Page 58 of A Court of Bones & Sorrow

“Couldn’t the Fae have picked a nicer place to drag us all?” I muttered, although I doubted they had come here voluntarily,which begged the question, who was powerful enough to force the Fae to do anything?

I was still musing this over when I reached Alaric’s study. The door was open a crack, so I pushed it and stepped inside. Alaric’s eyes rose from the letter he was reading, watching as I closed the door behind me and flipped the lock. Then I brushed the glyph on the wall, activating the silencing spell before walking towards his desk. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen in the next few minutes, but I was pretty sure we wouldn’t want anyone to overhear or interrupt us.

“You came.” He leaned back in his chair, a tightness around the corners of his eyes.

“I told you I’d let you feed from me.” I moved behind the desk and sat on it, scooting over until I was sitting directly in front of him. As usual, Alaric’s desk was perfectly organized, and I was careful not to knock over the stacks of letters and scrolls. “Did you think I would change my mind?”

Alaric’s gaze fell to where the high slit of my dress revealed a large amount of skin. Then he swallowed as impossible blue lines flashed across his light green eyes. I could feel the bloodlust rising within him as he wrestled it, and my heart raced a little faster as I leaned back on the desk, the movement causing even more of my thigh to be on display.

I still remembered quite vividly how he had tasted in my mouth. I wanted to feel his fangs in my neck as he buried his cock inside me. He’d been so demanding before, and I wanted him to give in to that urge again, but something told me that if I pushed him on this, he’d pull away. So I forced myself to wait.

“My family has a history of turning Strigoi.” The heart hammering inside my chest froze, and Alaric looked at me with an almost mournful expression. “It wasn’t just my cousin, Faolan, who turned.”

“Who else?” I asked softly, even as my mind was racing,trying to remember anything else about Alaric’s family. Aside from his parents coming from one of our outposts, I couldn’t think of anything useful.

He looked away, staring at a spot on his desk. “Maternal grandmother—she turned after my grandfather was killed by wraiths—and both grandparents on the paternal side. Best I can tell, over half on my father’s side have turned Strigoi, and my mother’s side isn’t that much better. It’s one of the reasons my parents were so relieved to be offered high-ranking positions here.”

Because they could regularly drink from Carmilla. Partaking in the blood of any of the House families significantly reduced one’s chances of becoming Strigoi. So much so that drinking from the House bloodlines had been the norm for a while, but now there were too many Moroi for that to be feasible. Parents would bring their young children to whichever House they belonged to shortly after they were born so the child could be given House blood, but that was it.

My generation had been the most stable so far, only a few instances of Moroi losing themselves completely in bloodlust and becoming Strigoi, but it did happen. I suspected, with the increased wraith attacks, it had happened more in the past few months and we just didn’t know yet. When facing certain death, some Moroi would relinquish their hold on humanity in an attempt to survive. Who knew how many more Strigoi were prowling the wilds after all the outpost attacks?

I mentally added that to the long list of problems we were facing and refocused on the one in front of me. Alaric’s cousin, Faolan, had turned, and I knew he’d been there to witness it. It wasn’t all that surprising that he’d been scarred by that.

“You won’t become Strigoi.” It was both a command and a promise. I leaned forward and tipped Alaric’s face up with my fingertips. “You aremine.”

His green eyes turned solid turquoise, and he released a low growl that had me clenching my thighs together.

“I can feel it every time my bloodlust rises, the all-consuming hunger. It’s only a matter of time.” His eyes fell to the pulse on my neck before he forced himself to look away and stare blankly at the wall. “There is a courtier who I have an arrangement with. She visits every couple of months, and I feed from her then. I only drink a little, and we do it at midday, when the sun is the strongest over the moon.”

Because the moon called to our bloodlust. All of our senses were heightened at night, but letting our bloodlust rise under the light of the moon was intoxicating.

The rangers often hunted at night because of it. They’d point themselves in the directions of the monsters and let themselves go, reclaiming their humanity in the morning. They spent years practicing that ability though, always keeping the smallest hold on themselves so they weren’t lost forever.

“I almost lost it last time she came.” Alaric rubbed his mouth like he could still taste the blood on it. Some part of me raged at the idea of him feeding from someone else, but I bit back the growl that crept up my throat. There was a time and place for territorial bullshit, and this wasn’t it.

“When’s the last time you fed?” I asked softly.

“Almost four months ago.”

Fuck. Our bodies needed food, but our magic needed blood. Most Moroi drank once a month, more often if they’d used a lot of magic for spellcasting or healing. Alaric’s control over his bloodlust had to be ironclad if he was still holding it together.

But even he had a breaking point.

“You’re only hurting yourself. Harker blood will help you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he rasped as he turned his gaze away from the wall and back to me.

“You won’t.” I let my bloodlust rise until I knew my eyes were black. “Trust me, I can hold my own.”

Alaric went still as he took me in. “What . . .” Then his eyes dropped to my fangs peeking through my parted lips. “What does it feel like to you? You almost never put it away anymore, not entirely.”

I thought about it. “Everything is just . . . more. The scents in the air. The colors in the flowers.” Slowly, I reached out and trailed my fingers along his jawline, my heart skipping as he turned his head slightly to inhale my scent better. “Your skin beneath my touch.”

A few beats passed between us before he looked at me with bottomless eyes. “And the hunger?”

“There,” I admitted. “Always there, but it’s like an impatient friend I’ve learned to live with and occasionally throw a bone to.” Something shuddered in his expression, prompting me to ask, “What does it feel like for you?”

“Mindless and cruel,” he said without hesitation. “Whatever it is that prowls beneath my skin . . . it isn’t me. It feels like it wants to devour everything I am until nothing remains but itself. The monster.”

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