Page 35 of Rebirth

Its needs.

And it wants her.

The feeling is overpowering.

I opened myself too much.

A growl vibrates in my chest as my gaze meets hers and I sense the moment she realizes something has changed within me.

Her throat moves, hand going to the weapon I know she carries at her waist even though she does not draw it.

“He’rox? Can you see me?” She takes a step backward. “Are you in there?”

My head tilts slightly. My vision has changed.

I can see everything. The fine hairs on her smooth skin. The golden ring around her pupil. And I can hear her heart beating. Erratic, it thumps against the bone structure beneath which it is caged. And there it is. The sound of the smooth rush of her lifeblood through her veins.

Soh’fee takes another step back, hand tightening on her weapon. “He’rox? Can you understand me?”

I stare at her, senses flooded by the network’s clamor. Its hunger beats at me, raging to be fed, urging me to give it what it craves. Her. The sweet blood within her fragile form.

No.

I clench my fists, fighting back the urge. But it is in my head.

Soh’fee’s eyes widen as she raises her weapon. Her hand shakes but her gaze does not waver from my own. “He’rox. I don’t want to hurt you. Fight this—whatever it’s doing to you. Come back to me.”

Her words pierce the fog shrouding my mind. Come back…to her? I grasp at her voice, her scent, using them as a lifeline to claw my way back to clarity.

“Come on…”

That slight tremble in her voice appeals to that other part of me I want to kill, the war between me and it only making me snarl harder, for that part of me can only die if I decide to let myself be erased with it.

Taking a few more steps backward, she stumbles, falling on her behind. But that does not stop her from scrambling farther away on the back of her arms, fear scent spiking.

I don’t know if she can hear it now. The incessant beating of the network around us. How it rises and falls. How it calls to me. Calls for her.

She is running away. The one thing I do not want her to do.

And the scent of her fear…

The Vullan part of me rises alongside that other part I’d wished to keep hidden, and I growl low, fangs lengthening. With a roar I lunge forward, my muscles like a well-oiled machine I haven’t used in a long time. On all fours, I launch myself after the female running away from me.

I cannot stop and her eyes widen as I approach.

“He’rox!” She screams my name, sound bouncing off the network around us before being lost in space as her back hits the wall near the entrance to this chamber.

Trembling hands lift her weapon, but she is too slow. Or maybe she waited too long. On purpose. Giving me a chance to prove myself.

In another time, at another place, her hesitation would have meant the death of her.

Not this time, though. I do not wish to see her blood spilled.

Instead…I want to taste it.

The image of sinking my fangs into her neck while my stiff shaft pierces her, filling her to the brim all the while enveloped in this sweet scent of hers almost makes me thrum with need. My pupils dilate, fangs dripping with a desire I never knew I could still feel as I close the distance between us. I pause only when I’m braced over her, the cool metal tip of her weapon pressed into my chest.

She has good aim. It is pointed right at my life organ.

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