me. It didn’t matter that I’d asked him to do it, only that he’d bitten me. He’d fed from me and, by our laws, that was punishable. It was considered hurting me, even if I didn’t agree.
I’d doomed us both.
“Quinten!”
He turned and looked over his shoulder, and I could tell the exact second he spotted Ilene, because his entire body tensed, and he bent down into a protective crouch. My hand was on his back, and I could feel the feral snarl tearing from his throat, and his ferocity surprised me.
Before I could even blink, he’d vanished from my side, and he was leaping for the ground, for Ilene. She didn’t scream, just shifted and took off into the woods.
“Quinten, stop!” I screamed, climbing down the ladder as fast as I could.
I couldn’t let him go after her alone. The council would use it to enforce their decision to get rid of him. They’d see him as unstable, and unsafe to be around. We had to prove them wrong, and killing Ilene wasn’t going to do that.
Before I reached the ground, Darren appeared through the trees, eyes scanning the clearing for danger.
“Alanna?”
“Quinten went after Ilene,” I said, running for the trees.
He was faster, and he sprinted off after the two of them. I just hoped that if I couldn’t stop them, Darren could. Would he be strong enough, though? Quinten was a vampire fledging, but Darren was only half vampire. Who would win?
“Alanna, it’s alright!” Darren called. “I’ve got him.”
I sighed in relief, and ran towards where Darren’s voice was coming from. When I reached the two of them, Quinten was busy struggling against Darren’s hold. His arms were pinned behind his back, but that didn’t keep him from lashing out with his fangs in the general direction that Ilene must have gone.
I ran over to him, and cupped his face in my hands. “Quinten, shush, it’s alright. Calm down, please.”
The result was instantaneous; he relaxed in Darren’s grip, and his fangs retracted. His eyes lost their reddish tint, and his entire face just softened at my touch. “Alanna, I’m sorry. I thought she was gonna hurt you,” he whispered, pleading with me.
“It’s alright, you were just trying to protect me,” I said, pulling him closer. “Quinten, we need to get out of here.”
He frowned. “This is our home, why would we leave?”
Darren frowned. “Alanna, the council cleared you two.”
I sighed. “Ilene saw Quinten feeding on me. Even though it was by choice, the council will see it as an attack. Part of the reason we were allowed to go was that Quinten was to never hurt anyone in the community, remember?”
“And I just did that,” he sighed, balling his hands into fists. “How could I have been so stupid?” He spun and punched a tree, showering us in an explosion of bark.
“It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I was the one that asked you to do it. I should have stopped to think.”
“Come on,” Darren said gently. “We have to get the two of you out of here. I guarantee Ilene’s first stop will be the council. If they catch you guys while you’re still here, you’ll never get away.”
Chapter Nine
“How could you have been so stupid?” Ray demanded, spinning to face us. “You were given a second chance by the council, and you blew it! Not even a week, and you’re in trouble…again!”
Jax frowned. “Ray–”
“Jax, don’t,” he said, glaring at nothing in particular. He sighed, and rubbed his face tiredly. “We’ll have to get the two of you out of here as soon as possible. The council may already be on its way. Alanna, go pack a bag. Don’t bring anything that will weigh the two of you down.”
“The two of us?” Quinten asked, stepping forward. “You aren’t coming?”
Ray shook his head. “No, it’ll just be the two of you. You’ll get away faster that way.”
“No!” I protested, appalled. “I’m not gonna just leave you behind, Dad. What if the council–”
“The council can do nothing to me,” he interrupted. “They won’t be able to definitively prove that I helped you escape, and they won’t dare move against me without irrefutable proof.”
I wasn’t so certain. “Dad, what if they do try and hurt you?”
“Alanna, I’ve fought vampires and werewolves before. I’ll be fine, now hurry. Pack, before it’s too late and you have to leave with nothing.”
Quinten darted into my bedroom too fast for me to follow, and I frowned. “Dad…”
“Alanna, please. If they come for you, they’re going to execute the two of you. I can’t let that happen.”
“Why would they execute Alanna, too?” Jax asked. I looked at him, and noticed that he was standing menacingly in front of the door. Nobody was gonna get in through there.
“Because they will,” Ray said, as if that answered everything. “Just trust
me. When they come for Quinten, they’ll come for her, too.”
I nodded, and followed Quinten into my bedroom. He was busy shoving a change of clothes into a gray duffel bag, and I walked over to him. “Quinten–”
“I’m sorry, Alanna. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been so stupid…”
“You weren’t being stupid, Quinten. You and I should be allowed to be together however we want. This isn’t fair to us, but it’s definitely not your fault.”
He frowned, but didn’t say anything. I knew that he didn’t believe me, but there was nothing I could say to change that right now. He blamed himself, I blamed myself, and Ray probably blamed both of us.
Quinten zipped the bag closed, and I grabbed a knife from my bedside table, just in case. When we returned to the living room, Ray was waiting for us. In his hands was a large, white envelope. He handed it to me and said, “There’s some emergency cash in there. It’s not much, but it’ll have to do on such short notice.”
I opened the envelope and frowned. There had to be over a thousand dollars in there.
“Two thousand dollars won’t last long, you guys, and you’re not gonna be able to get it from anywhere. So, try to make it last,” Ray said, ushering us to the back door. “Head for the nearest, largest city. Find a safe place to hole up for a while, and I’ll find you when I can.”
I threw my arms around Ray, and he hugged me as tight as he possibly could. “I love you, kiddo. Stay safe,” he whispered into my hair. “Don’t let anything happen to yourself.”
I nodded, blinking back tears. “I love you, too, Dad. Take care of yourself while I’m gone.”
He nodded and turned to Quinten. “I know things haven’t been the way they were before, but I still care for you like a son. And now I’m trusting you to take care of my daughter, by any means necessary.”
Quinten nodded. “I’ll protect her with my life.”
Ray hugged him, and shooed us off the porch. “Hurry, get out of here!” He shouted, as the sound of multiple cars on our gravel driveway reached our ears. “Go, now!”
Quinten and I ran into the trees, leaving behind everything and everyone we loved.
Arena Wars Trilogy Page 27
