The Alpha stepped towards us and gestured to Knight. “Is it his bracelet?” I shook my head. Did it matter? “It’s an ancient tradition among us that the one who holds the bracelet of an Alpha is under his protection. No one really knows where it came from, but it’s generally understood that the Alpha who gifted the bracelet is who protects the one wearing it.” He looked up at Knight. “You’re an Alpha,” he stated, not even asking. “It’s not obvious at the first glance. There’s something off with you.” So I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed something off about Knight. While I’d never have guessed he was an Alpha, it wasn’t much of a stretch.
“She’s under my protection now, since her Alpha isn’t here,” Knight told him. Well. That explained why he’d let me tag along with him. Though, since I held the money, technically he was tagging along with me.
The Alpha’s mate walked up to stand beside him. “He’s an Alpha, Jesse?” She made a noise like she was having a hard time believing it, and then she got serious. “Ah. I can see it now. Where’s your bracelet, Alpha?”
“I don’t have one,” Knight responded.
Even I was shocked. From what I could tell about the bracelets, they were a symbol of status, showing everyone who could see that you and your pack were strong enough to slay Vampires. The Alpha of this pack had at least thirty fangs on his bracelet whereas mine only had about ten. Knight might not be in a pack, but he was almost twice as big as the Alpha in front of us.
Of course, I’d never seen Knight wearing a fang bracelet, but I just assumed he kept it hidden since he didn’t have a pack to back up his claim of strength. I turned around and looked up at him, suddenly only thinking of one think to ask him. “Why not?”
He glanced down at me and said simply, “I’ve never killed a vampire.”
Oh.
“A Lycan that doesn’t kill Vampires and a Vampire that spares Lycans,” the Alpha, Jesse, said with a chuckle. “What a pair.”
“I’m not sure he’s a Lycan,” the Alpha female said suddenly. She’d been studying Knight for several minutes, apparently noticing things that I hadn’t. Not a Lycan? Of course he was a Lycan! What else would he be? “I’d call him a werewolf, but that would be impossible.”
Do what now?
“Aren’t they…you…the same thing?” I asked her. Apparently it was the wrong question to ask because they both got offended.
“It is not the same thing! Werewolves turn with the full moon,” the Alpha female said with a haughty sniff. “They’re wild and uncontrollable when they shift.”
I felt Knight grow ridged as they talked. The Alpha female dismissed her observation as a random thought and dropped it, but she kept eyeing Knight with suspicion. We left the pack after they shared some barbecued deer with us and Jesse gave us his number with the promise they’d help us if we needed it.
When we were miles away, I opened my mouth to ask Knight about what the Alpha female had said, but he quickly turned the radio on full blast to drown me out. So, he was okay with protecting me, but not okay with me asking about how everyone kept mentioning that there was something weird about him. Whether or not he felt like sharing whatever he was hiding, if what the Alpha female said was true, he only had a few days until the next full moon. If I royally pissed him off and he didn’t shift, I’d have my answer.
Balthazar had referred to Knight as ‘the marked’, and now Knight had been called a ‘werewolf’ instead of a Lycan. What was he?
When we reached the border of Texas, I was instantly hit with the scent of pack territory. Knight started fiddling with his keys to distract himself from growling instinctively. We continued until the smell was gone and checked into a fancy hotel for the night. Staying at only fleabag hotels was a pattern, and easily tracked, so we went off the trail every so often and stayed at very expensive hotels. That night, we had our own beds in a two-room suite, room service, and a large pool to swim in.
Knight left to go swimming as soon as we put our stuff in the suite. I drank the last few droplets from my bag of blood. It was now empty. I set it on fire in one of the trash bins until it was ash and then flushed the ashes down the toilet. Being alone in my room felt weird to me, so I put on the denim jacket I’d bought in Chicago and walked down to the pool.
The humans had all gone to bed, leaving Knight alone in the water swimming laps. I sat down on one of the pool chairs to watch him. I had no doubt that he knew I was there, but he didn’t stop. Now that I was seeing him shirtless, I could see he was way more muscled than I’d originally thought. In the time we’d been together, he’d been chomping down enough burgers to cause a heart attack, and I’d never seen him lifting weights or doing crunches. He didn’t even have any weights in his bag, that I’d seen anyway.
He stopped swimming and stood up in the pool, the water only coming up to his sternum and revealing a small patch of black chest hair. His chest was decorated with five long scratches that looked pink like he’d gotten them recently, but I could tell they had been there awhile. He ran his hands through his thick black hair to get it out of his face, and then he noticed me sitting there watching him. I thought he’d make some comment about me peeping on him, but instead he asked, “Why are you wearing a jacket? This is Texas. It's not cold.”
I took it off and smiled disarmingly. “I’m used to living in New York State. It’s not as warm there. Habit, I guess.” He studied me for a few seconds, but didn’t press me further.
“Do you swim? The water is nice. I know it’s cliché to be a wolf and like water,” he added with a roll of his eyes. I laughed and tried not to shiver. The lack of blood was making my body temperature fall. If anyone touched me, my skin would be cold. Because of this, the thought of swimming in cold water wasn’t appealing to me, as much as I would’ve enjoyed it under normal circumstances. I wasn’t doing a very good job of pretending I was fine, because Knight stopped smiling and got out of the pool. He walked over to me, leaving puddles of water and large footprints. “You need blood,” he stated when he stood in front of me. He didn’t have to ask.
“I’m fine,” I lied. He picked my jacket up and draped it on my shoulders, then he slumped down in the chair next to me.
“Being with you is….” I waited for him to finish his sentence. Was this his leaving speech? “...hard.” I let out the air I’d been holding. I didn’t feel like having this conversation so low on blood. When I tried to get up, he grabbed my arm and sat me back down. “Being around a vampire is like a Christian living with an Atheist. Your habits, drinking blood, I can’t stand them. When I was a boy, we were taught that vampires drank because they were monsters. No one said anything about you needing it to stay strong. I’ll admit, it’s not your average diet, but…” He raked his hands through his hair again. “It’s clear you can’t survive without it, even though you’re trying to.” Saying that was difficult for him, and I appreciated his effort to push past his prejudice. I didn’t dare ask him why he was staying with me, even though it was so hard for him, because I feared the answer.
We sat there for over an hour just looking at the water and not speaking. It was nice. Knight’s energy had a calming effect, something I only felt around Balthazar. At the castle, I was constantly on edge from everything that went on there. Being on the run was more relaxing, if you can believe that. Finally, Knight got up and I followed him to our suite. We went to bed in our separate rooms, but with our perfect hearing, we could hear everything the other was doing. After I fluffed my pillows five times, Knight sighed and started talking to me from the other room.
“How old did you say you were?”
This felt like a phone conversation because I couldn’t see him. “Don’t you know it’s not polite to ask a lady how old she is?”
“Fine. Just tell me the century.”
“16th.”
He paused and I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or about to make a joke. “Okay then. What was life like...you know…four hundred years ago?”
“You’r
e probably expecting me to say something like smelly.”
“Probably.”
“It actually was pretty smelly. But. It was also hard. Life was hard. Not just simple things like washing a shirt or plucking a pheasant. Living was so hard. There were no guarantees about anything. You could go to bed and wake up to the news that five of your friends had gotten sick and died. Or they were victims of robbers. Or the king had ordered a village slaughtered for politics.” I swiped my eyes to catch some tears. “We were more connected with the humans in those days. Their fragility was always around us, staring us in the face. That’s why we keep to ourselves now. It’s easier that way. Plus, some of us have superiority complexes.”
I was trying to make him laugh, but Knight was silent for a long time. When I’d convinced myself he’d fallen asleep, he suddenly sighed and said, “Since we’re sharing, I should tell you something.”
“Okay?”
“I was born over a hundred years ago.”
Chapter 10
Somehow, my ears and my brain were having trouble communicating with each other and it took my several minutes to process what Knight had just told me.
“Is that umm….normal for Lycans?” As much as I wanted to sound smart, I really had no idea if it was or not. “Or are you just a weirdo, as I suspected you are?”
“You’re not being very reassuring considering you’re the only person I’ve ever told.”
I was about to ask him more when he opened the door between our rooms and walked in wearing pajama bottoms, carrying pillows and a comforter.
I pulled my blanket up to cover my chest, even though I wasn’t the one who was topless. “Uh…. what’s up?”
“Your scent gets stronger when I’m too far away,” he said simply, and deposited his pallet on my floor.
“You’re in a lady’s bedchamber,” I told him. He lifted an eyebrow at me, silently reminding me we’d been sharing a room for a while now, and continued adjusting his comforter.
When he laid down, he said in a sarcastic tone, “I’ll try not to ravish you in my sleep.”
The next day we traveled through a town that grew fruit, so we decided to stop early and get a room at a bed and breakfast. We’d been travelling together for about two weeks, and I’d been running for even longer, so it felt time for a tiny break. The bed and breakfast we’d decided on was part of a peach orchard. Fruit trees dotted the acreage around the old white house, most of them peach, but several were apricot and plum. As part of our room deal, we could pick a bushel of fruit to take with us.
Knight picked the fruit expertly, knowing which were ripe, too ripe, and not ripe enough. He could reach the branches without a ladder, so I stood next to him with the bushel. His face was so excited, it was becoming contagious. After placing another fruit in the basket, with an enormous grin on his face, I gave him a questioning look.
“I didn’t realize you loved fruit this much Mr. I’ll-take-the-largest-burger-you-have.” I’d never seen him eat vegetation that wasn’t between sesame seed buns or deep fried in oil.
He shoved me playfully and almost made me drop the basket. “I grew up on an orchard, almost exactly like this one, in fact. It was before the war.” By war, he meant the Civil War. “The trees were so stunning in the spring. Pink peach blossoms are the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen. It made me wish I could paint them just to capture their beauty.” He gave a mournful grin and tossed another peach into the bushel. “That was a long time ago. I came back after the war to run the orchard with my mother, but a plague of locusts came. They ate everything green and beautiful. Then when everything green was gone, they chewed the wood on the house, the clothes we left out to dry, the rope on the fences.” He sat down and played with the peach in his hands. I could easily picture him over a hundred years ago, seeing everything he’d ever loved being destroyed.
“I was in Japan around then,” I said quietly. “We had to escape in case anyone found our castle during the way, so we all went to different countries. They have cherry trees in Japan. Have you ever seen one?” He shook his head, still lost in the past. I started picking peaches from the lower branches and had to use a step stool.
“Sorry,” he said after several minutes of me struggling to reach the fruit. I usually wore heels to make me taller, since I was only average height, but right now I was sticking to hipster sneakers and sandals.
“Sorry for telling me all that or sorry you’re cruelly reminding me that you’re over a foot taller than I am?” He laughed then and the past was gone from his face. “A little help?” I asked him, and pointed to some peaches I couldn’t reach.
“You’re doing fine,” he answered with a mischievous grin.
“Jerk.” I threw a peach at him, but I should’ve known better because he started a fruit fight with the bruised peaches that lay on the ground. I wasn’t that good of a throw since I wasn’t at top strength, but I held my own. We were both sticky and laughing when we walked back to the bed and breakfast carrying a bushel of fruit between us. Our mood was killed as we came closer and saw a police car sitting in front of the house. Knight took the basket from me and we scurried behind a shed where we wouldn’t be seen. The local sheriff was talking to the owner of the bed and breakfast, who gestured to the Impala and then the window of our room.
He was here for me.
Knight set the bushel down and took my wrist. I looked over and he put a finger to his lips, then gestured he was going to get our bags from the room and I needed to stay here. He left, so I pushed my senses out to listen in on the sheriff and the proprietor. It was difficult, since I hadn’t fed that day, but I managed to keep it up for a few minutes.
“…so she didn’t look suspicious?”
“No! I can’t believe she killed a little girl!” What? What was she talking about?
“What about the man with her?”
“He was…. well, he’s a big man, but he wasn’t rude. Just being near him was scary though.” I tried not to laugh. Knight was intimidating, with just his height alone. Good thing he hadn’t flashed his pointed teeth.
“He must be an accomplice,” the sheriff concluded, unfairly.
I gasped as my senses pulled back in. I felt even weaker now. Knight was there before I noticed he was near, carrying our bags over his shoulder. He took my hand again and said one word:
“Run.”
A month ago, running would’ve been so easy and so much fun. But weeks of drinking bagged blood had turned me into an invalid. Only a blood frenzy would strengthen me now, or just, you know, drinking from someone. I wasn’t even sure a frenzy would work at this point. So, when Knight grabbed me and told me to run, I failed miserably. I ran for about two minutes, but then my legs stopped working properly and I started tripping over my own feet. Knight clicked his tongue at me, and then he adjusted the bags, picked me up, and kept running. With my legs wrapped around his waist and his arms holding me against his chest, my mouth was right on his neck.
In the back of my mind, I remembered the gruesome training the turned went through right after becoming vampires. They had to forcibly learn control, but I was born with the control to keep my fangs in my mouth, even with a hot pulsing neck beneath my mouth. I almost decided to screw control and just drink Knight’s blood. Two things stopped me.
One: It’s completely unethical to drink without asking, and I’d already done that once to him.
Two: He’d probably drop me and leave me to die by Arthur’s hand.
Knight ran across the Texan countryside for over an hour, not slowing and not even winded. Every minute or so he adjusted his hands on me to make sure I was still there and not falling off him. My arms were too weak to even anchor myself on his neck. He finally slowed down and stopped for a few minutes to rest, though from the way he was breathing, you’d never have known he’d just run that far carrying a vampire and two bags.
He sighed like he was about to speak, and I stilled, waiting for him to complain or something. “My car,�
� was all he said. I giggled and he laughed too, the movement shaking my head.
“Call Jesse, he’ll keep it for you.” The Alpha had said to call him if we needed anything. This was anything.
“Text him,” Knight said to me. “Where’s the phone?”
I dropped my head against his shoulder. “I don’t think I can make my hand hold it.” I didn’t need to say why. He knew.
He rubbed my back and held me closer to keep me from falling. “Just wait a little longer.” We were off again, Knight navigating the terrain like a pro, until we’d been gone for several hours. The sun was setting when he stopped again. I vaguely registered the sound of him stepping into a pool of water and then he set me down inside a cave. Behind him was a waterfall and we were slightly hidden in the curtain of water. He sat down at my feet and we both rested.
After a few minutes, he glanced over at me. “I think your lotion is all rubbed off.” I felt pale, so I was probably a lot whiter than normal. I started sliding down the wall since I couldn’t hold myself up, but Knight was there to catch me.
I let him guide me onto his lap, I was kind of powerless to do otherwise, but when he tilted his head to the side to expose his neck, I froze. “What are you doing?” I asked him with trepidation, though I knew full well what he was offering.
“I heard the humans back there. Your kind has involved their law enforcement to find you. The hospitals will probably be on alert as well. Stealing blood was already risky. Now it’ll give us away.” He swallowed and met my eyes. “I’m offering this willingly. I told Jesse I would protect you, and I meant it. Now drink before I change my mind.”
My fangs almost hurt from lack of use as they slid down. I didn’t need them when I drank bagged blood, so they’d been pushed up for weeks. With them down, my senses opened slightly and Knight’s scent washed over me. He smelled different. I couldn’t put my finger on it. He put his hands on my waist, so I leaned in and gasped when my teeth sunk into him. I think he moaned, but I didn’t notice. All I could focus on was his blood. It tasted so good. It was like almost dying and feeling life pour into you again, which wasn’t far from the truth considering how weak I’d been.
Knight of the Hunted Page 7
