Page 47 of Until the Heart Stops
In all the centuries I had been alive I had resolved to be alone. A blood mate was a terrifying prospect until I met Lilith. And I had not been lying those months ago when I’d told her that she was the flame to which I lit the candle of my immortality.
Because immortality was nothing without her.
I cut my wrist again with my teeth, deepening the wound before holding the fount to her mouth. She closed her lips around it, eyes fluttering shut.
“That’s it, my darling,” I praised, kissing her temple. “Drink deep so you can be strong.”
When I’d woken, I’d felt betrayed by Seth. We had raised him from his grave to destroy Mael and the Covenant. He should have been here, should have never let Lilith leave. But as my blood passed into her, as her bodytensed and relaxed before her hands raised to grip my wrist, I thought I finally understood.
His blood was powerful enough to sustain us both. There would be no chance of her rejecting the change, no chance of her coming into this new life as a weakling and waiting centuries to grow strong. And perhaps the goddess had told him of this moment. But I found I could no longer think of him, not when Lilith’s skin hardened beneath my touch. Her heartbeat deepened, her hair took on a glossy sheen, and all traces of her blood loss and near death vanished.
The bond between us strengthened. Soft murmurs of her thoughts slipped through my mind rather than just emotion. My face swam in her vision and now in mine. All the markers of the bond we’d already shared, but tenfold. The wound on my arm closed and I pulled away, but a furrow formed between her brows, even with her eyes closed.
I barely noticed when Henry lifted Gabrielle into his arms and vanished from the room. Mateo followed, holding another body close—Raya with the wound in her chest gaping. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. The fire had died out, leaving only ash on the stone floor.
I pressed a kiss to one cheek then the other before turning Lilith toward me. She went willingly, keeping her eyes shut as she slipped her legs on either side of me. The gauzy material of the ritual gown rippled around her perfect form, the rose peaks of her nipples straining. I cupped the back of her head and guided her mouth to my throat.
Lilith’s hands slid up my chest and she pressed a kiss to the vein before her teeth, now as sharp and deadly as my own, pierced my skin. I groaned as she took one, deep pull,her fingers flexing on my shoulders. My cock throbbed and she shifted closer, pressing herself against me.
“Is that what you want, love? To ride my cock while you drink my blood?”
She gave a soft hum and I chuckled, reaching down to free myself from my trousers. Though her body was not as soft, not as hot as when she had been human, it begged for me just as before. Wet and slick and warm. I dragged the tip across her slit and she moaned, the vibration rumbling straight down into my bones.
With a shallow exhale, I thrust inside, seating myself to the hilt. Her cunt fluttered around me and I pressed a kiss to the exposed column of her throat, sucking the vein in between my teeth. Her hips gave small rocks, desperate for me to move, but I did not. I needed this moment just to be surrounded by her, to be assured that she was alive and here in my arms. My fangs pressed against the artery and I paused, allowing her to take one more mouthful of my blood before I bit.
Once before I’d told her that I’d felt bliss, but it was nothing compared to this, my mouth at her throat and hers at mine. Our blood, forever in a loop, forever sustaining. This was an ecstasy I was sure only the gods felt—the relief Deimos experienced when Amayah finally arrived in his arms. Because of course Amayah’s sacrifice had not been in vain. Even now she was united with her lover and they were tangled within each other’s embrace for all time.
As Lilith was in mine and as I was in hers.
Chapter 27
“What did you mean before? When you said he‘turned you into a weapon?’”
We were still in the ritual room and I was checking over the now non-existent wound on Lilith’s stomach, mostly to reassure myself that the transformation had taken hold. Soon we would know for sure if the first death begun.
“Most believe I was chosen because of my looks.” The words were bitter on my tongue and I huffed a humorless laugh. “I wasn’t.”
A muscle ticked in my jaw and I finally looked up to meet her gaze. Her kindness slipped through the bond tangled with her curiosity. Curiosity she stifled for my sake. “If you don’t wish to speak of it, I understand.”
I shook my head before scrubbing a hand across my face. The temptation to look over my shoulder at what had once been my maker was overwhelming, but I fixed my attention on her face, the gentle slope of her nose, the bow of her upper lip.
“I was thirty-three and lucky to still be alive—though that was exactly why I caught his eye. In my country I had been a warrior, and a skilled one at that. So skilled many said I was blessed by the Strigun, but I wasn’t sure if I believed the god of war truly blessed me.” Sighing, I finally gave in to the urge to look, leaning a hip against the table and staring at the pile of ash. “Looking back, I think there was a magical element to it. I was gifted in the art of killing and whatever power I had enhanced it.Thatwas why he chose me.”
Battlefields flashed through my mind. The scratch of the paint across my face and arms. The weight of the sword in my palm. Magic, though I’d had no name for it at the time, slicing through my veins, tapping me on the shoulder, whispering in my ear. And that pale, otherworldly face staring at me across a field strewn with bodies. I’d thought it was Strigun at first, thought I was dead and he was taking me to Keryes, the king of death, for judgment.
Lilith said nothing, but I slid my palm down her arm, the connection releasing a small bit of the knot lodged in my chest. “Mateo had rebelled against him and his teachings. I was to be the example and the chain which bound them.”
Her questions slipped through the bond unbidden, but she held her tongue. I interlaced our fingers together, squeezing. “I was exactly as he’d hoped, for a while at least.”
Finally her voice, now resonant and lush with the blood, slipped through the silence. “What did he make you do?”
I turned her palm over in my hands, tracing the lines slowly. “Unleashed me on his enemies, those Lycans and witches with whom he quarreled. For a century I was seen as wild and uncontrollable, little more than an animalrunning on instinct. Even now there are those who give me a wide berth, as you saw in Eamon’s ballroom.”
Her lips pursed. She had thought they’d kept their distance merely because I and my siblings were made by one of the Covenant. But there had been plenty within that crowd who had seen the devastation I’d wrought. How, with each command I obeyed, I brought our maker closer and closer to power.
“What changed?” she breathed.
A smile curled the corner of my mouth. “Gabrielle. Henry had been made a few decades after me and he was the one who found her less than thirty years later. Her magic had pulled him through the streets and right into the tiny room she shared with her husband, who was bent on killing her. When she was changed because of that powerful magic, it took very little time for her presence to soften us, to open our eyes to the monsters we had become.”
