Page 37 of Bloodbane

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A Matter of Life or Death

{ R U B Y }

I float toward consciousness slowly, rising from oblivion, gradually becoming aware of the dull ache of my arms, my chest… my everything . My entire body feels like one giant bruise.

Sleep curls around me, tugging seductively at my edges, trying to coax me back into the darkness. My surrendering groan catches in my throat as a warm body shifts behind mine, slotting against me perfectly. Muscular legs tangle with my smaller ones, and a wire of panic snaps taught in my lazy brain, slicing through the lingering remnants of sleep.

My eyes fly open, but I can’t find focus in the dim light. Who the fuck is behind me? Why am I so sore? And Hot? And… sticky? I sit bolt upright as my heart picks up pace in my chest.

“Ruby? You alright?” The sleep-roughened voice drifts over me in the darkness.

My mind immediately supplies a name to the who, but stumbles on why Thayne is in my bed.

The soft gasp beside me comes a beat before Thayne’s voice rings through the room again—all traces of slumber gone.

“You came back?”

I try and make sense of the question, but then understanding dawns that it isn’t meant for me.

“We made a deal. I intend to hold up my end.” There’s an edge to Grayson’s voice.

A sharp click brings light flooding into the room. I blink against the bright glow shining down from the ceiling, my bleary eyes trying to adjust.

Grayson is standing in the doorway, wet clothes clinging to the sculpted muscles beneath, arms folded over his chest, looking past me. That bubbling panic is back, and I twist to find Thayne behind me, naked but for the sheet snaked over his lap and twisting between his legs. The same sheet that’s tucked around me. I swallow with difficulty, my mouth now bone-dry, realizing Thayne isn’t the only one naked.

“So, you know that old joke about the vampire that walks in to find a human in bed with a werewolf?” I say, trying to force lightness into my tone despite my pulse fluttering in my throat. “I seem to have forgotten the punchline. Help me out?”

A small, amused huff sounds from the door. “How much do you remember?”

Not enough, apparently. I keep the quip locked away as I try and work backward. My brows pinch together under the effort, but there’s a strange fog in my brain, distorting and hiding the answers I’m trying to find.

“I remember you, uh, biting me. And then…” I shake my head slowly. “Nope, I got nothing. Did it work? Am I still me? And why am I… you know… naked and sore and very sticky?”

“Things are a bit more complicated than we thought.”

“It didn’t work,” Grayson states flatly. “You’re still infected.”

“That’s an oversimplification. Technically, she was never—”

“You can dress it up however you like, Thayne. It doesn’t change the fact—”

“I’m not—”

“Whoa, whoa, time out.” I hold my hands up to stop the escalating exchange. “How about we answer the naked amnesiac’s questions first in a simple, easy-to-understand, supernatural shit for dummies kind of way.”

“The plan, as reckless as it was, was solid,” Thayne offers, ignoring the grunt from Grayson. “You aren’t turning because you were bitten—if that was the catalyst, the transformation wouldn’t be complete until the first full moon after the attack.”

“I don’t understand. If it wasn’t the bite, then what?”

“I think you were… I mean, you must have been born a lycan. I’ve gone over it a dozen times from a dozen different angles, but that’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s the only thing that explains everything.”

Thayne’s words enter my head and then just sort of hang there as my brain denies the new information entry. It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible. All things considered, I think I’ve processed the reveal about the supernatural world reasonably well, but the notion that I’d been born into that world is ludicrous. “Uh, no. I’m pretty sure I would have noticed sprouting fur once a month and scampering around on all fours. There has to be another explanation, something you’ve missed, but we can circle back to that in a second. What about the rest? Why am I naked?”

Thayne’s eyes fall to his hands, twisting in his lap. He swallows, hard. Once. Twice.

“You were sick. Dying.” Grayson answers finally. “It’s a wolf thing. Thayne’s body produces a protein that yours requires. Unfortunately, the only way to administer it is…” He gestures vaguely to the bed. “Carnally.”

My cheeks blaze to life as memories begin to stir, hazy and indistinct, like shadows in fog—sweaty skin and cool hands, my frustrated tears and whimpering pleas, my body aching with a need I’ve never felt before.

“I’m so sorry, Ruby. I should never have touched you without your permission, and I wouldn’t have if I didn’t think it was a matter of life or death. Omegas need a protein only alphas have, and without it, you could have died, and I couldn’t—” Thayne snaps his jaw shut, his anguished eyes still refusing to meet mine.

The dark apology triggers something inside me and everything comes flooding back: the blissful chill against my skin as Thayne’s feverish body fucked into me, stretched me until pain and pleasure blurred together, the sound of my broken, begging cries filling the room as I’d splintered apart over and over, and Thayne filling me endlessly, pulsing hot and wet into me all night. I slide a hand beneath the bunched sheet as covertly as I can, laying it flat over my swollen belly. The heat in my cheeks grows, spreading down my neck, chasing my hand.

There’s an odd rush of violation. But that’s stupid—I had offered myself up like a cat in heat more than once. Begged for it. I pick at my nailbed idly, trying to make sense of my swirling emotions. Yes, I’d wanted to fuck Thayne—hell, I wouldn’t say no to round two or ten now—but is that desire triggered by need? Is it my choice or am I being controlled by my broken biology? It’s all too much to unpack, especially in front of the man—no, the werewolf—who had spent half the night inside me.

“I’m sorry. I would never have touched you otherwise,” Thayne murmurs, head still lowered.

The words are a stab to my heart. I had literally begged Thayne to fuck me. Thayne, who would rather talk than have my mouth around his cock. Thayne, who had only fucked me to save my life. Thayne, who’s trying to let me down gently, to let me know in no uncertain terms it won’t be happening again, as if he expects I’ll start begging for an encore.

I push my lips up in an empty smile; I don’t want to seem ungrateful for the extreme-if-unorthodox life-saving measures. “Don’t worry. I get it.” I want to say he’d made it plenty clear at the farmhouse that he has zero interest in fucking any part of me, and that I appreciate him taking one for the team and saving my life, but the flippant retort feels too revealing, too desperate. “Was this just a one-and-done thing? You gave me… what I needed and I’m good now, right?”

Thayne clears his throat, his face burning scarlet, looking so much like he wants to be anywhere but here, that Ruby feels a swell of sympathy. “No. Your protein levels will gradually diminish until they become critical again. That brings on a heat, increasing your libido to—”

“To the point that you’re rutting up against any hot or cool body in your general vicinity,” Grayson supplies, not seeming to share Ruby’s sympathy, by all accounts rather taking perverse pleasure in Thayne’s intense mortification.

Memories of grinding against Grayson, of begging to be fucked fill my mind. I shift on the bed as discretely as I’m able as my clit throbs back to life.

“—To encourage you to mate,” Thayne grinds out as if Grayson hadn’t interrupted. “It’s just biological urges being triggered. But that’s only until your body gets what it needs. The, uh, cravings should start to ease after that. And then your sex drive should return to however it was before the heat… until the next one.”

“ Next one ? How often am I going to need—” I catch the ‘you’ just in time. “—protein?”

“From what I know, there’s usually one heat each quarter.”

I nod slowly, taking in all the information and trying to commit it to memory. Knowing the intense desire that has been thrumming through me for the past few days isn’t going to be my new default setting is better than nothing. But still, the idea that I’m going to need someone—Thayne or otherwise—as some twisted form of sexual life support bothers me on so many levels.

“Okay, so... right. That’s going to take me a minute to process.” This new reality feels intangible and false, like a dream. Or, maybe I’m in shock: I do feel oddly numb. “You said this wasn’t because I was bitten. Let’s double back to that for a minute.”

Thayne’s pinched face immediately relaxes, apparently happy to be moving on from Lycan Sex Ed For Dummies.

“All humans turn on the first full moon after the bite and they’re always betas, never omegas.”

“What’s the difference? Aside from hazing rituals and pledge requirements?”

Thayne rewards my attempt at levity with a small smile. “It’s quite literally your blood designation. A beta’s blood doesn’t make the protein, nor do they require it. This means that, unlike omegas, they don’t have heats. It’s nature’s trade-off—omegas need, uh, assistance from alphas to maintain their levels, and in return, they are the only ones who can birth alphas.”

My quick inhale lodges in my throat and coughs wrack my body. Thayne’s hand slides between the headboard and my back, nudging me forward before thumping in what I’m sure is a gentle-to-Thayne manner. I lurch forward, away from the hand, and wave him off, sucking in air through my nose, eyes watering from both my protesting lungs and the burning pain in my back. Unable to wait until the fit has subsided completely, I twist toward Thayne, my hand flying to my distended belly.

“I’m not—this isn’t—”

“ No, ” Thayne assures me quickly. “No, that’s just...” His cheeks bloom into color once more.

“I hate to interrupt the supernatural biology lesson,” Grayson says darkly in a tone that suggests the opposite, all traces of earlier amusement gone, “but we have a bigger problem than the possibility of Evans carrying a litter of your pups.” Grayson ignores the withering look Thayne throws his way. “There has been another shifter attack. Ash took care of the mutt, and the deputy and I collected the—”

“You met Ash?”

“There's been another attack?”

“You two weren’t the only ones busy tonight.” Grayson’s gaze flicks to the window, and my eyes follow, finding the soft peach light peeking around the blind. “Last night,” he corrects himself, finally pushing off the wall and moving toward the bed. He eyes the end of the mattress for a moment but doesn’t sit. Instead, he tucks his hands behind his back, still avoiding eye contact. With his ramrod-straight posture, he looks every inch the good soldier giving a mission report. “We took the body to the clinic. Since he attacked in dog form, he has to be one of Arlo’s mutts. Ash is hoping Ruby can ID him. I have photographs for you to run through whatever facial recognition database you have access to.”

Thayne swears under his breath. “That’s why I had to leave yesterday. One of Arlo’s pack came sniffing around. Ash got hurt. I told her to leave it alone, that I’d deal with it, but she never listens. She was always going to go after him,” he sighs. “Is she okay?”

“She’ll be fine—seems competent enough.”

“That’s one word for it.” Thayne holds his hand out for the phone. “Can I see the photos?”

Grayson fishes my phone from his pocket. His fingers dance over the screen before he holds it out to Thayne, but I snatch it away with trembling fingers. Staring down at the too-pale face, the room starts to spin around me. It can’t be. But there’s no denying it, not when a face from my nightmares is staring up at me. My demons have found me.