Page 48 of Never Run from an Immortal

“Apology for what?”

“I had to cut myself out ofyourcar, Vale, after saving your ass.”

Aidan gestured to the bloody mess that was his torso, despite his best efforts to clean himself up. “I was a little busy.”

“All-powerful Vampire Lord, my ass,” she said on a huff of air, elbowing him lightly.

“Thank you,” he told her, holding her gaze.

Rae barely dipped her chin in acknowledgement, the tiniest hint of colour staining her cheeks. “Now tell me about Daire,the test subject.”

Aidan filled her in, all too aware of how much worse the situation could have been if the Fae and humans were further along with their testing. “Daire had Thaumas abilities, I’m certain of it.”

“How is that even possible? I thought the last of them were wiped out before I was born?”

So did he. “Either they found a store of blood… or there are Thaumas in hiding.” Aidan wondered if his uncle had known, if any of the council knew.

“Fuck,” was all Rae said, a rutok crying somewhere deep inside the kennel accompanying the sentiment. And then after a moment of silence, she asked, “Nim’s gone, isn’t she?”

He owed her the truth. He owed her a lot more than that, but he could give her the truth. Dark green eyes met his and he wished he had more information to give her. “She was wounded, but alive.”

Her relief was palpable, but there was sadness too. Regret. “You lost a lot of your team tonight. Baelin and the others?”

“They’re fine.”

Rae blew out a breath. “And now we just wait it out here?”

“No one’s getting close to this building unless I want them to now. Thanks to you.”

She relaxed a little at that but covered it up with a quiet chuckle. “Your thanks are almost as shit as your apologies,my lord.” The words were sharp, though Aidan felt her weariness; there was no hiding her exhaustion now.

“Get some rest,” he told her. Rae didn’t reply, and Aidan made a point of staring out the window opposite into the dark as her breaths slowed and deepened.

He owed his life to a Witch, and as morning broke, he realised he didn’t mind at all.

Chapter twenty-four

Rae woke slowly. She was warm, Aidan’s firm body beneath her.Beneathher.Shit.She’d practically curled herself over his lap, his fingers splayed over her hip. He didn’t stir as she eased herself out of his hold and rolled back onto her heels to look at him.

A faint scar and a broken line in his tattoo were all that remained of his wound. She allowed herself a moment to gaze over the rest of his ink: lines of that strange foreign text, rows and rows of it with finer, smaller symbols that before she’d mistaken for flourishes at the ends of letters. The night before she’d realised, sitting in his lap under the harsh lights of the break room, that his tattoos covered scars all across his torso and arms. Some of them painfully similar to her own. From his uncle, she would put money on it.

Aidan stirred but didn’t wake. She should have left him. Could have. But she’d woken up inside that car, her world upside down, the Vampire Lord trying to keep Daire away from her,and bringing her dagger to the test subject’s neck had been more instinct than a good business decision.

Goddess knew what she was thinking when she’d used her magic to pull the bullet out. Only it hadn’t drained her in the way using that amount of magic usually would. The opposite, in fact; she felt stronger for it. She hadn’t intended to pull from him, but Rae felt certain he knew.

Guilt twisted in her stomach for a heartbeat before she made her way for the door, needing to at least have a wall between them for a few minutes. To not think about the way he’d looked at her the night before, the way he’d held her to him, how all she’d wanted was to feel those hands over every inch of her.

Rutoks chittered and huffed beyond the wall to her right as she entered a corridor, knowing she’d eventually find an access door if she looked long enough. Some said the rutoks had magic once. Human children were still often gifted them as pets as a symbol of protection, but all they did was eat, shit, sleep, and breed until the new legislation had come in and the kennels had been built all across the city.

Some clever human had come up with the idea of turning their shit into biofuel, and the captured rutoks were permitted to live, magic or not. Rae didn’t know what she believed; she just loved the idea of an army of adorable creatures charging down from the mountains at dawn.

With every step she took further away from Aidan, she half expected to feel him press against her mind, but he must have still been sleeping. Her thoughts drifted to the way he’d rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip after she’d risen from his lap, and all she’d been able to think about then was how it would feel over hers. Watching him drink her blood, the effect it had on him, knowing that some part ofherdid that to him. It was a rush she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Even now, heat flushed hercheeks, her chest, her belly, lower. Rae swallowed, shaking away the thought.

A green door with a warning sign longer than her arm at the end of the next corridor was the one she was looking for. She mumbled her spell, the lock clicking and the door swinging open, not knowing what to expect. If an army of feral rutoks chased her back to Aidan, at least he’d have breakfast.

She hadn’t expected cages, wall to floor, and again she had to shake away the awful sight of lifeless bodies in the cells back at the facility. In her mind, the rutoks had been running about these facilities freely, deposited by some hole in the wall. They were clean creatures and only messed in their litter trays, which would have been emptied mechanically, Rae presumed, the same way everything else seemed to in the building. Each cage held a rutok, some hissing, some sleeping, some running back and forth across the tiny stretch of hatched wires. Water bottles and food dispensers connected to pipes ran along the ceiling, all fresh, all full. But no space. No direct sunlight; the windows were too high and too narrow for that.

If it wouldn’t attract so much attention, she’d set them all free there and then, but Rae couldn’t. She made her way further into the kennel, eyes drifting over sleeping rutoks, some old, some young, until she stopped at a cage holding two. A mother lying on her side, and an entirely white cub, curled up in the space under the mother’s chin as it whimpered quietly.

---