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No matter how docile he seemed at the moment, the alpha lying on the cot across the room was one of them.
ChapterSix
EDDIE
It had been a full day since I was brought to the clinic for the transfusion, and I still wasn't sure if the familiar silken voice I had heard in my dreams was my imagination, or if Castor really had been present. Either way, he was long gone when I woke up.
So was Arrow, though, so there was a silver lining.
I still couldn't shift back into my human form, and I wasn't even sure if that was something they wanted—or if that would reduce the quality of my blood—so I wasn't trying particularly hard. Despite my trepidations about the full moon, ever since that encounter, any difficulty I’d had with staying in control of my beast had dissolved into nothing.
I didn't know what magic spell this man held over me. Even his name on another's lips was enough to restore my sanity. Maybe it was a placebo, or maybe he really did hold some kind of magic within him. All I knew was that he had captivated my every waking thought, as well as my dreams.
I found myself living just for the chance to see him again. To hear his voice and be in the presence of his soothing energy and intoxicating scent.
He and the others were out on the hunt, which seemed to be the typical state of things. There was something different about this night, though. I had overheard the others talking, the young girl named Renata and the doctor, while they thought I was asleep. I learned a lot that way.
Apparently, the Order had been growing bolder as of late, and while I wasn't sure if the hunt Castor and Arrow had interrupted to save me was part of the mounting tension between the groups, I imagined it couldn't have helped.
It wasn't just Castor and Arrow who were gone tonight, either. So was Father Marius, as well as several of the other higher-ranking hunters I had heard mentioned from time to time. The nervous tones in which Renata and Dr. Kelly spoke of it made it clear there was something about tonight's hunt that bore greater danger than the others.
I wasn't sure if Renata was related to Castor or connected to him in some other way. She seemed too young to be his lover, but whatever their connection was, it was clearly significant.
The thought of him having a lover was enough to send me into a blind rage, but that was one irrational impulse I couldn't blame on my beast. Not entirely.
What was wrong with me? I barely even knew this man, and something told me he would not only find my devotion unwelcome but repugnant as well.
Was it just because he had saved me? He had made it clear in no uncertain terms that his reasons for doing so were not altruistic, and the fact that I had spent the last month as a lab rat and pincushion was proof enough of that. Nonetheless, knowing that did little to weaken those feelings.
Maybe it was a different form of madness that ailed me. All I knew was that from the moment I had laid eyes on Castor, he had become fundamental to my very being. My central sun.
That evening, Dr. Kelly had his hands full with Bryson and a couple of other hunters who had come in with injuries, so Renata was in charge of my donations. She eyed me warily as she approached with the tubing and pulled over the distillation equipment. It was a far more complex version of the machine Dr. Kelly had used for Bryson’s transfusion, and all the knobs and tubes made my head hurt if I tried to figure out what they did for too long.
Renata must have caught me staring, because she looked up from opening her infusion kit. “Has Dr. Kelly ever showed you how this works?” she asked.
I was surprised she was talking to me at all. Most of the others didn’t, aside from Dr. Kelly, who was not a man of many words under the best of circumstances. Our interactions were typically limited to whatever instructions he had to give me for the sake of using my blood. I shook my head slightly.
“It’s called an alembic,” she explained, opening the metal base of the glass canister to reveal a small flame beneath metal coils that were red hot. “The coils heat the blood to its boiling point in the cucurbit, which is this glass vessel. It turns into vapor and rises into the cap, where it passes through a filter to strip it of the contagion that passes on your condition. From there, the uncontaminated blood travels in its gaseous form through the tubes and into another filter fitted over the receptive container.” Her finger traced the path over the winding glass tubes into the second, smaller glass container. “Once the steam cools, it becomes a liquid again and it’s safe to inject. Pretty neat, huh?”
I listened in rapt attention as she spoke, and nodded. So they were alchemists, after all. Now I wished I could speak so I could ask her questions. Even if she was Castor’s girlfriend…
“Father Marius designed it many years ago,” she said proudly, connecting a fresh set of tubing to a clean needle. When she saw my surprise, she smiled and added, “He’s a brilliant alchemist as well as a hunter. He developed most of the technologies the Church uses today. Even the enchantments.”
She came over and sat next to me on the cot, the freshly fitted needle in hand. Even if I probably should have been desensitized to it by now, I still winced in anticipation.
I must not have been as subtle about it as I hoped, because Renata hesitated. Dr. Kelly would have just done it by now, which was better in a way. Less time to dread it.
“Are you frightened?” she asked, tilting her head.
It didn’t sound like a taunt coming from her, even though Dr. Kelly had certainly given me a hard enough time the last time I’d whined after he stuck me.
I looked away in shame and held my arm out to her so she wouldn’t think I was going to attack.
“I’ll be gentle,” she said softly, taking my forearm in hand. She prodded the crook of my arm lightly, and it took long enough that I looked up to see what she was doing. She was moving the fur aside, as if she was looking for a vein. I quickly looked away again before she stuck the needle in, surprised when all I felt was a faint pinch before it was over. I knew the needle was still in, but while Dr. Kelly always taped it down and left to tend to other things, Renata stayed, keeping a finger on the end of the tubing so the needle wouldn’t move around.
“There,” she said with a strangely familiar smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I leaned toward her instinctively, and realized my mistake when I saw the fear in her eyes. I nudged her shoulder lightly with my nose and made a whimpering sound that would hopefully make it clear I wasn’t a threat.
