Page 108 of Night's Reckoning
And he would be insatiable the first night. He would drink roughly ten pints of blood through his first night and slightly less every night for the first month. Eventually, his body would regulate. His amnis wouldn’t be quite so voracious.
But this night, he needed to feed.
He finished one pint of blood, and she quickly reached for another. He saw it from the corner of his eye and whipped around to grab her other wrist.
She couldn’t touch him if she tried. He gripped both her wrists with hands so strong she wondered if he could actually break her.
He was anchoring himself, holding on to something familiar, but she took nothing for granted. She knew him—despite his new body—and she knew he was furious.
When she’d been human, she’d been a thin woman recovering from her second pregnancy in four years. She’d been strong but spare. Lean.
Ben was a human in prime physical condition. He fought. He trained in weapons. He’d forced himself to climb and jump in ways normal human beings couldn’t, simply so he could keep up with the predators with whom he spent his nights.
After the second pint, his initial thirst was assuaged.
He dropped his legs over the side of the bed, still gripping her wrists, and put his feet on the ground, flexing his body and rolling his shoulders.
His immortal body was perfect and primed by amnis. He looked at his feet. Flexed his toes. He looked at his knees. His naked manhood, which was standing erect, like every hair on his body. Finally he looked up at her.
Their eyes met, and she saw the rims of his eyes were red.
“You did this,” he whispered.
She swallowed. “Zhang sired you.”
He shook her wrists, still gripped in his hands. “You. Did this.”
She blinked hard. “I did this.”
He roared in rage and shoved her away. He stood and paced. The sheet slipped from his body and she felt him flinch. “It hurts.”
“Your senses are heightened,” she said, keeping her voice to a whisper.
He rolled his shoulders again. “What am I feeling? In my back, there’s—”
“Your back was injured. Your spine. The nerves are still knitting together.”
He reached his hands up to tug his hair—a blessedly familiar gesture—but quickly dropped them. “It hurts. Everything hurts.”
“I know.”
He started to laugh. It was a low, bitter sound that turned into a harsh groan. “You promised. You promised. You fucking promised, Tenzin.”
She’d promised not to turn him, and she hadn’t. But she said nothing.
He marched over to her, his silver-and-gold eyes furious, and backed her against the silk-paneled wall, slamming both hands against it. “Youpromised!”
As soon as he shouted, he covered his ears. Then he covered his eyes. Tenzin could see the red seeping from under his fingers where his tears now mixed with blood.
She put her hand on his shoulder, touching as gently as she could, and drew amnis around him to soothe his skin.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to make it hurt less.” She kept her voice at a whisper. “Until you can control your amnis—”
“Kill me.”
She froze. Felt her fangs lengthen. “No.”
