Page 3 of Maksym

The word left me low and flat. Not cruel. Worse. Absolute. Her throat moved.

I held her there, wrist sealed to her mouth, my eyes on hers, the command tightening between us like wire.

“Again.”

She swallowed. Her body trembled. Her hands lay limp at her sides, palms up, the fingers bruised where someone had gripped too tightly and too often. I could smell old fear in her skin, beneath blood and sickness. I could smell rooms with locked doors. Men’s hands. The stale trace of another’s claim, and beneath it, deeper, the unbroken iron line of her will.

“Again,” I said.

The third swallow changed everything. Her fingers moved.

At first, I thought it was some final nervous impulse. Then her hand lifted from the sheet, slow and shaking, and found my wrist. The touch was barely there. A moth landing. A ghost trying to remember weight. Her other hand followed. Fragile fingers closed around my forearm.

Then she drank. Not from obedience.

Need took over. Life took over. The ancient bargain between death and blood opened its mouth, and she answered it.

I braced one knee against the mattress and let her take what she required. My wrist throbbed beneath her mouth. Her throat worked faster. Color did not return to her face—not yet—but something beneath the skin altered. A current. A darkening. The first deep note of transformation moving through tissue and bone.

Her heartbeat stumbled. Stopped. My own body went so still even breath abandoned me. Then her heart struck once, hard enough that I heard it like a fist against a door. Again. Again. Not human. Not truly. Not anymore.

A rougher rhythm began to form, irregular but strengthening, each beat dragging her away from the grave and toward the fate I had made for her. My blood moved in her. My blood changed her. My blood chained us in a way even death would have struggled to undo.

Her eyes snapped open.

The irises were blown wide and dark; the whites showing at the edges. There was no recognition in them. No gratitude. No softness. Only feral disorientation and a hunger so new it had no language.

She clamped down harder on my wrist.

Enough, I judged, though instinct recoiled at denying her anything. Too much royal blood too quickly could burn through a new turning like fire through silk. She needed to live through the transition, not drown in me.

I pulled my wrist away.

She made a sound of protest that scraped straight through the bond and lodged beneath my ribs. Her fingers tightened, stronger now for one brief flash, nails biting into my skin before that borrowed strength failed. She tried to follow the blood, mouth stained red, eyes wild.

I caught her wrists. Gently. Firmly.

The distinction mattered to me, even if it meant nothing to her. Her bones felt too slight beneath my hands. I could have held both wrists in one grip. I did not. I kept my touch open enough that she would not feel trapped unless she fought.

“Enough,” I said. “You have enough.”

She stared at me. Awareness began to claw its way back into her face. It was worse than the hunger.

Her gaze moved over me with terrible focus—the fangs not yet fully retracted, the blood at my mouth, the breadth of my shoulders over her, the dark room, the bed beneath her, the pain that must have been rewriting itself into new sensation. I watched the pieces assemble. Not correctly. Not kindly.

Vampire. Bed. Blood. Man. Monster.

Her whole body went rigid. I released her at once.

She shoved herself backward with a broken gasp, heels scrabbling against the sheets. The movement had almost no strength behind it, but terror gave her enough. She dragged herself toward the headboard, away from me, away from my blood, away from whatever she thought came next. Her knees drew up. One hand flew to her throat, where my bite had already closed and the old wounds had not.

“Easy,” I said.

The word was useless. I knew it before it left me.

Her eyes darted to the door, the drapes, the shadows in the corners, the distance between her body and mine. Calculating escape with a mind still half-drowned in transition. She would not make it three steps. She might not make it off the bed. Still, she looked, and I respected that more than any plea.

I did not reach for her. I did not move closer.