Chapter 61 One Good Turn
❀ Maeve ❀
Fire coursed through my veins.
A cry wrenched from my lips as I thrashed within an iron grip.
Drusilla?
“Nooo! Let gooo!”
My limbs flailed in place, tears tracking down my face with a foreign sensation.
“Maeve, wake up!”
The voice was loud in my head, bouncing through me with savage intensity.
My mouth was dry and felt cracked, fangs heavy and vibrating with the need to feed.
“Please…” What was I begging for?
A drumming sound filled my ears, and I gravitated toward it. The exquisite scent of metallic blood tinged with eucalyptus surrounded me, along with warmth, caging me entirely.
I reached for the source of the pounding, my fangs growing impossibly longer, the promise of relief purring to me.
Something held me back.
I exploded with rage. “Let me go!”
Claws flying, I attacked.
My arms were promptly wrenched back behind me. Whoever held me was strong.
“Maeve, baby, it’s me. You’re safe.”
Safe?
My chest heaved with exertion and hunger as I peeled my lids open.
The burning was subsiding, but the memory remained. It had felt like being drowned in hot oil while my stomach growled for sustenance.
A pale face stared down at me, dark curls falling over his forehead, just barely brushing a straight, regal nose.
My hand rose to brush the hair back, revealing startlingly red irises.
Familiar. Hypnotic. Beautiful—but weary.
“You’re okay,” he said, voice hoarse.
Was I okay? No.
But I would be once I sank my fangs into the taunting pulse of his neck. He must have noted my gaze and read my intent, because his arms tightened around me, stilling any action.
“What happened?” I rasped instead.
“I should be asking you. You collapsed.”
Everything rushed back like a cruel storm.
The glass shattering. The sun hitting the sticky blood and heating it into fog.
Finding Tammy on the floor, bleeding—
Tammy!
“Where’s Tammy? Oh gods…” My words caught in my throat, my eyes watering. “She’s dead… I saw her. Oh… Tammy…”
“She’s not dead. Calm yourself.”
“Where is she?” I twisted in his arms, my heart pounding.
There. On the other side of a small fire was a mass of bedding against a rock wall.
I scrambled out of Nikolai’s arms, my joints protesting loudly. Was this what it felt like to be old?
Crashing down beside her, I took her cold, still palm in mine.
“Oh gods…” I sniffled.
Her face was waxy in the firelight, the bedding tucked around her like a funeral shroud up to her neck. Through the small gap, I saw a piece of fabric wrapped around her throat to stem the blood at the back of her neck and close the wound.
But she was human. She wouldn’t heal fast. She was at risk of infection and… death.
Her skin was too pale. Tammy wasn’t a pale girl.
I turned to Nikolai, who had followed me.
“She’s dying, Nikolai. We need to do something.”
I didn’t like the way his lips tightened.
“Say something! Please, trace us back to the pack. There are human servants, and the matrons, the healers can help her…”
“I… can’t,” he grated.
My jaw slackened.
Would he really let Tammy die just to keep me from IronWolf? From Bastian?
My body trembled, heat churning in my chest.
“You must! I don’t care what you think, Nikolai. If she dies, I will never forgive you!” I snapped. Something rolled down my cheeks before I realized I was crying.
“All she wanted was to survive. She helped us, risked her life to lead you to the cave network. Will you really sacrifice her?”
That sinking feeling returned, my head swimming with utter starvation.
Tammy’s hand in mine thudded with life, with pumping veins full of blood.
What was wrong with me?
“Do you think that badly of me?” Nikolai said harshly. “Ever since I got you both out of there, I’ve been nearly mad with worry. I can’t get you to safety. I can’t trace!”
This was the first time I’d seen Nikolai lose his cool. His already pale skin tightened over his face, his fists clenched beside him.
“You went down. Tammy was attacked by one surviving feral. She slipped on the blood and fell on the glass, and I… I felt something latch onto me. I haven’t been able to trace.”
No. No.
My head pounded as I shifted my gaze back to Tammy. Her chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly, her breathing slow and shallow.
Dark circles stood out beneath her eyes from exhaustion… and I couldn’t stop glancing at her neck.
I itched to rip the fabric off. To check the extent of her injuries. To check the taste of her blood—
Nikolai jerked me backward. Tammy’s hand fell to the earth.
My eyes widened in horror.
I’d been leaning toward Tammy to… to hurt her.
“WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?” I screeched.
My insides roiled with competing instincts, hunger the prevailing force.
Nikolai leveled me with a piercing, calculating look. “You need to calm down.”
“Calm down? I’m starving! My anemia… I need bloodmeal…”
Exactly. That was it. In the absence of cooked bloodmeal, my instincts were misfiring, making me crave blood. Like a… like a vampire.
I shivered.
What had that dream been? That vision?
I’d seen Queen Lyssa. Felt her kill…
Nikolai grabbed my arms and faced me to him. “Maeve, listen to me very carefully. Did anything else happen in the fog? Did a feral bite you?”
“B-bite? No. I don’t think so.”
My gaze flicked to Tammy once more. My heart clenched.
“We can’t let her die. No, please. She can’t die…”
Her larger-than-life persona had grown on me, her simple desire for safety and protection hitting too close to my own.
I’d been in her position just weeks ago, wolfless and weak.
If Nikolai couldn’t trace, and we couldn’t get to IronWolf or even District 1 for a proper healer, she would be lost.
There was only one other option.
“Turn her.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “No.”
“Dammit, Nikolai—turn her!” I snapped.