Page 39 of Night of the Vampire
"Don't be afraid," I told her. "I would never hurt you." I don't think I could, even if I wanted to. This woman was mine. My mate. A gift from the gods. I now knew what it was that had kept drawing me to her. This explained so much. Why I'd been so bloody patient with her. Why I'd never taken another to satisfy my body's needs of either kind since I'd met her.
"Killian, I feel like I'm going to pass out," she whispered.
I pulled back, my eyes searching her face and then traveling over her body for the cause of her distress. When they fell on Kenya, her mouth sealed around Lizzy's wrist as tears slid silently down her temples, a homicidal rage such as I'd never felt before exploded inside of me and the world turned red. With a roar of fury, I ripped my mate away from her and pushed her behind me. There was no logic to the action, no emotion, only an animalistic instinct to protect Lizzy from the rival vampire who dared to take any part of what was mine.
The life light that had briefly filled Kenya's eyes faded away as she watched me, knowing death would soon be coming for her. And it wasn't the witch's spell that would take her out. Even as a part of me knew I cared for her and didn't want to hurt her—that it had been me who had offered Lizzy up in the first place—as a mated male, I was now ruled by my vampire instincts. And those instincts told me to protect Lizzy at all costs.
My upper lip pulled back, baring my fangs as my muscles tightened, hardened, and my focus zeroed in on the vampire in the bed.
"Son of a bitch."
The words came right before I was hit head on by a very large object, the force of it throwing me back through the wall behind me and out into the overgrown yard. I landed hard, Jamal on top of me. Before I could gather myself, he grabbed a large rock and bashed me in the side of the head.
"Snap out of it, you fucker!"
I hissed at him through a haze of pain as I tried to throw him off of me.
"What the hell are you doing? You're going to kill him!"
I immediately sought out that voice, drawn in ways I couldn't explain if I'd been asked. Lizzy was leaning through the hole we made, the concern in her voice flowing over me like a warm breeze.
"Nope," Jamal called back. "But I am going to keep him from killing Kenya. Our friend," he shouted in my face.
I growled at him and flipped him off of me and into the swamp, a hundred feet away.
As I got to my feet, I heard a noise behind me and spun around, sinking into a fighting stance and baring my fangs.
Lizzy's terrified face greeted me, her body poised to run. Her eyes traveled over my face and body, as though she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing.
Hunger hit me swift and hard.
Her eyes grew wide as she noticed the change in my posture.
Don't run. Don't run.
She spun away and ran back into the house.
"Killian, don't!"
Jamal's shout barely registered as I took off after her, leaping back through the hole. From the corner of my eye I saw Kenya, awake and more alert than she had been in days, and felt a vague sense of relief I couldn't quite process.
I caught Lizzy in the living room, three feet from the front door. Grabbing her up in my arms, I spun her around and slammed her against the wall, my hand behind her head to protect her. "You shouldn't have run, Acushla."
"Killian, please." Her eyes closed. "I don't feel well."
Lizzy's face was pale, her skin moist to my touch.
"You can't feed from her, Killian. She's already lost too much blood. You'll kill her."
Jamal was getting on my very last nerve tonight.
"I want to go home," Lizzy whispered. "I need to go home to Wiggles."
The dog. He was home alone.
"Please, I need to go home."
Although the hunger was still there, there was another part of me—a saner part of me—who was beginning to come back now that I had her safe in my arms away from the others.
