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“Huh. Then it means that Rei’s blood is drawing bits of your magic into himself. Fascinating.” Moon lightly clapped his hands together and threw them apart. At the same time, the two drops seemed to explode into even tinier specs that intermingled.
“Moon,” Chen interrupted, his voice firm but gentle. “I think it’s time to stop.”
“Just another minute.”
It wasn’t until Chen spoke that Yichen drew his gaze from the blood particles suspended in the air to actually look at the blood witch. Beads of sweat covered his stark white face. His laughing amber eyes had turned dark red, and his hands were trembling in front of him. Pink fingertips had become dark red, shifting closer to black as the color steadily crept down his fingers to his hands.
“Moon—”
“I’m fine,” he snapped in a voice that was not Moon’s. It was deep, as if dredged up from the bottom of an ocean trench.
“Baobei, you are not fine.”
“I’m still in control. I can’t stop now. It’s too fascinating. Rei’s blood…he’s like a vine that has claimed Yichen as his own. I—” Moon coughed, sounding as if he were choking.
“Moon, as your maker, I command you to end this spell this second!” Chen bellowed, his words vibrating with an old magic. Far older than the blood witch’s.
Whatever strings were holding Moon upright were snipped the moment Chen finished speaking. Both Moon and the blood fell. Only Moon was caught in Chen’s waiting arms. The vampire eased his trembling mate to the ground.
“I’m sorry. So sorry,” Moon murmured, turning to bury his face in Chen’s neck. “I let myself get carried away, and I promised I wouldn’t.”
Chen pressed soft kisses to Moon’s temple and the top of his head, gathering him in close. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. You held out a long time. We’ll find a way to better balance your two sides, I promise.”
“Why don’t we go inside and let Moon rest for a while?” Xiao Dan suggested, but his words caused Moon to pull away from Chen and struggle to sit up.
“No! I’m okay! I’m okay!” Moon did not seem okay. He was swaying and blinking as if he were trying to clear his head. But Yichen had to give him credit; Moon was fighting hard to pull his shit together. “What I saw was really amazing. I wish Bel Varik was here. He loves this kind of magic and science and blending. I’ll have to call him later so we can discuss it.”
“Focus, baobei,” Chen murmured.
“Right.” Moon snapped his fingers only to wrinkle his nose at his blackened fingertips. The worst of the discoloration had receded, but not completely. “Anyway…Rei’s magic, his essence, is like this plant. A vine. And it’s wrapping itself around Yichen’s essence, pulling it in and weaving them together, so it’s hard to tell where one of them ends and the other begins.” Moon tipped his head to the side to rest it against his mate’s jaw. “Makes me wonder what would have happened if Yichen had been a mere human.” Moon shivered. “Oooh…scary thought.”
“What if I were to die?” Rei inquired.
“Shut up,” Yichen snarled, the words leaping from his lips before he could catch them. Not that he wanted to. “That’s not an option.” Just the mention of death from Rei was enough to make the hair on the nape of his neck stand on end and his fangs tingle, wanting to slide free. “You’re not dying.” Yichen cleared his throat and glared at the ground. “We’ve still got to figure out how to take care of your loving parents.”
“Death wouldn’t fix this,” a new voice said.
The group turned to see that the large orange fox with multiple fluffy, dancing tails had strolled up and was now sitting on the outskirts of their gathering.
“Hey, Huli!” Moon called, throwing a hand up into the air.
The fox made a tsking noise, his whiskers twitching. “Playing with blood magic again?”
Moon held up one hand, his thumb and forefinger spaced a few centimeters apart while he squinted at the jiuweihu. “A little.”
“Huli? Can you see what Moon sees?” Xiao Dan asked, drawing the fox’s attention.
The fox spirit’s entire demeanor seemed to change—not to mention its appearance.
In the blink of an eye, it leaped to Xiao Dan and shifted into a human form. Or rather, a mostly human form. He would have been roughly the same height as Shixiong if not for the pair of black-tipped fox ears rising from the top of his head. Long, dark-brown hair cascaded down his shoulders and back, framing a soft face with a sweetly rounded nose and large, nearly black eyes. His arms wrapped around Xiao Dan’s arm while his nine tails tumbled out of a pair of slim black jeans. His oversized cream sweater slipped over one shoulder, revealing perfect white skin.
But that was what a huli jing or jiuweihu was supposed to look like—perfect. An enticement to make you do things you knew you shouldn’t.
And this one had set his sights on their shixiong a long time ago.
What Yichen couldn’t understand was how this creature could now come so close? They’d spent the better part of a millennium keeping it at bay.
“I can’t see what that monster can,” Huli admitted with a wave in Moon’s direction. “But I can smell that your didi has changed. He’s not what he was before the fae stole him away. I can see that his aura has also changed from when I last saw him in China. You’re going to need some big magic to pull them apart.”
