The Traitor Alpha's Daughter

Natural Enemies

Wren’s POV

“Wren. Wren, you need to listen to me. I know it hurts, but I need you to focus.”

It is very, very hard to think about anything other than the overwhelming pain that overtook me the moment that psycho b***h sunk her teeth into my neck, but if anyone can convince me to do something I otherwise wouldn’t do, it’s Alina. So, reluctantly, I get a hold of myself enough to sit up and look at her.

She's kneeling in front of me, peering urgently into my eyes. Smelling... stronger than usual. And no less alluring. “Do you know what’s happening to you?”

I know what’s supposedly happening to me. I heard them toss around words like “vamp” and “turn,” along with “no one unwilling.” But is that actually what’s happening to me? Am I actually turning into a vampire?

Is there any other explanation? I've never felt anything like this before. It's like my blood is boiling away inside me and turning to... I don't what. Metal? Glass? Something very hard and very painful.

"You're hurt," I say suddenly, scanning her skin. She's bleeding in at least a dozen different places—likely from smashing her way through the sliding glass door to save me. "We need to get you to a hospital."

She actually laughs at that. "I think you're the bigger concern at the moment. My wounds will heal soon enough."

“Are…” I feel moronic even asking it, but it would explain her lack of concern about her wounds. “Are you a… a vampire… too?”

She looks disgusted by that question. “No, Wren. I’m a wolf.”

A wolf? “Like… a werewolf?”

“More or less. But it’s not tied to the full moon like the legends you might have heard. We can shift at will once we…” She frowns. “Not really the point here, is it?”

“Well, it was a nice distraction from thinking about the fact that I'm turning into a vampire."

She manages another laugh at that, then sinks a little lower toward the floor. “I’m so sorry, Wren.”

“Sorry?” I repeat. “If you didn’t come, she would have killed me. What was that—the third time you saved my life?”

“If you can even call it that.” She shudders. “I need you to understand what’s happening—what you’re turning into. Once you finish the transition, it’ll be nearly impossible to kill you. You’ll be immortal, Wren—you’ll never age. Never grow old. Never stop craving human blood.”

Jesus Christ, this is a lot. Have I even accepted this reality yet? I feel I have no choice but to keep asking questions; at least that way I don’t think about the pain. I do my best to remain in a seated position. “Will I be able to survive without human blood?”

“Sure—you can get by on animal blood. But you’ll never feel fully… quenched. And after the first few years, you’ll weaken. You’ll be no match for vamps like Kat.”

“You told her…” I struggle to remember the things I heard in those first, most painful moments. “You said ‘take it back.’ And she said you knew her better than that. What did she mean?”

“I wanted her to suck her venom back out of you. But if she tried, she’d only kill you. She doesn’t have the best… willpower.”

“But… if she could have sucked it out… that means there’s a way to stop this? A way to keep me from transitioning without actually killing me?”

It’s hard to read her expression. There’s pity in her eyes, along with fear. “Yes,” she admits carefully. “But I don’t exactly have any vamps on speed dial to help you out.”

She already knows what I’m going to ask next; I can tell from the apprehension in her eyes. But I don’t want to be a vampire. Not after seeing the cruelty in Kat’s eyes as she moved to drain me dry. Not after learning that vamps are the ones responsible for killing Alina’s father. So I have to ask. “What about you?”

“I…” She bites her lip. “I guess I could… try.”

I can’t tell what she’s afraid of. Is she afraid of her own willpower? I’m no paranormal expert, but I’m pretty sure wolves don’t crave human blood the way vamps do; surely there’s no risk that she, too, will kill me... right?

“If you can,” I tell her softly, “I’d really not to turn into one of them.”

Her eyes well up with tears, and she says softly, “I’d really like that, too.”

And she moves forward to sink her own teeth into my neck.

For the first few seconds, it helps. I can feel the venom being sucked out of me; I can feel my blood being purified back to the way it’s supposed to be; I can feel the air and water and life flowing back into my veins.

But then I feel her starting to seize up, and I immediately pull away from her.

“Alina!” I shout, panicked, as she falls to her knees, coughing and sputtering. Her lips are turning purple; her skin is turning white. “What’s happening?”

But it’s no use; she’s long past talking. She sticks a finger into her mouth, pressing against the back of her throat as she gasps for air. She’s trying to make herself vomit, I realize. I reach for her hair, not knowing what else I can do to help, and hold it back as I silently pray that the vomit comes.

Finally, after the thirty most brutal seconds of my life, it does.

It’s a frightful thing, the bile that comes out of her. It’s blood-red and steaming, and it eats up the carpet beneath her like acid. Only after four long, hard retches does she collapse onto her back. Slowly, but surely, the color returns to her.

“It’s… poisonous to you,” I realize as I stare at the steaming, red bile. “Their venom.”

She shoots me a wry grin at that. “Apparently.”

I shake my head. The pain of my own transition is back in full force now, but I barely notice it. My mind is reeling. “You knew. You knew before I asked you to do it.”

“I knew what the word on the street was. I’d never personally ingested vamp venom before. Hoped maybe someone got it wrong.”

“You weren’t even stopping,” I say hotly, rising to my feet. My fury at the situation seems to be strengthening me. “You could have died. You would have died!”

She looks shockingly bored by the conversation. She's still lying on the ground. “And the world would have been rid of one more monster. Instead, now it’s got a new one.”

I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. Sure, I’ve accepted that I’m currently turning into a monster, but for her to call herself one? I might not know her nearly as well as I’d like to, but I know this: “You’re not a monster, Alina.”

She sighs, rising slowly to a seated position and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes trail over to the bile, which has finally stopped steaming. “I guess I should clean that up.”

“No,” I say immediately, rushing to the sink to get the cleaning supplies. There’s no saving the carpet that burned away, of course, but at least we can try to get rid of the stain. “Don’t touch it.”

She laughs. “You’re in the middle of a vampire transition, Wren. You can’t be… cleaning things.”

“Watch me.”

I don’t even mind scrubbing the carpet; like talking to her, it’s a welcome distraction from the pain and misery of what’s happening to me. And I don't want her anywhere near the poison that nearly killed her.

“What Kat said about the Winder Coven,” I say as I scrub. “That’s, like, a group of vampires, right?”

She nods. “There are thirty of them at the moment—thirty-one, if you join.”

“Why the hell would I join?”

“They all do, eventually. They spend the first few years being angry and bitter toward their makers and the rest of the coven, but eventually that anger fades when they realize no one else in the world will ever understand them.”

“What about wolves? You understand, don’t you?”

“Vamps and wolves are natural enemies—have been since the beginning of time.”

“But who says they have to be? Is it not just some arbitrary rule that can be ignored?”

She shakes her head. “It’s more than that. It’s the way we smell to each other—the way we feel. It’s the reason vamps run cold and wolves run hot. It’s the reason vamp venom is poisonous to wolves, and the reason wolf teeth are the only things hard enough to break vamp skin.”

The way we smell to each other? “But… you smell… nice.” Really nice.

She manages a small smile at that. “You smell nice, too. But it won’t stay that way. Give it another few hours, and you won’t want to be in the same room as me.”

I highly doubt that. “Is that how long the transition lasts? A few hours?”

“So they say. Again, not something I’ve ever witnessed firsthand.”

I frown, glancing at the clock on the wall. “My mom will be home soon. She can’t see me like this.”

“Right.” She rises to her feet, offering me a hand. “Then we’d better go somewhere else.”