Page 29 of The Serpent’s Bride (Bloodlines #1)

FIFTEEN

Raziel stood at the far end of the room, his arms folded across his chest, as he watched his doctor work on Monica. His jaw twitched. It took every ounce of willpower he owned not to leap across the room and sink his fangs into her throat and drink her dry.

No, her death at his hands had to wait until their honeymoon. But by the moons, he needed to drink of her before then.

The smell of her blood was thick in the air. He had tasted just the barest drop of it in the car and it had been a terrible mistake on his part. Now that he knew what he was missing, it was doubly hard to resist.

It’d been unlike anything he’d ever had before in his life. It had threatened every ounce of control he owned not to rip her apart.

But his wife of only a few hours was stretched thin enough as it was.

She was lying on her side on a metal table that the doctor used for surgeries.

Because of her concussion, which was thankfully deemed mild, she wasn’t given any painkillers nor was the doctor able to put her under to remove the bullet.

So Monica lay there, staring at a point on the far wall, as the doctor cleaned the wound with rubbing alcohol.

Her hand twitched in pain, but she didn’t make a sound.

“This will hurt,” the doctor muttered to Monica. His name was Bartholomew Williams—a brilliant young man who had been cast out from the local hospitals due to an… eccentric fascination with attempting to resurrect the dead.

“It already hurts.” Monica shot the doctor a flat stare. “Just shut up and do your fucking job, will you?”

Raziel chuckled. His new bride had claws. He found that he enjoyed it a great deal. Far more than when she was playing timid. And now he was fully convinced that the timid routine was entirely an act, which was fascinating to him.

Who was she? Really?

Every moment he spent around his new wife, he found something that felt like a new piece to a puzzle.

A puzzle that was forming an unexpected picture.

A picture that he was starting to find a little too enchanting for his comfort.

Bartholomew shook his head, picked up the forceps, and shifted his stool closer to begin the process of removing the bullet.

He paused before pressing the steel ends into the wound on Monica’s side, just above her hip.

Luckily, the bullet had not gone in terribly deep, nor had it hit any organs or arteries.

She would be fine once the stitches healed.

The doctor turned his attention to Raziel. “You may wish to leave the room.”

“Why?” He arched his eyebrow back at the doctor. Monica’s wedding dress was already mostly cut away, leaving her in bloody shreds of what remained of the lacy gown and her undergarments. The maids had brought some sheets to drape over her for modesty. “It isn’t anything I haven’t already seen.”

“The blood, sir. You already seem…affected.” Bartholomew’s eyes flicked down to Raziel’s teeth.

Ah. Yes. Raziel’s fangs had extended without his noticing. He grimaced, forcing them to withdraw back into his jaw. “Continue.”

“Sir—”

It was Monica who settled the argument. “It’s fine. He can stay.”

He couldn’t help but feel a bit surprised at that. It looked like the doctor was equally shocked.

Briefly, she shut her eyes and laid her head down on the thin pillow that had been provided to her.

She looked miserable, a thin layer of sweat on her forehead mixing with the dirt and blood that she’d gathered from the day’s misadventures.

She blinked her eyes back open, likely remembering she wasn’t allowed to sleep with her concussion just yet. “He’ll control himself.”

What an oddly charming vote of confidence. Leaning against the wall, he watched her with a faint smile. “Listen to your new boss, doctor, and do your job. Get to work.”

“Excuse me?” The doctor did not seem so keen on that statement. “I still don’t think it’s best if you are here, with your current?—”

“She is my wife. You answer to her now, same as me. That is how marriage works, isn’t it?” Raziel huffed a laugh. “Or was I mistaken? Tell me, how would you prefer I structure this situation?”

“I—well—” The doctor didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

“If you don’t fucking pull this bullet out of my side right now , I’m going to take those forceps and do it myself,” Monica snapped. “Stop. Wasting. Time.”

Bartholomew stared at her. Then looked to Raziel.

He merely gestured to the wound as if to ask the doctor what he was waiting for.

With a sigh, the doctor turned to the wound and put the tips of the forceps into the seeping wound.

Monica snarled low in her throat. Her hands were curled by her face.

Both of them clenched tight into fists, but she otherwise didn’t move.

She knew—either from experience or intuition—to keep still and try not to tense up as the doctor fished around in the wound as he searched for the spent lead inside of her.

Raziel would have to ask her about that later. If his new wife had taken a bullet before…he would have a lot of questions.

Bartholomew stayed quiet as he worked. Monica squeezed her eyes shut, her face twitching in pain, the only sign that she was suffering at all from what was happening as the doctor did his job.

Raziel had seen many of his human soldiers reduced to tears from similar wounds. Ones who had purported themselves to be toughest of the tough. Monsters and killers of the worst sort, reduced to whimpering children when the needle met skin and wounds were stitched shut.

Yet, here was Monica.

His arranged wife from an irritating upstart family from some obscure city on the edge of Runne. One he had been looking forward to ridding himself of quickly. Who he had seen as nothing more than a nuisance at worst, or at best, a brief and amusing distraction.

But by the time the bullet clinked into the metal tray and Bartholomew picked up the thread to begin stitching the wound shut, Monica had made no sound through the entire ordeal past the occasional grunt.

And as the doctor went to work closing the wound, Raziel wondered exactly what they did to their young women out in the outposts to give them such a level of pain tolerance.

Indeed, if it weren’t for the fact that her eyes were open and she was blinking, he would assume she had fainted.

Monica was studying objects on the far wall of the room with all the passive disinterest of someone sitting in the waiting room of a legal proceeding reading a plaque for the lack of anything better to do.

Only the occasional twitch of pain or a hiss through her teeth told him that she felt anything at all.

It kept him in rapt fascination. What a puzzle she was. Who was this Monica Valan? His wife? This cowgirl from the outpost farming city? Certainly nothing he had expected.

One thing was quickly becoming very certain, however.

He was not going to let her die until he had solved this particular mystery. The honeymoon would have to wait until he had his answers. He would unravel her.

Whoever you are, Monica Valan.

You’re mine now.

Nadi’s head was still spinning, and though her concussion was slowly starting to fade, her thoughts remained a jumbled mess.

The doctor had told her she could sleep in four-hour shifts once she got back to her room, as long as someone was around to wake her up and make sure she still knew what day it was. Fun.

Unfortunately, that meant she had to get the bullet pulled with no painkillers.

But it wasn’t the first time she’d had that done—and Dr. Williams was better at it than Betty ever was.

Betty was a good friend but a shit surgeon.

Nadi was pretty certain she had cigarette ash permanently sewn into her leg.

But that was neither here nor there at this point.

The doctor had finished sewing her up and cleaning the wound. That meant she was finally clear to go back to her room and take a sponge bath to get the dirt, sweat, and blood off her. She felt disgusting. She was exhausted. And her head was still reeling.

And she still had the whole issue of what had happened to deal with.

Raziel hadn’t left her side since she had walked out of that abattoir. And he’d barely taken his eyes off her the entire time. Part of that was probably due to the fact that she was covered in blood, but there was something else going on behind those red eyes of his. Curiosity? No.

It was deeper than that.

But she couldn’t quite put a name to it.

When she went to stand, Raziel tutted and scooped her up in his arms before she could protest. She didn’t struggle and just let out a breath as he walked out of the room with her. “Just…no teeth, please.”

“Only when you’re properly mended.” He smiled with the faintest glint of mischief in his eyes.

“Right.” Grunting, she put her head against his shoulder. Not because she particularly wanted to cuddle with her worst enemy, but because she just really needed something to lean against. “I need a hot bath.”

“I certainly wasn’t going to allow you in my bed in this state.”

That had her lifting her head to look at him in confusion.

“What?” He eyed her in equal bemusement as they climbed the stairs up to what must be his room. “Did you think you were going to still be sleeping downstairs? Now that you’re my wife ?”

She blinked. “I didn’t think about it. I guess it was a stupid assumption.”

“Yes.” He chuckled. “It was.”

A moment later and they were at his room. He shifted his grip to open the door, bringing her inside before setting her gently on her feet and shutting it behind her.

The room wasn’t what she had been expecting.

Oh, it was just as expensive and beautiful as she imagined the room of someone with his amount of wealth and means would be.

But she had expected something ostentatious .

Something that was humungous and screamed power.

Perhaps something even with a giant bed with columns, resplendent with chains and straps hanging from the ceiling.