WE’RE IN THE kitchen, eating breakfast when the doorbell rings. Everyone looks around, wondering who it could be. I get a sudden feeling of dread in my stomach. Jared, Brad, and Howard all move to get up. Howard gets to the door first. He opens it wide, and I can see through a gap between them all that it’s a courier delivering a package.
‘Jared Stone?’ the guy asks. Howard takes the parcel from him as Jared steps forward to sign for it. They close the door and all look at the parcel with a grim look on their faces.
‘Devon, you wanna take Maiya and head upstairs for a little while?’ Jared asks, but I don’t hear the question, it’s more of a demand.
‘No not really. I think I know just as well as you do what we’re going to find in that box, so I’d rather stay.’
Both Jared and Brad mutter under their breath at her refusal. I stay quiet. I have no idea what they will find in that box, but my now very acute sense of smell tells me it’s something not nice because it smells rotten. And my imagination will be running wild if I don’t stay to find out. Brad looks at me with a pleading look on his face, not wanting to make me go, but wanting me to go all the same. I ignore the look completely. I hear him sigh as Howard takes a steak knife from the draw. The box is small, but it’s covered in brown parcel tape and has delicate stickers on each side. Howard pulls the knife carefully along the seam of the box. As soon as the seam is pulled open, that stench I could smell a little fills my nose, and it’s vomit-inducing. I hold my nose against it.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Howard says almost painfully. He pulls out a blood-stained piece of paper and begins to read from it.
‘Jared Stone. This is the first gift of many unless the female you stole is returned, and the traitor killed. I will not accept anything less. If you do not meet my demands, prepare to go to war. You have until December thirty-first at noon. Do not try to barter. It won’t work. Brody dead. Willow returned—that is your only option.’
I look at Brad. He has a disgusted look on his face at whatever is in the box. Jared slams his hands down on the table in temper.
‘FUUUUUUUUUCK,’ he yells, making both Devon and I jump. Devon moves to his side and hugs his arm.
‘We should have just taken his fucking pack,’ Jared snaps out. ‘Killed the motherfucking lot of them.’ Brody chooses right then to walk in the room. His face screws up the minute the smell hits his nose, and I can tell when the realisation hits him. He walks over to the box, and Howard tries to close it so he can’t see but isn’t quick enough.
‘Brody,’ Howard says. ‘I’m sorry, man.’
Brody shakes his head. ‘Don’t let Willow see,’ he says, almost without emotion, and leaves through the back door. Howard goes after him. Jared and Brad look at each other.
‘Fucking lockdown again. I’ll let my dad know.’ He takes his phone and leaves the room. Brad tells me he’ll be in the surveillance room, leaving Devon and me alone in the kitchen. I think I know what’s in the box and I don’t want to see, but the morbid desire to find out if I’m right, overrides it. Devon and I both seem to move towards it at the same time. I watch as she pulls back the flaps and we both look inside. It’s worse than I expected. I find a woman’s head, eyes wide open, staring at me. It’s Brody and Willow’s mother. ‘Shit,’ Devon mutters and closes the box up. I feel sick. But I handle it.
‘What will happen now?’ I ask her.
‘We’re on lockdown, and I guess we prepare for the thirty-first.’
‘They won’t just hand them back over though?’
‘Not a chance. Jared won’t bend to his will. Or anyone’s.’
The next few days are a bit of a blur. People are coming and going, and Brad spends a lot of time down in the surveillance room. He, Brody and another guy, whose name I’m not sure of seem to cover that between them. I spend my time between our room, Devon’s, the kitchen and the TV room. Everyone seems to have a job to do except Devon and me, and it gets boring. Zoe is with us a lot of the time, but even she has a job with the nursing stuff she does.
‘Hey, are you managing on the new dosage better?’ she asks me. We have increased to morning and night injections of Brad’s blood, which we are now doing between us now without having to bother Zoe. She just does weekly tests on me—blood pressure and all that stuff.
‘Yeah, I seem fine now we’ve upped it again. I don’t get so much pain from my leg because it doesn’t get chance to wear off,’ I tell her.
‘Well, that’s good. I knew it would take some time to figure out exactly what works but I’m glad we’re there. It could still change over time though. You could end up needing more.’
‘Do you think so? That’s not going to be possible eventually, surely?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when it comes to it,’ she tells me as if to say well ‘don’t worry’. But now it’s out there, I am worried. Brad can’t be giving me blood continually. This is already a strain. What if I need more and more over time?
‘We need to cross that bridge now, Zoe. Could it end up that his blood isn’t enough?’
Her shoulders go up, shrugging. ‘I don’t know, Maiya. We’ve never had to deal with this kind of thing before, ever.’
‘But how much blood can a person give every day?’ I ask.
Again, her shoulders shrug.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ she says shaking her head.
‘Well, we can’t wait until it’s too late. We need to see what other options we have now. Maybe another donor? It could eventually be far too much for Brad? Could it weaken him?’
‘Taking his blood every day? Yeah, I would think it could.’
‘Well, then we need to do something now before it gets to that point, or he will have to stop donating. I won’t put him at risk.’
‘And he won’t let you not take his blood,’ Devon pipes up. ‘You know he won’t.’
I sigh. She’s right. I may as well speak to a brick wall then ask Brad to stop. I know he’d give his life for mine. I know because I would do the same for him.
That night, when we go to bed, I know I have to approach it. I don’t know what his reaction will be, but I have to get this off my chest.
‘Brad, how about we look at getting another donor?’
‘Huh? Donor for what?’
‘Blood,’ I tell him, knowing that as soon as he penny drops, he’s going to lose his shit.
‘Why the fuck would we do that?’ he asks annoyed.
‘Brad, I know you must have discussed this with Zoe before. You can’t keep giving blood like you are. It’s going to be detrimental to you.’
‘Better than the alternative, Maiya’ he says, clearly annoyed. He sits up and looks at me—well, glares at me is more of an accurate description.
‘All I’m saying is that maybe we should look into another donor?’
‘No, you are having mine, and that’s fucking it.’
‘Brad! Stop being such a stubborn asshole.’
‘Me? I’m the stubborn one? Sure, princess—because you aren’t stubborn at all, huh?’
I hate it when he calls me princess. He only uses it when he’s pissed at me.
‘Don’t call me PRINCESS,’ I yell.
‘Don’t fucking act like one then,’ he says, throwing the covers back and going to the bathroom, I sigh and throw my head back onto the pillow as I watch his sculpted back and arse walk away. Shit. He doesn’t come out for a long while, so I get up and go to him. Knocking on the door, I don’t get an answer. I kind of expected that.
‘Brad,’ I say through the door. ‘Please hear me out.’ When I get no answer again, I open the door and find him sitting on the toilet with the lid down. He’s sulking and has his arms folded like a kid across his chest. ‘Brad?’ He looks at me. He’s still pissed.
‘You haven’t got a fucking argument, Maiya. There isn’t one, so you may as well fucking stop now.’
‘No, Brad. We can look for someone else? I could even use both? We’ve got to try. I can’t live without it, and you can’t keep losing so much blood.’
‘It’s hardly a fucking lot,’ he mutters
‘No. You’re right, but how long has it taken for me to need more? How long before I need a pint every time? How long are we willing to let this go Brad, before it gets too much for you?’
‘Maiya,’ he stands now like he needs to make his point that much more. ‘Do you honestly think I can sit by and let some other guys blood run in your veins? Do you know what that would do to me?’
Oh… ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that. We can look at women then?’
‘No.’
‘What other option do we have?’
His eyes close and his jaw clenches. ‘There is one, but I don’t know how it will work. I don’t even know if it’s possible anymore.’
‘What? What is it?’
He looks like he’s in pain when he says it. ‘I could change you.’ He looks me right in the eye.
‘I don’t understand? Change me?’
‘You’d be the same as me, as all of us, but there’s a chance it won’t work, so I need to speak to some of the older pack members and the doctors. We’d have to assess all the problems that could arise. It’s not just straight forward.’
I’m shocked. I didn’t even realise this could be an option. Did I want that to be an option? It doesn’t take me long to think about it. If it means I’m no longer dependent on the blood he gives me each day, and instead, share a life that Brad loves, of course I’ll take that option.
‘Umm okay… so how do we go about that?’
‘If we decide that we want you to go through with it we need permission from the alpha.’
‘Jared?’
‘Yes and no. Jared’s the alpha here, but his dad’s still the alpha of the pack. Jared does make his own decisions though, with regards to us as a pack, since all the shit with Devon and Kristen. And his dad will be stepping down soon. That’s all in motion, anyway.’
‘So, we just need the go ahead from him, and we can do it?’
‘Babe, don’t get ahead of yourself. I won’t do it if it’s going to risk your life. We need to be a hundred percent.’
‘Brad, nothing is a hundred percent, ever.’
‘Well, this has to be, or it’s a no-go,’ he says with a tone that suggests this conversation is over. Gah, he can be so frustrating. I don’t argue. What’s the point?
‘Okay,’ I tell him as he wraps his arms around me.
‘Sweetheart. I don’t want to argue with you over this, okay?’
I nod because it’s the last thing I want too. He hugs me close, and I run my hands over the braids in his hair. I love him so much the thought of my life taking away from his, hurts me.