Rebel Reborn

Chapter 3

Three

GRAY

So. Much. Blood.

The taste of it in my mouth, the smell of it in my nose, the viscous feel of it sliding deliciously across my tongue. My veins hummed with it, magic and power and strength, all of it crackling to life with a fierce intensity that made me feel like I could burn down the world with little more than a pointed glare.

I was born for this…

Flat on my back in nothing more than a T-shirt, underwear, and a thin sheet over my legs, I opened my eyes to complete darkness and tried to sit up. My body refused to obey. The blood inside me was buzzing and alive, my senses finely attuned, but my muscles felt slow and sluggish.

I sucked in a cool breath—the first I’d taken since I’d awoken—and realized at once we’d made it back to HQ. I could smell the familiar mix of salty ocean air and fresh-cut wood from the lodge’s timber framing, and the scents of all the witches and men and shifters who’d occupied it, every one of them clear and distinct. Strongest of all was Darius’s—that heady blend of leather and expensive whiskey that always made my blood sing.

Again, I tried to rise.

No luck.

My belly turned over with a terrible growl, empty. Craving. Demanding.

“You’re hungry,” announced a familiar voice, and slowly I turned my head to find my vampire standing near my bedside, still as the darkness itself. My eyes had already adjusted to the lack of light, and now I saw him as clearly as if he were bathed in afternoon sunlight. I blinked, not believing it, but the shape of him only sharpened—glossy dark hair, full lips that made my thighs clench with fresh, hot desire. His eyes narrowed as he took me in, his honey-brown gaze both tender and severe.

“Darius,” I whispered, but there was no time to wonder about his breathtaking beauty or my enhanced vision. My stomach turned over again, bringing with it a wave of nausea so severe it made me gasp.

I needed to move, to feed, and again I tried to sit up, but the firm, comforting press of his palm against my chest steadied me. I hadn’t seen the movement, but now he was standing right next to me, the scent of him nearly overpowering my senses.

I wanted him. Badly. My mouth watered for it, my core suddenly burning with the unquenched flames of desire. Everything inside me craved his touch.

My hunger for him was even more desperate than my hunger for blood.

I’m going to die without it...

“What’s…. happening to me?” I sputtered. “I feel like… like I’m…” I tried to reach for him, but my arms were locked in place, immobilized despite the fact that my skin felt like it was on fire.

No, not immobilized. Restrained, I saw now. Same with my legs and torso. I tugged hard against the binds—thick leather straps fastened tightly around my wrists, ankles, and across my lower rib cage.

They’d tied me to the bed. Under any other circumstances, I might’ve been turned on by the idea. Now, it just made me rage inside.

Still. I knew it had to be done. After all, I was a deadly predator now, recovering in a lodge full of warm bodies, every single one of them pulsing with thick, sweet blood.

A whimper escaped my lips.

“It’s temporary,” Darius assured me, his voice measured and tight. “Once we’ve regulated your blood intake and weened you off the hawthorn infusion, this arrangement won’t be necessary.”

“Infusion?”

He lifted the sheet covering my legs, revealing an IV taped to the top of my foot. I followed the tube to the bag dangling from the poster at the end of the bed, slowly meting out a clear liquid drip.

“It’s on a time-release,” he said.

Well, that explained the sluggishness I was feeling.

“After our return,” he said, “I bathed you and helped you get settled in here. I’ve been with you ever since.”

“Ever since when? How long was I out? Is everyone else okay? What about Jael? My sisters? Sparkle and Sunshine?”

“One question at a time, little brawler.” Darius let out a low chuckle. “Let’s see… Everyone is present and accounted for. Your sisters are well, chomping at the bit to see you, though we all agreed it would be best for the humans of the household to wait until you’ve fully stabilized before visiting. The hounds have scarcely left your side—I had to bribe them with raw steak just to get a few moments alone with you tonight. We’ve not heard from Jael, but he completed the portal spell and disappeared with your moonglass before we left the cemetery that night, and the queen has not declared war upon us, so we’re assuming no news is good news on that front. All of the liberated prisoners are being treated for various medical issues and injuries, but everyone is expected to recover. As for you, you’ve been in and out of consciousness for the better part of two days. This is the first time you’ve managed to stay with me for more than a few moments—speaking, besides.”

My head was spinning. “Two days? I feel like I haven’t eaten in months.”

“Hours, actually.” He rolled up his sleeve, revealing a muscled forearm and a wrist covered with punctures, dark bruises welling angrily beneath the skin.

The sight of it made me wince. For Darius to bruise and not immediately heal, I must’ve been pretty brutal, and I must’ve taken a lot from him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“It’s nothing, love. Few more hours, I’ll be good as new. But my blood is a stopgap—not nearly enough to sustain you. You need non-vampire blood—preferably human. Quite a bit of it, at that.”

My stomach growled again, and Darius replaced his palm on my chest, as if he’d sensed I needed his touch, needed him to keep me from slipping away. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the parched feeling in my mouth, focusing instead on the rest of my body. My blood, singing and alive. My magic, crackling as always inside me, but more solid and sure than it’d ever felt before. I could hear laughter down on the first floor, the sounds of cooking in the kitchen, the splatter of wet snow against the windowpanes. The curtains were open to let in the moonlight, but the night was dark and cloudy. When I inhaled, the wisdom of the sea filled my senses, sharp and ancient and as powerful as I felt inside.

My heart now beat more slowly than I remembered, but it was stronger, responding to Darius’s touch with a deep familiarity.

“I survived,” I said, the word itself bringing forth a rush of laughter. “I survived the turning.”

“Yes, it appears your body has fully assimilated the change,” he confirmed, his voice thick with a mixture of relief, surprise, and there, lurking just below the rest, a hint of sorrow.

I understood. This hadn’t been his choice, after all, and I wasn’t out of the woods just yet. Not until I could exist in the presence of others without trying to murder them.

A shudder wracked my body, but instead of passing as I’d expected, it intensified, rolling from head to toe and back up again. My teeth chattered, my fangs cutting through my gums, then sliding back in. Again and again. The taste of my own blood filled my mouth.

“D-D-Darius? What’s happening now?”

“Shh, it’s alright, love.” Darius lifted the sheet and climbed into the bed next to me, his hand sliding under my T-shirt to trace a soft pattern on my belly. “This will pass.”

“What is it? Why am I sh-shaking like this?”

“You’re a vampire, little brawler,” he said plainly. “A hungry one at that. Your instincts are telling you it’s time to hunt.”

Vampire…

Instincts…

Hunt…

The bed shook with my renewed efforts to escape—instinctual more than logical at this point—but the hawthorn had done its job. I couldn’t break the binds.

“We can’t grant you your freedom yet, Gray. You’re too strong. If that primal part of you takes over, you could—”

“I get it, D,” I snapped, but then I closed my eyes, forcing myself to count backward from ten, focusing on the feel of his touch until the tremble finally subsided.

None of this was Darius’s fault—he was just doing what he had to do to keep everyone safe, including me. This was my choice, and I had to live with it. Besides, for the power and immortality of a vampire, hunger pangs and a few bouts of the shakes were a small price to pay.

I just hoped the transition period wouldn’t last too long. Every hour I wasted in bed was another hour we were leaving Blackmoon Bay in the hands of Orendiel and the hunters.

And in the hands of my mother, a vampire-witch we now knew was the deadly, vulgar head of the world’s most poisonous snake.

“My mother killed to feed herself,” I said absently, my thoughts drifting back to the darkness of the crypt, the evidence we uncovered there.

“You will not be reduced to such savagery. Elena has reached out to her connection at the local hospital to procure what we need, and at present, our demons and the wolf are braving the weather to retrieve it. You’ll have a fresh, humanely harvested supply very soon.”

“What about after? What happens when that runs out?”

“Then we’ll find more.”

“Darius, you need to eat, too. As will the vampires we rescued, including Fiona. We can’t just drain the city’s donor supply.”

“No, I suppose we can’t.”

“And until we can figure out how to deal with this winter apocalypse,” I said, glancing out the window as a fresh bout of wet snow slapped against the pane, “I’m pretty sure imported goods are in short supply.”

“All true,” he said, though he seemed completely unconcerned about our predicament.

“At some point, we’ll need to—”

“At some point, at one point, another day, tomorrow, next week, next year, next century… All pointless frames of reference for us now.”

“How do you figure?”

“Gray, you’re an immortal. If you start worrying about everything that can go wrong, everything that can throw a wrench into your day…. Well, there are a hell of a lot more days to worry about now.”

I closed my eyes as the brutal wind whipped another wave of slush against the lodge. Darius was right. I had to take things day by day or I’d drive us all mad.

“All things considered,” he said, forcing a note of cheer into his voice, “you’re handling this extremely well. Much better than most.”

I nodded, forcing the desperate gnawing inside me to settle. I knew from the stories I’d heard—not to mention the things Darius had shared about his own turning—that things could’ve been so much worse for me.

“I guess that means I didn’t slaughter anyone in the night, right?” I asked, only half-kidding.

“Well, let’s see…” He tapped his lips, his tone light and teasing. “As of our last accounting, the casualties stood at four shredded bath towels, one shattered windowpane, an upended china cabinet full of porcelain shards formerly known as priceless antiques, two splintered dining chairs, and a fruitcake Verona was particularly proud of, but the rest of us secretly cheered for that loss. Oh, you also punched Asher in the mouth.”

“Holy s**t, Darius! Are you serious?”

Darius shrugged as if this was all par for the course. “To be fair, he had it coming. Your incubus gets rather mouthy when—”

“But how did I manage to do so much damage? I don’t even remember coming home. I don’t remember anything after the bite. And I’m tied up, besides!”

“Initially, we thought we could forgo the restraints, relying only on the hawthorn. But you’re too strong, Gray. The few times you surfaced into consciousness were brief, but wild. You needed to feed, but my blood left you… Well, it left you a bit mad, to be honest. Asher insisted on trying to reason with you, convinced he could sweet-talk his way past thousands of years of predatory evolution.” Darius shook his head, holding back a laugh. “The moment he unfastened one of your restraints, you clocked him.”

Now I was laughing, too. The whole scene sounded pretty ridiculous—and one hundred percent Asher. “What did he do then?”

“Complimented your right hook, cursed up a storm, then retreated to a dark corner of the lodge with a bottle of tequila and a bag of frozen peas while I secured your restraints and got you calmed down. He hasn’t gotten close since.”

“I suppose I’ll have to make it up to him at some point.”

“I suppose.” Darius nuzzled the skin behind my ear with a string of kisses I felt all the way to my toes. “But it seems you’re through the worst of it, anyway.”

“I hope so.”

Most newborn vampires went absolutely wild with bloodlust. Without a present sire to tame them, to guide them through the early part of the change, to feed them and help them see the difference between instinct and choice…

I forced away the thoughts, unwilling to follow them any further. That wasn’t going to happen to me. I did have a sire. One I trusted with my life.

With my heart.

“So I guess I have to call you sire now,” I said, another laugh bubbling up as I turned to meet his eyes.

Darius flashed me a sexy smile, tracing his thumb across my bottom lip. “I wouldn’t refuse a nickname like that, if you insisted, of course.”

“You mean you like it better than D?”

“Hmm. That one has grown on me since our halcyon days in the Bay, but only because it’s from you.” He leaned forward, pressing a chaste kiss to my lips that only left me wanting more. Apparently, it left him wanting more, too. The hot, hard press of his c**k against my thigh told me everything I needed to know about that.

I shifted closer to him, as much as I could with the binds, the movement inspiring a low groan from my vampire.

“So what now, sire?” I teased.

Darius laughed again, his breath tickling my cheeks. His honey eyes sparkled with a thousand new facets, flecks of otherworldly colors and bottomless depths I was seeing with all new vision.

“Oh, little brawler,” he breathed, the length of him growing harder. “First my delivery girl, then my witch, and now my vampire… You really are going to be the death of me, in this form or the next.”

This form…

It hit me all over again—the magnitude of what we’d done. The magic of it. Sure, I was hungry, but I’d survived the change. I was a f*****g vampire. A bloodsucker. An immortal supernatural. A fearsome apex predator.

I must’ve said all of that out loud, because Darius suddenly laughed and said, “Yes, all of those things and more. So much more.”

“Right,” I said. “So, how is it that I’m not freaking out right now?”

At this, Darius could only shrug. “Because you’re you, love.” He kissed my eyebrow. “Completely baffling.” The tip of my nose. “Wholly unusual.” Then, just as softly as before, my lips. “An utter mystery, the likes of which none of us will ever fully solve.”

I rolled my eyes. “In other words, a total weirdo.”

“Yes,” he teased, his lips still dangerously close to my mouth. “But you’re our total weirdo, and that’s the important bit.”

I longed to touch his face, his hair, his lips. The tremor had returned, but this time it wasn’t a side effect of the change. It was a side effect of the sexy, dangerous, seductive vampire in my bed, and the fact that my desire to feel him inside of me had sparked to life once again, smoldering between my thighs.

Why are you next to me instead of on top of me, vampire?

“What is it love?” he asked softly, his voice holding a note of playfulness. He knew damn well what it was, and he was enjoying every minute of tormenting me.

“I feel… hot,” I said, my body already beginning to writhe under his intense gaze. “Under my skin. Inside me. Everywhere.”

“Is that so?” He ran his finger down the front of my T-shirt to the top edge of my underwear, sliding it back and forth beneath the lace, his touch kindling the embers inside me into a blaze.

“Darius,” I whispered, my eyes fluttering closed. “I’m dying.”

“And I’m not unsympathetic to your plight.” His fingers dipped lower, but not low enough. I arched closer, but he only pulled back, starting the whole torturous process again. He trailed those teasing fingers slowly down my T-shirt, back to the lace, sliding lazily down, down, down… then back out again.

Holy hell, bloodsucker.

“Could’ve fooled me,” I snapped.

“Mmm. I remember the first thirst of a newborn vampire,” he said, every word laced with seduction. “The need. Bone-deep, all-consuming, a blinding fire that rages unchecked. It’s not just the blood you burn for now, is it?”

I shook my head, my mind and body both unraveling. Vampire influence had no power over another vampire, but Darius’s words were having the same effect, winding me tighter, leaving me wet and aching for his mouth between my thighs.

“I cannot feed you,” he said, his voice a liquid whisper against my mouth, “but perhaps we might sate a different sort of hunger tonight.”