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I broke our gaze, looking at Gabriel. His features were understanding, comforting. “I imagine it is causing you a great deal of strain,” he said. “Not being able to control the stream of thoughts coming into your mind?”
I nodded. “It’s not as bad here,” I said. “Before we came here, it was constant and exhausting.”
“That’s because a vampire’s thoughts are more guarded. We’re used to shielding our minds from outside attempts to penetrate them. Humans have no shields; therefore, they bombard you.”
“What are you suggesting?” Ajax asked.
“You know who can help her,” Gabriel answered.
Clarity cleared the pain in Ajax’s eyes. “Alek.”
I sputtered. “The vampire king?” A shiver of ice scraped down my spine.
“You shiver at the thought of him but for me you coo?” Ajax teased, as if he’d felt the fear curl inside me.
I laughed, unable to help it. He had a point. Ajax was as big as the king if not a tad larger, and was far more menacing looking with his long black hair, dark eyes, and tattoos. But I couldn’t help it. Something in me had always been drawn to Ajax, had never once feared him, even when logic suggested I should.
But the king? With his ice-blue eyes and that power that radiated off him in waves? Every human instinct in my body had told me to run when I’d first seen him.
“I would hurry,” Gabriel said. “With her lessons. She doesn’t have much time.”
Ajax nodded, ushering me off the exam table and out of Gabriel’s offices.
“You know what would give me more time—”
“Don’t,” Ajax cut me off, stopping outside of the king’s study. “Please. I would’ve done it right then and there if Gabriel had said it would work without a risk. But, Grace…I can’t fathom stealing the last moments you have because I’m a selfish prick who wants to attempt to keep you forever.”
I blew out a breath as he knocked on the door to the study. I dropped the subject, not wanting to cause a rift between us, but it wouldn’t be the last time I brought it up.
How could it be? When it was the last ray of hope I had left?
* * *
“Good,”Alek’s voice didn’t need to be raised to feel like it boomed through the study we’d been working in for the past four hours. Ajax had stalked off the minute the vampire king agreed to help me, and I knew it was because of my wanting to try transitioning, but there was nothing I could do about it now. “Again.”
There were no dramatic movements, no flourishing arm motions, nothing like in books or movies. There was just the vampire king sitting in a cushioned chair across from where I sat in an identical chair, him using his power to penetrate my mind and me doing everything he’d taught me about shielding.
I’d gone into psychology not only because I’d wanted to help younger children in foster care, but because I’d always had a knack for visualizing. My imagination was a wild one—hence, my certainty that this had all been a hallucination in the beginning. I could manifest crystal clear pictures while I read, making reading one of my favorite past times.
So, when the vampire king had explained that I had to visualize a physical shield around my mind, I went all in.
I slammed the shield over my mind, fully formed and detailed, and the king laughed.
“That’s quite…fantastical,” he said, amusement in his voice.
He wasn’t wrong. I’d constructed my mental shield out of what I imagined dragon scales looked like, each scale linking over the other, hard as adamant and shimmering with an iridescent indigo color.
“I mean, why not?” I replied, focusing all my energy on keeping the shield in place. Not as easy as it had sounded when we’d begun our training. Alek had been able to tear it down within seconds the first time, and now that it was the…I’d lost count…but now I couldfeelhis power on the other side of my shield, like claws on a chalkboard.
But still, his thoughts remained at bay.
The control was exhilarating, filling me with a renewed energy I was certain was lost hours ago.
“Good,” he said, and I half wondered if he was even trying to break through.
He’d allowed me to enter his mind earlier, lowering his own shield that looked like a wall of onyx when we’d begun. I only needed to be in there a second to understand the depth of his power. Like Ajax’s, it was ancient, but the king’s ran in wells that had no end in sight—probably one of the reasons he was, you know, the king.
But that power likely meant he was only indulging me here. “Be honest,” I said. “You could break through if you really wanted to.”
