Page 14 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

Nyxiana

An hour before dawn the compound is dark, the first gray already showing over the eastern ridge. Pines hold the cool air low to the ground. Our travel packs sit by the lodge door, small and angel-crafted, barely more than we’ll carry on our backs. Ben’s gone through mine twice already, tightening straps that don’t need it. I let myself find that quietly funny instead of saying anything. A patrol wolf crosses the yard behind me, laughing low at something I don’t catch. The sound carries further than it should in air this still.

My right hand has a tremor. Small and steady enough that I can keep it curled loose at my side so no one sees. It’s been close to four weeks since I fed. My body keeps its own accounts whether I check them or not, the color under my skin thinner than it should be, my paleness tipping gray at the edges. I’ll handle it before we cross. I always do. Nobody at Ash Hollow has ever known there was anything to handle in the first place.

Kari catches me by the lodge door. “You get dragons and a family reunion,” she says. “I get patrol schedules. Must be nice.”

“I’ll bring you something back.”

“Bring me something that isn’t cursed this time.”

“No promises.”

She checks the edge of her blade out of habit. Then she grins and knocks her shoulder into mine on her way past, hard enough that I rock back a step. In more years of courts and treaties than I can count, rooms where people bowed before they spoke to me, I never had this until this pack: a woman who elbows me like I’m nobody special and means it as the highest compliment. I don’t tell her that but let it sit in me, the closest I let myself come to comfort.

A wolf hands Valen the other pack. I watch him turn it in his hands like it belongs to someone else. He works the straps between his fingers, testing where they sit, head tipped down over the buckle, hair falling forward across his brow, the silver in it catching the lamplight.

“I’ve never carried anything but a knife, and whatever I had on my back,” he says.

“You’ll manage.”

He looks up at that. The size of him sets off a tingle between my legs before I’ve decided anything about it, the kind of build that could carry real weight without a strap doing any of the work. I noted this the first week he started standing at my treeline. Deciding not to look hasn’t worked since. I let the awareness sit where it lands and don’t try to talk myself out of it.

Kaspian comes over quietly. I know before he speaks that he’s got an offer he already suspects I’ll refuse. He’s the only one in this pack who needs what I need, the vampire in us both hungry for blood ordinary veins can’t give. He’s the only one who can look at me and see exactly how far down I’ve run. He doesn’t waste time. “I asked Evren already. He said yes. Lyanna could draw from him into a vessel. You wouldn’t have to make the run at all.”

“No.”

“Nyxi.” His voice loses its ease. “It’s not only the feeding. You’d be walking into the lower reaches alone, at this hour, already run down. I don’t like you going down there. It’s dangerous.”

“I’ve been walking that quarter for decades. Nothing about it is going to surprise me.”

“That isn’t the same as safe. You know it.”

“I’ve fed myself since before this pack existed. I’m not going to start needing help with it now.”

He studies me a moment, weighing whether to push again, and decides against it. He’s the only one who’s ever known better than to try. He steps back and lets it go. I love him more for that than I’ve told him.

I slip out through the open side of the lodge, into the dark under the pines where the compound light gives out. I gather shadow around myself, a trick that belongs to Kaspian and me alone, and reach for the place between places. Run down as I am, it takes longer than it should to open, heavier under my hands than it usually is. Then it swallows me whole. I’m gone.

I come out in the lower reaches of Vampiria, the old capital, down where the noble houses don’t look. Black stone crowds close on either side of me, narrow ways under a low red moon that never rises or sets, its light the same unbroken red over every wall and gutter, cold, empty beauty. Old blood, tallow and wet stone reach me first. Other shapes move through the alley behind me, none of them sparing me a second look. Down here that’s exactly what I want.

My parents keep their own store of enchanted blood at the palace, an easy walk from here. They’d feed me themselves, warm, fussing, glad of the excuse. No one down here would ever need to see what I look like when I’m this low. I don’t go to them. I never do. The same stubbornness that won’t take Kaspian’s offer at the lodge keeps me walking past the palace gate every time. Down here I’m nobody’s heir, just another customer overdue and shaking. The vendor who’s known my face for decades doesn’t pretend otherwise. Somewhere out of sight a carriage clatters past on iron-shod wheels, the only clock this quarter keeps. He waits while I lay out the coins.

Cruor, hard little disks with the blood crystallized clean out of them. He bites one between his teeth to read the lineage locked inside it, the same way anyone tests a coin for gold, older blood always worth more than common stock. What I need tonight is old, strong and isn’t cheap. I don’t have the reserves left in me to argue it down. I pay what he names.

My fangs already ache, lengthening behind my closed lips. I don’t try to stop them. The veins along my wrists have gone dark, standing up thin and black under my skin. My hands won’t hold still no matter how hard I clench them. I can’t look away from the vessel while he fills it.

He slides it across the counter, live blood inside it, warm where the coins I handed him were cold and dead. I need both hands to hold it steady.

I gulp it down, too fast to pace myself. My grip on the vessel goes white-knuckled, a low sound comes out of me between swallows, something rough and involuntary, a sound I never let myself make anywhere but here.

For a few seconds there’s nothing in the world but the blood and how badly I need it. This is exactly why I come here instead of anywhere closer to home. A stranger forgets my face by morning. Anyone who actually knows me would remember my weakness forever.

Then warmth spreads through my chest, the hollow under my ribs closing over. My hands go steady next, the trembling gone. The color follows, easing back under my skin, the gray fading out of it. By the time the vessel is empty, I’m standing here whole in a way I wasn’t ten minutes ago. I’ve done this myself for longer than anyone at Ash Hollow has been alive. There’s a kind of peace in that even here, even now.

Time in the realm runs faster than home does. By the time I step back into shadow, only a blink will have passed there. Full again, the dark opens for me easily, no drag, nothing like it took to get here. I step out into the same darkness I left. The lodge is still lit up behind me like no time has passed. Valen is a few feet off, watching the exact spot where I disappeared. No one else in this pack has any idea I left. He’s tall enough that even in this light he isn’t hard to find. I make my way toward him instead of the lodge.

“Your hand was shaking earlier,” he says. “It isn’t now.”