Still shaking with the adrenaline of battle, Sandu immediately bathed his arms in the light in order to rid his body of the acid before turning to aid his brethren. Flashes of lightning lit up the night sky. He could see his brethren didn’t need any help whatsoever. It didn’t surprise him. They had all been at this a very long time.
As he turned his attention to his wounds, he felt a small shadow in his mind retreat. His very disobedient lifemate. Adalasia.
Sandu had thought to heal his wounds and hunt for blood to replace what he’d lost, but he had to rethink this night. Assess Adalasia’s reaction. She was his lifemate, and as such, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for her not to need to heal him when she saw the extent of his wounds. She might be repelled by his actions in battle, but she wouldn’t be able to resist the necessity to care for him—even to give him blood. That would work in his favor.
Sandu looked into his mind as he approached the house, seeing that small, shivering woman in the tiny crevice of his mind. She had wanted to see how to kill a vampire in case she needed to aid him in battle. She had been trained to fight demons. He caught glimpses of her battle technique with various weapons. She was intrigued, wondering if any of the systems she’d been taught would aid her in destroying the undead.
She followed his every move, horrified at his love of the battle, at his need to destroy the undead in the brutal way he had. He hadn’t felt the emotions, but she had. He had feared that would happen if she ever saw him in battle. Sandu could try to assume a mantle of civility. He could even hide his predatory nature under the guise of feigned humor quite a bit of the time, but there was no disguising what he was when he went into battle.
Adalasia had been taught from the time she was a child to recognize a demon from the underworld by the fierce glow of their red eyes. By the casual way they killed. She would see that he killed without feeling, at least on the surface. Beneath it . . . he knew where he couldn’t see, she could. There she would feel the joy of battle, the need of his to destroy, uncaring what happened to him in the process. He was her lifemate. He belonged to her. That was an ultimate sin, and he was committing another by manipulating her into giving him her blood.
Sandu wanted to feel remorse for what he was about to do, but his every instinct drove him. Compelled him. He was ancient, and she was his to protect in the way of their people. They had enemies. Too many. His enemies. Hers. They had to be prepared for the worst possible scenario. Both had to be prepared.
She stood in the hallway alone, trying to look brave when he materialized in front of her. He hadn’t taken the time to clean up from the battlefield, wanting to look his worst, knowing she wasn’t certain about him and their relationship, but the ties between them would compel her to take care of him.
Adalasia’s blue eyes darkened to pure cobalt as they moved over him, taking in the blood dripping from his neck and shoulder, his chest, and lastly, his thighs and legs. He heard her anguished gasp, and then one small, trembling hand crept to her throat defensively. “Sandu.” She whispered his name.
“I came to you as quickly as possible,” he said. “Lucian told me they prepared a suite for us to use. It’s on this floor at the back of the house.”
He held out his hand. She hesitated but then slipped her hand in his. He could feel her trembling as he walked her down the wide hallway to the heavy oak door. She kept casting anxious glances to the blood on his neck and legs.
“Sandu? I didn’t do as you asked me. I stayed in your mind when you went into battle.” She made the confession in a low voice. “I’m sorry. I just felt it was very necessary to learn how to fight one of these horrible creatures. I was hoping I already had some of the skills. Jaxon did tell me the heart had to be incinerated. Sticking a hand into their chest and dragging their heart out looked extremely difficult.” Her entire body shuddered.
She still wasn’t looking at him, nor did she approach the more intimate mind connection. He brought her hand to his mouth, inhaling her scent. Taking her into his lungs. After the foul stench of the undead, the fragrance of his woman was intoxicating.
“It was Abascus’s bad luck that Lucian had so many of the brethren visiting him this evening. Jaxon had already dulled his senses. He wasn’t thinking clearly, staying when just the presence of the wolves should have been a warning to him. The wolves didn’t attack Jaxon on her way home. The safeguards on the house should have warned him. When he couldn’t call out to Jaxon, her power was more than it should have been against a master vampire, even for a Carpathian woman, but he paid no heed. That is the ego of a vampire.” He gave her that insight.