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He nodded. “I tried to, but the blood didn’t settle. The more time that passed, the more obvious it became that my body was no longer processing human blood.”
“You said it usually takes a few times.”
“We both know usually doesn’t mean much when it comes to reality. I am exceedingly old, as you like to say, and Troy is surprisingly powerful for a werewolf who isn’t so old. It seems the one feeding was enough.”
Fear clawed at me as I realized that maybe I should have asked more questions. I’d been the one to push for Kase to feed from Troy.
Of course, it wasn’t as if we’d had a lot of other options. Kase had been hurt and needed blood to heal, and as it turned out, humans were hard to come by in hell.It had felt like the options were him feeding from Troy or him dying. What had it gotten us, though? Just a bit of time?
“Breathe,” he said.
I gave him an annoyed look. “You don’t breathe, so maybe don’t coach me on it.”
He set a hand on my back and all but pushed me—not toward the couch, but through the doorway to an area I’d never been.
His bedroom.
Not that he looked ready to put that room to any good use in his state.
It was dark in there, even more so than the rest of the house, and when he tugged me into the bed, when he settled and pulled me against his side, it felt too normal, too casual.
Still, I gave in and set my head on his chest, having finally gotten used to how it didn’t rise and fall unless he was speaking.
“Why haven’t you called Troy?”I asked.
“He was put in that position once because we had no other choices. That is no longer the case.”
“Are you saying there are other werewolves you can feed from?”
“No. Feeding from werewolves is forbidden, and given the tense lines between our factions right now, there won’t be werewolves lining up to offer. I refuse to forcefully feed from one, either.”
“So what does that mean? What are your options?”
“The addiction sometimes resolves. Given I only fed from him once, there is a chance that after a period of withdrawal, my body will reaccustom to human blood.”
“That sounds like you don’t believe it.”
He tightened his arm around me, pulling me closer. “I don’t. I have seen this before, have strapped down vampires taken by this addiction to keep them from attacking werewolves and causing wars.”
I twisted so I could glance up at his face, but he wasn’t looking at me. He stared off at the ceiling.
“It isn’t pretty, Ava, the way they go. It is like a vampire starving to death, but worse. They lose everything about themselves, waste away, until a stake or a fire is a mercy.”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” I swore to him.
He looked down at me, and the crease in his cheek said he had almost smiled. “You always surprise me. Even after all these years, you can almost make me believe that if anyone could find another option, it would be you, my little reaper.”
Reaper.
The first real mention of what I was. So far, all the men had stepped around that fact, ignoring it like they knew but no one wanted to be the one to bring it up. It was the horribly cut bangs in the relationship.
“You’re not afraid of me because of that?”
He snorted, as if that were the dumbest thing he’d heard recently. “I once ran across a god killer.”
“What’s a god killer?”
That crease deepened, and he settled in as if he planned to tell a long story. “They’re old creatures, some say older than the Elder Ones. I have found that the universe requires balance. In the event anything takes too much, something else is created to counter it. God killers are the answer to supernatural beings, as if mortals needed something to balance the scales. They are strong, powerful, able to steal the power of supernaturals, but they still age and die like mortals.”
