Niki vaulted onto the porch of the rambling L-shaped infirmary and barreled toward the door.
“You can’t see her,” a quiet voice said from the shadows.
Niki stopped, regarding the petite brunette curled up in an Adirondack chair. Elena’s dark eyes swirled with unhappiness. “She’s alive?”
Elena sighed and, rising from her seat, drew Niki into a tight hug. She ran her fingers through Niki’s hair and stroked her back. Niki relaxed into the medicus’s embrace, Elena’s gentle caresses soothing some of the sharp edges of her lust and calming the acrid dread she’d endured while watching Sylvan fight the rogue. All her life, she’d been by Sylvan’s side—playing dominance games when they were pups, tussling with her as an adolescent, fighting beside her as an adult. She’d rather die than see Sylvan suffer a single injury, and she’d failed completely to protect her twice in as many days. She’d urged Sylvan to take a mate, knowing she couldn’t give the Alpha the soul-deep protection she needed, but she would never have chosen Drake. The doctor was a newly turned Were—a mutia. Not everyone in the Pack would accept her, and she would be sterile, unable to give Sylvan an heir. She was a political liability, physically inferior, and not worthy of the Alpha. But nature and Pack law dictated Niki bow to Drake’s will, and she had. She’d submitted, and prior to this day she’d only gone to her knees for Sylvan. The burn of humiliation simmered in her belly, and she growled.
“What happened?” Elena continued to stroke Niki’s shoulders and arms.
“Nothing.” Niki pulled Elena’s sweet scent deep into her lungs. The medicus was mated, and her caresses did not incite Niki’s need to tangle, but Niki was nearly as dominant as Sylvan, and her frenzy would eventually stir Elena. Neither Elena nor her mate Roger would mind that, but she broke free and backed away. For the first time in her life, her needs set her apart from the Pack. “Tell me about Lara.”
“She’s…” Elena kept hold of both Niki’s hands. Her voice vibrated with anger and worry. “I’ve heard her crying out. I don’t know how aware she is. I can still feel her ties to the Pack, but I don’t know…what she is.”
Bile churned in Niki’s stomach. Lara’s heart had been shredded by a fusillade of silver bullets meant for Sylvan, and even the Alpha’s treatment of her wounds had not been enough to save her. She’d been dying, had died, and the Vampire had kept her from passing beyond anyone’s help by giving Lara her blood. Blood that would colonize her organs, infest her system, turn her from the dominant Were centuri she’d been into something…other. Something, perhaps, not Pack.
“I don’t care what she is,” Niki said. “I intend to see her.”
“Be careful, Imperator,” Elena said. “The Vampire is powerful, and the Alpha has given her leave to be here. We are in her debt.”
“I know what we owe her,” Niki said, the quick hard pulsations in her sex a potent reminder she couldn’t, and didn’t want to, ignore.
*
Jody watched Dr. Marissa Sanchez orgasm for the third time in as many hours. Lara pulled from the punctures she had made in Marissa’s neck, and Marissa moaned, her hips undulating faster and faster. Marissa’s familiar, ecstatic cries ignited Jody’s bloodlust. Until recently, she had been the one to feed from Marissa’s neck. She had been the one to release the hormones that made Marissa come. She couldn’t stop the rise of her bloodlust, not when she hadn’t fed all night and the heavy scent of blood and sex thrown off by Lara and Marissa permeated the air, but she was strong enough not to join them. No matter how much she lusted to bury her mouth in Marissa’s groin and drink her.
Like all her species, she orgasmed in the throes of bloodlust when she fed, but the release was purely physical. When humans, and on rare occasions Weres, showed signs of wanting more than the shattering orgasms her feedings induced, she moved on. Ever since Marissa had shown signs of becoming emotionally attached, she’d rarely let her host. She wouldn’t tolerate an emotional connection with her hosts, not when the next step was blood addiction. She didn’t want the responsibility. First they’d be dependent on her for the hormones her bite provided to achieve sexual satisfaction. Then they’d want to blood-bond and be turned. And turning more often than not resulted in death for the human hosts. The spiral was inevitable.
Marissa cried out, clutching Lara’s back and riding the hand buried deep between her thighs. Jody’s stomach roiled and her vision shimmered. Her hunger pounded in her loins, and the rich aroma compelled her incisors to unsheath. Across the room, Marissa’s eyes snapped open, searching for her.
“Jody,” Marissa whispered, her voice a plea. She stretched out an arm in invitation, then abruptly, her eyes rolled back, and she went limp in Lara’s arms.
“You’ve taken enough,” Jody warned. When Lara kept feeding, Jody leapt to the bedside and cupped one hand beneath Lara’s chin, pulling her mouth away from Marissa’s neck. “Stop.”
“No!” Lara whipped her head around, her eyes an inferno of red and gold. Vampire and Were. Like all newly turned Vampires, she was ravenous and unable to control her bloodlust. Those urges accelerated the inherent sexual frenzy provoked in Weres by danger or challenge and made her lethal. She should probably let Lara die now. If she helped her live, she’d be responsible for seeing that the newling didn’t run amok while she learned to feed without tearing her hosts to pieces.
“She’s unconscious. You took too much too quickly.”
“I want her,” Lara growled.
“She needs to recover.” Jody still didn’t know why she had offered her own blood to save the Were. She had no particular fondness for Weres. Unlike the Fae, the Magi, and the Psi, Vampires and Weres did not rely on magic and extrasensory abilities to stay alive. Vampires and Weres were predatory creatures whose survival depended upon physical power and dominance. They were more often rivals than allies.
Lara had acted instinctively when she’d thrown herself in the path of the bullets meant for Sylvan—any Were would have done the same. But Jody hadn’t expected to see Sylvan risk her own life trying to save one of her guards. Sylvan, with blood pouring from multiple wounds in her torso, had fought for Lara’s life. No Vampire would have chanced their existence for an underling. Probably not even for a family member. So she’d offered her own blood to keep Lara alive long enough to heal, but Lara had been too close to death and hadn’t been able to replenish her own blood stores. She’d incorporated Jody’s blood and had become a rare chimera, both Were and Vampire. Lara, like Jody—like all Vampires living or Risen—was now dependent on the ferrous carrier compounds in human and Were blood to supply oxygen to her tissues. Without it, her own blood would slowly empty of the essential elements needed to sustain life, and she would suffocate—one cell at a time.
Jody stroked Lara’s damp face. “The hunger will not kill you. You’re stronger than your urges.”
Lara jerked her head away. Her incisors gleamed. “She agreed.”
“She’ll die.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will.” And so will I. Lara was her responsibility now—hers to protect and control while Lara learned to satisfy her needs. Even for powerful, experienced Vampires like Jody, the urge to absorb every ounce of heat and strength a host could provide was hard to restrain. For a newly turned Vampire, the bloodlust was so exquisitely painful, the need to feed so overpowering, they would leave a trail of bodies behind them before they were hunted down and destroyed. Jody would not allow one of her line to devolve into an animal.
Jody tightened her grip on Lara’s jaw. “You will do as I say.”
“I need more.” Lara’s thick chestnut hair clung in wet strands to her corded neck, her pale bronze skin stretched tight over knife-edged bones. The muscles in her torso rippled, and a faint dusting of brown pelt exploded down the divide between her carved abdominals. Her nipples tightened into small, hard stones. Aggression in Weres was always accompanied by sexual arousal, and she was doubly dangerous with all her drives demanding satisfaction. “I want her.”
“It’s almost dawn. We’re going hunting after you sleep.” Jody held Lara in place with the force of her gaze. “We’ll find you another host.”
“Now.” Lara lunged for Jody’s throat, and Jody tossed her across the room. Lara crashed into the wall and fell onto her back.
Before Lara could regain her feet, Jody leapt atop her. Driving her thigh between Lara’s legs, she simultaneously grabbed Lara’s wrists in one hand and pinned them to the rough wood floor. Lara roared, her eyes blind pools of fire. Jody twisted Lara’s hair in her fist and pressed her mouth to Lara’s ear.
“Don’t make me kill you,” Jody warned, the weight of her body magnified a dozen times by the power of her mind thrall.
Lara whimpered, and sanity surfaced through the agony of endless hunger and searing sexual need. Wrapping one leg around Jody’s thigh, she ground her swollen sex into Jody’s hip. “Help me. Please. Please.”
“I will.” Jody relinquished her grip on Lara’s hair and pushed the flat of her hand between their bodies, skating over the stone plains of Lara’s abdomen to her sex. She palmed the swollen clitoris and pressed down rhythmically, milking the glands on either side. She brushed her mouth over Lara’s. “Come in my hand. Let me feel you spend, Wolf.”
Lara arched like an overdrawn bow, only her head and heels touching the floor. Her abdomen contracted, her pelvis jerked, and she released in a howling fury of pleasure and pain. Jody, shuddering with need, held her down until the spasms stopped. Lara was still Were enough to excite her bloodlust, but not Were enough to satisfy her. If she tried to feed from Lara, she would likely kill her and poison herself. Vampire blood was too ferrous-depleted to sustain another Vampire.
When Lara quieted, Jody rolled away, panting. Hunger stripped away her control—relentless and unstoppable—but she wouldn’t have fed from Lara even if she could have. She hadn’t imagined Lara’s face dissolving in pleasure at her bite, but that of a human female she had no intention of ever tasting. Becca Land awakened more than her hunger, incited more than her bloodlust. She stirred a longing she couldn’t afford to feel, a need for connection that only harbingered pain. She’d seen firsthand the inevitable result. She’d watched her mother die because her father had been too weak or too selfish or simply too uncaring to resist momentary pleasure. Vampires had millennia to indulge their needs. Humans had only a fleeting lifetime and a fragile hope for immortality. She might be a predator, but she would not become a murderer.
Pushing herself to her knees, Jody buttoned her shirt with trembling hands and tucked it into her pants. Lara lay curled on her side, her knees drawn up, her hips and thighs slowly flexing as her orgasm waned. Jody leaned over and skimmed her fingers through Lara’s hair.
“Get dressed. We’re leaving.”
Jody didn’t wait for an answer, but proceeded to cover Marissa with a sheet and lift the semiconscious woman into her arms. The bites in Marissa’s neck were already fading, but she was hovering on the brink of serious blood loss. Marissa always did push the envelope when she hosted.
“Did I hurt her?” Lara whispered, standing now, her whiskey eyes hollow with torment and lingering hunger. She’d pulled jeans and a shirt from the closet and dressed mechanically.
“Dr. Sanchez will be fine after a day’s rest and some nutritional supplements,” Jody said. “Don’t forget she volunteered. She wanted the pleasure of feeding you.”
“The pain won’t go away.”
“Your body is seriously oxygen deprived.” Jody opened the door and gestured for Lara to precede her down the hall to the main lobby of the infirmary. “What you’re experiencing is severe lactic acid poisoning. You need to replenish the ferrous carrier compounds frequently, or the pain will become debilitating. If you don’t feed, your cells will break down, and your muscles and organs will disintegrate. You’ll become paralyzed, lose consciousness, and die within hours.”
“Aren’t I dead already?” Lara said bitterly.
“No, you’re not dead. You’re pre-animate—a living Vampire.”
“I am a wolf Were!” For an instant, Lara’s wolf surged again, and her eyes shifted to amber gold. The bones in her angular face sharpened. A deep rumble of warning resonated in her chest.
Jody slowed, untroubled by Marissa’s weight. Although others frequently misinterpreted her slender form and pale complexion as delicate, she was stronger than any human and even some Alpha Weres. Her lineage was ancient, and when she rose after death, if she rose, she would be among the most powerful Vampires in the world. At any other time she would not have tolerated Lara’s display of dominance, but she didn’t want to subdue her again. Lara was still too unstable, her system in chaos, fluctuating wildly between her Were and Vampire urges. Most Weres who were turned, and who survived the turning, were more Vampire than anything else. Many could never shift form again. But Lara was not just any Were—she was one of the strongest Weres ever turned. Where she would fall on the spectrum, the eventual extent of her power, was unknown. She was likely to be one of a kind.
“You should thank me, Wolf, not challenge me.” Jody captured Lara’s gaze in her thrall. “We don’t have time for this rebellion tonight. Dawn is coming.”
Lara shuddered, unable to break completely free. Her face was luminous with pain, but still she managed to speak. “When will the hunger stop?”
“When you’ve fed enough.”
“Who?” Lara’s gaze fixed on the rapidly bounding pulse in Marissa’s neck. “Can she…a little more?” Her incisors dropped, and as if feeling her call, Marissa’s lids fluttered open.
“Let me feed her,” Marissa whispered, writhing in Jody’s arms.
“No,” Jody said. “Any more and you’ll never break the blood addiction. I won’t turn you into a whore.”
“I’m burning.” Marissa’s eyes were pleading, her lips moist and swollen. Her nipples hardened against Jody’s arm. “Let her make me come. I need her.”
“No.”
Lara snarled. “Let me taste her.”
Elena’s voice cut through the hallway like a whip. “That human needs attention. At least allow me to give her some fluid.”
Lara spun into a crouch. “Stay out of this.”
Niki vaulted through the doorway and landed between Elena and Lara, her canines and claws extended. “Stand down, centuri.”
“I don’t answer to you.” Lara’s eyes flamed Vampire red.
“You answer to me.” Jody ensnared Lara’s mind and eased Marissa, unconscious again, into Elena’s outstretched arms. “Take her. Some intravenous fluids—”
“I know what to do.” Elena looked from Lara to Niki, who growled at Lara’s challenge. “Don’t let them fight.”
“My Vampire needs to feed.” Jody struggled to hold Lara back by force of will. She’d misjudged how strong she would be so soon after turning. Lara was not like any other pre-animate Vampire—she was more like a newly Risen, very strong and very hard to control. “I don’t have time to get her back to the city and find another host.”
“I’ll feed her.” Niki’s gaze shifted from Lara to Jody. “I’ll feed you both.”
Jody studied her and Niki held her eyes.
“Come with me,” the Vampire said and dragged Lara away.
*
“Let her go. I’m ready.” Niki tensed, ready to leap if Lara lunged at her. Lara didn’t look like any Were in the grip of sex or battle frenzy she’d ever seen—Lara’s eyes didn’t gleam wolf-gold, but simmered with crimson flames. Lara was all Vampire, a stranger in a Packmate’s body.
“She’ll tear your throat out,” Jody warned.
“I can handle her.” Niki’s wolf braced to fight.
“I want the wolf under me,” Lara growled.
Niki almost whined in need, but not from Lara’s call. Lara’s Vampire part was ascendant, but her sexual pull was nothing like the magnetic compulsion that emanated from the slim, pale Vampire who now rested her hand lightly on Lara’s neck. Jody’s thrall hammered Niki with another wave of sexual power, and her clitoris jerked erect.
“You’ll take her the way I say you’ll take her,” Jody told Lara mildly. “When I say.” She looked at Elena. “We’ll need to stay here. After Lara feeds, this close to dawn, she’ll sleep.”
“Bring the human to the treatment room,” Elena said. “There are empty rooms down the hall you can use.”
“Secure?” Jody asked.
“You’ll be safe. The Pack will guard you.” Elena stopped outside the treatment room and stroked Niki’s cheek. “Be careful.”
Niki nodded curtly, frenzy eating at her insides. She’d fought down the lust too many times since the hunt with the Alpha. She wanted to empty, mindlessly, endlessly. She wanted a Vampire’s teeth in her throat. She shoved through a door and didn’t see the Vampires move, but suddenly they were on the other side of the room, flanking the bed. Waiting for her. She pushed the door closed and did something she’d never done within the Compound before. She locked it.
Take off your pants.
Niki didn’t hear the Vampire’s words, she felt them in her head. Jody still gripped the back of Lara’s neck and seemed to be holding her back, not by physical restraint, but with the force of her mind. Lara’s sweat-soaked T-shirt clung to her chest, outlining her tense, swollen breasts. She hadn’t shifted, didn’t even seem to be morphing under the pressure of sex frenzy the way most dominant Weres did when they needed to tangle. Niki couldn’t detect her scent, didn’t feel the prickle on her skin of a Were broadcasting her need. All of the usual signals that marked Lara as Were, as Pack, were muted or gone. Lara’s eyes were opaque red pools of fire, devoid of recognition or connection. Her lips curved not in a snarl of wild Were sexual demand, but in a seductive curl above glistening incisors.
Niki’s chest constricted. Lara wasn’t Lara, and the loss weighed so heavily on her heart she nearly went to her knees. She was blood-bonded to Lara just as she was to Sylvan and the other centuri, and losing one of their own was worse than losing a body part. A black chasm of despair threatened to swallow her, and she roared in agony. No more. She couldn’t bear any more. She grasped the edges of her open fly with both hands and ripped the heavy canvas from her thighs. Her wolf clawed at her to shift, but she clung to her shredded control.
“Let her loose,” Niki demanded, her voice roughened by her thickening vocal cords.
“Not yet.” Jody unbuttoned her shirt with one hand. Her smooth, pale body gleamed like carved marble. With a quick flick of her wrist she tore Lara’s T-shirt down the center. Lara ripped away the remnants of the shirt and pulled off her jeans. Smiling faintly, Jody whispered to Niki, “Come join us.”
Lara strained in Jody’s grip, a keening whine reverberating in her chest. Her eyes fixed on Niki’s neck. A wave of sexual longing hit Niki, and her sex tightened. Whose call had captured her? Jody’s? Lara’s? What did it matter?
Come here, little Wolf. Let us taste you.
Niki’s canines and claws erupted, her pelt line flared, and her clitoris throbbed. Like all dominant Weres, sex and aggression were two points on the same spectrum. If she didn’t release soon, she would fight the first Were who even smelled like a challenge, and Lara was the closest candidate. Niki bounded across the room, landing lightly in a crouch in front of the two Vampires.
Lara struggled in Jody’s phantom grip, the muscles in her chest and neck straining. Niki’s wolf bristled at the challenge, and Niki snarled.
“Don’t fight her,” Jody said. “She can’t help herself. Her hunger is ruling her. All she knows is pain.”
Niki’s heart seized, and the urgency in her loins receded. She straightened and cupped Lara’s cheek. “Lara, I’m here.”
Lara arched as if an electric current shot through her spine, and her keening became a howl. She gripped Niki’s arms and yanked her onto the bed, covering Niki’s body as they fell. Niki’s back slammed down, and Lara’s thigh drove between her legs, crushing her sex. White-hot agony ignited in her core, and her wolf surged past her restraints. She was under attack! She had to defend herself. She bit Lara’s shoulder, burying her canines deep into the muscles. Lara bucked and spent herself on Niki’s stomach, coating her with hot, thick victus. Lara reared back, incisors bared to strike. Niki struggled, but Lara was strong, so strong.
Niki saw death coming. Would that really be so bad? Her death would be fast, and she’d be drowning in pleasure. She could let go. Let go of it all. She had only to surrender.
No! If Lara killed her, Lara would be lost forever.
Niki drove her hands into Lara’s hair, twisting Lara’s head away, preventing her from feeding. Preventing Lara from giving her what her soul screamed for. She would never believe that Lara was lost to her, lost to the Pack. She sobbed when the pressure in her groin made her stomach cramp and her mind cloud. She didn’t want to think. She just wanted a few minutes of peace. But Lara needed her more than she needed to escape. Lara was Pack, and Pack was everything.
“Lara. Lara. It’s me.”
The crimson blaze in Lara’s eyes dimmed, and uncertainty flickered over her face. “Niki? What?”
“It’s okay. You need to feed. I want to feed you.”
Lara looked down at herself, at her hands pinning Niki to the bed, at the pool of vital fluid glistening on their stomachs. “What did I…” She shuddered, her face contorting, and reason left her eyes.
Jody climbed onto the bed, straddled Niki’s hips behind Lara, and jerked Lara against her chest. She held Lara’s head on her shoulder. Lara seemed not to struggle, but her skin rippled continuously as if she were shuddering inside. Jody said, “She needs to feed. Her periods of lucidity will get shorter and shorter. If you don’t feed her, she’ll die.”
“She won’t die.” Niki turned her head, exposing her neck. Her clitoris pulsed against Jody’s pants. “Tell her to take what she needs.”
Jody eased Lara down until Lara lay on the bed next to Niki and guided Lara’s face against Niki’s throat. “Feed.”
Lara struck hard and fast, her bite like a knife cutting into Niki’s throat and down into her chest. Then a tidal wave of erotic power enveloped her, as if a thousand hands, a thousand mouths, caressed her simultaneously. Jody’s voice flowed over her, low and warm and soothing.
Don’t worry, little Wolf. You’re ours now.
Jody knelt between Niki’s legs, and Niki gripped Lara’s shoulder, her claws digging into muscle. Lara pulled at her neck and each pull pounded in her groin. Growling, sobbing, Niki arched off the bed. Jody took her into her mouth, her incisors piercing her sex on either side of her clitoris. Pleasure more intense than anything Niki had ever experienced burst inside her. Twisting under Jody’s slender weight, she whimpered and came in Jody’s mouth. The searing release drove the breath from her chest and burned away every fear, annihilating loneliness and uncertainty in utter oblivion. Her wolf receded and she stopped struggling.
Jody held Niki’s writhing body down on the bed with one hand pressed to her rigid abdomen. She drank, absorbing the power of blood and victus. Her body, nearly starved, flushed with the rapid infusion of life. Powerful Were blood bonded with hers, more potent than any drug. Her hips bucked, and she orgasmed in the throes of bloodlust. She drank and came, swallow after swallow, until Niki’s glands were empty and her clitoris softened. The satisfaction coiling through her was so electrifying she didn’t want to stop. Distantly, she heard a savage growl, and Lara spent again in a thick flood against the Niki’s hip. Jody dragged herself away from Niki’s sex and gripped Lara’s shoulder.
“Let her go.”
Niki’s neck and chest glistened with a sheet of red. Lara’s eyes were closed, her throat working convulsively as she sucked at the stream of blood slowly trailing down Niki’s throat. One hand held Niki’s breast, squeezing as she swallowed. Niki’s hips pumped steadily in synch with the rhythm of Lara’s feeding, her thighs drenched with her release. The scent of blood and sex made Jody’s stomach cramp, and her groin throbbed. After turning Lara, she’d fed from four hosts before rushing to the Compound to tend to the newling. She still didn’t feel replenished. She still needed more. She needed more of the Were. But even as strong as this Were was, if they took any more they’d kill her.
Jody gripped Lara’s jaw, squeezing until she forced her offspring to open her mouth, and dragged her away. Bracing her back on the wall, Jody held Lara in her arms. Lara trembled and whimpered, her eyes open but unseeing. Jody stroked her hair. “It will pass. You’ll survive. Sleep now.”
Lara shuddered and went completely still. Dawn was breaking.
Niki groaned and rolled onto her side, squeezing a hand between her legs. Her hips rocked as the hormones Lara injected into her system continued to stimulate her.
Jody closed her eyes, savoring the languor of feeding and climaxing. The Were was powerful. Niki’s blood filled her with more strength than any host she’d ever had. She stroked the Were’s head as the Were pressed against her thigh. She could get used to this. The Were rumbled, crawled over her thigh, and stretched out between her legs. A warm mouth moved on her sex. With fresh Were blood circulating in her veins, she would be able to orgasm again. Maybe then she could banish the sound of Becca’s voice and the hot rush of desire Becca ignited every time she saw her. She lifted her hips and let the Were take her between her lips. She could be satisfied with this. Very, very easily.