Page 36 of Exes, Hexes, and Strategy
Upon entering, Rafe saw nothing but Nina. Running to the bed, he collapsed beside it on his knees and took her hand in his. Kissing her knuckles, her palm, all he seemed able to say was her name, over and over again. Her skin was cool to the touch, leached of color, but the steady beeping of the heart monitor assured him that she was indeed alive.
Looking at her face, he drank in the sight of her, those beloved features nourishing his parched soul. Her eyes were closed, dark circles underneath, and there was a stark white bandage covering the injury on her throat. An IV bag, filled with dark red blood was attached to a tube that fed the life-giving liquid into Nina’s veins. A blood transfusion. Yes, she’d lost a lot of blood. It made sense.
“Mister DeMarco!”
Rafe’s head snapped up to see Morgan Rhys looking at him. By her expression, that hadn’t been the first time she’d said his name, trying to get his attention.
Keeping Nina’s hand held snugly in his own, he rose to his feet beside the bed then wished he hadn’t risen when Morgan’s next words nearly had his knees giving out on him.
“Her transition is progressing perfectly.”
Transition?
He looked to that bag of blood again as realization hit. They were allowing Nina to be Turned.
Rafe was usually pretty adept at stringing a sentence together, but all he could manage was “What?” and then “How?” and then again, “What?” before he finally sputtered almost breathlessly in his amazement, “But it’s forbidden.”
Morgan’s look was sympathetic. “It is. That’s why Kane had to stop you.”
Rafe’s brow furrowed with confusion as he looked to Nina, to the bag of blood that had now taken on an entirely different meaning, and then to Morgan once more. “Then how?”
An idea suddenly came to him and he asked, “Was it because I’d already given her my blood? Was she already transitioning?”
Morgan shook her head, and Cam chose that moment to speak up. “Chances were high she would have puked up that blood with you trying to Turn her like that.”
Rafe shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose as the first signs of a headache began to pulse in his temples. “Please,” he bit out in frustration. “Will someone just tell me what the hell is going on?”
“If youhadmanaged to Turn her,” Morgan told him. “If she’d been one of those rare humans that took to vampirism easily and the method you were attempting miraculously worked, you would have signed your death warrant – for the both of you. The Court of Elders would have hunted you down and killed you both. It’s the one rule they don’t play around with, the one rule they’ll actually rouse themselves from their plushy little nests to punish personally.”
“See why I said I saved your life?” the angel asked, a smug grin on his face.
Rafe shot the man a glare but quickly turned back to his Nina. He raised her limp hand once more to his lips. “I’ll fight them,” he fiercely swore. “Every last one of them, for her.”
“Well, now you don’t have to since I’m the one who Turned her.”
Rafe looked back at Morgan with open surprise.
“I don’t know if you know this, but as a tenured Hunter, I’m not bound by the Court’s rules but by those set down by the Society,” she informed him before she turned and picked up a laptop, turning it around so that he could see what was on the screen.
“This is the Hunters’ Society manual,” she told him, tapping the screen. “I’ve been through it numerous times to check to make sure I was remembering correctly, and nowhere in it does it specifically say that a witch cannot be Turned. Instead, it clearly states that any asset to a Hunter team may be Turned at the team leader’s discretion for intake into that team.Any asset,” she reiterated.
“It’s a loophole,” Cam clarified in case Rafe was slow on the uptake. “One that saved your Nina’s life and gives you a get out of jail free card.”
One that gave him Nina. Forever. Rafe closed his eyes, his breath leaving him in a shudder. They could be together for all eternity. A wish he had never thought would come true, granted, thanks to Morgan Rhys.
After a few moments, he opened his eyes and glanced at Morgan to say sincerely, “Thank you.”
The woman dipped her chin in acknowledgment before turning to set down her laptop. “She’ll be under a standard Hunter contract now. There’s no getting around that, but I’ll explain all of that to her when she’s awake.”
Rafe nodded absently, his focus fixed on Nina.
“Now, we need to talk about your father.”
He grimaced. He didn’t want to talk about Vincent DeMarco, not when he was so happy he actually felt light-headed. The monster was dead and good riddance. Rafe certainly wouldn’t mourn him.
“He’s still alive.”
Chapter Twenty-One
