Page 82 of Heir

As soon as I stepped into the kitchen, Drak stopped what he was doing—which was arguing like a pretentious ass with Zandren—and stood up. “What is going on?”

“I’m making coffee? Would you like some, Bat Boy?”

“No.”

“No, thank you. For a snooty aristocrat, your manners are trash.”

He walked toward me, a feral look in his eyes I’d never seen before. His fangs descended. I backed up until my ass hit the fridge. He crowded me.

Fear ran icy through me and I glanced around his broad frame to see Zandren and Maxar already up off the couch, approaching.

“Wh-what’s going on?” I stammered

“He’s like possessed or something,” Maxar said.

“You’re bleeding,” Drak said, closing his eyes and taking a deep inhale just inches from my face.

“No, I’m not.” I lifted my hands and placed them on his chest—he was cool to the touch—and pushed him away. He didn’t budge. “Drak. Move.”

He moved all right, but he didn’t back up. He dropped to a crouch and pressed his nose to the “V” of my shorts. “You’re bleeding here.”

Well, that earned him a knee in the face and a kick to the chest. He landed on his ass in the kitchen and I rushed to get away. “You’re fucking sick. What the hell is wrong with you?”

He was quick to get back up on his feet, blinking. “I . . . I don’t know.”

Was he out of the trance now? What the hell was going on?

“Wait a minute,” Zandren said. “Are you bleeding?”

“I just got my period, but I don’t really call that bleeding. I mean, yeah, it is, but it’s not like an injury. It just happens once a month, not a big deal.”

“But I think it is,” Zandren said cautiously. “When a female shifter—a mate—goes into estrus, male shifters lose their minds. All rational thought disappears. Even if we haven’t sealed the Mating Bond. If they’re mates, they go bonkers. Luckily, females only go into estrus every few years and even then, pregnancy can be rare. It’s a way to keep the species from booming.”

“So you think because Drak is a vampire, it’s the opposite for vampires?” Maxar asked. “He’s going bonkers while she’s on her period?” He wrinkled his nose. “That’s nuts.”

Zandren shrugged. “Do you have a better explanation?”

Already, Drak was staring at me again with that savage, lustful look in his eyes. But it wasn’t a look that said he wanted to kill me and eat me. It was a look that said he wanted to eat me, like in the clit-sucking, orgasm-causing kind of way.

I backed up even more, making my way toward my bedroom. “So what the hell do we do? Chain him to a chair for five to seven days? If he gets free, what’s he going to do to me?”

“I make a habit of not fraternizing with vampires,” Zandren said. “I don’t know.”

“Me either,” Maxar said with disdain. “Freaky blood suckers.”

“Not helping,” I cried as Drak prowled toward me. Zandren, noticing the fear in my eyes, leaped into action and looped his arms through Drak from behind, restraining him and keeping him in place. But Drak bared his teeth and hissed at Zandren. Then some crazy super-human strength came over him and he tore free of Zandren’s grasp by flipping Zandren over his head and onto his back on the floor.

“Oof,” Zandren said before growling and flipping back to his feet. “What the fuck?”

Maxar quickly conjured a yellow lasso of fire and whipped it around Drak’s midsection and arms. He tugged hard, keeping Drak from coming after me. “Omaera, get into your room,” he shouted. “Now.”

Wide-eyed and terrified, but also intrigued by all of this, I scrambled to open my bedroom door and ran inside, slamming and locking the door. Not that I thought a simple lock would keep a centuries’ old vampire from getting in and devouring me if he wanted to.

Grunts and gnashing teeth echoed from the living room as Zandren and Maxar struggled to restrain Drak. What would it take to keep him from coming after me? And if he did get me, what would he do?

Was I just supposed to stay holed up in my room all day? For the next five to seven days? How was this going to work? Couldn’t he take a pill or something? If I gave in and let him . . . do what his instincts were telling him to do, would that satiate him? Or would it give him a taste and he’d become more crazed than ever?

Also, how come he had no idea what was happening to him? Did vampires not talk about this with each other? Or was it because I was human?

---