Chapter 63 Rivals
❀ Maeve ❀
The air lightened, becoming easier to breathe as we walked through the tunnel.
Tammy’s head lolled in Nikolai’s grasp, he carried her unconscious body with ease.
In the middle of my desperate draining of his blood, he’d reached out and clutched my neck to physically pull me off him.
Even drained, he was still powerful, and I looked up at him in admiration. Though my head hung with shame and I dreaded knowing what he must think of me, I stuck to his side in the tunnel, following closely.
“How do you feel?” His husky voice split the silence.
Moments after feeding from him, I’d suffered a debilitating stomach ache that proved raw blood didn’t agree with me.
Nikolai had watched me closely, that calculating glint never leaving his eyes.
“I’m okay,” I told him, looking straight ahead. “How much further is it?”
“We’ll soon be upon it.”
He’d mentioned being able to sense an exit by smell and vibrations.
“Are you sure you don’t need to drink?” I offered, still fighting guilt for preying on him. “Maybe starving contributes to your not being able to trace?”
“No, you need it more.” He glanced down at me as he rejected my offer.
My cheeks heated at his stare.
It could work, though, bloodletting until I could get some food to eat and replace our stash, since he preferred to drink from only me.
I wondered when I’d stop feeling the urge. My senses were charged, my heart pumping wildly, but still that pesky hunger tickled the back of my mind.
We hadn’t found Graves. Just a couple of tanks of crimson blood and a wayward vision.
Should I have told Nikolai about it? I didn’t understand why I kept it to myself, only that it felt right to.
Soon, I started to sense the increased lightness of the air and the scent of fresh leaves, trees, and animals above. We were close.
I glanced back at Tammy.
We needed to find shelter by the time she woke up. We’d need to hide her, feed her, and train her to control the uncontrollable hunger of a young vampire.
“Is her heart beating now?”
“No,” Nikolai said, his mind preoccupied.
What was he thinking about? Tammy’s chances of survival? My loss of control and the craving for blood in the first place? Blood that was almost wasted by vomiting.
I walked faster, suddenly craving a breath of fresh air.
My lungs needed to be cleared of that damned blood fog, and with it, these confusing urges raging inside me.
“What did your mother tell you about your father?” Nikolai suddenly asked, his tone clipped as if trying to solve a puzzle.
“I don’t want to talk about him.” My fists clenched.
Mother had told me he was alive, yet I’d never met him. He didn’t want us, so we didn’t owe him any thoughts.
“Oblige me,” Nikolai insisted.
I rolled my eyes. Was this an attempt to know my origins, to decide whether or not he’d keep me as a bride?
I considered telling him I didn’t know how to cook either, and that I was very lazy with chores.
“I only know he’s a wolf somewhere out there, living his best life while his daughter trudges through some cave with ferals at her heels, and his ex-wife was camped with some other wolf named Sorin.” I kicked a stone in the path. It blasted into the rock wall with a thud.
After a beat of silence, Nikolai asked carefully, “And your mother is human?”
“You know that. Why are you asking again?” I snapped, chest heaving.
His gaze met mine, his head shaking slowly. “Nothing… nothing…”
I huffed, trying to suppress the anger building.
Then we turned a corner and the tunnel slanted upward like a hill. At the very end was the deep, dark blue of the starry night sky.
Squealing, I ran ahead.
“Finally!”
“Careful…” he warned.
I slowed down and bounced on my toes as I waited for him to catch up. The blood I’d taken from him fired up my senses so much I didn’t even fear running into a threat up ahead.
He finally reached the mouth of the cave, and we stepped out together. He stood rooted in one spot, looking first right, then left, and smelling the air.
At his blank stare, I ran a few steps farther and inhaled deeply.
“Ahhhhh,” I breathed. “There’s nothing like a good drag of fresh, chilly night air.”
“Indeed.”
Nikolai began walking alongside the rock walls of the mountains separating Blackbridge and the vampiric territories of Veilmoor.
Since he couldn’t trace, he was forced to walk to his destination—something I knew must irk him to the bone.
“Where are we headed?” I asked once I fell in step.
His mouth moved as if to speak, then he closed it again.
Suspicion nagged at me.
“We should find shelter, maybe get into District 3 and use one of your lairs. It won’t be easy transporting a feral vampire just awakening. Not to mention, it’ll soon be morning.”
Nikolai glanced up at the sky with irritation.
Then he froze.
His head tilted, eyes flitting around the terrain.
“What?” I whispered. I looked but saw nothing.
Was there an ambush waiting ahead? Perhaps the ferals were smarter than we gave them credit for and had set some kind of trap?
A woman appeared.
One minute she wasn’t there—the next, she was.
Traced.
She stood with one hip cocked, a black cloak gleaming under the moonlight and covering her from head to toe.
Her lips curved, her upper face shadowed.
“What do we have here?” she purred.
I hated her and her seductive voice instantly.
Flexing my claws, I pinned her with my gaze.
Nikolai wasn’t at the height of his powers, Tammy was unconscious, and I’d have to pull my weight. But between Nikolai and me, we could take her.
“Lilith,” Nikolai said, his voice sounding a little too relieved for my liking.
Lilith? The same vampire I’d seen him with on the night of the ceremony?
My hackles rose immediately.
“A runt and a dud,” Lilith continued, amused. “You always did gather the funniest strays.”
“I’m not a stray. And she’s not a dud, so watch your mouth,” I hissed.
Lilith looked down her nose at me, the most belittling expression on her face.
“Ohhh,” she awed, “it speaks.” Her eyes flashed.
My blood boiled with frightening intensity.
I leapt for her, claws out.
Blinded by rage, I didn’t see her stiletto-clad heel until it was too late.
Fire exploded at the side of my head from her kick.
Air wrapped around me for the seconds I was airborne, her cruel smirk the last thing I saw before my back split a tree—