Page 140 of Golden Eagle

But Jamie was already nodding and backing out of the room.

A moment later, Alexei heard the apartment door open and close.

Dante rounded on him, gaze disapproving. “Why do you treat him like he’s a bother?”

“Because he is a bother.” Alexei reached for the shirt, but Dante pulled it back, frown deepening.

“As someone who’s studied the monarchies of the world, allow me to share a bit of unsolicited wisdom with you: all the best princes have shown the occasional bit of compassion. All the shit ones got their heads lopped off.” He thrust the shirt forward. “Get dressed or we’ll be late.”

Silently fuming – properly chastened – Alexei went to dress and clean up. He took a little water from the tap and combed his hair back away from his face in front of the mirror. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, thank you very much, but now he doubted, turning his head side to side, checking it from various angles.

He scowled at his reflection and stomped out to find his shoes. He thought he might split Dante’s jeans when he sat down on the sofa to tug his sneakers on. No one needed to wear pants that tight – not even string beans like Basil fucking Norrie.

God, he was in a foul mood. Jumpy as a cat, looking for a fight.

The truth that he wasn’t going to speak aloud was that last night had rattled him. Badly.

No one had ever resisted his compulsion before. He’d never crossed paths with a mage that powerful; had certainly never been attacked by one. He had Gustav’s voice in one ear, and Nikita’s in the other, and he didn’t belong, not anywhere, and he’d been too young, before his immortal rebirth, to learn all that he needed to of intrigue and double-dealing, of how to tell the truths from the lies. He felt young, and stupid, and all he wanted was to have his mother kiss his forehead and call him “Baby” and fix everything for him.

He would appeal to a higher authority. To Prince Valerian Dracula of Wallachia, who’d lived for half a millennia, and who’d dream-walked across the world.

~*~

Mia didn’t like bragging, as a general rule, but she thought she’d been handling the sudden upheaval of her life with no small amount of grace.

A grace rapidly fraying at the edges, little threads shredding away moment by moment.

It was easiest at night, when they climbed into bed. When the hotel curtains were drawn, and the chug of the air conditioning helped cover all the tiny sounds she’d never noticed when she was mortal. When Val pulled her in close, and she could press her face into the smooth skin of his throat and let her world narrow down to the now-familiar scent of him, which meant love, and safety, and acceptance.

But morning would inevitably come, and they’d step out of the microcosm of their night’s hotel room and she would be assaulted by the sights and smells of the world, sharp and fierce, invasive in a way they’d never been before. Innocuous things grated on her nerves: the crackle of the speakers in Fulk’s Cadillac; the clatter of silverware in a restaurant; the wail of a child; the hot stink of a dumpster as they walked past it in a parking lot. Sometimes she knew an inexplicable urge to take off sprinting; to leap up and grab a window ledge. Just because she knew she could, strength and energy coiled deep in her muscles in a way she’d never known before.

By the end of every day, she was usually shaking. Raw, overwhelmed, close to hyperventilating. Val would stroke her hair, or massage the base of her neck, and apologize for how strange it was. Would reassure her that she would adjust, eventually, because everyone who was turned did so. And she would choke backWhat if I don’t?because she could read the guilt and worry in his gaze, and she didn’t want to add to his own stresses.

He had nightmares; sometimes she woke in the dark to find him shivering, whimpering in a language that must have been Romanian.

Despite her new physical strength, the stress bore down a little more every day. Exhausting her. She had the sense of clinging by her fingernails, and could sense that Val wasn’t much better off, despite his glittering smiles, and his cheerful questions about the world around them. A week ago, she’d watched him slip into a red button-up shirt in front of a department store mirror, turn side to side, and stare at his reflection in bewilderment.

It was a lot like the way she looked at her own reflection.

And then there was the blood.

Every night, Anna came to her with an innocuous paper cup – usually one of the free ones from the hotel bathrooms – full of hot blood. It was Fulk’s; she could tell that by its scent, and what a hell of thing to be able to detect.

Drinking it out of a cup wasn’t like that heated moment back at the mansion, when Val had turned her. When drinking from his wrist and his throat had gotten all tied up in sex; his fangs piercing her skin nearly as pleasurable as the joining of their bodies. No, when she looked down into the cup, the velvet crimson liquid turned her stomach.

And made it growl.

As much as the idea repulsed her – mostly on principle – her body craved it. Needed it. Hunger won out over nausea every time, and she drained it all down in a few greedy swallows. It was no longer the salt-copper of biting her own lip as a human. There was a richness to it now; arightness. Headier and warmer and more soothing than wine.

Last night, Nikita had said that immortality wasn’t a gift. It wasn’t a cure.

He was right.

In her worst moments, when she felt close to something like dissociation, she reminded herself that she was alive. That she was loved. That would have to be enough.

She sat now on the end of the made bed, staring down at the carpet fibers she could pick out with wondrous detail, concentrating on her breathing. Slow in, slow out. Letting the conversation wash over her; actively pushing back against the anxiety that pulsed off Fulk in waves.

They stood in the bathroom, he and Val, the door open, while Val brushed out his hair in front of the mirror.

---