Page 36 of Bought for Blood

Slow down. You’ll be sick.

I make myself go slow. Small spoonfuls. Butter on the bread, thick. I eat the apple down to the seeds.

When the tray’s empty, I turn the butter knife over once in my fingers—dull, cheap, but an edge is an edge—and slide it under the pillow before I can talk myself out of it. Nobody counts cutlery in a room like this. Not yet.

When it’s done, I sit with my hands on the warm table. The muscles let go all down my neck and out of my shoulders, one by one. Without my permission.

Because I know why this room is warm, and it isn’t kindness.

He’s a monster, Serenity.

I saw what he turned into. The predator I’ve been afraid to meet. I saw a picture rattle on the wall when Vasile hit it, and then a grown man ran.

But then he put his mouth on the bite on my neck, careful, slow, and closed it. And told me he was sorry.

Sorry.

“Vampires don’t apologize,” I say into the silence. There’s no version of what he is that says sorry to what I am.

But it looked real.

Stop.I push the tray back.Stop it right there.

Hoping is how you break in a place like this. I’ve watched it happen. The ones who hoped went the fastest.

He protected what he pays for. That’s all tonight proves. Every word of that speech was about his arrangement, not about me.

My wolf doesn’t respond to that. She’s watching the door, waiting on something I haven’t figured out yet.

I take the extra blanket off the chair and try the bed.

It’s too soft. I lie in the middle of it, clean and warm and fed, and my back keeps waiting for the cot’s crossbar. My ears keep reaching for sounds that aren’t here. It’s too quiet; a year of the ward’s hum and boots on concrete, twenty people breathing somewhere in the dark, and now nothing.

Finally, I give up, drag the pillow and both blankets to the floor, and lie down against the wall with my back to the plaster. Better. That’s the shape my body knows. The wolf lies down along the inside of me, facing the door. She isn’t afraid. She’s on watch, ears up. She can hold the watch all night now.

I reach for the glamour.

It answers. Steadier than it’s answered in a year.

I pull it over my hand, just my hand, and the shape goes vague against the blanket; there, but hard to focus on. Three breaths. Four. Five before it slips. A month ago, all I could manage was a flicker.

That’s the food. That’s the warmth, and the blood they’ve stopped taking. Whatever’s been sitting dormant in me is coming back now that nobody’s draining it off twice a day.

I lie on the floor of this warm room and feel it rise. I can’t tell if I’m steadied or scared. Both, probably.

Because it’s what he wants too. The stronger I get, the better I taste. I’d bet the apple core on it.

At least he—

I stop myself. At least he what? Feeds gentler than the last one? Pays for the stew?

Gratitude is your problem, Serenity.

He can have the blood, since I can’t stop him. He doesn’t get the rest.

The card reader clicks out in the corridor. A soft electronic sound, once. Locked from their side, midnight rounds. My bolt. Their lock.

My wolf keeps her eyes on the door. I pull the blankets up.