Page 41 of Blade's Battle
“I need to blood-bond. With you, Anna.”
Terror squeezed her heart at the thought of blood-bonding again. “No!”
“It won’t hurt. There will be a momentary sting of the knife along your palm. I’d never do anything to harm you.”
“I know how it works. I’ve blood-bonded before. Which is why I can’t blood-bond you.”
“You can. When a mate dies, a shifter can blood-bond again.”
She was shaking her head as she pulled away from him. The fear the anxiety, the sense of hopelessness and devastation returned. “I’ll never blood-bond again. It’s not worth the pain.”
He couldn’t understand how terrifying the thought of blood-bonding—oflosing—another was to her.
“We’re right for each other.”
“You barely know me!” This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.
Blade took a very determined and decisive step toward her. “I know all I need to know. You calm me and my wolf.”
“That’s not enough.”
His hand cupped her face, and she found herself leaning toward him. “We’ll learn the rest about each other in time,” Blade said, his voice full of confidence.
Even if they were ready for a permanent commitment such as a blood-bond, she still wouldn’t do it. Never again.
“You need a shifter, not a human.” It was her trump card, the one fact he couldn’t dispute, the fact that would convince him to let go of this idea of being with her.
While he may not know the science as she did, he was shifter, and every shifter knew that blood-bonding a human would weaken him. The bridge that allowed him to move from shifter to wolf would be damaged. The blood-bond activated a process within the shifter that literally rewrote the genetic code of the bridge, taking half of the genes from the bond partner. It was why strong shifters avoided bonding with weak shifters. Taking the genetic code from a weak shifter meant allowing your bridge to be rebuilt with weak genes. Humans had no genes to contribute to the bridge, which meant the shifter lost half of its genes, leaving their bridge incomplete and making even the strongest of shifters weak. As for a weak shifter who blood-bonded with a human, that invited death, as it had for Kurt.
“I needyou,” Blade said with unerring confidence as his hands stroked her arms, lulling her into the false belief that she could be with him and nothing would happen to him. She’d thought that about Kurt too.
“Are you ready to compromise your shifter abilities just to be with me?”
“Yes.”
That was most definitely notthe answer she expected.
“Is this about going feral? I might be able to prevent that. I was working on the feral problem before I had to switch my focus to helping weak shifters. I can resume that part of my work and find a way to stop you from going feral. Then you won’t need to settle for me. You’ll have all the time in the world to find the right person for you.”
Blade leaned his forehead against hers. “I already found her. I may not know your history, but I know who you are, Angel, that you’re right for me.”
He smelled really good, and he would wear down her defenses if she weren’t careful. Anna pulled away, breaking the contact. Allowing him to lean his head against hers wastoo personal. And yet pulling away felt sowrong.
“You’re infatuated with me, or maybe you’re feeling sorry for me. I don’t need your pity and you need to get your head in the game. You’re going feral, and Liam has you under house arrest. Doesn’t that worry you?”
Blade pressed his palm against the center of her back as he kissed a path down her neck. His lips on her skin felt so good, so right. She stepped away from his lips, from him.
The disappointment on his face was clear, but so was his determination. “You’re still in love with him, with Kurt.”
“We’re not having this conversation,” she said, quite adamantly.
He sighed as he pushed a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Love doesn’t end when a person dies, does it?”
The sorrow on his face said a lot. Blade had lost someone close to him.
“No,” she said softly.
“You’re not ready to let go of him. I get that, I really do. I won’t push you, Anna. I can wait.”
