Page 93 of Land of Shadow

“That’s how long I’ve waited for you.”

I scoff. “You’ve been a virgin that whole time?”

He laughs, full-throated and so damn warm. “No, I’ve been waiting for my Blood.Kedves verem,” the foreign words roll off his tongue seductively.

“For blood? And what did you say?”

“For my Blood.” He tightens his grip on me. “For you.”

“This is just sex. You know that, right?” I turn to look at him over my shoulder.

“Is that what you’ve been telling yourself?” He smirks, cocky bastard.

“I’m not your immortal vampire bride.” I try to scoot away from him. “Wait.” I freeze. “I can’t get pregnant, right? You’re an entirely different species.”

“Already seeking my seed to start our brood? How wonderful.” He doesn’t let me move an inch. Pressing his nose to my neck, he inhales. “Can you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The call.”

“What?” I shake my head.

“Listen.” He lets me move just enough so that he can turn me around to face him. “Here.” He taps his chest over his heart.

“You want me to listen to your heart?” I arch a brow. “Cliché much?”

“To my blood.” No hint of amusement in his tone. He’s serious.

I grudgingly press my ear to his warm skin. His heartbeat is strong, steady. I close my eyes and focus on it as if I have my stethoscope and a nurse taking notes. Nothing remarkable. Nothing except the impulse to wrap myself around him. To kiss him endlessly. To talk and laugh and make love with no end in sight. I want all that so much it hurts, so much that the bridge of my nose begins to prickle with unshed tears.

He pulls me away gently. “Do you hear it?”

“I can’t do this. Whatever this is.” I wipe at my eyes, unsure of what the hell just happened. “I think … I think I should go.”

His face returns to its stoic mask.

I sit up. He doesn’t stop me this time. I swipe my shirt off the floor, questions spinning like a whirlwind through my mind.First and foremost, what the hell was I thinking? Fucking him? Letting himbiteme?

He watches me dress in silence.

I march to his bedroom door, each step away from him only increasing my mental recriminations. “This can’t happen again.”

He doesn’t reply, only looks at me with his arrogant smirk. One that says, ‘we’ll see about that’.

25

Soldiers and workers mill around the hotel atrium when I come down the next day. Thankfully, the bodies are gone. Their blood remains, though. The soldiers are carrying soiled furniture and rugs out the wide open front doors while workers in white spray disinfectant everywhere.

I hurry past and into the hallway leading to the lab. More soldiers move in and out of the building, the gargoyles conspicuously absent.

“Don’t touch that.” Wyatt is just inside the door as soldiers march through our lab like angry ants in a colony. “Or that.”

“Hey!” Aang actually smacks the hand of a soldier reaching for one of the upended microscopes. “That’s fragile.”

“It’s on the floor.” The soldier frowns at him, then lifts the microscope back onto its table.

The lab is, for lack of a better word, wrecked. The militia destroyed everything they could, shattering glass and denting metal. Papers are everywhere, computer screens busted, tables upended, refrigerator doors yanked off their hinges. Everything we had in here is a loss.

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