Page 78 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

He doesn’t move. “Valen.”

He carries me out of the open like I never said a word. The realm answers him. It happens without either of us asking for it. Walls come up where there was distance, close enough on both sides to touch if I put my arms out. The light overhead comes down low enough to sit under. There’s a bed at the center of it that wasn’t there when we started walking. Low wide, made up in something pale that has a shine to it where the light hits.

The sound in here is different. Out there every noise went up into a space with no ceiling and never came back down. In here my own breathing comes back to me from a wall four feet away.

He holds this place now. It hears him. An hour ago it was trying to unmake anything standing in it that had no right to be there. Now it builds him a room because he needed one for a woman who can’t stand up.

He sets me down on the edge of the bed. It gives all the way under me. Nothing in the outer chamber was soft like that. He crouches in front of me so we’re eye to eye, both hands on my arms until he’s sure I’ll stay upright without them.

“I’m fine.” I straighten up out of his hands to prove it. He sees my hands shaking before I get them behind me. He doesn’t believe a word of it and lets me have it anyway. I’ve been worse than this. Six months sealed inside a crystal in a mountain in Colorado, my three bloodlines going at each other, nothing going into me for any of it. I don’t remember most of it. That’s what the stasis was for. I didn’t decide my way out of that one. Kaspian spent half a year looking for me, living on animal blood that couldn’t hold him. Then he phased three of us out of a cave that was coming down. It nearly killed him. I’ve handled my own feeding ever since.

So I do what I’ve always done. I reach for whatever is left in me and tell my hands to stop. They shake harder. I stand up from the bed and my knees buckle. I catch myself on the edge of it rather than on him. Then the gray comes in at both sides again. I can’t hide it anymore. I could have hidden it from anybody else alive. I’ve sat across a dinner table from my own mother worse than this and she never knew. None of that works on him. He was watching me for months before I ever spoke to him. He hasn’t stopped since.

“How long have you been like this?”

“Since about halfway through the fight.”

He nods.

“It isn’t the feeding.” I get it out before he can decide it was. “I fed at Blood Moon two days ago. It’s the fight. The flame, the shielding, holding both of them for hours. There’s nothing left in me after that.”

He puts a hand under my chin and tips my face up to his.

“Take my blood.” It isn’t a question.

I start to tell him no. It doesn’t come out. I don’t have enough left in me to win an argument I’d have won on any other night of my life. I’m too tired to lie to myself about the rest of it. Part of me is glad to lose. He would have gone on saying it until I took it. I know that about him now.

He answered this in Doria and I didn’t take it then either. I had my mouth open on his throat on the floor of that room with both points down on his skin. I’d made him swear to put me on the ground if I got that close, and he never moved. When I asked him why, he said I’d already stopped. When I asked whether he’d have let me take it, he said yes and he didn’t think about it first.

Nothing about that answer has changed.

He comes up out of his crouch and sits down on the edge of the bed and pulls me into his lap. My thighs come down either side of his. I can feel how warm he is through my clothes. He runs hot, always has. I run cold. I’ve gotten colder every hour since I started running out.

He turns his head to the side. Not his wrist. His throat, bared to the base, tipped back with nothing between my mouth and his pulse.

“No.” I push a hand against his shoulder. “You don’t know what might happen.”

He waits.

“I’ve never taken it out of a living person.” My hand doesn’t move off him. “I don’t know that I’ll stop.”

“Then don’t.”

“Valen.”

He keeps his head exactly where it is.

“Nyxiana. Do it.”

My hand closes around the back of his neck. Touching him there does more to me than the blood is going to. My fangs come down, without permission, the same as they always do when there’s too much in me to hold. They catch sharp against my own lip. My mouth is watering. Nobody warns you about that part - not the fangs - the mouth. I can see his pulse moving under the skin of his throat. I haven’t looked at anything else since he turned his head. Every second I look at it I want it more. Get off him. That’s the last order I give myself. I lean in instead.

His pulse jumps before I’ve touched him. His body started answering me the second I moved. Underneath the blood I can smell how much he wants me. It’s all over his skin, sharp and unmistakable. It was on him before we sat down. My lips part over his throat. I stay there without moving. His heart is beating fast under my mouth, too fast for a man sitting still. I bite down. His hand comes up against the back of my head and presses me into his throat. Nothing else about him moves at all. His blood floods my mouth, all of it at once, more than a first pull should give me. He’s turned his head so far that there’s nothing in the way. It’s hot, alive. I’ve never had anything like it. I can taste him. Not blood. Him. Heat spreads out from where my mouth is on him. It runs down both my arms and gold comes up under my skin with it, faint. It pools low and settles heavy between my legs.

Valen makes a low sound. His cock is already hard underneath me. “Fuck, Nyxiana.”

I swallow. He groans. I do it again to be sure. He groans again, and his hips come up under me with it. He’s answering every pull I take. So I keep going, past what I need. His blood lands everywhere at once. My arms. My spine. The gray clears from my vision. And between my legs, my pussy is wet, clenching on nothing, throbbing for something that isn’t in me yet.

I moan against his throat with my fangs still in him. The gold breaks out of my skin at both wrists and burns all the way down my arms. It puts light on his throat, on my mouth where it’s fastened there, on his blood on my lips. I couldn’t pull it back now if the whole Council walked in. His cock is still hard under me. I can feel every inch of him through the fabric. He’s thrusting up into me now, in time with every pull I take.