"One month." I nod and pull her back into my arms. "Now, hush. We have things to do." I reach to the bedside table and nab the remote.
She hides her face in my neck. "No more scening, I can't take…"
"Shh," I chuckle. "It's all right, pet. That part of the night is done."
I click a button and a panel over the fireplace pulls back, revealing a flat screen TV. Another button and the screen flickers on.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail starts playing. Selene goes still.
"Comfortable?" I whisper. She nods, eyes on the screen.
"Good. Relax," I order. A moment later she giggles at the 'Swedish' subtitles. She's still rigid in my lap, fighting my order.
At one point she makes to move and I restrain her.
"I have to pee," she pouts and I let her go on the promise that she come right back.
"Feeling all right?" I ask when she re-enters and stands at the foot of the bed.
"Just a flesh wound," she says in the Black Knight's voice.
I open my arms. "Come," I order her when she hesitates. "I want to hold you." Biting her lip, Selene crawls into my lap. A second later, my submissive she wolf sighs happily. The credits keep rolling and our laughter mingles.
It won't last forever. But nothing does.
Selene
I WAKE at noon the next day. The bed is empty and I am bereft.
I didn't expect him to be this way. I didn't expect for the kindness, hate, anger and love all tangled up. But whenever he's gone... I miss him.
He says he didn't kill my pack. Who do I believe? My mentor, who sacrificed everything to give me revenge, or Lucius?
Do I trust my head or my heart?
"I'm such an idiot." I rub sleep from my face. I have a crush on the Vampire King.
A shifter in love with a vampire... is that such an impossible thing?
He's a vampire, and not just any vampire--the King. I'm a wolf. We're worlds apart, far as the sun is from the moon.
It's no use. I'm in love with a monster. And I don't even care.
AT NIGHTFALL, Lucius finds me pacing on the patio.
"Pet?"
I push back my wild fall of hair. I bathed after my babysitters left, but didn't primp. I couldn't bear to be inside, surrounded by his scent. "You call yourself a monster. Why?"
"I've done things, Selene," he says gently. "Things I regret. Not what you're thinking--but I have killed before. Hurt people. But it was a long time ago." He spreads his hands. "The world was different then."
Call me stupid, but I believe him. "What made you go to the auction?"
"I heard they were auctioning shifters."
"You didn't know?" Xavier made it sound like the auctions were Lucius' idea.
"I knew there were vampires with a taste for shifter blood who'd take consorts. But shifters are not our natural victims. I didn't know shifter slavers were hunting down the weakest species and auctioning them to the highest bidder."
"You didn't?"
"No. I confess, I had my head in the sand. But now that I know, I'm putting a stop to it. And not because of our little agreement," he adds. "I had planned to do it long before that."
"You did?" I shake my head, dizzy. Lucius isn't the villain Xavier makes him out to be. Is he?
"It's not all altruism. There's evidence my sired have latched on to a new scheme to rise up against me." He shakes his head, looking as if he's found a toddler finger painting on the living room wall, not a set of grown vampires plotting a coup. "A few of them got the idea that they could turn shifters, form an army to overthrow my rule."
"Turn shifters? How?"
"The same way humans are turned vampire," he strokes his chin. "Blood exchanges, followed by an exchange of heart blood that kills the new host, allowing the vampire virus to take over."
"Is that possible? Have you done it?"
"Turned a shifter? No. I would never. Such a creature would be … an abomination."
I flinch.
"Not fully shifter, not fully vampire. More powerful than either. If it could be done, of course. Few vampires are strong enough to create more of our kind. It takes a strong victim, and a strong sire. Perhaps that is why my sired turned to shifters. They had no luck with humans, and decided to try with a stronger species."
"And did it work? Is it possible?"
"I don't know. I don't think so--at least, I doubt any of my sired have discovered how to do it." He pauses. "There is a way to make shifters as powerful as vampires. but no one knows it."
I take a step forward. "How?"
"Our blood." He enters the patio, coming closer I try to puzzle out what he meant. He cocks his head, looking down at me. "Do you want me to show you?"
Selene
"YES." I say. I don't know what I'm consenting to, exactly. But I'm in too deep to stop.
"Come to me." Lucius orders. "Closer. That's it."
"What... what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to drink from you." He pushes my hair back from my shoulders. "Then you're going to drink from me."
"What? No--" I suck in a breath as his fangs sink into my neck. A small pinch and bliss,
my body shaking with the heady feeling.
"All right?" he murmurs.
"Just a flesh wound."
"Your turn, pet." He slashes a cut into his chest, presses my mouth to the wound. The first taste of blood is sweet, sizzling on my tongue.
"Do you feel it?" Lucius asks.
I gasp as adrenaline hits my veins. My limbs tingling with an excess of energy. My heart seems to pump faster, my senses sharpening.
I am super Selene, warrior woman.
"Race you." Lucius points to a saguaro cactus in the distance.
I push after him, my legs pumping--and I blur. The landscape rushes past until I stop, staggering. I reached the cactus before he did, and I'm not even tired. My body pulses with power.