Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 125077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
There was a piece of trivia I’d never heard. “What do you mean wrong? They turn into primals?”
“Not exactly,” Rose hedged. “Sometimes primal blood takes… I don’t know how to put it but it takes root in a person and changes them. No one’s tried it in many, many years. It’s forbidden for a primal to share blood with a non-primal except in extreme cases when a life is truly in danger. The last person to take primal blood lost their hair and grew fangs that wouldn’t recede. He also developed a…hunger for blood that couldn’t be denied.”
“That’s what always happens?” I was curious.
“Not always. Sometimes it’s smaller changes like talons that grow or a sensitivity to sunlight,” Rose explained. “I read that once the change was nothing more than developing extremely sensitive hearing. But they cannot take the chance that they create a monster. I’m married to a primal, and I don’t share blood with him. The academics are kind enough to send the companions blood so we can stay with our husbands as long as we can.”
It was an exchange begun long ago when companions and vampires realized the way they fit together. Companions fed their vampire husbands, and the hubby paid her back with a much-elongated life through his blood. Anyone marrying a primal apparently would get the shaft if the academics weren’t such a kind group of dudes.
“Okay, but we can wait for…” I was about to say Casey, but that was the moment when Gray’s fingers barely skimmed across the wound, and I groaned because the pain went sky high. The pain had been sitting at a low hum of misery, but I kind of saw stars when anything touched my side.
“And she’s going on the bed.” Gray simply leaned over and picked me up, crossing to the bed, and I clamped my jaw down to keep from shouting out. “We’re not waiting for Casey. That’s a whole damn thermos of king’s blood, and Evan’s not going to be here for more than a couple of days. Evan, I take it your dad got back and realized he could slow down your aging process to match Fen’s.”
I winced as he laid me down on the bed.
Evan handed him the thermos. “Yes. It was pointed out that Fen will outlive me by a couple hundred years, and my dads put me on the every other day blood shot plan. I would rather wait until I’m like twenty-five or so, but they want me to have the healing properties, too. I tried to tell them we all take vamp blood before we go into battle, but my dads are super overbearing and protective.”
“I would like to try to apply it topically,” Rose said, setting her daughter down and crossing to wash her hands. “I worry since we’re dealing with a wound given by one of the Profane that it will scar if we don’t put it directly on the skin. How deep does it go?”
“It looks superficial, but she should be healing this,” Gray said. “Aren’t you supposed to be on king’s blood?”
“Well, excuse me if I was on a Faery plane and the king turned all human on us. So I’ve been off the juice for a couple of days,” I said. “I didn’t think about it.”
It was a routine at home. I was the Council’s Nex Apparatus, and that meant a wee dose of king’s blood in my morning coffee. While I’d been stuck on a weird Fae plane, I’d had neither coffee nor a functional vampire king. I’d gotten back and home had been taken over along with my refrigerator, so I was off track. And that fucking fireball hurt.
“So she’s been off it for almost a week in her time,” Gray said. “And she doesn’t take the same dose the queen and Quinn take. Topical it is, then, and when she gets back she’ll dose up again. I’ll talk to Casey about a donation this afternoon.”
Casey kind of owed me, and I wouldn’t hate having some more protection for me and the baby. I wasn’t worried about the vamp blood doing anything to my son. The queen had three healthy kiddos and she was always on the juice. Apparently it didn’t cause any complications unless it was primal blood.
I gritted my teeth as the nurse examined the wound. “So Profane spells are worse than regular old witch spells. Do we know why?”
“The Profane share some power with the demons who work with Myrddin,” Gray explained.
“Ah, hence the demonic power I can feel coming off her.” My bestie was going to need some serious deprogramming and probably a hearty detox. “Ow.”
It sizzled where the king’s blood touched, but in a good way. Still a hurty way, but I could feel the skin closing.
“Wow, that’s gross,” Luna said from above.