“I was in the process of telling her as much,” a steely-eyed Ronan said.
Great. Now they were both on me. Meanwhile, I’d begun shivering again, both from the confrontation and the dropping temperature, and Carden fully registered my condition. He shot a quick glare Ronan’s way, then turned his full attention back to me. “You’re drenched,” he said, with an accusing edge in his voice. He adjusted himself beside me, sheltering me from the January wind. Feeling his body close was a relief.
Affection for him swelled in me, but I tried to hide it. He was being pretty blatant about his interest in me, and it was making me nervous. I gave his arm a discreet squeeze. “I’m fine.”
He ignored this to glare at Ronan some more. “She will become ill.”
Ronan bristled. Gathered himself. Then he dropped a bomb. “Acari Drew,” he said slowly, meaningfully, “is stronger than any of us realize.”
I gaped. What a statement. It shocked me into silence. I wasn’t the only one, either. We stood there, awkwardly, for what felt like an eternity, and I imagined each of us was weighing all the various things those words could imply.
It was my stomach that saved the day. It grumbled, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Hunger, so ordinary and yet so undeniable. Cheerily, I announced, “Hey, dinnertime.” Chirpy didn’t come naturally to me, and I was sure I sounded like a complete moron, but it did the trick.
Reluctantly, Carden nodded. “I will escort you back.” He was in full knight-in-shining-armor mode, his grim expression suggesting we were heading to battle instead of just the dining hall.
I realized he never gave his reason for seeking me out. Wasn’t he worried the Tracer would figure out what was between us? Ronan was obviously beginning to put two and two together. Though Carden wasn’t stupid—maybe that was what he’d wanted.
As we made our way back, I considered the good news and the bad news. First, I wasn’t nearly as alone as I’d feared. I did, in fact, have friends on this island. All good.
But the bad news? Apparently, my allies were incapable of standing within ten feet of each other without looking like they wanted to draw blood.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ididn’t get a warning. Just a tug on my hand, then boom. Carden swept me off the path, behind a rock. And then he kissed me. Hard.
His body pressed mine against the cool granite. I’d been shivering before—the night was freezing and flurries had begun to drift down from the night sky—but no more. He was as cool and solid as the rock at my back, and yet heat blazed through me. My body—my blood—hummed in perfect recognition. This was where I belonged. With Carden.
He pulled from me finally, and I drew in a shaky breath. I’d been nervous what he might say. Nervous he’d be mad to have found me with Ronan. Our conversation surely had looked like more than just a chat between student and teacher. It had been more than a simple chat. But this intense kiss? I hadn’t expected this.
“Carden…what was…wow…” I gasped a laugh, trying to get ahold of my senses. Was this his way of taking my mind off the keep? Because it was working. “What was that for?”
I couldn’t see him clearly, but I felt his eyes bore into me through the darkness. He swept the hair from my neck and leaned close, whispering, “To remind you.”
His words were a hot tickle in my ear, and I shivered with pleasure. If this was Carden being jealous, bring it on. “Remind me?”
“That you’re mine,” he growled.
Ronan was my friend. He gave my belly the occasional flutter. But that was where it stopped. In our time together, I’d known Ronan to steal my nerves. My will.
But Carden. He stole my breath.
I swallowed hard, gathering my senses. “Ronan is the last person you need to worry about.”
Recent concerns about my safety—about Yasuo—invaded my mind. Carden must’ve sensed it, because he asked, “And who should give me cause for concern?”
“Nobody.” I forced the thoughts from my mind. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Anxiety was a constant on the Isle of Night—I wouldn’t let it come between us. Instead, I considered the powerful creature in front of me. Just the thought that this ancient vampire might’ve been jealous…because of me…It exhilarated me. Made me feel bold.
I cupped his face in my hands and drew him down for a slow kiss…one that I led. “I don’t need any reminders,” I told him as I pulled away. How could I ever forget this?
“I appreciate a woman who knows her mind,” he said with a smile, then darted in for one last quick, hard kiss. “Perhaps I simply enjoy reminding you.” His words were confident, but I heard a hint of relief in his voice.
I’d never been much of a flirter, but seeing his smile gleam in the darkness gave me the guts. Using my best coy voice, I told him, “Hey, feel free to jog my memory anytime.”
He laughed, grabbed my hand, and tugged me around the other side of the rock. Leading us away from the path.
I stopped short, looking back to where we’d been. “Wait. The dining hall is that way.”
“Ah, but you won’t be eating in the dining hall this evening.”
“I won’t?”
“You wanted to know where I stay,” he said.
As much as I longed to see where he spent his time, I truly was starving. My stomach grumbled again. “I’m afraid I need more than just…to drink. Do you think I could grab some food first? It’ll just take a minute. I can just snag a—”
“Och.” He tsk-tsked me. “Have faith, wee dove. I may no longer be human, but I haven’t forgotten how to be a man. I have prepared you food.”
He sounded so proud saying it, I felt bad doubting him. But seriously, what passed for a meal in his world? It’d been hundreds of years since he’d needed food to survive. Did he remember what tasted good? Plus there was the whole ancient Scottish thing. Delicacies in his day were probably things like blood pudding served in sheep’s entrails. “What kind of food?” I tried not to sound too wary, but I probably failed.
He grinned at me, like he’d read my mind. “A good kind,” he said firmly. “Trust me.” He took my hand in his.
I did, and it was. Good, I mean. Like, all kinds of good.
His refuge was a modest, one-room cottage. I’d have called it a shack, except there was nothing shacky about the heavy stone and mortar walls. It was nestled on the bank of a lake that was small enough to have demanded only a few breaths to swim across to the other side. Though the general location was inland, it wasn’t so far from the coast that I didn’t get a visceral sense of the horizon, gray and empty in the distance.
“What is this place?” I ran a finger along the butcher-block table that punctuated the middle of the room. It was dinged up from generations of things like chopping turnips and deboning fish and yet it was spotlessly clean.
He came up behind me, resting his hands on my shoulders. “Such places are called bothies. Though I’ve staked my claim on this one, it would once have been open for any to use. Mostly hunters or fishermen. What do you think?”
I didn’t know what I’d expected, and though it wasn’t this, this didn’t surprise me. Everything about the place was solid—much like Carden. “I like it. It seems…right.”
My eyes went to the corner of the room and the sturdy wood platform that was the largest item of furniture in the place. It was covered in quilts and pillows—a bed.
His bed.
Oh God. His bed.
I was a virgin, obviously. And obviously, I was nowhere near ready to have sex with a vampire. But that big bed seemed so masculine. So…demanding.
“I thought…I thought you vampires didn’t really sleep.” So what did he use it for? I reminded myself that I was here because I’d asked him to bring me. I wasn’t ready for sex. But I trusted Carden. He probably already knew I wasn’t ready. This could be as innocent—or as not-innocent—as I wanted.
“Aye, it’s true. I no longer sleep as you know it. But vampire or no, a man likes to rest.” He seemed to
read my mood, and with a light squeeze to my shoulders, he walked to the fire and, like that, changed the subject. “Here I stand like an unschooled lad, and yet you’re hungry.”
I sighed. Carden always knew how to put me at my ease. “I am,” I said, happy to have the topic of food normalize this otherwise completely bizarro situation.
I smelled the food now and meandered over to stand with him at the fireplace. Taking up the whole back wall, the thing struck me as overly large for such a small cottage, but I supposed when it was originally built, that hearth would’ve provided heat, stove, and a gathering place all in one.
The cottage was dark, but the fire cast dancing orange light along the walls. “What is that?” I asked, studying the oddly shaped burning coals.
He went to stoke the fire higher. “Peat,” he explained, “burns longer than wood.”
“Handy.” I gave him a teasing smile. “Seeing as there aren’t exactly many trees on this rock you call an island.”
He laughed. “Precisely.” He sounded pleased, and that pleased me…more than it should have.
I looked away, self-conscious again. What was my problem? I was tripping out. I needed to relax. To let go. I was there, which meant he trusted me. What better way to relax, I decided, than by getting to know him better? I scanned the room, looking for the real Carden. The cottage was a bit on the Spartan side, lacking things like pictures or paintings. I realized what else was missing. “You don’t have any appliances,” I said suddenly.
“I’m not exactly in need of a refrigerator.” He cocked his head my way, flashing me his fangs in a playful smile.
“No, I guess not.”
He took a large fork from the hearthstone to spear and flip a piece of fish the size of my hand. He’d settled an iron grate over the coals, and the fish hit it with a sizzle.
I inhaled, taking in the aroma of butter and wild onions. I’d thought I was sick of seafood, but my watering mouth was currently disagreeing. “Wow, that smells good.”
“Aye. It’s fresh.” He nodded to the window. Moonlight sparkled on the lake, shimmering and lapping mere feet from the door. “From the loch just outside.”
He put down his fork, clapped the soot from his hands, and in one swift movement, I was in his arms. “I told you, love. I’ve not forgotten what it is to be a man.”
If knowing how to kiss me till I was dizzy or cook the heck out of a piece of fish was a sign of being a man, then Carden was one with a capital M.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I should go,” I told him later. We lounged on his bed, and though he’d nestled me close, he must’ve sensed I wasn’t ready for too much more. I loved kissing Carden, but feeding from him, too, added a whole extra layer of intensity. I wasn’t ready for much more than that…not yet. I felt close to him, intimate, yet not put-upon. I was safe, utterly. He wouldn’t demand anything from me that I didn’t willingly offer.
It was just right—he was just right.
“Not yet, love.” He flexed his large arm, snugging me more tightly to him. “First you must drink.”
“But I drank already.” We’d kissed, and I’d tasted Carden’s lifeblood pumping power through me. I felt the effects of him more than ever now, the change in me, from his blood.
“Was it enough?”
“Yes…” I paused to turn inward, checking in with my body. I was stronger, and lately I needed less blood to feel this way. “I feel different from before.”
He pulled away to meet my eye. “Good different?”
“Yeah.” I smiled and flexed my hands and shoulders. “Really good, actually.”
“It’s as I hoped,” he said. “As our bond grows deeper, you will grow stronger. Able to part from me for longer.”
“No blood fever, you mean?” When we’d first bonded, my first impulse had been to break our bond and I’d experimented with being apart from him. Let’s just say, the experiment didn’t go so well. I’d felt itchy and achy and just plain crazy.
“The risk never completely goes away, but aye, you are stronger.” He rolled onto his back, lifting me so I straddled him. “You are stronger,” he repeated in a voice gone hoarse. He squeezed my thighs as though he’d test that strength then and there. “And will become stronger still.” Then he pulled me down and took me in a fierce kiss.
I tasted him and thought of the fever. Even if I didn’t fear it, I’d still want this. Want him. And yet it was a relief to know it was possible to get past that feeling—that I wasn’t dependent on Carden every single day to function. Not that I wanted to part from him, but the fever had made me jittery, helpless. Girls died from it, driven insane by their dependence on the blood.
When we parted, I asked, “So does this mean the day will come when I won’t need to feed from you at all?”
He gave me a hard, narrow-eyed stare that I could tell was playful…mostly. “Is that what you wish?”
I nudged his shoulder. “No, that’s not what I wish,” I said, mimicking his grim tone. “It’s just…ironic, I guess.”
“Ironic?”
“That the closer we get, the farther from you I can be.”
“I don’t know of ironic. But I do know, the closer we get”—in a blindingly swift movement, he swept me beneath him on the bed and was kissing along my neck—“the closer I want you.”
I totally lost my train of thought for a while, melting under Carden’s touch. He was so strong and solid over me. How amazing that to drink his blood was to share that strength.
Finally, I pulled away, unable to push aside a nagging thought that’d entered my head. “Carden?”
He held my hands over my head and began to kiss his way down my arm. Distractedly, he mumbled, “Hmm?”
I unlaced my fingers from his and slipped my hand around the firm column of his neck. My thumb found his pulse, pounding. Beckoning. “If I were to drink more, would I get even stronger?”
He stilled and met my eyes, giving my question consideration. “Is that what you desire?”
If drinking from Carden made me stronger than the unbonded Initiates, if I drank even more, would it make me stronger than a Guidon? Stronger than a Trainee even? “Maybe,” I hedged. “Maybe I do.”
“There are no guarantees.” He genuinely considered my question. That was the thing about Carden—he was never dismissive of me, and I appreciated it. “It could as soon harm as help you,” he said. “There are risks.”
“Aren’t there always?” I thought of the castle. Even if I never found a way to spy inside, that kind of strength would come in handy with Alcántara’s recent assignment. I was still waiting for a Trainee to jump out of the bushes in an attempt to bite me. It would happen any day.
Whatever came, I told myself I’d survive it. Just as I’d survived all the rest.
But I also knew that, until now, I owed part of that survival to Carden himself. He’d been my secret weapon, helping me escape from my first mission, saving me from the rogue vampire. More than that, his very presence kept the other students—not to mention other vampires—at bay. He felt like the last guard, the emergency reserve. My Plan B.
But what if I didn’t need so much protection? I was getting the most advanced, the most lethal training in the world. And with extra doses of Carden’s blood, I was getting stronger. Would the day come when I could truly look out for myself completely, even against the vampires?
“I’d like to try.” I curled up toward him, nibbling at his neck. But strong as I was, I was still just a human girl, and my teeth were useless.
He pulled away, and for a moment, I thought he was angry or that he’d deny me. But he bit his wrist and held it out to me. “Then I’m yours to take, mo chridhe.”
I took, and took some more. It surged into my mouth, warm and rich and so much more exciting than simply drinking from a glass. I took his blood until I grew woozy from it. Drunk with it. My head spun from the rush of his blood in my veins. It spun with possibilities.
I felt closer to him than ev
er. I knew I’d never be immortal like Carden, but if I drank enough, would the day come where I’d age more slowly? What would happen the next time I faced down a vampire? I knew there was information Carden had kept from me out of concern that too much knowledge might put me in danger. But what if my strength made that moot? There was so much to know and learn…about the island, about Carden.
“Tell me,” I said suddenly.
The fire had died down, casting us in deep shadows, but his laugh was quiet and close. “Tell you what, dove?”
“About you.” I was feeling buzzed and easy, and it loosened my words. “About your childhood. Your family.”
“My family?” he asked warily.
I could tell I’d caught him by surprise. “Yeah,” I said. “You know…Did you have siblings? What was your father like? That sort of thing.”
“I…I didn’t much know my father,” he said quietly.
I adjusted to see him more clearly. The topic was clearly an uncomfortable one.
Before I could probe further, he changed the subject. “What of you? What of your home?”
“My home?” I brushed that one right off. “I don’t have a home. My father used to knock me around.”
“You mean to say he hit you?” His lips peeled back to reveal his fangs. “I’ll find him and—”
I hitched up on my elbow to kiss his cheek, cutting him off. “Thank you for that.” The sentiment warmed me. He looked so fiercely protective—I think that was even a hissing noise he’d made. “But I promise you, it’s not necessary. I’m sure I’ll beat you to it anyway.” I thought for a moment about my dad. Would I kick his ass if I ever saw him again? Was he even still out there, or had he already drunk himself to death? Did he ever think of me? I realized I didn’t care. “I’m over it,” I said, feeling my outer shell harden that much more. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
But he wouldn’t let it go. “Your mother allowed this to happen?”
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