by Kaia Bennett
Evie became haunted by the second week of training. We moved our tent to the new clearing, and kept ourselves camouflaged, despite not seeing another helicopter. Every day, she came home tired and hungry, first for food, and then for my touch. To remember why—and for whom—she was working so hard.
She ventured off into the woods to check on her family that same week. I heard the call of her anguish in my mind. I found her sobbing into her hands, while Stark rubbed her back and held my phone.
“They don’t understand,” she cried. “They don’t understand why I don’t just leave and come to them. My brother didn’t even want to talk to me. He just wants to go home and back to his old school and his friends.”
If I’d stayed dead they could’ve lived their lives. At least they’d have had that.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, trying to breathe through the shards of glass that seemed to push through my chest. I motioned for Stark to beat it with my thumb to leave us to together, but before he did, he pulled me aside and handed me my phone.
“Cai left a text.”
I looked down at the screen and inhaled, bracing for the worst.
Your father has been contained. You’re very welcome and I’ll find a way for you and your mate to pay me back. Soon.
Relief swelled inside me, the sharp pieces in my chest melting like ice so I could breathe.
“Does she know?”
Stark nodded. “I told her we can leave, that after you talk to Cai, if the coast really is clear, I can take her to them.”
When Stark marched back to camp, she leaned her head on my chest while I held her.
“We can’t leave yet, even if it is safe.” Evie sniffled and swiped her face. “We can move if need be, and create wards somewhere else, but it takes time to undo them. I haven’t even learned how to make them yet, it’s taking forever!”
Her chest shuddered with a breath before she broke into sobs again. I suppressed the urge to taste those precious droplets while she rained them onto my shirt. I rubbed her back, unwilling to say what needed to be said while she battled her sorrow.
When she calmed, I kissed the top of her head
“Even if we were ready today, you’d have to explain us to your family.” I served her sharp truth with a remorse chaser. “That’s not something you’ll be able to do overnight either, Evie. Not something prey are gonna understand. Not at first, maybe not ever.”
“Humans, Jesse. Not prey. My family aren’t food.”
I sighed and pulled her in tighter so she couldn’t see my grimace. “You know what I meant, baby. I’m working on it, but correcting a lifetime of thought is gonna take—”
“Time,” she whispered. “Everything takes time.”
“Mm hmm. Now that you’re turned, you have a lot more of it. Give yourself a break, you’re learning things you’d have been taught since childhood, if you’d known you were a witch.” I kissed the top of her head again, then her tear-streaked cheek. “This is all temporary, Evie. If anyone can make their family understand what you’ve been through, what we are to each other now, it’s you.”
She nodded and sucked in a shivering breath. I kissed the other cheek, her tears like honey on my tongue, a taste she’d given me with her mind. I’d have to work on this. I shouldn’t be licking her sadness off my lips like some human dessert.
“I don’t mind.” Her nipples pebbled against my chest in confirmation. “I should, it’s kinda twisted that you think my tears are sweet. But, we are twisted.”
“I think everything on you is sweet,” I murmured against her throat. “Like… those pancakes you insist on making.”
She giggled when I gripped her ass, and then gasped when I reached between her legs to rub her pussy. I hauled her to me so she could rub against my growing erection while I bit her throat.
“Admit it, you like tasting human food through me. Dead things.” She tried to tease but her moans got in the way. The heat of her cunt seared my hand through the denim.
“None of that shit is food.” I kissed her with all the hunger and possessiveness in me, coating her tongue with her own blood. “You taste that, baby? That’s what feeds me. You’re what feeds me.”
I walked her backwards until I could push her against a tree. She braced her upper body against the trunk, legs spread while I took up space between them. I hauled her hips against mine so she could grind against my cock.
“I’m not the only thing that feeds you.” She smiled, her pupils dilating before her eyes slammed shut. “I know you spend half the month waiting to share a human with me, you creep.”
I grinned and flicked the button of her jeans open. The width of my hand wrenched the zipper down when I hurried to cup her wet flesh. “It’s always sweeter when I feed with you. It’s that creepy witch shit you pull, especially now that you can make feeding sweet for the prey.”
She laughed, that exuberant smile I adored splitting her lips until she bit down on a moan and furrowed her brow. She pumped her hips and I answered with harsh swipes and squeezes of her dewy lips.
“You just gonna toy with me, or fuck me?”
“Oh, is that what you want? You wanna salt and sow, witch?”
She nodded frantically and pulled me into her embrace, kissing me and biting my tongue to taste me. The sweetness of my mate. Every part of you tastes like sin.
Her thoughts made me smile. Even with her witch side dominating, she still craved the taste of me, my blood, my sweat, and come. I pulled my hand free and painted her lips with my favorite flavor, shoved them inside, and let her tongue play over the sweet and salty mingling of her lust.
One last kiss, then I spun her and shoved her jeans down her hips. The woods echoed with the crack of my palm against her ass, and the cry she loosed. Animals scattered. I chuckled at the skittering of prey in the underbrush, the play of cold air on her reddened cheeks as I spanked her. With one hand, she scratched the bark, with the other, she reached between her legs to ease the ache while I undid my jeans.
I slid in hard enough to hike her onto her toes and made her whimper with pain while I groaned at the clenching fit.
Wrenching her hair away from her ear, I whispered, “You like how I make it hurt, don’t you, baby?”
“You know I do.” She sucked air through her teeth at the sharp tug I gave her curls. “Fuck me. Hurt me, Jesse.”
We fucked like animals against that tree. I got the strangest feeling we’d been here before, like a dream coming true. I made her cry, I made her scream. When she said she couldn’t come again, I wrenched another orgasm from her. My fingers punished her clit, my cock didn’t relent in the hard pace I set. Her sweat mingled with mine when we kissed and rubbed foreheads, when my hips smacked against her ass. I tasted tears of a different sort mingling with her blood on my tongue and I licked them up with a growl of possession and love.
In the end, just before I thought I would explode out of my own skin, just before my balls tightened and my shaft swelled within her juicy core, I sank my fangs in her throat and drank a deep draught of sweet poison.
Her body vibrated and pulsed. Mine shook like a rocket dying to explode in the sky.
Time crawled while we swam in slow motion within in this strange ocean of sensation. Every sigh echoed from her lips, every breath from mine sounded like I breathed into an echo chamber.
Evie arched into me, the sweet surrender of her body and mind prickling every atom in me to life. I felt like we’d traveled again into the circle of mists, shoved together by our need, but instead of frenzied speed, the universe slowed us. My venom slid into her open veins. Possessed by something older than me, older than my father and his father before him, as old as the blood rushing through our veins, my mind called out to hers.
I am the flame, the fang of death. Fill me with life, and I will shelter you from death. Drink of me. Drop by drop.
Her body swallowed my venom. Her mouth swallowed my kiss, my breath and my pledge and she made one of her own, one she’
d recalled as if from a dream in the desolate Austin woods where she healed me.
I am the fount, the bearer of life. Drink of life, as I drink of death. Drink of me. Drop by drop.
The earth heard us, whatever being had brought us together when everything should’ve torn us apart, answered with approval.
Time shot forward, we cried out together as our conscious minds caught up with our straining bodies. A vicious orgasm rocked us. The tree bore our weight. We marred the bark with white scratches, my fingers laced through hers, as I pumped her full of come. My venom sizzled in her veins. Her blood sang in mine.
It should’ve been like this our first time.
I didn’t want to leave her body. She didn’t want to let me go. I scented more blood, and realized when I turned her face the other side, that the bark had scraped her cheek. The flesh had already begun to heal. I licked and kissed the love wound and she grinned with a wince.
“This must be the vampire equivalent of rug burn, huh?”
“I was just following orders. Hurts, right?”
She burst into giggles that made me groan against her bleeding throat from the vibrations. The wound hadn’t yet begun to heal. When I licked her clean, I tasted the stinging burn of my venom, the heat snapping on my tongue.
I didn’t think the true born venom that made companions and mates for my lonely species would do anything else to Evie. She’d already been turned, after all. But, even as I pulled out of her pulsing pussy, I felt a sense of togetherness I hadn’t known I’d been craving. I felt like I’d finally come back to the beginning, to the purpose for the burn in her veins. I’d made my vow and she chose me again. The acid healed instead of killed, pulling us even deeper into a bond we wanted to strengthen.
We pulled our clothes back to rights. I wiped the sweat from my brow and I took her hand.
With a lopsided grin I teased, “How’s that for a salt and sow, baby?”
She huffed, but as we walked away she looked around, she inhaled deep.
“I think we actually did it, Jesse. By accident, like everything else. It feels different here now. Like maybe—”
Maybe it can be a home. Maybe this can be quiet, and good, and ours.
She squeezed my hand. We’d consecrated this little spot of land after all.
A week later, I braced myself for a shitty morning as I returned from a hunt with Vaughn. The full moon would be approaching in a week. Thankfully, because the blood lust in Vaughn stirred again.
“You know she’s gonna sense what happened—”
“Yeah. I know.”
He’d killed his prey. Vaughn struggled and lost to the bloodlust, stopping just short of raping the hiker, but that killed the bespelled high he’d been riding from the circle. I didn’t look forward to sharing Vaughn’s backslide with Evie.
“Vaughn—”
“I don’t wanna talk about it. Not everyone has a mate they can rein themselves in for when the bloodlust hits. I didn’t fuck her, that’s all I got for now.”
I stretched out the kinks of tension in my neck. In truth, she’d have been there, if not for the strange flagging of her vampire appetite.
I’d been counting down the days, waiting for her to join us on a hunt, to fuck and feed with me with abandon. I knew when the full moon would come with the precision of any wolf or witch, but she felt nothing, despite the moon’s approach. A mood fell over her, thanks to stumbling blocks in her training, and that meant comfort food.
Fucking. Human food.
The overwhelming waft of the pancakes and chicken that had been cooking on the Coleman propane stove just outside the tent curled in my nostrils. The smell made the warm blood in my stomach curdle and my cock flagged. We entered the tent just as Evie handed Stark a plate with a small army’s worth of food on the surface. The wolf gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek and sighed, “Thanks, Evie,” before he settled into the small table that served as the dining area. The tent was eighteen feet by eighteen feet and still felt too small to house all those dead smells.
I expected an eye roll from Evie at the thought, but she stormed back out of the tent and fixed her plate in silence.
Vaughn went straight to his sleeping bag, lit up a cigarette and flopped down in a furious cloud, battling guilt for the death and entitlement to the kill as a predator.
I exited the tent and sneaked up behind her, put my arms around her waist and kissed her neck.
“Morning.” Her tone fell flat as her mood, but when I tried to read what had her sad first thing in the morning, I got nothing but pristine blankness. Purposeful blankness.
She’d closed off her mind to me.
“Hey? What’s going on here?” I lightly tapped her temple.
She pulled out of my embrace and waved the spatula in the air like she’d swat a fly.
“Sometimes, I just don’t want extra buzzing in my brain. It’s early. I’m tired. We’ve been living in a tent for damn near two months and I still haven’t figured out how to hold a ward as well as I hold a dick. Oh, and I know you hate the smell of my food, but I don’t have the bandwidth to lick your taste buds with my empathy so you like it.”
I took a step away and followed her back into the tent. I folded my arms with a raised eyebrow. When Evie turned around to look at me, she noticed every man watching her in the aftermath of her outburst with uncanny stillness. She triangulated a glare then took a seat beside Stark, focusing on her plate with a huff. She gnashed the first bites with a furious stare at nothing in particular.
A moment later she heaved a deep sigh, her shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry. It’s not—” She grasped her cheeks. “I’m just tired, you guys.”
“Take a break and skip the coven today,” I ordered. “Killing yourself to put up some magick barbed wire doesn’t do you any good.”
“You’re racing toward the moon anyway,” Stark added after swallowing a mouthful of crispy skin and tender meat. The crunching made me want to slit the wolf’s throat.
“And Jesse’s shit stain of a father is behind bars, so we’re not on a time crunch.” Vaughn couldn’t suppress an indulgent sigh. “We can officially make this the longest fucking camping trip I’ve never wanted to take.”
“Like you don’t do most of your hunting in the great outdoors? I’ve never seen a vampire bitch so much about nature, man.” Stark shoved a whole pancake into his mouth and washed down what Evie would call ‘syrupy goodness’ with orange juice he procured from the mini fridge. I took a seat across from Evie and forced myself to be a man about the sharp citrus tang I could damn near taste, but not process as pleasurable.
This must be how humans feel when they see cows chew cud.
“I’m a native New Yorker, wolfman, or was anyway,” Vaughn grumbled, peeling off his shirt and kicking off his shoes and jeans so he could settle into one of his surly, naked naps. “I only do concrete jungles long-term.”
Stark gave Vaughn’s naked body a once over, then returned his attention to his food with a shake of his head and a very wolfish snort. “Damn house cat.”
Full moon coming. The slow pull, the quickened rush of blood would have us all fucking and feeding soon, inside and outside the coven. The erection my morning feeding had given me stirred despite the food, but Evie still didn’t answer my body’s call.
I pushed sex from my mind and tried a different approach. “When you’re done eating, take a walk with me.”
Evie pushed her food around on her plate, then took a bite of pancake and chewed slow. “Why?”
“I think you’re right about the tent. It was never meant to be a long-term fix.” I gave the Army style set up a once over, from ceiling to, window flaps, to floor.
She looked up and tilted her head.
“We should build a house. When the wards are up, like any other coven would. I want you to pick the place.”
Evie’s mouth fell open, her head straightened.
I smiled, waiting for her to light up the tent with joy. She’d said she want
ed a home, a place that felt like what she’d left behind. This was the moment I made good on my promise to be her shelter in the storm.
She burst into tears and covered her mouth to quiet her sobs.
“Whoa. Is that good or bad?” Vaughn asked. “Do I gotta put my fucking pants back on?”
Stark set his fork down, gave Evie’s back a long pat that seemed to ratchet up her hysteria, and said to Vaughn, “Let’s take a walk, man.”
Vaughn shot up to his feet, cigarette nearly blown out by his speed. He shoved his legs into his jeans and strode out with Stark, barefoot and barely zipped.
“Come here.”
The harsh edge in my voice confused me. I didn’t know why I’d become so angry, I just knew I wasn’t angry with Evie. Maybe watching her dissolve into tears at the mere mention of sharing a house with me had something to do with my spreading rage.
She got up with a sniffle, using her napkin to wipe her nose.
I grabbed her and pulled her into my lap. I gritted my teeth. Even now she had me shut out.
“Why are you really upset, and why are you hiding the problem from me?”
“I’m, I-I’m n-not hiding. I’m compartmentalizing.”
“I tell you I’m building you a house and you burst into tears? That’s some deft compartmentalizing for an empath.”
“Don’t piss me off!” She wiped her tears and then her eyes with heel of her palm.
“Don’t hide from me,” I countered. “Is it your family? Something happen? Or something in the coven?”
“My birthday’s coming up,” she blurted suddenly. “I’ll be twenty-three. And this is not where I imagined I’d be at twenty-three.” She laughed out loud and her tears returned. “That’s dumb. Of course I didn’t imagine this. Vampires and wolves and witches. Oh. My.”
She giggled, and then burst into tears again.
“Vampires and witches and…”
“And what? Tell me, baby?”
