AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Three swallows of blood, and the whole world changed.
Chapter Nine
Cai had seemed so matter-of-fact about it. Because of that, Rand hadn't expected anything much different from the second mark. This was...
He'd gone rigid in Cai's arms, no matter that his cock was still throbbing with impending climax, and having Cai deep in his ass was a burning pleasure. This overruled that. It was as if his cells were being remade, every one of them bound to a matching one with the male flush against his back, bearing him down against the mattress.
The second mark had put Cai's thoughts in his mind, an adjustment to mental privacy, but wolf communication was as much intuition and body language as it was speaking, so it hadn't been a big leap. This was way beyond that.
Rand could actually feel the vampire descending through all the levels of his mind, deeper, even deeper, penetrating everything. Beyond the mind, and way into the heart and soul. He was walking straight into those rooms, able to throw any door open without Rand's say-so. He'd told Cai that being fucked as a wolf would be like invading a sanctuary? This nowhere-to-hide, child-like but undeniable fear, caused the type of panic Rand didn't experience too often.
Cai's arm had tightened around him, making it worse. Rand withdrew on every level. Or tried. He was thrashing. "Let me go...can't breathe."
Cai fortunately listened, pulling out and moving back, giving Rand room to scramble free of the bed. He was disoriented, having trouble making sense of anything. His mind was split in two. Nothing sacred or private any more. He was like a cut open fish, still flopping on a bank, in agony. He hit something, maybe a side table, sent it crashing, and knocked over something else that shattered. A vague burning, like glass cutting into his feet. He didn't care. He was trying to escape, and he knew one sure way to do that.
No, Rand, don't...
He shifted, but the disarray of his mind made it one of the worst shifts of his life, as if his bones were being broken and remade. A cry became a howl of agony and he was writhing, thrashing on the floor, caught between human and wolf. Fuck, it was a Split, increasing his terror. It happened sometimes, to wolves caught up in a trauma where they were unable to keep their wits about them. It could become permanent.
Permanent and fatal, because there was no way to exist with a foot physically in each plane.
Help...
"Rand, I'm here. Calm down. Breathe. You're not stuck, goddamn it. You're just worked up. Just breathe." Cai scrambled to his side, his own mind in chaos, still trying to manage all the images and connections with the shifter, while simultaneously trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Well, to do that, he'd need to know what the fuck he was doing, right? And obviously, he hadn't. Some of this stuff, like opening and closing his mind to the shifter to communicate, had been easy as falling asleep, no instructions needed, making him believe the vampire-servant thing was ninety-nine percent common sense and instinct. But this...
Oh, God, the shifter was...he was part man, part animal, a macabre, monstrous mess of human and wolf body parts writhing on the floor. Fuck, what could he do? Cai didn't know who he could trust here, and he'd...what the hell had he been thinking?
He whirled at a knock, but the one knocking didn't bother to wait before he entered. It was Jacob, Lady Lyssa's servant. He took in the scene at a glance and came swiftly across the room, though was sensible enough to stop a few feet back when Rand threw his head back and snarled. Rand's mind was being swallowed by his wolf, the human part still caught up in the marking change, trying to sort it out.
"How can I help?" Jacob asked. He wasn't deferential the way most servants Cai had met were, but he was honest and direct, which Cai appreciated. Rand didn't have time for him to weigh trust pros and cons.
"I'm not sure. I was third marking him. Least, I think I was. I've never done it before, and I don't know much about human servants, making them, having them..." Cai broke off at Jacob's startled look. "I never witnessed...I was just told the basics. Take blood, release serum, give blood. He's a shifter, I don't know... There was something in his mind about Splitting, this in-between state. He's frightened. I don't know how to help."
"Okay." Jacob moved to the upended side table, found the house phone where it had fallen behind the bed, and picked it up, punching in a number. "Debra, Jacob here. Are you in? Just landed? Good. We've got an emergency. Not sure what we'll be needing, but Brian's probably the best bet to figure it out."
He gave the unseen woman details based on some of what Cai had told him, and added info that Cai hadn't. "Think it might have been an unprepped third marking. Going to have my lady come help talk him through it, but it'd be good to have you as backup in case I'm wrong." He paused. "Tell Brian not to wet himself, but the servant is a wolf shifter. Yeah, they really exist. We're keeping that knowledge classified."
At a later time, Cai would be impressed by how calm the servant remained, with a thrashing half-man, half-wolf on the floor in obvious distress. But Cai was going to lose his fucking mind if someone didn't do something. Now.
Jacob hung up and returned to Cai's side. "My lady's on her way."
"What? I..." Cai had shot his mouth off to her earlier. That was different, when he'd been making a point driven by his emotions and what-the-fuck attitude toward almost everything. In a heartbeat, he positioned himself over Rand. The mutated male was tearing Cai's heart out. He'd subsided into a painful whimpering, eyes glassy. He had three wolf legs and one human one, and the jerking of human and animal limbs in a mindless mimic of attempted flight was killing Cai. He'd done this.
"If she's coming here to take a stripe off my ass or do something terrible to him, she'll have to take me apart piece by piece to do it."
"I believe something terrible was already done to him," Lyssa said coolly, stepping inside the door and closing it behind her. "By an inexperienced vampire who should have asked questions rather than hiding behind his ego and pride."
Cai swallowed, his fists half clenched. Jacob straightened, his expression saying he was about to warn Cai to stand down, but Lyssa took care of that herself. She crossed the room, wearing a hunter green dress that flowed over her curves and moved with the same rippling appeal as her dark hair, loose on her shoulders. Unbound, it reached her waist. She was barefoot and dropped to her heels next to Rand, so close to Cai her shoulder pressed against his knee. He noticed Jacob shift closer, a protective gesture. He wanted Cai to move back, but Cai wasn't doing it. Yeah, he'd fucked this up, but that didn't mean he'd abandon Rand.
"Your shifter is not going to come to harm from me," Lyssa said. "Put your hand where mine is."
She laid it on Rand's chest, a curious patchwork of wolf fur and human chest hair. The ribs on the right side were spread in a strange, unsettling way, as if about to split from the skin. He understood why Rand's mind was a red haze of spiraling chaos and pain. His was in danger of going the same way if he couldn't fucking help him. Lyssa's calmness helped, he couldn't deny it, but the tightness around her mouth, and close way she was studying what was happening to Rand, didn't assure a good outcome.
"A third marking is different from a second marking," she said in that mesmerizing voice, drawing Cai's gaze to her face, though his hand remained over Rand's rapidly beating heart. "It is more than releasing the serum and the two of you exchanging blood. The first third marking for a young vampire like yourself is often mentored and guided by an older vampire, when necessary. I expect you dismissed the soul connection as spiritual nonsense."
"Save the lecture for later. Fix him, help him."
"It's not a lecture," she said in reproof. "Only his Master, the one who marked him, can fix him. You. So listen, if you truly care for his welfare. Because if you can't, you will have to end his suffering by taking his life."
Cai's startled glance shot to her. Her face was stern, uncompromising, but not without compassion. The last surprised him, as did the gentleness of her touch when she gripped his other hand and moved it to Rand's abdo
men, so one palm was on his chest, one there. Then she moved behind Cai, laying one hand over his heart, behind his shoulder blade, the other to his lower back.
"Close your eyes. Don't look at his outer form. Look inside. Breathe with me. Slow. We need to slow it all down, detach from his physical suffering so you can reach past it, end it. You've been in his mind as a second mark. Go there first. Go where it's familiar. A third marking is a soul-to-soul binding, Cai. Heart to heart. You can be everywhere inside him, to the deepest, darkest, most hidden areas of his soul, the uncharted pathways of his heart, and anywhere in his mind. You essentially become total Master of this soul, responsible for its care and existence, even as it becomes your bound servant through eternity."
"I didn't...I didn't realize it was all that."
"No. And now you regret, and wish you could take it back, because that type of commitment scares you."
"I also didn't warn him. He didn't know."
"Which is also a big part of the problem. First things first. Focus. As you relax and focus, you'll be able to see those pathways inside him. You'll see where your marking has rushed in like floodwater, taking up too much room. Too much, too fast. Too deep. Drowning him. Imagine instead your binding with him is a mist like fog, light as air. Draw back slowly, give him room to be Rand, to find himself and all the things he knows about himself. No, do not withdraw all the way or too fast. Get past your guilt and fear."
Her tone was a gentle reproach, but effective. Cai wondered how the hell she was sensing all this through her palms. She had no access into his mind, but it was as if she did.
