Page 171 of White Wolf

“What? I’m not.”

Sasha snorted, unimpressed. He reached with his free hand to push his hair back off his face, so The Look would have maximum impact. “You’ve been sleeping for almost twelve hours. You had no dinner, and your brain got hijacked.” He tapped his own temple for emphasis. “You’re hungry. For food,andyou need to feed.”

Nikita rolled his eyes.

“You feel like shit, I can tell. I can always tell.”

Obnoxious little shit.

“It took a lot out of you, showing her.”

Nikita choked on his next inhale, coughing smoke. Sasha patted his foot until he’d got his breath back. “That…it really happened, didn’t it? She was here.”

Sasha crawled up the bed so he could sit beside him, leaning back against the headboard. He was still smiling, eyes touched with sympathetic sadness. “Yes, she was really here.” He reached over and touched Nikita’s temple. “In there.” He perked up, grin widening. “I sent her a text message.”

“Ah, Sasha…” Nikita groaned and took another drag.

“She’s family!” Sasha insisted. “You have to. She has all these questions now. And besides, she gave me her phone number – or, well, technically you did, or she did through you, I don’t know – but that means she wants to meet us.” He grinned his toothiest, most manipulative grin, eyebrows waggling.

Nikita sighed. “When?”

“Oh, yay! Hold on, let me get your breakfast.” He bounded up off the bed and out the door.

“Still not hungry,” Nikita called after him.

“I don’t care, you’re eating!”

His stomach growled a feeble protest, but his hand shook badly when he brought the cigarette to his lips. Yeah, it was time to eat. And feed.

Sasha returned bearing a plate heaped with bacon, scrambled eggs, and heavily-buttered English muffins. Though the sight and smell left him faintly nauseas – low blood sugar, someone had suggested to him once, and it made sense – he had to admit that the food, plentiful and tasty, was one of the best things about this new century.

Sasha climbed back onto the bed and put the plate in his sheet-covered lap. “Here.” All proud, like someone’s mother.

He was pretty good at being Nikita’s mother, when he needed to be.

“I won’t eat all of this.”

“Try,” Sasha urged, and then stole a piece of bacon.

Nikita hated the sound of his own chewing, and Sasha knew that, so he launched into an entertaining story about this morning’s trip to the bodega while Nikita ate. The man behind the counter knew their names now – potentially dangerous – not because Nikita had ever bothered to introduce himself, but because Sasha was the sort of person who could make friends everywhere. Nikita teased him that he was more dog than wolf, but it was true. At least as far as friendliness went. The people he smiled to in shops and on the street had never been on the receiving end of one of his angry snarls.

By the time Sasha had talked him through his new favorite drink at Starbucks, and the new couple that had moved in on the first floor, Nikita had managed to work his way through both halves of the English muffin, most of the bacon, and some of the eggs. The food filled the middle of his stomach, but the edges remained sharp and bright, a hunger that buzzed restlessly under his skin, made his teeth rattle in his head. Blood hunger. The fierce kind that, if left unchecked, could lead to disastrous happenings out in public.

He tried, as a rule, not to think about the slip-ups he’d had in the past. He hadn’t had one in a very long time.

Something in his face showed it, because Sasha stopped talking and eased the plate away from him, braced a hand on the mattress and leaned across him to set it on the nightstand. Almost in his lap. Close enough for Nikita to hear the steady thumping of his heart; close enough for the scents of wolf, and shampoo, and dryer sheets, and soft human skin to bloom inside Nikita’s sinuses, saliva filling his mouth in response.

Blood.

Yes,blood.

He hated this; hated every part of it. Hated what he’d become.

He took a shaky, shallow breath, and then another, hands clenching tight on the sheet.

“Shh, I know, I know,” Sasha murmured as he sat back on his heels. “It’s alright. It’s only natural.”

Nikita closed his eyes and fought it a moment, like always, the awful craving. Then swallowed again, and again, panting. This must be what junkies felt like, he thought. Or maybe it was worse; this wasstealing.

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