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“Wait! Didi, are you okay? Were you hurt?” Shixiong’s firm but gentle hands gripped his shoulders, halting him.
Without thinking, Yichen snarled at Xiao Dan, baring his fangs, ready to tear into anyone who stood in his way.
“I’m safe, Yiyi.”
And like that, the red haze of panic and fear receded. He blinked and Rei was standing there, just past Shixiong’s shoulder. The blood-soaked shirt and mud-splattered jeans were gone. His hair was damp and his pale skin had a rosy glow, as if he’d recently stepped out of the shower. Rei was dressed in a pair of soft sleep pants and the moss-green sweater Yichen had picked out for him as if he needed the softness as a comfort. The only thing marring his perfect beauty was a white bandage covering his throat.
The hands holding Yichen disappeared and Yichen moved, closing the distance between him and Rei in a few quick steps.
And then Rei was in his arms. The elf even lifted his legs, wrapping them around Yichen’s waist while placing his arms over Yichen’s shoulders. Lips sealed to lips, and Yichen could feel Rei’s sigh of relief.
Holding him, feeling that rightness in his arms at last, thought leaked into his brain.
“Soooo…” Junjie drawled from somewhere in the hallway. “Apparently, this is happening.”
“Ugh. Just don’t,” Xiang grumbled. “I had to listen to that happening when Rei woke up from his garden nap and again later that night. We need to move them like we did Chen and Moon.”
“Hey! It’s not my fault vampire hearing is so good. Or that Chen’s tongue is so—” Whatever Moon was going to say was cut off.
“That’s enough, baobei,” Chen interrupted. “No one needs to hear you shouting my praises.”
“His shouting is why we moved you in the first place!”
Rei broke off their kiss but kept their mouths pressed together so Yichen could feel his wicked grin. Behind them, Shixiong was clearing his throat and ushering his clan mates off to another room so they could discuss things. Yichen knew he should put Rei down and join them.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he turned in the opposite direction, walking with the elf still in his arms, toward his bedroom. There were private things they needed to discuss first.
Chapter 22
Rei
Yichen’s default emotion was anger.
Whenever the poor vampire felt too much or didn’t know how to express his emotions, his brain routed everything through anger until it could figure out what to do with the flood of happy, sad, relief, panic, fear, rage, helplessness, and more.
So, Rei couldn’t say it surprised him that Yichen began shouting the second they were alone in his bedroom.
“What the fuck were you thinking, attacking the king head on like that?” he demanded as he put Rei on his feet again.
“I was thinking that killing him now would solve two-thirds of our problem,” Rei drawled. Naturally, he had to slip into his own bad habits and be a snarky asshole instead of trying to calm his lover.
Definitely the wrong thing to say.
Yichen’s anger downshifted into frigid, biting words. “How? By getting yourself killed?” His voice was barely more than a whisper, but the tone slipped in like razor blades across Rei’s flesh. “You tell me you want to stay here with me—a little hard to believe that when you throw yourself at King Ash’s blade the first chance you get.”
“Yiyi…” Rei started, but stopped as a muscle ticked in the corner of Yichen’s eye.
The vampire’s footsteps were silent across the wood floor as he closed the distance between them. Only his frantic heartbeat filled his ears as Yichen lifted one hand and slid his fingers across the white bandage circling his throat. Meimei had wrapped the wound, but it was already healed to the point of being just a red, puckered slash. In another hour or so, the cut would be a fading red line.
But he could guess that wasn’t what Yichen was seeing. No, his mind was replaying the stream of blood soaking into Rei’s shirt, the look of surprise and horror on Rei’s face. His brain would be filled with the stories of how Chen and Moon had nearly lost their lives at the end of King Ash’s sword.
If their roles were reversed, Rei would be in the same frantic, illogical state.
No, he’d be worse. He’d lost his mind plenty of times when Yichen had been tortured. There would have been no dragging him out of the forest. He’d rampage, killing every elf he could find.
“I’m sorry, Yiyi. I was reckless,” Rei murmured. He lowered his head to brush his chin on Yichen’s thumb. The rich scent of the woods mixed with the sour smell of sweat and fear that still clung to the vampire. “I saw him in front of me, and he appeared so weak. Like my mother had been draining the life from him. I thought…I thought it would be easy to kill him. Then so many of our problems would be solved.”
