Alex
13 Years Ago…
Emma grabs my trembling hands, turning them over to check for injuries I already know aren’t there. Beyond the blood-splattered stone walls, another battle rages, an endless swarm of bodies against the glow of torches and bonfires dappled over the countryside.
Red velvet and tarnished armor scatter at my feet while my cousin sucks in a breath, her ocean blue eyes meeting mine. “What have you done?”
“Go to the nearest clinic outpost and find a way home to Crimson Peak,” I urge, my voice trembling. Below, at our feet, dark, almost black blood pools around my shoes, spreading toward Emma’s boots. Tangles of platinum hair float in a crimson current.
“Alex–”
“Go. Now.” I grip her shoulders, squeezing tight, leaving bloody prints on her healer uniform.
“Alex? Alex, what have you done!” Emma sobs as I push her out of the puddle of blood, her boots leaving sticky tracks across uneven cobblestone. An ancient temple in horrendous disrepair rises around us, blocking the rain and the chaos beyond the shattered stained-glass windows.
“Don’t look. Don’t look at her, Emma. Please. Go. I am begging you to go.”
“Oh, my gods. Oh, my gods! Alex!” Her wail of despair slices through me like a knife. I gather her to my chest, shushing her, begging her to keep quiet. A shadow darkens the doorframe, and Drake, her twin brother, steps in out of the downpour, blood dripping from his armor. His mouth is stained black, fangs on full display.
“What–” His eyes lock on the body behind us and widen. “Alex!”
“Get her out of here!” I shove Emma into his arms. They stumble back, but Drake whirls on me, grabbing me by the shoulder and tossing me into the wall. Chipped stone bounces down from the ceiling, scattering around the body–the headless body–painting the room red.
“Tell me,” he pants, delirious, “exactly what happened.”
“No. You have to get out of here before anyone sees us.” He slams me against the wall again, and I grunt, wincing as bright pain laces through my battered torso.
“He’s hurt, Drake!” Emma cries out, but Drake’s eyes are glued to mine. He’s so like his dad–my uncle Michael. It’s amazing, honestly, how shifter sensibilities can bleed through overwhelmingly vampiric-leaning genetics when hybrid blood is involved. Drake bares his fangs at me, but his face–his warmth–the glossy, heated death in his eyes? It’s all shifter.
“She had to die.”
“Not by your hand,” Drake argues.
“I had no choice.”
“Emma, leave!” Drake barks, but Emma whimpers, shaking her head. “EMMA! Go!”
“I won’t!”
Drake clutches my throat to keep me still and snarls at his twin, who bawls, torn between keeping her eyes on me versus her brother.
“Please go,” I beg her, tears welling in my own eyes. “Please.”
“No! We all have–we all need to leave! Together!”
“There’s nowhere to go, Emma!” Drake’s frantic, struggling to catch his breath. “Queen Matilda’s army has the village surrounded.”
“I can get out.” I clutch his fingers, which are digging into my throat to the point my words come out as a scratchy, breathless grimace. “I’ll run, and you’ll take her head. Her army will back down when they realize their leader is dead. It’s over, Drake.”
“Her son is still alive,” Drake argues. “Kai is worse than Queen Matilda ever was!”
“This was her last stand. Her people are disillusioned. You know it’s true. Your father was–he’s coming to your aid by morning. The witches are arriving any minute to help. This is your chance to be–to be a fucking hero. Take her head!”
Drake holds my gaze. A decade of war-torn memories flood between us. Two kids–we were two scruffy boys with scraped knees and a propensity for being exceedingly naughty. We grew up together, attached at the hip, like our fathers had. He was the closest thing to a brother I’d ever have. One day, we were ten years old playing war games, imagining what it would be like to be soldiers and heroes, and the next, we were training for a moment exactly like this.
It wasn’t enough.
“Go north to Starlit Tundra,” Drake says after a long, heavy pause.
Emma shrieks the word, “No!” but her voice is lost to the pounding in my temples and the warmth spreading from several stab wounds on my abdomen.
“Keep going north, past their settlements, until you can’t go any further.”
“What’s past Starlit Tundra?” I ask weakly, and Drake… smiles.
Gods, in another life, had we not been princes, the heirs to our fathers’ kingdoms, we would have been explorers. We would have been the ones to discover the fabled lands of the ancient fae gods and their proteges–the Goddess’s own people the shifters here talk about so often. Like the golden woman that his mother, Faye, and his shifter grandmother, Emory, told us stories about. The people who could heal my mother. The people who could stop tyrants like Queen Matilda with a single twist of their wrists.
“I don’t know, but you can find out.”
“Don’t!” Emma screams, but Drake lets me go, and I slip into the darkness, holding my stomach to keep my entrails from falling out of my shirt, and I run.
* * *
Alex
The present…
I never allowed myself to have anything that would keep me shackled to one place. Not until I finished my PhD, and a prestigious postdoctoral position made me forget who I was. It was easy to forget my past and true identity. I was blinded by knowledge not yet available in my world. By science. By drills and beakers and miles and miles of glacier blue ice. Nothing else mattered for an entire decade. I ate, slept, and bled my research. I let it consume me until I was a shell of the man I was when I ended a bloody war with my bare hands and made it impossible for me to ever return home again as long as the son of the monster I killed walked free in our world. Hunting me.
Then I saw Skye for the first time, and she forced me to remember. She forced me to remember all of it. Which is why I tried so damned hard to keep her at arm’s length. Falling for someone? It was out of the question.
But I’m a scientist. A fucking biologist. I know better than to assume things like attraction and desire are within my control.
This is so much more than that.
She cups my cheek, her eyes hazy with starlight. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m here,” I whisper and kiss her again, like I’ve wanted to kiss her for weeks now, putting every ounce of feeling and energy I have between us.
Skye’s body is a masterpiece of the Goddess’s design. She’s all soft curves and warm, peachy skin that tastes divine on my tongue. Her dark hair frames her face like a halo, reflecting soft lamplight like burnt gold and the deepest, heaviest wine.
Her lips part in a breathy moan. I’m barely inside her but already riding the edge of something powerful and overwhelming I’ve denied myself time and time again. Her inner walls quiver, squeezing in rhythmic waves that force me to brace a hand on the bed and slow down before I ruin this moment for both of us, ending it far too soon.
She mouths my name, her eyes open to slits bright with desire. Beautiful. A miracle of science and nature. She is what I was looking for all this time, isn’t she?
Her fingers dig into my sides. I stroke deep, watching her, noticing the little line between her brows that forms when she concentrates on the new sensations building inside of her. It strikes me then that she’s only done this once. Just once. I shove aside the acute feeling of jealousy that ripples through at the thought of anyone else, especially someone who couldn’t even come close to worshipping her like she deserves, seeing and touching her like this, and thrust.
She gasps, drawing her legs up and locking her ankles at the base of my spine.
“Like this?” I draw the words over her cheek and thrust in deep again, the bed frame rattling against the wall, and she sighs sharply, arching her neck.
I can’t help it. She shivers, gripping my arms, while I nuzzle her neck and inhale. She smells like the deepest vanilla and amber, like everything soft I want to fall into and never resurface, but it’s her blood that drives me insane.
“Take more,” she begs, drawing scratch marks down my back with her nails. “Please, take more.”
I bite down on that little cleft between her neck and shoulder and suck deeply. She gasps, muttering something whiny and unintelligible, but cants her hips against mine, meeting me thrust for thrust, slow and deep, stroke for stroke.
I can taste the adrenaline surging through her. Her pleasure makes her blood rich and heady in a way that doesn’t seem real. She’s delicious. I’m obsessed. I can’t get enough. I’ll never get enough.
The bed creaks and shutters beneath us. Her pussy tightens, spasming, and I let go of her neck to curse and growl wicked, utterly deranged things in her ear as she comes multiple times. It’s crazy. We’re both insane. This can’t continue, but I’d rather die than ever give her up.
So I won’t, even if the conversation we have next is going to gut me.
I pull out, spilling onto her lower belly, barely making it in time. She’s limp beneath me, her skin damp with sweat and pink from exertion. I press my forehead to hers, breathless, riding faint waves of pleasure still surging through my body, but when I open my eyes, she’s looking up at me with that questioning expression that pulls me back to the present instantly.
“Vampires and shifters can… procreate.”
“Ah,” she says with a sleepy smile. “I was wondering.”
“And I don’t taste a single shred of contraceptive tonics in your blood.”
“You can really tell?”
“I doubt I’d be able to differentiate between tonics, but you taste incredible.”
Her eyes light with curiosity, and I’m hard again. I’m out of my mind when I press inside of her once more. Her lips part, and she exhales slowly, sinking into a shared sensation of awe. She’s swollen and likely sore, so I’m gentle, taking my sweet time, reveling in the feeling of her and the little sounds she makes.
It’s almost an hour later, our bodies spent and slack on my bed, which is a tangle of sheets, when she lifts her cheek from my chest and looks up at me, her violet eyes dimmer than usual. “I have to go back to my family, don’t I?”
I brush my fingers through her hair lazily. “Yeah. You should.”
She lies back down with a soft huff, her body curled against mine while starlight dances over the ceiling. Wind funnels against the windows, sending flurries of ice crystals shattering over the glass, but inside, it’s silent. So quiet and warm I can hear her heart beating, and my body hasn’t been this relaxed in a very long time.
I lean over and brush a kiss over her forehead. “I can talk to the university president for you.”
“About what?”
“Bereavement leave, of course.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And us.” I lean out of the way, allowing her to look up at me again. “Because people are going to find out about us, and I’d like to get ahead of any rumors.”
She peers at me skeptically, the furrow between her brows deepening. “You being a vampire and me being a mystic?”
“No,” I laugh. “Us. Whatever this becomes. The university has strict rules about relationships between employees, so while you’re gone, I’ll make sure everything is settled before you return. Plus, my secret is still safe. I’ve only told you and… Toby.”
She jumps up, turning to face me. “You told Toby?!”