Page 59 of Blood and Magic
“Tonight?” My heart nearly dropped into my stomach. “Where are we going?”
He grinned and grabbed his jeans off the floor, slipping them up his legs. “We change with the pack, and now that you’re one of us, you’re coming, too.”
I still didn’t know what to think about all of this, but how could I deny it? I had fangs. I had claws. I’d nearly bled Vermillion dry. I turned toward his bedroom, found my dirty clothes, and went to the bathroom to shower. I flipped on the light and caught my reflection in the mirror.
The person staring out at me was a stranger.
This girl had glowing blue eyes and luminous skin, the kind that supermodels had on the runway. Gasping, I stepped closer and leaned in close to get a better look.
Hello there, came the soft voice from inside my mind.
Startled, I stiffened and gasped, stepping back from my reflection. “Who are you?”
You, it said. Me. Us.
Us? How could it be us? Who was us?
God, how could any of this be fake? How could I conjure this up in a dream? I wanted to convince myself I’d wake up any second, but that didn’t seem likely when this…being…seemed to come from the depths of my soul.
Vermillion said my sisters had gone through this, so until I talked to them, I decided to take things one step at a time. I turned on the water and got under the stream, determined to wash away who I was to make room for whoever I was going to be.
CHAPTER 18
Vermillion
“You look like shit,” Guin said from the other side of Kodiak’s desk. After Maeve had showered and dressed in some of my old clothes, we drove to the homestead because Fenris said Kodiak needed to see me…now…in person. I hadn’t been expecting an ambush from the eldest Vanderbilt sibling.
“No worse than when you went through your transition,” I said, adjusting my hips.
“Definitely worse,” Kodiak added with a wince.
“My little sister, Mill?” Guin crossed her arms, clearly displeased with the whole situation. “You told me things were fine, that you had a handle on it.”
“I did,” I said. “I do.” I gestured to the office door, where Maeve sat on the other side and waited for her turn with these two overbearing dominants. “As you can see, she’s alive.”
Better than alive. She’d come out of my room, wearing one of my T-shirts, instinctively choosing to cover herself in my scent, something that pleased my wolf immensely. I didn’t tell them that, though. It was just my magic in her making my wolf react like that.
So what if the transition had been different with her? So what if we were sharing dreams, if my emotions were in sync with hers? It didn’t matter that being with her gave me a new lease on life. She was a newborn shifter in a sea of unmated males, and she deserved to find whoever made her happy. Even if it wasn’t me.
The beast in my head growled at that idea, but I reminded him that fantasies dreamed up under the throes of the transition were simply that—dreams, works of fiction, idealized notions of romance that didn’t exist. In reality, we were still as wrong for each other as before.
Guin sucked in air through her teeth and raised an eyebrow, looking from me to Kodiak.
“You said if one of my sisters went into their transition while I was in Bozeman, you would send someone other than Vermillion to help.”
Kodiak smirked and leaned back in his seat. “I said I would try. You know how these dominant wolves get. Once they’re in the haze, there’s no pulling them out.”
She rubbed a hand over her face and groaned. “You’re the alpha, aren’t you? The one keeping these Bastards in line? Can’t you tell him to back off? She has bite marks on her neck, for Christ’s sake.”
“You can’t get everything you want, Guin,” he said. “You asked me to send someone I trusted to man your ranch, and I did. You asked me to keep your sisters safe while you handled your father’s business, and I did. Making sure Mill happened to be outside of the blast radius when Maeve ultimately exploded wasn’t part of the deal.”
She put her hands on his desk and leaned in, holding eye contact with him. In our world, that was a threat, and no one could maintain it with the alpha for very long. I grimaced, anticipating his reaction.
“Deal?” She laughed. “Your piddly little homestead would still be a hovel if it weren’t for our merger. You needed money, and I needed men. That was the deal.”
I expected Kodiak to bare his teeth and rise to his full height, at least six inches over her, but he stayed seated, simply smiling while she read him the riot act.
“Now your Bastards probably think they can fuck any Vanderbilt who goes into transition.”
