by Hayley Todd
The liquid within had obviously been thinned with something. Wine, I was sure. I took a tentative sip, the liquid tasting...off as it passed over my tongue. I grimaced.
Anton placed the amulet tenderly on my bedside table and glanced up at me, watching me carefully. He lifted his hand and gently wiped a stray droplet of the blood-wine mixture from my lower lip.
A twist in my gut had me lurching forward, hand pressed to my abdomen. It was a worse pain than it had been before, something violent and dark.
“Kyra? Kyra, what’s wrong?” Anton asked, leaning to try to look at me. He pressed a hand to my back and staggered off the bed and onto his knees with a gasp. He struggled to breathe for several moments more before lurching to his feet and darting from the room.
I took long drags of breath around a nauseous agony that foiled through my body.
Anton came rushing back, a small trash can clutched in his hand. He held it in front of my, kneeling next to me.
I tried to fight the horrifying clench of my muscles but found myself unable to. I gasped, ejecting all of the blood I had ingested with an agonizing gag. Anton brushed my hair away from my face with one hand, staying near me the entire time though I was certain I was a disgusting mess.
When I’d finally emptied my stomach, he set the can aside and helped me rest my legs on the mattress. He lifted the blanket, tucking me in but watching me with wide eyes. He dropped to one knee, bringing his eyes level to mine.
“How many times has that happened?” he asked.
I sighed, my stomach still twisted into knots. “A few,” I replied. The human blood thing had never really worked out for me. Rarely, I could tolerate the stuff, but the majority of the time, my body rejected it. Carson was the only other person who knew. We didn’t want to expose how we had been getting by to anyone.
He stared at me for several long moments. Another side effect…
I flinched, the words hitting me more sharply than they should have. His eyebrows dipped in confusion. He watched me in silence.
C-Can you hear me? He pressed his lips into a tight line, only watching.
I could. I could hear him. His lips didn’t move but the words rang clearly to me. I hesitated, thinking back on all the times I had simply understood as though I’d been told, when someone’s eyes had said a thousand words.
“I can,” I replied softly, a long pause between my words. Anton’s golden eyes went wide, looking my face over. I stared hard at him, willing myself to hear more.
Jesus, Kyra. What is it about you?
I jerked, sharply.
Anton pressed his hand over mine. “Your powers are developing.”
“You mean that part of my magick is reading minds?” I asked him.
He nodded, the words lost to him.
“How did you eat before?” he asked, gazing at me.
The question caught me off guard, my heart thumping hard in my chest. How could I tell Anton of all people that I almost solely drank from my boyfriend’s neck? Next time we’d be discussing our favorite sexual positions! Talking about bloodletting was basically the equivalent.
Anton reached up before I could stop him and pressed his palm between my breasts, against my chest. My heart thundered beneath his fingers.
I...can’t…
His...blood…
My own voice rang out in my head, filtered and sounding as though it were being echoed around a bubble.
I fell back away from him, shoving his hand away from me. I glared at him, moving to the other side of the bed. “That is not okay,” I said, covering my chest with the blankets.
He sagged onto the edge of the bed. “You have to tell me, Ky,” he said. “This isn’t a joke or the time to be prideful. You will be fighting top tier vampires tomorrow. You can’t be malnourished and still survive that.”
I stared at the blankets, velvety smooth beneath my fingers. “You can’t tell anyone,” I whispered, my voice barely audible.
“Of course,” he replied, the voice surprisingly serious. I glanced up at him, lifting my hand out. He pressed his palm against my own and stunned me with a wave of thoughts and emotions. There was imagery of very private moments feeding from Carson along with a wave of love and exhilaration. It pulsed and ripped through me as if I were experiencing every emotion from our experiences in a seconds long rush.
He finally yanked his hand away, both of us breathing hard into the silence. “I knew it,” he sighed and it felt as though something snapped within me. Pain and frustration rippled out at me, accelerated by his betrayed tone.
He lifted my chin, not allowing me long to wallow. “I’m not judging you,” he said, staring into my eyes with those sunset colored orbs. “I’m just saying,” he continued, a grin slipping across his lips, “I was right. I knew it. Something felt wrong with our bond after we all imprinted,” he hummed to himself.
I could feel what he meant through his thoughts when I focused. They didn’t come easily but now that I was aware of what those impressions had been, I could feel an essence, like I just knew what to look for. Anton’s thoughts felt familiar.
There had been this feeling for him, this background buzzing in his blood that had tied to me. It called him to me and left a taste of my essence in him.
But after his father had tried to kill Anton, Carson, and myself, the only way to save our lives had been for Anton to create a mutual imprint between us. Carson and Anton had imprinted with me at the same moment that I had imprinted with them, creating a bizarre and unheard of bond between us. Imprinting was incredibly rare and there were no accounts of a three person imprint in vampire history.
After that moment, the bond was different, flavored with an impression of Carson too. And there was a different tug, pulling him toward me even more strongly than before, a craving for my blood that he would not allow. It was staggering.
I gasped, ripping my senses away from him. He had known. He may not have known what it was exactly but he had definitely felt something different.
He was watching me carefully again. “That is invasive, isn’t it?” He asked with a small smile.
I simply nodded apologetically and smiled back.
He suddenly frowned. “You still need to eat,” he said.
I peered at him, knowingly instantly what he was thinking. Imprint for imprint. He thought he could feed me like Carson had.
“I think this is another side effect of our...unusual imprint,” he supplied. “Maybe you can only tolerate the blood of those you’re imprinted to. It’s a natural allure in a normal imprint, intoxicatingly delicious and more empowering than any other blood. It would only make sense for that allure to be amplified when imprinted twice. Amplified to necessity for survival. Almost like withdrawal after a drug addiction.”
Despite how his devastatingly good looks and his class clown like charm made him appear, Anton was actually quite smart. He had a genius IQ and had several doctorate degrees already. Not many people knew that about him but I had attended one of his graduations a year after we met.
After some thought, I nodded.
His eyes danced as he scooted farther across the bed, pulling his button up away from his neck, exposing a tank top beneath and the musculature of his neckline.
The gesture was an echo of moments with Carson. He had a thing about getting blood needlessly on his clothes so every time he had the opportunity he’d remove his shirt and sit it neatly. Anton’s current moves could have been interchangeable with Carson’s own.
The removal of his button-up revealed a line of pale, perfect skin beneath. He tilted his head to the side and leaned nearer. I didn’t know if his theory was right. I wasn’t certain that his blood wouldn’t be in the trashcan next but something in the selfless moment, it didn’t matter.
My lips pressed eagerly to his skin, my teeth pressing out and pressing through. His life force filled me with a fury not unlike Carson’s. He melded beneath me, embracing me with barely restrained need. He wanted me and I knew it. I c
ould feel it vibrating against me everywhere that I touched him. His emotions were a turmoil that in this moment I could relieve.
I pulled at him and though he was normally very contained, I could feel everything. He let me dip into his mind if only for an instant. I wasn’t sure he’d even meant to.
I felt a well of desire and need boil out of him. He was on a precipice of collapse and I’d pushed him away. He wasn’t the only one burning with pain and fury but I had shoved him out of my own.
As I took him in, his emotions came too, exploding into me, flooding out my own. If I hadn’t felt the hot droplets run over me and down his shoulder, I wouldn’t have realized I was crying.
He pressed a hand into my hair, his fingers running carefully through it. His other hand curved down my back, his skin brushing my own.
As though it were visible, tangible, I felt a golden glow wash over us both, our powers entangling, our energy meshing, washing over our conjoined bodies. With it came peace and power and a disconcerting love I hadn’t known had been building there.
I lurched away from him, breathing hard and wiping my hand across my lips. Anton was similarly afflicted, bent at the waist and gasping for air. He peered up at me, his golden eyes glowing with residual magick.
“I-I’m sorry,” he gasped.
“No,” I plead, one palm pressed to my chest. His auburn brows tilted in confusion. “Don’t apologize. Don’t...don’t face that alone ever again.” I was shaking uncontrollably.
One of his hand snaked up my neck to clasp my cheek. I gazed at him, staring down at me with an enthralled burn in his eyes. He pressed his forehead to my own, but it seemed that neither of us had the right words.
I devolved into sobs as we touched, an echo of that lonely despair within him igniting me.
At some point, I must’ve fallen asleep because the next image I had was awaking, cradled in Anton’s protective embrace and filled with a resurgence of energy as I entered the first day of putting my training to the test.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
My dreams that night revisited moments, flickering thoughts that I had experienced within Achillia's memories. I had images of a staggeringly gargantuan arena curving into the night sky around me, filled with hot, furious bystanders. My opponent changed repeatedly, spinning with faces from my life.
First, I squared off against Liam and Henrick. They were the most fitting in this scene anyway. Then, their faces bled into one figure, tall and beautiful. Valeria crept towards me. I guess she suited the scene too, since Achillia had first appeared to me, fighting her sister in the Coliseum.
Valeria turned and appeared to me again, her face eerily familiar. Her face was similar to Valeria’s own, but different. The curves were softer, the eyes kinder. Instead of Valeria’s pale blonde, this woman’s hair was actually white. Instead of dangerous violet, this girl’s eyes were a faded lavender. I had seen her before.
She stared at me silently for a long moment, her body language meek.
I stared hard at her, my mind spinning. I recognized this woman. She was nearly interchangeable with Valeria if one was not looking closely. The longer you stared, however, the more obvious the differences became.
“This ‘er boss?” Said a horrifyingly familiar voice. It was gruff and strong and inspired fear in me with only the simple phrase. He was British in origin which was obvious in his clipped words.
I knew that she too was British, before she even spoke. Because I remembered this. “It does appear to be,” she replied in a smooth, delicate voice. She stared at me, her pink lips moving in time to the words. “Collect some of her blood, you certainly spilled enough of it,” she continued and the words snapped to me in startling clarity.
Those lips split into a smile.
She knew what came next, and so did I.
My heart stabbed terrified agony through my entire chest as a shadowy image of Raoul, the Vampyre to beat me, eat me, and try to rape me, appeared in the blackness of night overhead. My knees buckled beneath me and fell into the dirt.
It was her. The one who had started this entire journey. She was the one who had been in the club that night, who had lured me out and into Henrick’s first trap. We had thought her to be Valeria, and looking at this woman now, I could still see the potential confusion. They were eerily similar, but obviously different.
Darkness pressed down into me, the sky falling into the bowl of the arena below. Raoul’s face neared closer, his mouth opening to reveal stories long fangs. And then a golden glow exploded over us, lurching into the sky. I whipped my gaze away, an arm stretched across my eyes. The light burned even still.
I peered into shadow cast across my form. An auburn haired man stood over me, glaring up and into Raoul’s grimace. He screamed into the sky, Raoul’s face shrinking away in horror.
The arena vanished, enveloping us into pure darkness. All that remained was me, and him. I waited for Carson to turn, to scoop me into an embrace, but the eyes that turned onto me weren’t the liquid green of my boyfriend, but the golden burn of Anton. As he turned, the differences became more obvious until I was baffled about how I could have confused them.
Anton turned, holding a hand out to me. I took it, unable to keep my gaze off of his glowing golden eyes. He lifted me to my feet, pulling me into his arms. His grip was cool, but comforting. He was soft and gentle. And he’d scared the nightmares away.
I blinked awake. Anton’s chest rested beneath my cheek. I didn't move.
“You're not the greatest at pretending to be asleep,” he said almost instantly. I peered up at him curiously. He chuckled. “You froze. Stopped breathing.”
I hesitated, but realized he was right. My entire body had frozen, unnaturally still. I could only imagine that in deep slumber, I had breathed and subtly shifted. I sat up, lifting myself off of his torso. He shifted up beneath me, leaning on one elbow. His face was so close to mine that I could feel his cool breath across my lips.
He peered closely at me. “Are you okay?” He asked.
I stared back at him, confused. I nodded.
He lifted a hand, brushing strands of hair from my face. “Your...dream?”
I froze again. He knew. He knew about my dream! What had we done?
“How?” I asked him.
He shrugged, watching me. His neck had healed, the exposed line of skin along his shoulder bare and perfect again. As though he knew my thoughts, he rubbed the skin along his collarbone.
“What did we do?” I asked him, fearing the consequences of drinking his blood. It hadn't felt as insignificant as drinking from Carson. Drinking Carson's blood had been enticing, alluring, and delicious but this seemed to hold more. And it unnerved me.
Anton huffed a quiet chuckle. “I wish I knew,” he replied, smiling. He was adorable, the joy on his face drawing me in. He so often wore this snarky, arrogant half smirk, but in that moment, he was grinning an innocent joy.
I rolled out of bed before I could make a bad decision and threw myself into the bathroom, swinging the door shut behind me. I got in the shower, letting steaming hot water ripple across my skin.
I didn't have time to worry about whatever it was that took place between Anton and myself. I had plenty on my late already. I was about to start a bunch of fights with ancient, all-powerful vampires. My boyfriend had been kidnapped by some jilted girl from his past. And a mystery I thought I had solved two years ago, had just reemerged through some reconfigured memories. Whatever had occurred last night was going to have to wait.
I could sense Anton the entire time that I showered. I knew exactly where he was at all times as though I could see him through the walls. I could feel his heartbeat and feel his pure joy.
Something had changed though I wasn’t sure what, nor was I certain of what kind of change it may be.
Another new development became evident once he got moving. His thoughts sang out to me, brushing against my consciousness no matter how hard I pushed them away. He couldn’t get his mind off
of last night either and he made it impossible for me to think of anything else if I was even capable.
I couldn’t help a thrill of glee at his mood. I’d seen Anton go through some dower moments recently and this was a pleasant surprise.
I left the bathroom dressed for battle. I wore a black crop top tight enough to stay out of the way without being so tight that I couldn’t move along with a pair of black tights and black sneakers.
Anton was seated at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee between his hands. He grinned at me as I entered the room, pulling my long hair into a bun.
“Coffee’s on the warmer,” he called as I crossed the kitchen. I grabbed a cup, a smile crossing my face as I realized he’d already sat the French vanilla creamer and sugar on the counter.
I sat with him, sipping at my creamer with a touch of coffee.
He spoke first, surprising me with something not about last night, “Are you ready for the fights?”
I hesitated, abandoning the dozens of questions and answers I’d prepared in my head. “I’ve been training since I was like four,” I replied, staring into the swirls of cream in my coffee, “if I’m not ready now, I don’t know if I ever will be.”
He surprised me again by chuckling.
“What?” I asked, staring at him.
“I just think that’s an understatement,” he replied. “I’ve seen you demolish legions of vamps you shouldn’t have been able to touch. I think you’ll be fine.”
His faith sent a surge of pleasure through me, delighted at his approval. He was right, I realized. I wasn’t afraid of fighting these ancient vampires. There were a dozen worries and insecurities stirring in my belly but fighting them weren’t any of them.
If you weren’t fine I’d stop them anyway. He said in his mind. And I wasn't sure if horror or warmth was the cause of the ripple down my spine. I was thrilled that he wanted to protect me but I was terrified because the thought of him in danger physically hurt me.
