Page 16 of Outcast Island

I’ll be better.

For you, little diamond.

That is the last coherent thought I have before I fall into a violent spiral, sucking the blood from a vampire’s torn neck until I drain him dry.

Then I sniff the air… and search for the next one.

CHAPTER 6

GUÐRÚN

I don’t knowhow many times I used my fingers on myself until I finally passed out from the pain.

When I wake again, a fever rampages my body and sweat drips down my brow.

Wiping it away, I frown when my fingers come back red.

Not sweat,I realize as I sniff it, finding it metallic, even if it doesn’t quite smell like Magnus, I know what it is.Blood.

My body is rejecting Magnus’s blood that I had pushed inside myself.

There seems to be more than there should be, though. The bedsheets are completely red, and I’m covered in the little ruby droplets as if I had expelled blood from my system for hours.

Maybe some of it is mine.

“I’m sorry,” a male voice says from a dark corner of the room.

I flinch, but I’m too weak to pull the covers over my body. My lower half is sticky, and my legs feel heavy. An ache resides in my stomach, and it’s so powerful that I can’t even see straight. I stare at him as the room spins.

Magnus’s guilt is a refreshing cold cloth this time as he approaches me. He’s covered in blood again, but his eyes have changed.

They’re red.

Or rather, they’re a dull red, muted but different than the dark orbs flecked with embers that I had seen before.

“Where have you been?” I ask, my voice coming out hoarse as if I’ve spent hours crying and screaming.

Perhaps I had. I can’t remember much other than the pain.

His guilt strengthens before he seems to remember I have empathic powers, and his jaw clenches. The sensation of his emotion clamps down in response.

He’s learning control.

“I was feeding on any Vampire Alpha I could find on the island before I returned to you,” he says. “I need to violently kill to stem the blood rage, and you were in no position to take on more of my anger.” His gaze falls over me, taking in the damage he caused. “If you don’t know what a Vampire Alpha even is, then you don’t know that you’re in heat, or what that means.” A swallow works down his throat, and his jaw clenches before he continues. “You need a knot, but if I am to knot you, it is because you want it, and I need to be in enough control that I can help you through your heat without forcing you into estrus, or biting you, if you don’t want to blood-bond.”

I’m not sure what estrus is, but everything else he just said rings true.

There’s not a single wound on my body, but I’m starting to understand what it means to be a Vampire Omega. I have needs, and he denied me at the worst possible time.

Because I’m in heat.

But isn’t it stopping exactly what I had wanted? Maybe I hadn’t said it aloud, but he was frightening me. I wanted it to stop.

I wanted to understand.

And so he did what he had to do to make sure he could pull back so we could have a proper conversation.

“You’re a good Alpha,” I tell him, and I mean it. I might not have my memory, but I know there aren’t many vampires with his kind of control or desire to respect an Omega’s wishes.

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