Page 85 of Unmarked Magic

“I know it,” I affirmed with every ounce of my being. “You can do this. We can do this. I know we can.”

Reid’s fists clenched in the confines of his handcuffs. His head fell against the wall, eyes closing, fighting for the right words. When he opened them, they held renewed purpose. Determination. “I feel like my magic is on steroids and you’re the only thing it wants. Your scent is heightened tenfold. I’m not sure I can stop these urges inside of me.” The tone of his voice told me was deadly serious.

“What urges are you talking about, exactly?” I needed him to be clear about what we were dealing with here. Did he want my body like I did his? To touch me? Or something else, something I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear, let alone face.

His chest rose and fell with every breath, his pupils blowing wide with whatever was on his mind. “I want you.”

Silence.

His eyes locked onto mine.

“Your body.”

Another breath.

“Your mind.”

His face twisted on his next exhale, battling the words wanting to escape him. “Your blood,” he rasped.

At his last word, my entire body went rigid. It took every ounce of my being not to show how that one word had affected me. I feigned unbothered. Didn’t speak. But it seemed I didn’t need to.

He continued. “If I can’t control this, I’ll kill you,” he warned.

Way to lay it straight.

Still, I didn’t let my nerves show. “You can and you will,” I said, with as much conviction as I could muster. Every instinct in me screamed I was lying.

I ignored it.

Because I didn’t want to think about what that would mean if he could not control whatever he was feeling. What would that mean for us?

Suddenly, my vision blurred, no longer able to fight tears. They scraped my cheeks, and I furiously swiped them away, willing them to evaporate. I dipped my head to the ground, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

“Scar,” he croaked.

The crack in his voice was undeniable. Knowing he was fighting his own emotion almost broke me. When I looked up at him again, his eyes glistened. A sob broke from me, and I wiped my tears with my sleeve. Our eyes locked, a knowing so strong between us, I feared I couldn’t do it. Stay strong.

Reid’s wrists flexed in his restraints, and his arms corded with veins at the movement. “All I hear is your heartbeat,” he said softly. “I feel it pulsing in your veins as if it were my own. You need to leave,” he pleaded. “Please.”

A new type of pain speared through my heart. The kind that shreds from the inside out, dangling your hopes, your dreams, between its gnarly fingertips until slowly, piece by piece, they dissolve. The pain choked my words, stomped on my chest. Its heavy boot was immovable. I wasn’t sure if I could claw my way back from its suffocating heaviness. But I had to try.

When Callan strolled back into the cell, he walked so upright I imagined he had a rod stapled to his back. Ancient swagger. He held open a leatherbound book with a black ribbon sitting in the center crease, marking a specific page. Passing it to Colt, he nodded toward it as he spoke. “Seven hundred years ago, a blood mage was bitten by a vampire. It says here his magic protected him from full transition.”

Colt turned over the book in his hands, flipping through a few pages.

I frowned. “Full transition? As in, not at all, or half, or what?”

Callan hesitated, tripping on his words. “His magic prevented full transition. He lived a life in human years.”

His sentence felt unfinished, and something about his tone, the uptick at the end, hinted there was more he needed to say.

“But?” I pushed. If there was more to this story, I needed to know it all. Even if it broke my heart.

He continued. “The mage remained able to use his magic and lived a reasonably normal life, but his mate’s blood was the only source he would survive on.”

The cell went silent.

My blood was now Reid’s life source? I held back the nausea threatening to release the contents of my stomach, keeping my face impassive like I hadn’t just heard the most haunting words of my life. He would have to bite me. Have to drink my blood.