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I let out a strangled noise, almost animalistic, somewhere between a grunt and a moan of pleasure.

It was so good. It was pure vitality that I drank. I could have cried with relief. It was the blissful moment when the pain finally stops. It was moving a limb that’s gone to sleep, after you can’t stand the discomfort any longer. It was exactly what my body needed.

And I didn’t care about anything else.

I was hardly even aware that I was on my knees in the filthy kitchen, with a strange vampire staring down at me, or that Michael was in the other room, or that my face dripped blood.

None of it mattered.

I took another blood bag and drained it. Then another. I lost count. I hadn’t bothered to count in the first place. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was—

I blinked. The bag in my hands was empty. I didn’t really remember draining it.

The animalisticneedreceded.

And horror overtook me, as I realized how completely I had just lost myself. It had blotted everything else out. Everything that made me Danny. Everything that made me a person. The totality of me had been shrunk down to one, irresistible impulse: tofeed.

Time had passed—it was impossible to know how much. I was startled to find that half a dozen empty bags were scattered around me. If I had been feeding on a person instead of the blood bags, I wouldn’t have been able to stop.

Not until there was nothing left.

“It will get easier to control,” Thierry whispered, sounding sympathetic. I didn’t know what expression I must have worn on my face, but it was obviously bad enough to make someone like Thierry want to use kid gloves with me. He added, his voice soft, soothing, “And this passes, sooner than you think. Every vampire goes through this, in the very beginning.”

I raised my gaze, not to meet his, but to meet Michael’s. The expression on his face was ghastly. His eyes were wide and he was rigidly staring at me, like he’d never seen me before.

I could feel his disbelief, like the world had stopped making sense to him.

And then I saw, the memory blooming between us, a flash of two vampires falling upon Joshua, sinking their teeth into him. And Michael just standing there, flabbergasted and useless, disbelieving that this was a thing that could happen—

Belatedly, I understood. A sick feeling washed through me.

He had come to the kitchen, hadn’t he? He had been summoned by the pain I had felt. He’d sensed it through the bond. And he had wanted to make sure I was okay. Because he loved me.

Which meant he had seen everything.

He had seen the way the vampiric impulses I now possessed blotted out everything else. That I had been taken over by something…other.

I lurched to my feet. I took a step in his direction.

Michael flinched.

And then something in my chest broke.

I let out a ragged breath. “Michael, I…”

But then I trailed off. I was surrounded by empty blood bags. He had seen everything. He had seen the way I had been beyond reason or rationality. And there was nothing I could say.

He was my mate. That was beyond question. Which meant that he was mated to a monster. A creature from a horror story. A creature like the ones we hunted.

“I need a minute,” Michael said. He didn’t sound like himself at all. And his mind felt too locked up with disbelief to even tell what he was thinking—if he was even thinking anything coherent. He took a step backward, his gaze locked on me, like he was afraid I would come after him next. His back hit the doorframe. Then he blinked rapidly. He turned and then, with his whole back ramrod-straight, his body so rigid and tense I could practically see him vibrating with it, he left the room without another word.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN || MICHAEL

Imade it out of the house, blinking against the too-bright morning sun. I didn’t care that it hurt my eyes. I needed the air. I wasn’t sure I could breathe.

Somehow, the moment Danny had woken up as a vampire and I saw that he wasn’t crazed with bloodlust, I had assumed that some sort of miracle had occurred. That maybe, because we were supposed to be together, it had somehow tempered some of his urges. That maybe there wouldn’t be any all-consuming bloodlust. I had bet my own safety on it, in fact.

But it wasn’t all that different, was it? It just wasn’t an all-consuming bloodlust withme.Just like I instinctively knew I was safe around him, in a way that even five years of life experience couldn’t disagree with, his own instincts rearranged themselves for me. But that was as far as it went. He wasn’t the exception when it came to being a vampire. He was just as much in danger of losing himself to it as anyone had ever been.