I’m shouting at the pain drilling into my skull.

My vision is swimming hard again, and I crash out of the seat I’ve been resting in. My knees and palms land hard on the floor, and a shock jars through my body. Strong hands are on me, and they cradle my body. Looking up, I’m comforted by the concerned, kind eyes of Lucian. I take in his scent, that hint of brandy still on his breath.

“I don’t feel well,” I choke out.

“Jesus, sweetheart, you’re pale. Even for us you are.”

He scoops me in his arms like a bridal carry. I want to point that out, that it’s funny since we’re practically married. Hell, more than that. How many human unions last forever and are literally ordained by fate. Yeah, big fat goose egg there. My focus is fading in and out, so I can’t even get up the strength to tell him what I’m thinking. I laugh, sputter to myself as he carries me back to his private quarter of the plane. The door shuts behind us and I kneel on the bed before him. My anger is still there; I still wish he’d told me all of his plans before we arrived in Bucharest, but I’m not feeling well.

Abe did take far too much, as I feared. I need him now. Need the blood, the elixir of life that connects us.

“I’m not…I’m so hungry.”

Lucian strips his shirt off and I lick my lips at his broad physique and the pronounced curves of his muscles. Carver is muscled from years of missions as a Tireur, the best of the assassins working for Queen Bitch Morana. Lucian’s a fighter too, in his own way, but he’s broader. It’s almost like a swimmer’s physique versus a football star’s. Heat flares in my belly again, it’s spread from lower---my core---and I’m ready to feed.

So ready to feel the utter orgasmic ecstasy I’ve missed over the last few days.

“You gave Abe too much. We really needed at least two Drias for this. The fact you could wake an Ancient at all is a miracle,” Lucian says. Then he brushes his hand over my forehead. “Fuck, Aura, you’re burning up.”

Moaning, I sway on my knees. “Please, Lucian, need you.”

“Have it, my love,” he says, bringing my face to his collarbone. “Have everything you need.”

My fangs are fully descended, and I strike fast, letting the heady nectar hit me hard. It tastes of copper, of course, but also of the brandy he’s drunk and of his strength and determination. It’s a force in its own right, so different from Carver’s but no less right and no less addictive. Carver’s blood is steady like the waves of the ocean; Lucian’s blood is crisp like an alpine forest. Both so steady, both so needed. Closing my eyes, I fall into bliss and keep drinking. Electricity seems to sizzle up my nerve endings and my clit streaks to life as the beginning bites of pleasure lance through me.

I need him in so many ways.

Vaguely, I’m aware of shouts.

Opening my eyes, I watch, confused, as Lucian pushes my fangs. The Kresova soul deep inside of me doesn’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go. It feels so good, and I’m so very close. Greedily, I dig my fangs in deeper. Loud screams annoy me, even if there’s an edge of panic to them. I don’t care. I’m so very hungry---need this---and I must keep going.

Strong hands wrap around my shoulder and pull me away.

I crash to the headboard of the bed and it jars my feral side enough for me to get the upper hand over her. “I…What?” I can’t understand the scene before me.

Marius’s offering a towel to Lucian who is holding the fabric close to his right shoulder. The skin there is torn, and a mottled collection of dark blue and purple bruises dot his arm and chest. Blood oozes everywhere and stains the bed and walls. He’s pale, like a bed sheet, and leaning against the wall to keep from falling over completely. Marius’s green eyes are wide with horror as he looks between us.

“Did she take too much?”

Lucian shakes his head, his dark hair fanning out against his neck as he does so. “Not yet. It was close. I don’t know how drinking that much didn’t make her sick. I’ve tried explaining to her before that feeding is about balance.”

“A full grown ancient vampire king needed to almost drain her to nothing after millennia of sleep. It’s only because she’s a Dria that she’s still up and walking. Blood just from one consort isn’t enough. She needs a huge amount from at least one other vampire. Perhaps, Row…”

“He was injured from the Draugur. His leg was badly cut. He’s healing, but he can’t give, and Abe is still recovering. We don’t have anyone else to feed her with,” Lucia says. His voice is shaking still but growing stronger with every word he utters.

I swallow hard. My vision is still spinning. In fact, dark specks seem to float before my eyes, and it’s as if a narrow tunnel of darkness is covering over my line of sight completely. My head swoons and I pitch forward. I’d have hit my face completely against the mattress if Marius hadn’t caught me.

Licking my lips, I regard those mossy green eyes, those depths that captivated me back at Morana’s. The small connection between us even then that saved my life. I know what my Kresova soul wants, what the beast inside needs. But I can’t. His bomb is the reason Carver was taken, the reason Lucian and I were hurt and suffering.

So much death.

Even if it was for saving Abehartach, it was wrong.

“Who else is there?” I ask, my stomach twisting and cramping.

I haven’t been this desperate and hungry since I almost killed in the street during my change. Part of me is so ravenous, she doesn’t care. She’ll tear through anyone to get enough blood. Lucian or Row…they can defend themselves. If I go on like this much longer, I’ll hurt Reina. Or kill her.

“There’s me,” Marius replies, tearing off his jacket and rolling up his left sleeve. His wrist has a jagged scar down the vertical line of his vein, and I wonder what that is. I doubt with our healing it came from a battle or scrape after death. It must have been from his human life. “I can do this.”

Logic catches up with me.

“No!” I shout. “I won’t do it. I might be on the same plane with you, and you might have tried to say you’re sorry for Carver, but I’m not drinking from you.”

I don’t know if a blush reached my cheeks by then, but I felt hot. Confused. Feeding was too intimate. It was something I’d only shared with my consorts. I’d fed only from vampires I loved and cared about. I wasn’t about to do it with a mad bomber. With the reason Carver was imprisoned, no matter how inadvertent.

Lucian, still holding the towel to his shoulder, leans over and stroked my cheek. “Sweetheart, you have to. Abe has drained enough to kill even you, and my blood isn’t enough. Please, this uprising can’t work without you. It’s like Lavinia said, ‘You’re too important.’”

“This bastard hurt Carver. He hurt all of us.”

“For the greater good,” Lucian corrects. “Besides, you’re dying. If you want to live long enough to save Carver, you have to do this. Please.”

Lucian knew how to hit me where I lived, knew how best to manipulate me. I took a deep breath and nodded. Only for Carver would I take Marius’s traitorous blood. It wasn’t because he’d struck me so deeply in the middle of the Bacchanale. It wasn’t because I felt drawn to him in a way I couldn’t bear to explore further.

No.

If I died, then that Bitch Queen Morana won. She’d torment Carver until he died, keep the rest of the vampires at her beck-and-call, and use Jolie to bring carnage to anyone left in the resistance. I wasn’t about to let that happen. I would see Carver again, and I’d drink from Satan, himself to do that.

“All right,” I say. Then, I look away. It’s too intimate when I feed, too erotic too. I’m only lapping from Marius’s wrist, but I don’t want Lucian to watch. This is about hunger, death, and nothing else, but I can’t rub his face in it either. “Can we have a minute. Please, Lucian.”

He eyes Marius and then nods. “I can get a shower for a bit. I need to clean off. I look like that movie Se7en.”

“Maybe a little,” I say, even as my vision grows darker and I groan.

Lucian scoots out and there’s the chomp of fang on flesh and then the heady scent of blood again. Marius brings his wrist to my lips, much as I’d done earlier that day with Abehartach. I don’t have to be coaxed. Part of me wishes I could have held out a bit longer, that I could have showed restraint, but I was dying and my pure Kresova soul was in survival mode. I might be bothered by having the moral high ground, but she just wanted to live. Unlive. Same difference.

His blood is no less delicious than Carver’s or Lucian’s. That usual copper, that heady elixir that is always blood no matter the source, but mixes in with something wild and uncontrollable, like a fire roaring through my mouth and down my gullet. Carver and Lucian are steady in their own ways, measured and tempered. Marius isn’t. He’s a raging forest fire, the eruption of a volcano, a pure force of nature bubbling under the surface and just barely contained.

I want all of him.

The heat from his blood mixes with the flush of need spiraling up from my belly, from deep within my pussy. My clit’s throbbing again, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Nothing I want to do to end it either. I managed not to moan---well, at least not more than the average ravenous vamp---and eventually the hunger is satiated. The wild Kreosva within me grows calm, and the orgasmic pleasure dims before coming to climax. Eventually common sense sweeps over me and cold logic hits me in the face all over again.

Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

What is wrong with me? Am I just the biggest vampire slut in the world?

I effing hate that, the way the blood lust and, well, other lusts sweep over me and make me like some dog in heat, but the moment’s past. And yet, something else is different about me. Something has opened, a connection I can’t close.

“I’m sorry about your wrist,” I say, even as it comes out as a ragged gasp. Clearly, I’m still worked up than I realized.

Marius disappears to the hall and comes back with a pile of blankets for a me and a few, already wet hand towels. Silently, I clean my mouth, and then wrap myself up in layers of cloth. I feel too exposed around him already. As I watch him, Marius wipes off his wrist and quickly rolls down his sleeve and slides on a jacket. He’s hiding more than just the wound I made, and I know that now. The same way I saw Carver at Morana’s. We’re connected, Marius and I. But I can’t face all of what it means yet.

“You needed to feed, princess. We need our one awakened Dria in one piece. I’m just a pawn here.”

“I thought you were the knight.”

“Okay, fine I’m a little better than a pawn, but I don’t matter like you do,” he says, coming to sit next to me on the bed. So, don’t apologize for feeding. It’s obviously a vampire’s raison d’etre.

“No, I mean from before. I…you were really upset once, weren’t you?” I say, running my hand over his left wrist even through the fabric of his jacket.

Marius’s eyes go wide, vulnerable. His lip wobbles just a little as he replies, a small tell that he’s not as steady as he wants to be. “Should I even try and say I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, because I saw it…felt it during the feed. Something…can’t you feel it to? We’re connected.”

“Princess,” he says, stroking my cheek. “I’ve known that since I saw you in the hall at Morana’s fuckfest. I’ve been around centuries and never had a girl make me stop in my tracks the way you do. But there’s nothing to be sorry about. I was mortal once, and I got to feeling pretty damn low. I’m not feeling that way anymore.” He flashes his fangs at me. “In fact, I’m enjoying being top of the food chain and bringing on the revolution for my true king right now. It’s far better than I started out. Total sad sack back then.”

“I can’t believe you were ever that. Maybe a hothead or a violent anarchist, but never pathetic, Marius.” My voice is so quiet. It’s almost a whisper, and if he didn’t have vampiric senses, he might not have even heard my reply. “Nothing about you would ever be ‘sad sack.’”

I’m not even sure how it happened. Later, I’ll blame that second soul of mine, my feral nature and the way Marius’s called to her. That’s what I’ll say if Lucian ever asks.

Marius leans forward then, and his lips are on mine. There’s a hint of Jack and Coke on his lips and that wild spice underneath all of him, like when I was human and used to suck on cinnamon mints. He’s unrestrained, uncontrollable, and everything I should never want.

But I do.

Marius breaks away from me first and scrambles to the door at the far side of the bedroom. “You should get showered up. I think Lucian’s done with his. You’re a mess of blood and exhaustion. I…you don’t need me in here.”

“We were sharing a moment.”

There’s raw pain glimmering in Marius’s eyes. “No, princess. You were just hungry. I…maybe something opened up, but it’s best we shut it, right? I’m just the bastard mad bomber, and you’re the Dria queen with her ordained consorts. We don’t want to muddy any waters there, do we?”

Shaking my head, I think of Carver, of how my heart aches for him and of how desperately I want him back. My mind moves to Lucian who was almost drained dry to help me, and would go through anything, even letting another man give me blood, to make sure I was safe. I had more than I could handle right now, especially until Carver was found.

Marius was right.

Outside of some confusion and mutual embarrassment, nothing had happened.

It was better that way.

I offer him a small smile and pull my blankets tighter around me. Marius probably needs a way to diffuse this as badly as I do, a way to go back to the slight antagonism that’s been our rhythm so far. I do too. It’s the least I can do to work to put it back in place. “Thank you. I won’t forget how you helped me. I…everything hurts without Carver.”

“And I’m sorry for that.”

“But I won’t forget what you did for me tonight either, that you saved my life. Thank you, Marius.”

He nods and, for a moment, I think he’s going to say more. Instead, he just backs out the door. “I’ll find Lucian. He can help you shower, princess. Everything’s status quo again, right?”

“Sure,” I say, hating myself all the while for the lie escaping from my lips.