“Wow,” she said as she put her hand out and ran it over his head. “You’re beautiful.”
Leo made a soft huffing sound as he pushed into her hand. He lifted his head sharply and scented the wind before running off at top speed.
“Don’t worry, he does that,” Henri said as he began folding Leo’s clothes. “He won’t go far.”
“I still can’t believe what I’ve just seen,” Sera said as she moved closer to Henri on the log. The vampire put the folded clothes down beside him and put his arm around Sera’s waist.
“Yes, this hasn’t been an easy introduction into the underworld, has it?” Henri said kindly.
“You can say that again.”
“I know today wasn’t easy either,” Henri said. She turned and looked into his eyes. They were so warm for a being so cold. “Leaving your home.”
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I mean, it’s still pretty fucked up, but I’m getting used to it. That flat was never really my home, it was just a place I lived in.”
“I hope that in time you’ll start thinking of this as your home,” Henri said. “As us as your home.”
Sera smiled. “You know, for a blood sucking creature of the night, you’re really very sweet.”
Henri pretended to be offended. “Well, whatever you do don’t let that get out. I have a reputation to uphold.”
Sera leaned into him a bit more and felt a tingle spread through her body when he brushed his lips over hers. Her body had never felt more alive than it had in the last couple of days. She pressed against Henri harder as she parted her lips against his, inviting him to deepen their kiss.
Henri kissed her with such passion that it left her a bit dizzy. His tongue sensually ran over her own, sending signals of pleasure down between her legs. She heard herself moan and felt his hand on her thigh, sliding higher.
Suddenly, and without warning, Henri broke their kiss and stood up. Sera stared after him, confused and more than a little frustrated.
“Henri? What’s wrong?” she asked as she came up behind him.
When he turned back to her she could see the effect their kiss had on him. He looked at her like he wanted to devour her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking another step away from her. “But without Leo here I don’t trust myself.”
The implication of that frightened Sera. “You think you’d bite me?”
“I don’t just think I’d bite you, Sera,” Henri said. “It’s that I’m not certain I’d be able to stop.”
He sounded so ashamed, she had to comfort him. Reaching out, she placed the palm of her hand on his back.
“I don’t believe that,” she told him. “You stopped before, both times.”
“And both times Leo had to tell me to,” Henri said.
“But he didn’t force you to stop,” she pointed out. “He might have told you to, but you did it, all on your own.”
Henri turned back round to face her. “If I hurt you, I couldn’t live with myself. I won’t risk it.”
She understood that but she hoped that in time he would believe in himself. She couldn’t deny that she was a little afraid of his desire for her blood, but she trusted him, felt safe even.
“I’m sorry,” Henri said. He stroked her hair back behind her ear. “There are things from my past that haunt me.”
“Like what?”
“I was young when I was turned. My maker didn’t even stay to see me through the transition,” Henri told her. As he spoke, she could see it happening in her mind. A young and frightened Henri, not knowing what was happening to him. “The hunger for blood was all consuming. I was the furthest from human I have even been in those first few months. After a while the fog began to clear and that was even worse.”
“Worse how?”
“I was aware of everything,” Henri confessed. “My conscience had returned, but it wasn’t enough to stop me. I had no way of getting my hands on blood, and animal blood simply didn’t sate me.”
“You killed people,” Sera said. She didn’t know what it said about her that she wasn’t horrified by his confession, but it probably wasn’t anything good.
“I did.”
She could hear in his voice that he was wracked with guilt over his past. She should have been disgusted, she should have pulled away from him, but all she wanted to do was comfort him.
“You’re different now,” she insisted. She put her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest. When his arms came up around her she felt something in her heart light up. “I trust you, Henri. I know you would never hurt me.”
Henri placed a kiss atop her head and rubbed his face in her hair. “Sera, I—”
Henri’s words were cut off by the sound of a howl not too far from them. They both tensed for a second before Henri let out a soft laugh.
“It’s just Leo,” he assured her.
Sera felt herself relax again, that was until she heard another howl, this time from the other side of the woods.
The two of them broke apart and spun in the direction of the second howl.
“Tell me that was an echo or something,” Sera said.
Henri didn’t get a chance to answer before two wolves, one gray and one brown, stepped out of the darkness. They were both snarling, their bodies low to the ground.
“Oh my God,” Sera said as she back up into Henri.
“It’s all right,” Henri assured her. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She remembered the other night, and the way Henri had fought the werewolves that had attacked them. He didn’t have a sword this time.
Another wolf stalked toward them from the other side and then a familiar face appeared. Still in his human form was Bale.
“Of course,” Henri said as he pulled Sera against him. “You’re errand boys return to you in pieces, and rather than realise that’s on you, you come here looking for revenge. How original.”
“One of them was my brother-in-law,” Bale said. He was wearing a long leather jacket, which seemed like overkill for this time of year. Sera watched as he removed it, folded it, and placed it on the floor. He began cracking his neck as if he was limbering up for something. “My sister won’t give me a moment’s peace until I bring her back your head.”
“Family, am I right?” Henri said smoothly.
In one fluid motion, he grabbed hold of Sera and leapt up into a tree. Sera couldn’t help the small scream that escaped her at the sudden motion.
“Oh my God,” she said as she clung to a tree branch.
“Stay here,” Henri said.
“Are you kidding me?” she shouted. “Where am I going to go?”
Henri smirked at that and jumped back down, landing easily in front of Bale.
“Well then, shall we?” Henri asked. He pulled his arm back so fast that it was a blur to Sera. Henri’s fist impacted with Bales face with such a force that she actually heard it.
Everything seemed to kick off at once. Bale flew backward and his four lackeys all lunged at Henri. Sera didn’t care how strong Henri was, or how good of a fighter he was, he was seriously outnumbered. It was then that she remembered what Leo had said, werewolf bites and blood were deadly to vampires.
She watched, helpless, as Henri went flying back only to turn in the air and land in a crouch.
“Henri,” she shouted, her heart in her throat. She had thought that Leo wouldn’t go far but he was nowhere to be seen. She wondered if they had already gotten to him.
Oh God, she thought.
She knew that she had the ability to break glass with her mind, but she had no way of controlling it, and even if she did they were in the woods, there was no glass there. She felt helpless and looked around in hopes of seeing something, anything that would help Henri, but there was nothing.
“Did Price send you?” Henri asked, his voice calm despite the fact he was currently fighting two fully shifted werewolves. “You know he’s put all the blame on you, right? He claims he only
wanted to know where Sera was.”
Bale scoffed. “Bullshit. He wanted the girl for his collection.”
Henri didn’t respond, instead he moved behind one of the wolves with the fluidity of a dancer and snapped his neck. The creature fell to the floor in a heap.
Bale growled and motioned for the other two wolves to attack. Now it was three on one.
When another wolf, this time black and unmistakably Leo, came crashing through the trees, Sera’s heart finally unclenched.
Leo snarled, looking wild and dangerous, as he lunged for Bale. The two of them rolled around fighting while Henri fought the other three.
Sera felt completely helpless. What good was being a nephilim if she couldn’t help the people she…she chose not to finish that sentence.
Bale managed to throw Leo off him and the wolf tumbled across the ground. As Leo got to his feet, he shifted back into his human form. Sera didn’t know if that was a smart move or not, but she remembered that he had bested werewolves the other day while he was human.
She heard Henri cry out and Sera’s head whipped round to look at him. Her heart was in her throat as she desperately tried to assess his injury. She felt some small measure of relief when she saw that her vampire had been slashed by claws and not bitten.
“Henri,” Leo shouted as he launched himself at Bale.
“I’m all right,” Henri shouted back as he kicked the wolf he was fighting in the face.
Leo let out an all mighty roar that seemed to make the wolves falter and cower slightly before they shook it off and resumed what they were doing.
In any other circumstance, seeing a naked man fight with a fully clothed man might have been funny, but this was anything but.
Leo and Bale continued to fight, tearing into each other with clawed hands. There was so much going on that it was hard to keep track. Sera’s gaze flitted between Leo and Henri, her feeling of helplessness growing by the second.
Another wolf went down, unconscious but not dead. That just left three of them including Bale.
Leo roared again in Bale’s face as he knocked the other man to the ground. Sera noticed again how the other two wolves faltered in their attack on Henri. One of them even stopped what it was doing and backed away, cowering slightly.
“Leo,” Henri called out as the wolf still fighting him sank his teeth into Henri’s arm.
“Oh shit,” Sera cried out. She couldn’t stay in that tree any longer. She had to get to Henri.
Leo saw what had happened, that his partner of nine years had been bitten by a werewolf, a thing that was apparently fatal to vampires. With a vicious sounding snarl, Leo transformed once more into a wolf and lunged at Bale’s throat, sinking his teeth into the skin and tearing out the flesh.
“Henri!” Sera shouted as she scrambled down the tree, scratching her leg in the process.
Although bitten, Henri was still fighting, but before Sera could make it to the ground the wolf stopped and backed away from Henri, whimpering pitifully.
Ignoring the two remaining wolves, Sera dropped down the last few feet and ran to Henri’s side. Her vampire stumbled and fell to his knees just as she reached him.
“Oh God,” she said as she pulled him against her. “What do I do? Will my blood help you?”
“No,” Henri said, bringing his hand up to cup her cheek. “I’m afraid not.”
“Well, we have to try something!” she shouted at him. She had just found him, she wasn’t ready to lose him.
“Henri,” Leo said, his voice a hoarse and guttural whisper.
Now once more in his human form, Leo dropped to his knees beside them. There were tears running down his face and bloody gashes all over him.
The two wolves remained where they were, cowering and whimpering with their bellies low to the ground. Another lie unconscious.
She didn’t know what came over her or why she thought she knew better than Henri, but in that moment she believed in herself, in her ability to help him. She was done being the damsel in distress, letting life be something that happened to her. It was time she learned the true extent of what she could do.
Bringing her arm up to Henri’s mouth she pushed it against his tooth, piercing her skin. She cradled him to her and made him drink her blood. This time she ignored the inappropriate sexual sensation she felt at being fed on. All she could think about was the fact that she couldn’t lose him, worse, that Leo couldn’t lose him.
Leo didn’t seem to be concerned about the wolves behind them so Sera ignored them and focused on Henri. She didn’t know why or how, but she felt a certainty that she had never felt before. She knew this would work.
Henri gasped and pulled his face away from her wrist but Sera pushed it back against his mouth.
“I’ll kill you,” Henri warned.
“No you won’t.” She was sure about that, too.
Leo brought Henri’s hand up to his mouth and he kissed his knuckles. His face was marred with dirt, blood, and tears.
“Sera,” Leo said after a while. He let go of Henri’s hand and grabbed hold of Sera’s wrist. “I don’t want to lose Henri, but I don’t want to lose you, either. That’s enough.”
Sera looked down at Henri and felt her vision darken a little at the edges, she let Leo pull her arm away. Maybe she had gone too far, given him too much of her blood, but it was worth it.
“I love you,” Henri told Leo, tears slipping from the corners of his eyes.
“No, you can’t leave me,” Leo said as he furiously wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. “I can’t live without you.”
“You have to,” Henri told him. “You need to take care of Sera.”
Sera wasn’t listening to either of them, her eyes were glued to the bite mark on Henri’s arm. Both Henri and Leo had told her that a werewolf bite was lethal to a vampire, but her instincts were good, and she knew to trust in herself.
Before her eyes, Henri’s wound started to close. The black lines that had started sprouting from it and crept up his arm began to disappear.
“It worked,” she whispered.
“What?” Leo asked. He took hold of Henri’s arm and brought it up for inspection. “That’s…how?”
Henri pushed himself up, still a little weak, and looked at his arm in amazement. “Sera. How?”
Leo ran his hand over the red mark that was all that was left. Even that was fading before their very eyes until all that remained was a faint white line.
“That’s not possible,” Henri said. He looked up at Sera with an indescribable expression on his face. He looked paler than usual, despite the blood.
She knew that she didn’t have a satisfactory explanation for him. All she could do was tell him the truth.
“I don’t know how that worked,” Sera confessed. “I just knew that it would.”
“What do you mean?” Leo asked.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Sera said. “Look, it doesn’t matter how. All that matters is that it worked.”
Henri didn’t look convinced. He was still looking at Sera like he didn’t know who she was. She tried not to focus on that too much. He had almost just died after all.
“What about you?” she asked Leo, her gaze travelling over his wounds. “You’re hurt.”
“I’ll be fine,” Leo assured her.
The werewolf let out a sudden joyous laugh and pulled both Henri and Sera into his arms.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” he said as he buried his face in Henri’s hair.
Henri hugged Leo back. “I know. Me, too.”
Sera felt like she was just now taking her first real breath since the wolves had attacked. It was all still so new to her. Her entire life was different now, but she knew that she didn’t want to lose it, not any of it. How could she hate what she was when it had just saved Henri’s life?
“Uh, not to ruin the moment,” Henri said as he pulled away a little bit. “But you do realise what you’ve just done, yes?”
Se
ra didn’t know what Henri meant until Leo released them and looked behind him at the two wolves.
“What are you talking about?” Sera asked.
“I killed their alpha,” Leo explained. “That makes me—”
“Their new alpha,” Henri finished.
Sera noted the way the two wolves were watching them, still cowering low. “Well shit.”
Chapter Nineteen
Leo knew he hadn’t had a choice. Bale hadn’t given him one. If Leo hadn’t killed him then both Henri and Sera could well be dead, or taken. Being an alpha wasn’t something he had ever wanted, at least not since he was a kid. He remembered his dad telling him that one day he would become the alpha of their pack, but it wasn’t something Leo had thought he had to worry about, not for a long time.
When his dad died, Leo saw it as an excuse to get free. He left and never looked back.
“So,” Sera began as she looked between the three other werewolves in the room. “What do we do with them?”
They had gone back to the house with the three werewolves in tow. Justin, someone Leo had always been friendly with, was among them, as well as two men that Leo only knew by sight, Karl and Eddy. Now they were all back in their human forms standing in the kitchen. Henri had thrown them some of Leo’s shorts to wear while Sera got the first aid kit out and started fussing over Leo.
“I mean, they attacked us, and you decided to bring them home with us,” Sera pointed out.
She pressed an alcohol soaked cotton ball to an open wound and Leo hissed through his teeth.
“It’s complicated,” Leo said.
“Everything in my bloody life has become complicated,” Sera argued.
“They were following their alpha’s orders,” Henri told her. He pulled some things out of the first aid kit and went over to Eddy. There was a large gash on his head from where he had been knocked unconscious.
Sera stopped what she was doing and turned to look at Henri as if he were mad. “They nearly killed you.”
“You don’t understand,” Justin said, watching Henri as he cleaned up Eddy’s wound.
Eddy was young, no more than nineteen Leo would guess, and he was now Leo’s responsibility. “It’s impossible to disobey your alpha. I didn’t want to hurt you, any of you. Hell, I’d pick Leo over Bale any day, but it’s like there’s something in your brain that feels wrong to go against your alpha.”
Welcome to the Underworld (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) Page 12
