Chapter 3
By midday my arms were throbbing a fair bit and my chest felt like it was just on the wrong side of tight, but I chalked it up to the shifting. After all, those bones changing and moving was something foreign to me, so it made sense I’d be sore after. It seemed odd that the pain got worse, instead of better, as the day went on, but I ignored it. I’d hurt more than that for as long as I could remember, so if my heart was beating a tad faster than it had in the morning and my skin felt a smidge tighter, well, I reckoned I was still doing all right.
But then the strangest thing happened. I was outside, taking a little walk after supper in the hope it would ease the tightness in my legs so I could go to sleep, when the image of that black-haired bloodsucker’s face popped into my head. I remembered meeting his gaze and wishing I could see the color of his eyes in the dark. I remembered his long, lean frame gliding toward me. I remembered my body’s reaction to him, to the thought of his fangs piercing my skin and drawing out my blood. I shuddered and the throbbing in my veins intensified.
What was wrong with me? That vampire and his buddies had been planning to kill me and I was getting turned on by the memory? Apparently, being able to shift didn’t mean I was no longer weird.
I shook off the unwelcome thoughts about long hair and a strong body and kept walking, trying to focus on the beauty of the sunlight filtering in through the trees and the familiar scents of pine and earth. I failed on both counts, because all I could think about was the beauty of the strong warrior as his hair flowed behind him when he flew at me, and the scent of his skin, spicy and warm, like cinnamon and cloves. It had instantly brought my pecker to attention in the alley, and I was having the same reaction in response to the memory. But it wasn’t only my prick that throbbed: all my veins pulsed with blood, and I wanted more than anything to have the vampire suck me and release the pressure.
Super. I was just coming out of my run as the pack freak because I was the only male shifter in memory who’d been unable to take his wolf form by so late in life and because I was smaller than the other males, and because I was weaker than, well, it seemed like I was weaker than everyone and… Wait. Where was I going with this uplifting internal monologue?
I couldn’t remember what I’d been thinking or doing. My body just moved, seemingly of its own accord. And suddenly I was surprised to find myself in town alone, the sky completely black. Had I walked there? I was having trouble concentrating on anything except the pounding in my veins. I clung to a thread of clarity in my head that said I didn’t belong on that street, surrounded by half-soul shops and houses.
Deciding that I needed to shift and run home, I ducked into an alley and stripped out of my clothes. But when I called my wolf form, nothing happened. Or rather, I couldn’t shift, but something did happen. The dull ache I’d been enduring turned into a pain so sharp it stole my breath. I felt too full, like my body was carrying more than it should, like my heart and my veins and my skin were going to explode. I collapsed onto the ground and curled into a ball, trying to catch my breath.
And that was when I heard him.
“I’m hungry,” my vampire growled. My vampire. Even in my foggy mental state, I knew something wasn’t right about that thought, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“You’ve been feeding all night, Miguel. This one is your third, and you’ve already drained him more than you should. Let’s go.”
“Hungry,” Miguel’s deep voice rumbled. And then I heard a frightened scream.
“If you take any more, you’ll kill him, and we don’t need that kind of attention. This town isn’t as big as what we’re used to. Besides, you can’t still be hungry. Let’s go.”
I crawled on forearms and knees, body held low to the ground, and peeked around the corner. Miguel had a pale, trembling half-soul pinned to the wall, two unconscious males lay at his feet, and another vampire stood next to him, his hand on Miguel’s shoulder, seemingly trying to restrain him.
My arms and knees felt damp. I lifted one arm at a time in front of my face and turned them. Red, slick, warm. I was bleeding. When I lowered my gaze to my legs, I saw blood drizzling there too. It looked as if I had been dragged over gravel, probably because I’d been dragging myself over exactly that. Sharp rocks and glass had pierced my skin, and my veins were happy at the opportunity to release their burden. I kept crawling forward, looking down at the ground so I might could avoid any more damage.
“I’m hungry,” Miguel rumbled again, and I returned my focus to him. He dipped his face toward the man’s neck and opened his mouth. I barked.
Barked? I shook my head and looked down to see my bloody skin had been replaced by fur. When had I shifted?
I wasn’t the only one surprised by my bark. Miguel and the other vampires turned their heads in my direction. The half-soul stayed as he was: crying and shaking. The stench of urine told me he had soiled himself.
I walked over to them, no thought, no plan, just an uncontrollable need to keep the bloodsucker away from that man. I didn’t want Miguel touching him, feeding from him. So much so that I growled at the mere possibility. And it wasn’t because I wanted to protect the frightened half-soul.
“What the hell?” the vampire who wasn’t Miguel said as he stared at me. “More dogs? I would’ve thought the ones last night would’ve gone home and warned the rest of the mutts to stay where they belong.” He shook his head and sneered. “There was no point in letting them live. Damn dogs can’t seem to understand their place.” He took a step toward me. “Well, I’m sure as fuck not making that mistake again.”
Miguel let go of the half-soul and reached for his comrade, preventing him from moving closer to me. Without the vampire holding him up, the half-soul slid down the wall and sat on the ground, gasping as tears streamed down his face.
“You deal with the humans,” Miguel ordered the other vampire. “I’ll take care of the wolf.”
The vampire ran a disdainful gaze over the three half-souls collapsed on the ground. “Deal with the humans?” he asked.
“Yes. You said we don’t need the attention, right? They were all drunk before we fed. Take them to their homes, and by morning, they won’t remember any of this. And if they do”—Miguel shrugged—“they’ll think it was all a dream.”
Looked more like a nightmare to me, but I wasn’t in any form to comment. Literally.
“We didn’t feed,” the vampire grumbled. “You fed. And you didn’t share.”
Faster than my eyes could follow, Miguel backhanded the other vampire, sending him flying several feet until he slammed against a parked truck. Blood dripped from his nose and lip. He licked his upper lip and wiped a hand across his face, smearing a streak of red over it. Though he didn’t roll over and show his belly, the vampire did as he was told. He climbed to his feet and, with slumped shoulders, approached the human male Miguel had released, who was now just as passed out as his friends.
If I hadn’t already felt the power rolling off Miguel, the interaction I was witnessing would have told me who was Alpha. Or the vampire version of Alpha. I had no idea what they called their leaders. Regardless of his title, this was the vampire who was staying behind to take care of me. Those had been Miguel’s words, right?
I should have been terrified.
I should have fled.
My whole life, I’d been warned about the bloodsuckers. They had no souls, no values, no respect for nature or community or family. And while my kind limited interaction with the half-souls as a general rule, we didn’t abuse them. They were weaker than shifters and we didn’t prey on the weak, a concept the bloodsuckers didn’t understand. The one in front of me, Miguel, looked to be the worst of their kind, hurting and terrifying defenseless half-souls without mercy.
But despite all that, I didn’t move when the not-Miguel-vampire roughly snatched the unconscious half-soul off the ground and moved away with the male in tow.
I didn’t move when the Miguel-vampire stood straight and tall and turned his sharp, piercing gaze on me.
And I didn’t move when, after the other vampire and the half-soul were gone, Miguel started walking—was he gliding?—toward me.
I looked at his feet, happy to see them touching the ground, and then I looked at his face, happy to see he’d focused completely on me. I sat up and tried to smile, which was difficult in wolf form and incredibly stupid in I-was-about-to-get-my-hide-tanned form. I was pretty sure my tail was moving from side to side. I refused to even think of it as wagging.
“I expected you to return to your kind, wolf,” Miguel said, his voice, strong but quiet, coming from barely parted lips. “I came to check on yo—” He stopped mid-word, looking surprised by what he’d said. “I walked by that alley after sundown and you were gone, but I could smell another wolf. A female who smelled like you, but…didn’t. I thought she’d come to collect you.”
Vampires could scent? That was something I hadn’t known. And for him to have distinguished the connection in scents between me and Crissy meant the bloodsuckers’ sense of smell was just as sophisticated as ours.
“Confused you, did I?” Miguel chuckled and grinned, looking pleased with himself.
I wondered if he could read my mind, if that was another vampire trait of which I’d been unaware. But then I realized my head was tipped to the side, my brow furrowed, and I reckoned that being able to read body language would have been enough for him to sense what I was thinking.
Of course, to be able read my body language, the vampire had to be looking at my body. I straightened my posture at the realization. And I felt something else getting straighter too, or rather it was getting harder, which meant it wasn’t really straight. It curved and veered right, actually.
“Well, you confuse me too, wolf.” Miguel’s voice was suddenly huskier and he was near about close enough to touch. “You smell…different.” He took in a deep breath through his nose and shuddered. “You smell good.”
I got up and took the two steps necessary to reach him, then stretched my neck up and nudged his crotch with my snout. He made a noise that was part laugh, part groan. Then he put his hand on my head and pushed me back.
“Doesn’t matter how good you smell. I’m not sticking my dick in an animal. Shift.” He palmed his groin, and I saw what looked to be a nice-sized bulge filling his jeans. “I’ve wanted to fuck your skinny ass since you came in your pants last night.”
Fuck my ass? I froze, an image of what he described in my mind: me in human form, naked on all fours, him behind me, pushing into my body. I’d seen pack members tie in wolf form. I’d even managed to spy some of them nude and writhing together in human form on the forest floor, under the moon. But I’d never seen two males together.
Male shifters tied with female shifters. It was the only way for a female to release her wolf and the only way for a male to maintain his humanity. Each shifter’s soul shared two forms, two bodies: a wolf and a human. Females’ souls favored the human form, while males’ souls favored the wolf. In order for a female to shift, she had to accept a tie from a male wolf. For that reason, females shifted later in life. Males, on other hand, shifted as cubs, but their connection to their human half weakened as they aged, and they needed to tie with a female shifter in order to hang on to their humanity.
I hadn’t expected to tie with anybody, ever. I mean, I hadn’t ever been able to shift into my wolf, so how could I help a female connect with hers? Plus, I hadn’t figured on living much into my adulthood. My family had endured looks of pity and disgust from pack members as a result of my inability to shift. Though they’d tried to shield me, I’d heard the words: sick, wrong, abomination, better off dead.
Although I was now able to shift, my newly developing attraction to a male vampire was sure to make the comments about me worse. The whole basis of shifter society was rooted in the concept of the connection between males and females, in the need to tie. So there was no question in my mind about how the elders would react if they knew what I was feeling: they’d say two males together was wrong. They’d say being with a vampire was worse. My parents would probably say it too. Maybe even my sister.
But it didn’t feel wrong. Not in my head, not in my heart, and not in the rest of my body. In fact, nothing had ever felt more right than being in Miguel’s presence or thinking about being held in his strong arms. So I closed my eyes and called to my human.
“There you are,” Miguel said, caressing my head with his big cool hand. I blinked up at him. “You’re shivering. Do you have clothes, young one, or did you come out here in your wolf form?”
I frowned as I rose to my feet. “I’m twenty. I’m not young.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m a man.”
One side of Miguel’s mouth turned up and he twitched his lips in amusement. It was the first smile I’d seen on his face that didn’t look predatory. “Twenty, you say? I’m more than four hundred years old.” He dropped his gaze between my legs and then the increasingly familiar and arousing wicked grin spread across his face. “But you are most definitely a man. Who would’ve thought such a small body would have such a big dick?”
I blushed at his crude words and instinctively tried to cover myself with my hands.
Miguel groaned and then licked my cheek, from my jaw to just under my eye, over and over again. It was such a canine gesture that it took me off guard.
“I can see your blood just beneath your skin.” His voice was husky and low. “I can hear it.” He licked his lips.
“Hear it?” I whispered.
“Your blood. I can hear your blood thrumming through your veins. It’s so loud.” He dipped his head and grazed my neck with an open mouth. “Never heard it so strongly before. It’s like it’s calling to me.”
With no thought toward self-preservation, I cocked my head and offered my neck to the bloodsucker, whom I had just witnessed all but killing a man. And that was after he’d drained two other half-souls who were, at that moment, still lying on the ground not more than fifteen feet from us.
“I can’t drink you, wolf,” he said regretfully as he continued mouthing my skin. “Your kind is poison, not food.”
I knew that, of course. The fact that vampires were allergic to shifter blood was one of our strengths during battle. Without the ability to suck us dry, they lost their primary tool and we were more evenly matched.
Despite that, I needed Miguel to feed from me. Not because I wanted to hurt him, but because I could feel what he described too. Not thirty minutes had passed since I’d crouched on the ground, bleeding, but already my body felt too full, my skin too tight. It was a familiar feeling, one I’d lived with for as long as I could remember. But only in that moment did I recognize it for what it was: too much blood in my body, in my veins, in my heart. I needed release, and I knew instinctively that Miguel could give it to me.
“So warm,” he said as he licked and kissed the pulsing veins in my neck. I trembled, and he pulled his face back, pursing his lips in disapproval. “And we need to make sure you stay that way. You need to shift back or we need to find you something to wear, and then I’ll walk you out of town.”
“But I…I,” I stammered. “I thought you were going to…thought we were fixin’ to…” I could feel my neck and face heating even more. I didn’t have the words to finish that sentence. I just knew I wanted something, needed something, felt as if I’d die if I didn’t get…something.
Miguel wrapped his arms around me and pulled me right up against him. “So shy,” he whispered and gazed at me. “I’d forgotten what that was like.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I burrowed closer to him, moving my hands up his sides and clinging to his shirt.
“I haven’t been with someone so new in years.” He rubbed my lower back as he skated his lips over my jaw. “Decades.” He reached my mouth, and my entire body shook with need, my heart slammed against my ribs, and my breath came out in short, desperate gasps. He paused, and then he looked into my eyes. “Have you ever been kissed?”
I shook my head.
“Centuries,” he said so quietly that I felt more than heard the words. Then he cupped my cheeks between his hands, cocked my head up, dipped his face, and touched his lips to mine.