Page 7 of Hunted (Love and Revenge #5)

Sadavir

J osh didn’t answer when I knocked. He had been even more withdrawn than usual since giving Acacia’s message to Sadavir yesterday.

The hallway was quiet. It felt... guarded, but not exactly safe . The wards Sanka had etched into the archways flickered faintly in the periphery of my magical senses—not announcing danger yet, but... humming. Like they didn’t know what to do with him anymore either.

I lifted my fist and knocked again, paused.

Waited.

Still nothing.

I pressed my hand flat to the rune-plate in the door panel and held it there. The ward resisted me at first—my aura misaligning with its newer, sharper calibration. We’d reset it three times already. The Fox’s wards were being coaxed to defend against Josh—and apparently that included me .

According to the sorcerer, a faint bit of my aura clung to Josh’s.

Some sort of barely-perceivable natural bond that had slowly, quietly grown between us over the years of proximity, friendship, and love.

Apparently, the nearly imperceptible connection was just enough for the magic in the wards to detect it. The wards were confused.

I was confused. Conflicted. And a hell of a lot of other things besides.

I let my head fall forward and rested my forehead against the door.

I hated this with every ounce of my being.

It felt wrong to keep Josh prisoner, isolated and locked behind layers of magic as if he was some evil thing.

It reminded me too much of our years trapped in Acacia’s menagerie, locked away from the rest of the coven.

I had only been toted out for vampire queen’s pleasure, while Josh was only allowed out to run occasional approved errands so he could tend to her blood slaves.

Eventually, the wards recognized me and the lock disengaged, jolting me out of my depressing memories. The door opened with a soft reverberation that I felt through the wood, and I straightened before I fell through.

He was on the floor again, huddled in the far corner of the guest suite, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. He didn’t startle. Didn’t speak. His head turned just slightly, tracking me like a predator that still remembered a time when it was prey.

I signed slowly. “It’s me. You’re safe.”

Josh blinked. His hands didn’t move. He got like this sometimes since he was kidnapped.

Distant and unresponsive. He’d tell me he was lost in thought or distracted by Acacia.

But I wasn’t sure I entirely believed him.

I felt like he was pulling away, getting further from me—further from the man I knew—every day.

I knelt down a few feet away and lowered myself onto the floor, leaving space between us.

He watched. Silent. Distant. Dull-eyed, in the way I’d seen trauma victims in the vampire menagerie look when they stopped bracing for the next blow or unexpected horror and started to just accept it as normal.

After a long moment, he raised his hand and signed. “Acacia is quiet right now. I think she’s resting.”

Even his sign was tired—shoulders slumped, hands sloppy.

I signed back, “ Then I’ll whisper so I don’t wake her up .”

He looked at me. Mustered the faintest flicker of a forced smile in response.

I couldn’t stand seeing him like this. I took a deep breath through my nose and slowly let it out through my mouth to calm myself. He needed me to be steady and strong for him.

Josh’s warm, rich scent had changed since his transition, grown fainter under layers of something darker, like a cool, earth-and-leaf-scented fall night.

The room itself smelled sterile. Nothing personal.

Nothing of the man I used to know. Just spell-wax, clean sheets, and the faint copper trace of old blood from a nosebleed two days ago that he hadn’t let me help with—brought about by resisting Acacia.

I tilted my head as I signed. “How bad is it today?”

His soft lips twitched. His answer came one-handed, fingers clenched tight to his knee: “Medium.”

With Josh and his refusal to ever make a “nuisance” of himself, that probably meant it was bad.

“Did you eat?” I asked, not bothering to beat around the bush. We might not like the idea, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a vampire now.

A pause. Then, “I tried. It didn’t help.”

Of course it didn’t. According to most vampires I’d met, blood bags were stabilizing but not particularly sustaining or nourishing. Feeding for them was about more than just the blood—they also needed the little slip of lifeforce, of aura, that they consumed when they fed from a live victim.

And Josh’s needs seemed to be worse than others, probably thanks Acacia’s psychotic energy in his mind and in his aura. The bagged blood filled the need but not the hunger. Not the craving Acacia had cursed into his cells.

I shifted my weight, leaned back against the wall opposite him, and tapped twice on my sternum—a signal between us from years ago. I’m still here.

He saw it. A flinch ran through his body, but he didn’t look away.

His fingers lifted again. Slow, hesitant. “I hate this.”

“I know,” I said aloud.

It wasn’t only the vampirism, the fact that he had been turned into one of the same kind of monsters who had tormented us and held us captive for years.

It also went against his beta nature. He was supposed to be the caregiver, a source of support and comfort.

And I knew he felt wrong being on the receiving end of that, just as much as he felt wrong for sprouting fangs.

“I don’t know what thoughts are mine anymore,” he signed, after a pause.

“I dream about killing people I love. And then I wake up and want to do it. Not because I actually want to—but because something in me says it would feel so good. Just for a second. A moment’s euphoria, stronger than any narcotic. ”

I didn’t reply right away. I wasn’t sure what to say to help him. Those weren’t Josh’s thoughts. I knew that was pure Acacia. But saying so felt like it would only remind him that his mind wasn’t his own.

He curled tighter around himself, like shrinking small enough might keep the hunger from using him like a marionette to get what it craved.

“Do you think I’m still me?” he asked, his hazel eyes searching my face, desperate for some sort of reassurance.

I nodded.

He shook his head, hands trembling as he signed, “You’re the only one, then.”

That wasn’t true. But he wouldn’t believe it if I said so. I knew Josh well enough to know the stubborn idiot would need to be shown, not just told. So, I didn’t bother with empty words.

Instead, I signed, “I’m not here to fix you. I’m here to be with you through this.” Then I slid my arm around his shoulders and pulled him in against my side, not caring if I got bitten in the process.

His breath hitched, and I thought he’d fight me.

But eventually he relaxed into me, accepting some of the alpha influence I offered.

He reached up—hesitantly—and wrapped his hand around my wrist. His grip was loose, but I wasn’t fooled.

He was grasping onto me. Grounding himself.

Craving the contact but too lost in his misery and self-loathing to act on the need. His skin was so cold.

I let him cling to me for as long as he needed, while I nuzzled into his hair and drew in his new scent, firmly telling the instinctual creature inside me that this was still Josh—our Josh—and we’d best learn this new scent, incorporate it into our senses and file it under the category labeled “ mine .”

When he withdrew, I made the impulsive decision to grasp for more.

I slid my hand into his soft hair and cupped the back of his head, drawing him into a gentle, chaste kiss, showing him I wasn’t afraid of him, or revolted by him.

I let my aura flare outward slightly, my alpha instincts wanting to wrap our magic around him and squeeze him tight, show him he was loved.

I thought he might pull away, too worried about his bloodlust to risk kissing me.

I was surprised when, after only a few seconds of gentle acceptance, he suddenly pulled me closer.

His lips parted my own in a rare show of lustful demand, and I opened to him.

I was secure enough in myself to quell my alpha instincts and let him take the lead.

Whatever my hurting beta needed to heal.

The kiss was searing, and I moaned into it, surprised.

Despite being asexual, Josh was affectionate, and he loved cuddling, and touch, and making out.

But he didn’t usually come on so strong, with such an obvious sexual overtone.

He nipped at my bottom lip, drawing a tiny drop of blood, then hummed appreciatively as he all but climbed into my lap while he lapped it up.

“Fuck me, Sadavir,” he demanded, his voice low and seductive, sending a shudder of want through me.

It was a damned hard thing to do, but I forced myself to slow down, to pull back and hold the hungry demon at bay. How many times over the years had I wished he’s ask me that? Dreamed of what it might be like to have that with him?

“Josh?” I forced out. “She doesn’t own you,” I vocalized firmly as I gripped his upper arms and held him back. “Stay with me.”

The sneer that twisted his chiseled lips was confirmation of what I suspected. “What was that, snake? You’ll have to enunciate. I’m afraid I don’t speak brain defect .”

I shook Josh, hard. I didn’t want to hurt him, but seeing Acacia so fully take over his body and speak through him like this was terrifying. “Leave him alone,” I said, slow and loud, so she would have no excuse of not understanding my blunted speech.