Page 27 of Claimed By her Alien Prince

Whatever it was, it did the trick though. I felt already stronger, more aware.

He turned back to the table, and I noticed he was still bleeding from the fight. "Seth." I stood. "You're bleeding."

He looked down at his abdomen, his very, very ripped abdomen, and the side of his lips curved. "Well I'll be damned."

Almost curiously, his finger dipped into the blood before he looked at it. "Red," he declared fascinated.

I wasn't sure what he had expected, surely this wasn't the first time he had bled. There were scars all over his muscular back and his wide chest.

"How is your arm?" he asked after sticking his finger in his mouth to suck the blood off it.

His gesture flustered me.

Arm? All I could think of was his finger in his mouth, his lips around it, and so many sexual images assaulted me, that I felt heat rise from my core into my face.

Uncannily quickly he was by my side and pulled up my arm his father had sliced earlier. But besides two narrow white lines, there was nothing left.

"You'll have scars," he observed.

I rubbed my arm with the hand holding the cup and liquid sloshed inside, but didn't spill. How was this possible? The last time I looked at my arm, there had been two ugly tears in my flesh. I couldn't imagine that I had been out long enough for them to heal.

And then I remembered something else. "Your hand?"

"It's nothing." He moved away from me.

"You cut yourself and your blood… it healed me?"

His eyes were unreadable when he said, "Daemon blood heals Nayphyllym."

I stared at the slashes at his side, wondered about the one on his palm, the one he didn't want to show me. My voice wavered, and yet, I had to know. "Does that work the other way around to?"

"We cannot live without Nayphyllym blood."

He hadn't answered my question and we both knew it. I narrowed my eyes at him, and with a sigh, he nodded. "Yes, Nayphyllym blood heals us too."

"Then let me…"

"No!" He shrank back.

Hurt, I stared at him. Was the thought of my blood healing him really that abhorrent to him?

I noticed that he favored his right side, he was hurting from the wound Nergal had inflicted on him.

"If I can help you, let me help," I offered again.

"There are others who can and will." His words were like stabs to my heart.

I had no idea why I cared whose blood he took or why his mere words were able to inflict this kind of pain on me, but there was something else, something entirely unexpected and just as inexplicable: Jealousy. Red hot jealousy ran through me. Just the thought of him using somebody else to heal his wounds, to ease his pain…

"No!" I exclaimed before I could stop myself.

I rose and stepped toward him. His presence dwarfed me, but I wasn't afraid despite logic dictating that I should have been. I should have run in the other direction instead of confronting him. One didn't confront a predator, one ran. Especially when they were unarmed or when weapons were useless against said predator. And that's what Seth was, a predator.

I saw it. I smelled it. I sensed it.

A long time ago, one of my many caretakers had taken me to the zoo, and I remembered visiting the panther exhibit, remembered the smell. Dark, musky, predatory. Seth's scent wasn't as strong, but it was there just the same.

It might have been funny in another situation. Me, who barely reached his chest, advancing on him, despite him towering over me by a good head and half; his chest was so wide, he could have easily hidden three of me. His biceps were thicker than my thighs, and I had no doubt he could snap my neck with little effort and two of his fingers. Yet here we were, me advancing on him, and him retreating until his back hit a pillar.

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