Page 15 of Cruel Vampire King

I wasn’t sure if it was shock or if I blacked out a moment, but the next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground. My head tilted slightly as Luken pressed on my stomach and chest. I groaned and choked on the water as it spilled from me. He bent over me, pinching my nostrils shut, and sealed his mouth over mine. Warm breath eased into me, filling my lungs.

He started to pull away, and a spike of… something went through me.Don’t leave me. I reached out, catching his long, wet hair in my hands as I lifted my body to him. Pain made my vision go white, but I still found his mouth with mine. My lips moved with his as I slipped my tongue into his mouth, eager to taste him.

Some part of me wondered what the hell I was doing—but I didn’t care. This couldn’t be real. How could Luken have gotten to the lake? How could he have pulled me out?

So it wasn’t real. Which meant I didn’t have to act the way I knew I should.

Luken broke the kiss, cupping his head under my head. He chuckled, his amber eyes dark as he studied my face. “Easy, Elara. Not now. Not until you’re in your full mind.”

“Why did you do it?” I whispered. I was never going to ask him in reality—not about to give him the satisfaction of knowing how deeply he hurt me. But here and now, when he was just some figment of my dying brain? Why not ask? “Why did you kill them?”

“Kill who?” His brow quirked as he asked.

“My family.” I let out a shuddering, burning breath. “I was going to come to you. I’d decided to leave home. But before I could, you burned it to the ground.”

Luken’s eyes grew wide. His hand smoothed the hair from my face, his touch still warm in comparison to the air. The chill from the lake was setting deeper into me, my lungs aching and raw from their lack of air. Was being dead supposed to hurt this much? I didn’t think I was dead. If anything, I was caught in that moment between life and death. That must be why I was hallucinating Luken now. Because he’d been my obsession since the moment I saw him.

He was so beautiful. His skin glistened with water, emphasizing the golden tones. His amber eyes, so deep and expressive. He was stricken by my words. Figures that a hallucination would fall back into that golden king, that heroic figure I’d made him into when I first saw him.

“Is that really what you believe?” he asked, his voice low and pained. “You think I killed your family as vengeance because you told me no?”

I nodded, and the pain grew sharper in his eyes. His fingers brushed against my cheekbone, sending tingles in their wake.

“Why?” his voice remained low.

“Who else had a motive?” I answered. “Nobody had any reason to send those mercenaries after us. Only you. And they told me. They said you sent them.”

“They told you?” He frowned at me. “Did it not occur to you that they were lying?”

I laughed weakly. “Who else had reason to attack us?”

His eyes darkened again, but his brows drew closer together this time. It was anger rather than lust. “Who, indeed?”

He muttered something about the gods, but I couldn’t hear him clearly. The pain in my ribs was getting worse. Darkness swirled at the edges of my vision, and I blinked rapidly, trying to fight it back. My lungs were heavy, too heavy. More water had gotten in. Ah, that must be proof that I was still dying beneath the surface of the lake. I choked on the liquid in my lungs.

Luken’s hands moved on my body. They were rough and quick as he moved me to my side. I coughed and spluttered but couldn’t get my breath.

“Pulmonary edema,” he muttered.

I’d heard the term before. Dry drowning. After near-drowning, sometimes the lungs decided to simply fill with liquid and kill the person after they were saved. It was rare. More common among selkie-kin. A trueborn selkie could breathe with a lungful of water, unlike both humans and seals. It was part of their magic. Even a half-selkie didn’t have that same adaptation, but if they nearly drowned, some part of that distant magic would try to breathe through the water.

And so the lungs would fill and drown them. It happened far more rapidly than in other species. But I was still beneath the surface, wasn’t I?

A spike of panic washed through me. What was happening to me?

Luken’s hands pressed to either side of my face, making me look at him. “Elara, hold on. This isn’t the end.”

I stared at him, unable to do anything but think,This isn’t the end,repeating it on loop in my mind. He bit his finger, slashing through the skin with one elongated tooth. Propping my head back, he dripped two drops of blood into my mouth.

“This will heal the worst of your injuries,” he told me. “You’re not so close to death as to become a vampire. Don’t worry, Elara. You’re going to be okay.”

And that was when I knew. It was all real. How he’d gotten here, why he was here, I didn’t know. But the tangy blood hit my tongue and I knew. Pain burned through me as my bones knit together. Luken’s hand was still cupped behind my head. I couldn’t let it end like this. I couldn’t…

I reached out and grabbed his collar. I dragged him closer, whimpering with pain as I did so. “Luken…”

“It’s okay,” he whispered.

I growled, fighting the darkness. “I will never forgive you.”

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