Page 41 of Bullets and Blood (Hunting Hearts #1)

Chapter Thirty-Five

Lance jerked awake, his fingers curled and heart pumping. Rage flooded his veins like acid, and his fangs ached to carve into flesh. He reached out, but the bed was empty. He snarled and flung off the sheets so he could find Nix and drag him back to bed. But Nix wasn’t in the room.

He flexed his fingers and made tighter fists. He needed blood. The taste was thick on his tongue, but he remembered the way Nix had pulled away before eventually succumbing.

But he’d left.

Nix hated him and what he’d become.

His fangs cut his lip. The roof of his mouth hurt. His body hurt. He scratched his arms, needing to spill blood. What was wrong with him? Wasn’t he supposed to be getting better?

He turned the door handle, but it wouldn’t open. He shook it. “Let me out.”

There was someone out there. Their heartbeat echoed in his skull.

He stalked to the window and flung open the curtains. Dawn light spilled between the bars. His room was a prison.

His pulse thumped. A headache bloomed in his temples and spread. He dragged the curtains closed before the light could add to his discomfort. He glared at the bed that smelled like blood and sex. He wanted more. But he couldn’t stand to be touched.

Every mark Nix had left on his skin was sore and open.

Shouldn’t he be healing faster?

What had they done to him?

The heartbeat outside the door was joined by another, so he banged on the door again. “Let me out.”

His knuckles bled. How hard had he hit the door?

In that moment, he didn’t care. He kept hitting it because it felt good.

When the bastards outside wouldn’t open the door, he started yelling at them.

At Nix for leaving him. The Reids for locking him up like he was an animal and his family for abandoning him.

He tore the sheets from the bed, and even though he was aware he was ranting and howling like a possessed man, he couldn’t stop.

At the back of his mind, he knew he didn’t really hate Nix, but in that moment, he did, and if Nix had been there, they would’ve fought, and he’d have been just as strong.

Nix wouldn’t be able to push him away anymore.

He sniffed the pillow Nix had used, then tore it in half, watching the feathers fall to the floor.

Nix wasn’t coming. No one was. He yelled until his throat ripped.

* * *

Nix leaned his head against the door, his arms resting over his knees.

He’d gotten dressed in the track pants and T-shirt that had been left in his room for the occasion even though he didn’t think anyone would’ve cared if he’d hidden in his room and recovered.

Today, his stomach was a shiny, thick scar with new muscle forming beneath, which was a vast improvement.

The bite marks were healing, even the deep ones on his ass—which he had enjoyed far more than he should’ve, mostly because Lance’s tongue had been everywhere.

After finding the lube in the room, the safe biting lesson had fallen to the wayside, but Lance had remained in control enough to bite only where he was allowed.

That control had vanished today.

He closed his eyes as Lance launched into another round of abuse aimed at him. He’d sat guard for one of his cousins and knew this was normal—though Nix couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said on his day five, only that the trust between he and his mother had been irrevocably broken.

There was always a guard just in case the new vampire broke down the door and started on a rampage. New vampires were dangerous, wild beasts, but there was truth to what they said. Lance would be questioned before he was accepted by the Reids even though he was Reid by blood now.

The click of heels along the corridor made Nix open his eyes. He sat up straighter as Ann Reid, the family matriarch, stopped in front of him. This was the woman who’d been in the room when he’d first woken and when he’d drained Lance. A few steps behind her was Garrick.

“You don’t need to be here. That’s what he’s for,” she said, nodding at the guard who was working on his crossword skills.

“Yeah, I do.” He stared up at her. Her dark hair was streaked with gray, and the lines around her eyes might have been friendly if she’d been smiling.

“Your loyalty is admirable, but we need to talk.” She indicated for him to follow and took two steps, then glanced over her shoulder.

Nix was already getting up, though not quick enough—the weak stomach muscles slowed him down. He couldn’t refuse an order from her when he was a guest and in trouble beyond these walls. He fell into step behind her, and Garrick walked behind him.

His heart beat a little quicker.

He knew what was coming, and he’d been dreading it. Ann led him into a small sitting room. On the coffee table was freshly brewed tea and chocolate cake as if this were a social visit.

Garrick shut the door and remained there as though he expected Nix to make a run for it. But there was nowhere to run, and the only person he wanted to run to was upstairs, cursing his existence. He sat opposite Ann on the sofa.

“Tea, Hadley?”

“Thank you.” He’d much rather have coffee, but if she was offering tea, that’s what he’d drink. She was serving; this wasn’t going to go well at all.

Ann added sugar to her tea then leaned back as though completely at ease. She knew where all the weapons in the room were. She could relax. “Help yourself to cake, someone is going through a baking phase and there are always too many around.”

His gaze flicked to Ann and then Garrick. What was this? But he helped himself to cake because he might need the energy later, and he hadn’t eaten a meal—besides Lance—in a while, and he was still very fond of real food.

The room was silent as he put the cake on his plate. He felt like a creature on display. What were they mentally taking note of? His bare feet? His love of cake? The bite marks on his forearm but not his neck?

Nix took a forkful of cake, wondered briefly if it was poisoned, and then ate. If they wanted to kill him, they’d had enough chances. They could’ve locked him in with Lance today. He wouldn’t have made it out alive.

“Tell me about your sister.”

The cake got stuck in his throat.

Ann smiled and sipped her tea. “We can talk, or I can drag it out of you.”

He swallowed. “You’ll do that anyway.”

But at least she didn’t have any shears handy.

“Later, to confirm if you were telling the truth. I want to know who I’m letting into my family.”

“I’m sure your intel is as good as anyone’s.”

She nodded. “You aren’t going to deny or tell me you were forced into killing for your family?”

Nix studied the cake and his undrunk tea.

Was it more noble to plead that he had been made to do it?

It would be a lie, though. He’d been expected to, but no one had told him he’d be punished if he didn’t.

He shook his head. “I had obligations after the broken peace talks. That’s all.

I did my duty for all the good it did. Zinnia ordered me to leave her, and we’ve both been on the run since the attack.

I don’t know where she is.” He lifted his gaze.

“But I’d like to let her know I’m alive. ”

“How do you communicate?”

“Through a secure chat on the site. We’ve been checking whenever we can.

She hasn’t checked in for a while. I’m worried.

” He considered his options, then decided he didn’t have any.

There was no Hadley family. Even if Zinnia came out of hiding, there was still no Hadley family.

He had to let that go. His loyalty was to the Reids now.

He owed them his life and Lance’s. “I can show you as an act of good faith.”

Ann nodded to Garrick, who retrieved a laptop from a sideboard and placed it on the coffee table.

“What will she make of your change in loyalty? She is the matriarch now. She may want to bide her time before making a strike against the Orlans.”

Maybe she would, but he couldn’t be a part of it. “I can’t do that again.”

He wouldn’t. He’d completely unravel.

Ann leaned forward. “And Lance? Where does he fit in? He’s blaming you for all his ills right now.”

“I know. And I am to blame. I asked for a truce and kept my enemy close. Close enough that I accidentally fell in love.” It wasn’t meant to end like this, but he wouldn’t change it. He held Ann’s gaze. “Just do it. Tear out the answers you want.”

Ann put down her tea and rested her elbows on her knees.

Nix did the same. All the careful barriers he’d built up, he took down.

Fighting her or resisting would only create suspicion.

He’d always be the one who had to be watched because he was a Hadley by birth and blood.

But he would do what little he could to prove he wanted this chance to work.

Her eyes gleamed and the touch of her will brushed against his. He tensed out of habit. Wanted to push back and throw her out of his mind, but he couldn’t blink and break the connection.

She carefully sifted through his thoughts, examining each one that made her pause and questioning him.

The words tripped off his lips and bared all the scars he kept hidden.

She knew that he hated being turned, that he hated killing, and that he’d wanted a different life and the winery.

He admitted that he loved Lance, yet worried that, in time, Lance would push him aside, unable to forgive him for his death, and he’d be adrift.

He’d heard the words of doubt and fear that he’d be unworthy.

Unlovable.

And he’d hated himself for telling her those truths even as he was unable to stop.

She dug deeper into his past and brushes with the law as well as every death he’d caused.

It was one thing for his mother to know he resented her for turning him and that he hated killing for her, but another to tell someone outside the family.