Chapter 8

• He stood right where I left him, looking off into space. “So.” I stopped at the spot of the barrier and looked at him. “What are you freaking out about?” I cringed at my own words. “Besides being held against your will, obviously.”
• “Obviously.” He said in a droll tone. Huffing out a breath he walked slowly toward me.
• It sent chills up my spine, he moved like a predator.
• “Your random,” he motioned to his head, “mind whatever…”
• “Mesmerizing.” I supplied for him and got a blank stare in return.
• “The problem with your random mesmerizing stunt is, it has landed you here with,” he held up one finger, “one, a younger royal that can’t go three days without feeding.” He put up two fingers, “two, a younger royal that can’t feed off humans.” Three fingers. “Three, your human.”
• The only one I understood was the last. “I don’t…”
• “That’s the problem.” He stopped just on the other side of the barrier and looked down at me. “You have no idea what you’ve walked into.” Sighing, he rubbed his hand across his forehead. “By mid-day tomorrow I’m going to be,” he paused for a moment, a look of contemplation on his face, “bordering on hard to manage.” He nodded, “by tomorrow night I will not be pleasant to be around… and you cannot cross this invisible ward they’ve placed right here,” He tapped his hand lightly on the barrier, causing sparks to fly. “After that it gets worse.” His brown eyes searched my face.
• I shook my head. “Still not…”
• “Come over here.” He took a step back.
• Raising my eyebrows, I looked at him.
• He raised his hands up. “I will not hurt you. You are my only way out of this.”
• Biting my lip, I weighed the pros and cons of stepping across. Pro, he was going to explain something, and considering he’d filled in more blanks in the half hour then Davis ever did… Con, I’d be within his reach in case he was some whack-job like the rest of them.
• Sighing, I stepped across the stupid barrier and stood in front of him. Something moved through his eyes as he looked down at me, but I couldn’t make out what the look meant. For a second, I thought he looked afraid of me, which was all wrong, and probably me projecting my own fear to think dumb things.
• “I’m going to try to explain this, without scaring you.” He paused his jaw stiffened, “you said something about contacts when my eyes changed.”
• I nodded. His voice was quiet, almost soothing, as long as I didn’t think of how it sounded when he was angry.
• “I’m assuming if you dealt with mages, you’ve seen purple eyes…”
• I nodded again, almost mesmerized myself by his quiet tone.
• “Okay, mages are purple and there are other eye colors where I’m from… red, yellow, white, green…”
• I frowned. “Where you’re from?”
• He held up his hand. “We’ll get there in a moment. I’m trying to stay calm and not remember you are the reason I am here.”
• My lips formed an o, my eyes wider, I nodded. “Different colored eyes. Got it.”
• “Red,” he lowered his lashes just enough I couldn’t see his eyes for a second, then he grasped my arm lightly and looked at me, “like mine are now, means we feed on essence.”
• His eyes were a deep, blood red, and appeared to glow as well. My heart raced, but I was determined not to run the other way. I swallowed the lump in my throat.
• “Red eyes also come with,” he opened his mouth, “fangs.”
• I did try to step back when I saw he wasn’t lying, but his grip tightened just enough that I couldn’t. Fangs. Glowing red eyes and fangs. What. The. Hell.
• “Are you good?”
• I shook my head and couldn’t find a word to describe how not good I was.
• Inhaling through his nose, he cringed like he was in pain and then squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t move. Don’t speak.” He said softly. Blowing out a breath, he looked like he was trying to stay strong. Which made no sense. After several deep breaths, he opened his eyes and they were brown again. “For years I have struggled against an addiction to human essence…”
• I knew I probably looked like a deer in headlights right then, but the pieces were fitting together about him freaking out, and I really wasn’t liking the picture forming in my head. “Oh.” Was the only thing I said.
• “Yes. Oh.” He nodded.
• “I-I don’t know what essence is—but I’m thinking if fangs go with…bad for me, huh?”
• He tilted his head, “in this case, bad for both of us.” He released my arm and put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t want to feed off you…”
• I was okay with that.
• Rubbing his hand on the back of his neck, he gave me a hard look.
• “I sense a but.” I stared up at him.
• “I can’t go without feeding for three days.”
• I pointed to the kitchen. “There’s plenty of food, will that,” I clasped the apple in both hands in front of my chest, “help?”
• He shook his head. “Yes, we eat as well, but that’s not feeding.”
• “Oh.” I was fitting more pieces together, I couldn’t break the barrier, he couldn’t feed off me—which was okay on that front, but apparently not. “What happens if you don’t feed?”
• “What happens if you starve?” He asked back in the same tone I’d used.
• “Right.” He could be ill, and then the trade might now happen. The idea of him dying, of me being here with a dead giant when they came back, that scared me more than the idea of his fangs biting. “What,” I couldn’t believe I was asking this, “what is essence, I mean the fangs…”
• “I don’t drink your blood.” He looked bored, which meant I wasn’t the first to ask.
• I was relieved to hear that. “Uh, but you still bite… with the fangs…”
• He inclined his head. “Yes.”
• “Oh.” I wrapped my arms around my waist. “Right, cuz’ why would you have fangs if you didn’t? That wouldn’t be evolutionarily necessary.” I nodded, knowing I was babbling. I licked my lips, nerves kicking in all over again. “So—if as a last resort you had to feed, uh, what…” He wasn’t moving, hadn’t blinked in at least a minute…
• Reaching, he brushed my hair back from my neck and then tilted my jaw gently moving my head to the side. Leaning down, closer, his breath brushed against my skin at the base of my neck. “Right here.”
• Vampire was my first thought, but he’d assured me he didn’t drink blood. Was I being conned—again?
• “Bethany?” He whispered.
• The apple I held dropped to the floor. “Yes?”
• “Move back across the line.” His voice was shaky.
• I immediately stepped back not one, but two steps. When I looked back at him, his eyes were red. He didn’t speak. I didn’t speak, just stood there looking at each other. I could see his jaw clenched and wondered how close I’d just come to being bitten. The fact that it was appealing for a quick second, scared the hell out of me. I swallowed and then remembered my apple, which was now halfway down the hall in the wrong direction. “Essence, got it.” I said quietly. He still hadn’t moved. “I need food. Do you want me to make you something and then we can,” I waved my hand around, “figure this out?”
• “Sure.”
• That was it, he continued to stand there staring at me. Nodding, I backed up, “I’ll be back shortly.” I turned and went to the kitchen then sat down on the floor against the cupboard. I looked at my phone on the table and thought about calling Davis and telling him to find someone else to come and watch Leone. I didn’t know what had just happened, and I didn’t want to know. If I did that though, then how would I get Erin back? If what Leone said was right, my best bet to get to her was stick with him. So many if’s…
• Getting up, I opened the fridge to figure out what to make. I hoped he wasn’t a fussy eater, because I wasn’t the greatest in the kitchen, by anyone’s standards.