Page 71 of Eternally Yours

I waited for her reply, but she left without saying a word, her silence a stake through my heart. The guards stepped further inside. It wasn’t until I felt the blinding agony of their batons slamming into my head, shoulders, and back, that I realized my torture wasn’t over yet.

Accepting my punishment, I curled into a ball on the floor and took every blow, waiting for death to eventually take me, too. There was no pain they could inflict on me that could be worse than what I already felt on the inside.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Nicholas

Adeep groan rumbled through my chest as my eyelids drifted open, a bright light making my retinas sting. I tried to shield my eyes from the light, but any movement my muscles made grated against every nerve ending. Grunting, I clenched my teeth, trying not to wail. God, I was so sore breathing was a labored task that choked me and left me gasping.

Fucking. Hell. Did I get run over by a semi?

Blinking, the world finally came into focus. I was lying on my bed, but not at my apartment. The raging fire blazing inside the stone hearth of my coven bedroom lit the flames of my memory, sending my heart into a sprint.

The attack. Loren!

A stabbing sensation shot across my ribcage as I tightened my abs in an effort to sit, the biting pain pushing me back onto the mattress, my teeth chattering as I held in a moan.

“Stop being such a hero,” my father’s voice echoed in the room. “You’re not fully healed yet. Thatshe-monsterdid some number on you.”

Rage curdled in my stomach. “Don’t call her that,” I gritted.

In a flash, my father stood beside my bed, his face inches from mine, his breath hot on my skin. “You didn’t have to see your son clinging to life by a mere thread.”

When I didn’t say a word, he straightened, but he kept his hard stare locked on mine. My father was not a man of many words, and he wasn’t one for showing affection, but despite our differences, I knew he loved me. This time he didn’t try to conceal the anguish that had raked through him.

“She nearly decapitated you,” he said, turning from me and walking toward my bar. He reached for a decanter and poured a glass of blood.

The iron tang reached my nose in seconds, my gums thrumming with hunger.

“It’s fresh,” my father said. “Janus left moments ago.”

I’d stopped drinking from blood-hosts decades ago. I knew my weaknesses. Bloodlust had almost destroyed me once. “You know I can’t drink warm human blood.”

“What do you think has kept you breathing these last few weeks?”

Weeks?

Walking back toward me, he placed the glass on the night table and sat on the armchair next to my bed, his easy demeanor making me forget for a short moment he was the same man who had me thrown in the Solaris. “There’s no shame in it. Drink. You need to heal.”

The scent was too strong, and my body’s instincts to feed were impossible to hold back. I sat up slowly, wincing through the lancing pain at my side. If weeks had gone by, why hadn’t I fully healed?

As if reading my thoughts, my father said, “It wasn’t just your neck she hacked to bits. She also tore off your right arm and parts of your right leg. Your ribs and spine were almost pulverized from the impact of her blows.”

Flashes of the attack mauled my mind. The fury in her eyes. The sharpness of her teeth. The crippling agony of her claws as she mutilated me. I was both awed and terrified. Puzzled, I looked at my father.

“I should be dead.”

“If it had happened elsewhere, you would be,” my father said. “The magnitude of the damage she inflicted was beyond what a vampire’s cell regeneration could repair. Not to mention the toxin levels in your blood made it extremely difficult for your blood to clot. We think whatever blood that beast managed to give you in her attempts to save you after she realized what she’d done might’ve helped. Along with Catherine’s quick thinking, of course.”

“Cat killed Dr. Thorpe and managed to disarm the collar, then?” I blew a sigh of relief, thankful the plan had worked. “I owe her my life. And Loren’s.”

Sucking in a deep breath, my father leaned forward. He parted his lips to say something, but hesitation flickered in his blue eyes and he paused.

“What is it?”

There was silence for a moment as he thought about his reply, then said, “Catherine had blood-hosts rushed to our in-house med unit where you were constantly fed intravenously while our doctors worked tirelessly to piece you back together. As you said. You owe her your life.”

Why did I have the feeling he was holding something back?

---