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My altercation with Sonja stayed on my mind all through the weekend, and I was still thinking about it the following Monday.
What bothered me the most about the whole thing was that the redheaded bitch was partially right. I had been changing. Just not in the way she thought. I wasn’t turning evil—though the lack of coffee might just put me over the edge—but I was growing weaker. Much weaker. I should’ve been able to take control of that situation in the hallway using persuasion alone, but I hadn’t been able to. When I’d reached for the skill, all I’d found was an aching Kai-shaped chasm. His absence, his refusal to even acknowledge me half the time, sapped my strength. It was an echo of the horrible, crippling exhaustion I had felt before I’d bonded with the guys; a slow, starving death.
Going through my days without him around was bad enough, but sharing my first class with him when he wouldn’t even look at me—that was pure hell. I was crawling through a vast desert, and he was an oasis guarded by razor wire. If I couldn’t get over the wire, I needed to find a way under it.
There was only one person I could think of to turn to for advice, and I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. Still, as I dragged my way through the day, I knew it had to be done. After falling asleep in my last class, too exhausted to keep my eyes open, I made my way to the infirmary.
“Piper! It’s nice to see you. You aren’t hurt, are you?” Cassandra’s dreamy voice softened in confusion as she gave me a quick once-over.
“Not physically,” I said through a yawn, trying to will away the pounding headache that had been growing in my skull all day. “Not yet anyway.”
She cocked her head at me in confusion, then gestured behind her toward one of the curtained-off sections. “Come. Tell me.”
I followed her, then sat down on the small exam table and looked over at her. Shame wasn’t an emotion I usually allowed myself—life was too damn short to waste it feeling guilty about stupid shit—but it was clawing its way to the surface now.
I knew I’d made a mistake with Kai. I knew I shouldn’t have taunted him with my blood like that. I’d pushed him too hard, made him snap, and in response, he’d pulled away from me almost entirely.
It had been my fuck-up, and it was up to me to try to fix it. But, God, I hated to admit that I was wrong.
Not just because I was a stubborn bitch, but because of what being wrong meant.
“I…” The words stuck in my throat, and I forced them past what felt like a total blockage, speaking in a rush. “I need to know how to break this bond.”
“Your succubus bond,” she said in her dreamy way, cocking her head at me. “With the four men.”
I shook my head. “It’s worse than that. I—I bonded with Kai. Specifically. In his specific way.”
Her eyes widened, and her irises reflected something that wasn’t in the room, as if a memory was being projected on them from the inside.
“Oh.” She sighed. “During the fight with Owen, right? When he drank from you. Not to worry, dear. A vampire bond after one feeding, especially since he was unconscious for most of it, won’t last for long. It will be a little uncomfortable, of course, but the nearer he stays to you while it wears off, the better you’ll feel.”
My throat had tightened even more as she was talking. Shame must’ve been positively radiating from me, but she didn’t seem to feel it. Maybe my succubus powers were so drained that all of my emotional projections had weakened. Even my natural human ones.
“Uh—that was the first time,” I mumbled.
“I’m sorry?”
“Ah—that was the first time,” I said a little more clearly. “It, um…it happened again.”
“I see.”
The healer spoke softly, and I believed she really did see—that she understood the complexity of my situation. She perched on the exam table beside me, barely making a dent on the stiff padding. She held my gaze and my hand, and watched my expression somberly.
Looking away, I chewed on my bottom lip. “He wouldn’t talk to me about what happened when we fought Owen. And I lost my temper.” I shook my head, desperate to distance myself from my past decisions. “I teased him. I cut myself, then held out my wrist an inch from his damn face. I—I practically forced him to do it. He didn’t want to. He kept telling me how terrible it would be. I didn’t believe him.”
I dared a glance at her face, but her expression hadn’t changed. She was quiet and somber, but not judgmental. I guess if you spend a lot of your time drawing out people’s deepest, darkest secrets, you can’t really afford to be judgmental.
“Was there a sexual or emotional element to the second occurrence?” she asked, her voice soft. “Was he conscious?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes, yes, and yes. He was fully—erm—engaged.” Rock hard didn’t seem like the appropriate thing to say at this particular moment.
“I see,” she breathed. “Hm. Well, there is good news and bad news.”
“Bad news first.”
“There is no way to break the bond.”
I winced. “Okay, good news?”
