Page 21 of Blood & Bedlam

“There is no record of you, Reine Montague. Your Social Security number is fraudulent, your birth certificate a forgery as well. You claimed to have never known me, and yet this book is filled with memory. Intimate memory of a life that can’t have belonged to you.”

The only sound in the room comes from her, the blood rushing through her veins, the heart jackhammering in her chest.

“What is this of, Reine?” I press, but she just stares between me and the portrait. I count her breaths. Hold mine.

“A wedding night,” she begrudgingly whispers, then her voice wavers, and it’s frustration pouring from her lips. “I think—I don’t know, I don’t—I’ve been drawing you since I first picked up a pencil, dreaming of you. I thought I made you up! I don’t know what you want from me. I never asked for any of this, but if these are my last moments, I’m not going to beg you for them.” Her words claw at me, the conviction in them.

“She’s telling the truth.”

Juliette’s voice cuts through the tension, and I’m terrified at the hope that pierces through me. Eight sets of eyes fall to my gentlest daughter, the seer of us all.

“How do you know?” Reine asks, herself bewildered by Juliette’s sudden championing.

“Because memory is in the Blood,” she answers simply before turning to me. “Taste her and put all this to rest.”

I shake my head, stepping back from the table.

“You know I can’t do that,” I grit out, even as the darkness that lives inside of me rattles at the bars of his cage, salivating at the mere thought of drinking from the source. I’ve abstained for so long …

“You have to. You’re the only one powerful enough to break through whatever is inside her mind,” Juliette argues. I open my mouth to protest, but Reine beats me to it.

“Taste me? I’m not a fucking slab of meat. No one is putting their fangs in my damn neck, not again.” A part of me understands this perfectly reasonable reaction to the trauma of being thralled against her will, being kept conscious while fed on … if that is what happened. Panic works its way down Reine’s spine, and the hair on her arms stands to attention under a wave of goose bumps prickling her flesh. If she’s faking it, she deserves an Oscar for this performance because it certainly feels real. She takes a few steps back, stumbling toward the door.

A foolish attempt in a house full of Otherworlders.

“Papa—” Camille warns, but her eyes aren’t on my eyes. They’re on my hands, on the elongated nails morphing to talons against the table. The beast in my chest roars its approval, its want to taste this human, to feel the gush of her blood, hot and warm and spiced, sliding down my throat. The very base of my nature come to call.

I don’t remember rising to my feet.

“Reine, don’t move.” I hear Fleur’s voice, feel the distress of so many others on the charged air, but … the beast thrashes, amping up my blood, tunneling my vision.

It wants. It fucking wants.

Reine’s fear permeates my senses, eyes widened on mine. It’s chaos in the room, in my own mind, but I’m not in control. A small part of me recognizes how wrong this is, how dangerous. Bowing to the Blood after all this time, but I can’t focus on anything other than her.

“No, absolutely the fuck not. If you want to taste something, here.” Swiftly, Reine swipes a shard of shattered glass from the table.

“DON’T!” Claire screams, but it’s too late. The jagged glass stabs into the meaty flesh of her palm, sinking like butter, tearing through skin and sinew and muscle. Just as it did last night, a scent so delicious my fangs descend, blooms in the crimson droplets of blood cascading down her arm. My teeth lengthen to points, a primal groan ripping from my chest. My vision narrows to only her, and the sticky, sweet substance she’s gathering into a discarded glass. It flows down her offered flesh, and I try to rein it in, the beast, to keep myself together, but it’s like she’s a cleaver, unraveling me with every drop of blood her heart pumps. Demanding me to devour her.

The need barreling through me is a shock wave of sensation, delectable, overpowering, violent. The cut is deep, the blood red and fresh and hot, the bars of the cage inside of me bending under the thirst of her calling. There are hands on me, heavy and frantic, pulling me back as blood drenches the body of the woman I’ve loved for centuries, but my own heart is a beating organ for the first time in eight hundred years. My senses home in on her, only her, to the hunger coursing through me with conviction I’ve never known.

I’ve never felt a thirst this ravenous, an insatiability that I can’t get control of, and I can’t tell if it’s the act of her offering herself to me that has turned me into more animal than man, or if she has bewitched me in some other way, but I can’t bring myself to care. Reine should be terrified to see me like this, but there’s only reverence in her blue eyes as my teeth bare, as my dark aura pulses around us in waves that snuff out the light from the candelabras. I know that the hands holding me back belong to Blood of my Blood, but she is the sole focus of my world, the beginning and possibly the end of me.

For the first time since I woke up on that ship three hundred years ago, I truly surrender control. Time stands still as Reine Montague meets the beast within in a tidal wave of crimson and hunger and desire.

She is unflinching in her awe through the blood and the gore, and I am insatiable to her will, just as I have always been.

Reine

CHAPTER 10

Chandelier lights flicker and candles blow out under the weight of black shadows radiating from Vladimir, at the monster he’s half transformed into—but I can’t look away. He’s magnetic in the depths of darkness, inviting me closer, demanding my attention. It occurs to me, as his family yells and claws to keep him from getting to me, that I should be scared. Should be absolutely fucking terrified at what I’m witnessing, but he’s … he’s magnificent.

My body leans toward him, the seduction of his power licking against my skin. I shiver, goose bumps painting over my exposed shoulders, and all the while, I can’t look away. He’s bigger—his body bulked and inflated with power, muscles straining against the fabric of his gray suit jacket. Teeth elongated and deadly as growls rip from his throat. They’re ancient and deep, and Jesus fucking Christ—

Am I … into this?

I can’t even begin to unpack the thought, but it flits through my mind. I’m sure the throbbing between my thighs and the rushing of blood to the surface of my skin is a sign I’ve lost all sense of reason and self-preservation. Fat droplets of blood flow down my arm, staining the white tablecloth and the oak floor beneath me, but I don’t pull my arm back or remove the glass shard still clutched in my shaking hand.