Page 12 of My Blood Is Yours

As if on cue, the doctor arrives and turns to face my cell. As anticipated, it’s the same male who pointed the gun at my head. He gives me a smile that belies the darkness within him.

“A great pleasure.”

My nostrils flare again at the faintly musky scent of his fur.

Evandriel smiles, fangs glinting. “Lykos,” he confirms.

Wolf-shifter.

The doctor’s eyes shift briefly to Evandriel’s, as if he’d have preferred to keep that bit of knowledge unspoken. Evandriel’s gaze roves over me in a way that tells me the wheels of his mind are spinning with great possibility. It makes my stomach churn with disgust, and my claws extend with the need to tear his throat out.

My hands grip the bar so tightly that the metal groans. TheAkash-forsakendoctor steps forward, though he still remains wisely out of reach.“Ah, ah, ah.”He pulls out the tiny gun he attempted to kill me with earlier. “Unless you want me to put yet another hole in your head, I would stop doing that.”

I’m too dizzy to dodge out of the way in time, but it doesn’t stop me from seeking my freedom. The bars in my grasp bend, and one even breaks free from the crumbling stone it’s been hammered into, but before I can move any further, the doctor steps forward, gun aimed, and everything goes black once again.

ELOWEN

Nightmares haunted my sleep—what little I managed to steal for myself. I’m stirred by a gentle caress to my cheek. “Good morning, darling…” My skin suddenly crawls at the recognition of Forsythe’s voice, now so sweet and opposite to the cruel monster he’d become last night. His moods have always been extreme, and last night was hardly out of form. Not to mention, this man has never called medarling.Before, I’d always turned the other cheek. What was the alternative? Risk his wrathandendure celibacy?

Still, I fail to conceal my repulsion. Forsythe must take offence to my grimace. Whatever mask of tenderness he managed to wear is instantly replaced with something cold.

“Your presence is required.”

Forsythe stands and moves towards my wardrobe to begin rummaging through my sparse clothing. My fingers seek out the comfort of the pendant at my throat to thumb it soothingly until the metal encasing the ruby goes warm.

“I need you to wear something… attractive.”

My brows pinch. I don’t exactly have a salary that can afford me a seamstress. All I have, with the exception of one dress, arethe servant’s dresses he provided me over a decade ago when he first hired me. “What’s going on? What happened to the… the…”

“The daemon,” Forsythe finishes for me.

“He’s alive?”

Forsythe turns sharply away from my wardrobe, holding the singular nice item of clothing I own—a dark red dress with a V-shaped bodice that dips low to reveal my buxom décolleté and long, billowy sleeves that button at the wrists. I inherited from my mother—a gift from amale suitor, she’d explained to me with rosy cheeks.

“Yes, and the creature seems intent on killing Evandriel and me, but for some reason, Evandriel seems inclined to believe he won’t hurt you. Thus, I am tasking you with the daemon’s care and promoting you to…”

Forsythe hesitates for a moment, as if deliberating.

“… research assistant.”

My brows leap. Forsythe clears his throat at my obvious shock. “And so long as you are able to get him to cooperate, I will need you to collect specimen samples. Nothing unusual. Just blood, tissue, semen, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Semen?!”

My horror isn’t at all in response to the idea of collecting it. No, if anything, that excites me. It’s the fact that Forsythe wants it in the first place.

Forsythe narrows his eyes at me with impatience, his voice growing increasingly impassioned. “This creature isimmortal.Do you have any idea how important this is to the world? How many lives we could save? I shot him in the head, and within an hour, his body had somehow purged the bullet and made a full recovery. Imagine what we could do for humanity!”

Forsythe and I give each other matching scowls as he takes a deep, steadying breath and yanks a handkerchief from his tweedwaistcoat pocket to dab at his brow, where a vein throbs. “Christ. You never fail to provoke me, woman.”

A long beat of silence passes as he calms and seems to shrink subtly in size. “You will do this, Elowen. And you will do it well. If not for yourself or me, then for humanity. If I had had access to his healing capabilities and all the knowledge his biological processes hold, I could have been able to save your mother. This opportunity will give your life meaning and purpose. You should be grateful.”

Give my life meaning.

His tone suggests my life is otherwise meaningless, and I’m suddenly disgusted with myself that I spread my legs for this man. Perhaps he’s not wrong in regard to the lack of meaning I’ve had in my life over the last decade. Though I don’t linger on the statement.

Instead, my heart clenches painfully in my chest for an entirely different reason. Already ten years have passed, and still, the memory of her death is like a stab to the chest. She’d had a slow and torturous death where the body seemed intent on slowly killing itself, no matter how Forsythe tried to save her. Which is the one thing that endeared me to him. If this male has ever shown me tenderness, it was during that time. He had been my only source of emotional support—scarce as it was—but it was there nonetheless, in his own way.

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