Chapter Twenty-Seven:Maurice's POV
By the time we reached the gymnasium, the werewolves were already surging toward us like a tide.
They coordinated well, bodies low to the ground, closing the distance in a matter of seconds.
Paul moved first. His figure blurred into nothing but a streak, and he grabbed the largest wolf's head in one motion. The wolf's body crumpled to the floor, twitched once, and went still.
Hilda was already moving before the first wolf had fully fallen.
Her movements weren't as violent as Paul's, but they were just as lethal—more fluid, more precise. Her fingers struck accurately into the soft tissue beneath the jaw, and the wolf's body went limp in her hands, its momentum carrying her sliding across the floor until she hit the base of the bleachers and stopped.
The remaining wolves hesitated for maybe half a second. Their pack instincts and survival instincts began to war with each other, their minds recalculating the odds.
Paul and Hilda charged into the pack.
Thirty seconds later, the entire gymnasium fell silent, leaving only the sound of bodies collapsing and the wet, dying gasps.
The blood scent surged up afterward, so thick it was suffocating.
But what really made my hands shake was another scent, cutting through all the slaughter, hitting me full force.
Sweet, complex—I had to draw on every ounce of control I'd accumulated over the past one hundred and fifty years to keep from completely losing it.
Carol's blood.
I felt that pull like a tangible presence, dragging me forward whether I wanted it or not.
I'd tasted her blood before, that night at The Emerald, when I'd lost control.
It had been a long time since I'd allowed myself to lose control like that. Her blood was too sweet, plus something else.
I couldn't name what it was at the time, but I'd been thinking about it ever since. Using laboratory work as an excuse, I'd collected samples of her blood, spent countless hours trying to find the answer in them.
I told myself it was because her genes were special, that my interest in her was purely academic, the natural curiosity a scientist has when encountering an unexplained variable.
But now she was dying. All those observations, all that interest, all that carefully maintained distance—none of it meant anything in the face of that fact.
I knelt beside her, pressing my hands against the wound in her abdomen.
The werewolf had struck precisely, claws deep enough to penetrate major organs. I could feel the slick heat of internal bleeding beneath my palms, the wound too large, too deep—simple pressure couldn't stop it at all.
Her blood ran between my fingers, soaking my shirt.
Every nerve cell in my body was screaming, wanting to lick it.
I clenched my teeth, forcing that impulse down.
My chest gave a sharp twist. It was the echo of the blood bond, created unintentionally that night at The Emerald.
I could feel Carol's pain.
This bond shouldn't be this strong—a single feeding was far from sufficient to establish a real connection, especially when I'd only taken enough for a taste, nowhere near enough to create a true bond.
But apparently, everything I thought I knew about vampire physiology and blood bonds wasn't enough when it came to her.
I could feel her life draining away through that connection, could sense her heart still desperately trying to maintain circulation even as her blood pressure dropped and her organs began shutting down from blood loss and shock.
The sensation was too real—so real I couldn't distinguish whether it was her pain or my own.
"Carol," my voice came out hoarser than expected. I could tell her werewolf bloodline was finally beginning to manifest.
The transformation that should have happened naturally during puberty was finally starting. Her body was trying to activate the werewolf healing ability and enhanced metabolism.
But it was coming too slowly.
Her cells were attempting to regenerate, her immune system running at full capacity, but the injury was too severe and the transformation incomplete—her body was stuck between human and werewolf.
The wound wasn't healing, blood still flowing hot between my fingers.
Through the blood bond, I could feel her heartbeat faltering, her consciousness fading with each passing second as her brain lost oxygen.
She was going to die.
The thought surfaced clearly. With conventional medicine, biological science, with all the skills I'd spent nearly two hundred years learning, I couldn't stop any of it.
Unless.
Vampires can transform people into another form of existence, can pull someone back from the brink of death and remake them into something that will never age, never sicken, never be killed by something as ordinary as blood loss.
I'd done this before. That's how Hilda and Paul came to be.
Carol has werewolf blood—would that matter? I didn't know.
Or rather, I just didn't want to believe it would matter.
Because if I didn't try, she would die. I couldn't afford not to try.
I brought my wrist to my mouth and bit down hard, all the way to the vein beneath.
My blood surged out, cold, without the vitality of human blood.
But I didn't care about that. The transformation required enough venom to enter her bloodstream, to rewrite her DNA, to remake her into someone who could withstand all of this.
"Maurice." Hilda grabbed my wrist. "Have you lost your mind? You can't turn her. Although she's not exactly a werewolf, she has werewolf blood in her."
Of course I knew that.
The vampire virus and the werewolf curse had never coexisted in a single host.
The biological incompatibility between two forms of supernatural infection was well established.
Turning Carol might not save her—it might even kill her faster.
Even if it succeeded, she might end up stuck between vampire, werewolf, and human, living in pain and chaos for the rest of her life as her three natures constantly fought for dominance.
I would also be violating the peace accord between werewolves and vampires, dismantling that carefully maintained, fragile and false peace between the two species.
Simon Volkov would have every right to demand my life for what I was doing to his ward.
But I'd lived for one hundred and fifty years.
I'd survived my own transformation, endured the initial period of uncontrolled bloodlust, and the decades of long self-control practice that followed.
I'd built a life, career, and reputation spanning continents and centuries.
I'd created Hilda and Paul, guided them through transformation, taught them how to survive in a world where one misstep meant death.
I understood these risks. I understood the cost.
But I didn't care.
Right now I was kneeling in her pool of blood, my wrist torn open, my hands shaking.
I cared about Carol in a way I hadn't cared about anyone since becoming a vampire. It felt too much like the kind of emotion I'd spent decades convincing myself I'd never feel again.
She was mine, just like Hilda and Paul were mine, only different, far more complicated.
Looking at her face, what I felt wasn't the satisfaction of creation or the pride of mentorship, but something raw and possessive.
I didn't want to study her, didn't want to publish papers about her unique biochemistry.
I wanted to keep her, bind her to me through blood, through transformation, tie her to me.
Make her never be in danger again—because she would become strong, fast, immortal, and mine.
This desire was irrational, dangerous, utterly selfish.
I knew I should stop. But I couldn't let Carol die as a human, because losing Carol was not an acceptable outcome.
I pulled my wrist free from Hilda's grip with all my strength and pressed my bleeding wrist against the wound on Carol's chest, letting my blood drip in.
I watched my blood mix with hers, dark red and bright red spreading across her pale skin.
I thought I would feel something in that moment, but there was nothing except her life still draining away.
I pressed harder against the wound, letting more blood flow in.
Carol's body suddenly convulsed. She arched her back sharply, limbs jerking violently.
I began to feel a glimmer of hope—at least it meant her nervous system was still working, her brain sending signals, her muscles responding.
"She's rejecting it," Hilda shouted. "Maurice, if you continue you'll only destroy her. Her immune system is attacking your blood, she—"
I didn't let her finish. Through the blood bond, I could feel Carol's werewolf nature attacking the vampire blood as an invader.
But I'd already chosen this path the moment I bit open my wrist.
I knew it might not work, knew I might kill her myself through arrogance and desperation, but I couldn't turn back now.
I pressed my wrist harder into the wound, forcing more blood into her body.
I stared at her face, looking for a trace of consciousness, a trace of pain, a trace of evidence she was still alive. Hilda was shouting beside me. I didn't listen.
Carol would survive, or she wouldn't.
She would become something new, strange, and powerful, or her body would tear itself apart.
The werewolf curse might win, completing its unfinished transformation while burning the vampire virus from her body.
I couldn't control the outcome, could only keep pouring blood in, praying she would be strong enough to withstand it all.
If she survived and hated me, if she condemned me for making this decision for her, if this moment of weakness destroyed everything I had—then so be it.
I'd lived for one hundred and fifty years. I could bear the consequences of saving Carol Valodin.