Or at least, that's what it felt like.
My catsuit was made of dragon leather—don't ask—and it was as strong as steel. Yet, whatever this thing was, it cut through it like butter. As I collapsed, I realized it didn't hurt, and that's when I knew I was in serious fucking trouble.
Blood sprayed everywhere, literally sprayed. It soaked my attacker from head to fucking toe in a fountain.
It was a shifter of some kind, what species exactly, I could no longer tell. But it dropped down on me and crushed me into the ground as I fumbled to get my hand to obey me. I was still holding the pistol, but my fingers refused to obey, refused to pull the damn trigger. I'm losing too much blood; I'm in shock. I'm going to fucking die.
I would have, too, if it wasn't for Bennett.
He saved my ass a second time by grabbing the lizard by the skull and yanking him off of me. His hand still squeezing the creature's head, he cracked it like an egg, and then threw the body against the wall where it slumped to the floor, twitched, and then went still.
"Little fox," he said, not at all sympathetic, as he leaned over me, and my vision blurred. "You're bleeding profusely, and you're not healing. Cat got your tongue and your magic?" I opened my mouth to tell him off, but no words would come out. I wanted to say screw you and eat a dick, but all I ended up doing was gasping and tasting the metallic whisper of my blood on my mouth. Am I going to get infected? I wondered, which was a stupid thought because I was literally dying right then and there, probably minutes away from it.
"Fuck," Bennett cursed as he stood over me. "If you die, that vampire freak is going to be up my ass, isn't he?" My eyes flittered shut. Through sheer force of will, I opened them back up. I had the feeling if I let them close again, that'd be the last time.
Bennett leaned down, smelling like amber and musk, earth and decaying leaves and pine. He smelled like forest, life, and sex. He might've been a psychopath, but this was not a bad smell for my last moment of life. Not bad at all.
I even liked it when he picked me up and held me against his chest, something that would normally push all my buttons in the worst, worst way. And yet, when my head lolled to one side, I could hear his heart beating inside his warm, hard chest.
"Keep alert, little fox. It'd be a shame if I wasn't the one to kill you."
Creepy as that was, it was also comforting. This time, when my eyes slid shut, I was pretty goddamn sure that Bennett Beowulf was not going to let me die.
A lot of confidence to put into a crazy person, huh?
I couldn't have passed out for long. When I next opened my eyes, I was lying on a large bed in a room with vaulted wood ceilings, and log walls. A lodge. The lodge. Bennett's lodge.
I was lying on the alpha male's bed.
Crap.
When I tried to sit up, my body refused to obey me. It flat-out staged a revolt. My fingers and toes twitched, but that was about as far as I got. Even when I realized I was naked, my body fully exposed, and started panicking, I still couldn't move.
"Don't fight it," Bennett said, sitting naked on the bed in front of me, his dark hair wet and stuck to his forehead, gold eyes locked on mine. We were both clean and wet, scrubbed of the foul goo and the blood from the cavern. It made sense that I was no longer wearing my clothes, but it also gave me a very clear view of what was happening with my thigh.
My leg really was about this close to being severed.
I could see muscle and bone, and the thin bit of tissue keeping it all held together.
Bile rose in my throat as I flicked my eyes from my wound and back up to Bennett. I was bleeding profusely still, the dark sheets beneath me soaked and wet, but it was no longer spurting. That was good, right? Right?!
Bennett sat up and crawled toward me, reaching his hands around my thigh, his hot, warm fingers invisible to my nerve endings. I couldn't feel him touching me and that was terrifying.
"I'm going to assume that if I save your life ..." he began, fingers moving up toward the wound. "That I'm not going to regret it." He touched the edges of my bleeding flesh, and a scream tore through me, making Bennett shudder. Not sure if that was from the pain of having his eardrums burst or perverse pleasure at seeing me in pain, but I was naked and he wasn't taking advantage, thank fuck.
His fingers grazed the edges of my wound before he pulled back, lifting his wrist to his mouth and tore into his flesh, creating this ragged wound that oozed even more crimson fluid onto the sheets. The entire bed, mattress and all, was going to be soaked by the end of the night.
"These things can get intense," Bennett told me as he reached out and let his blood drip into my wound. I'd be worried about diseases, about the dust infection, whatever, but at this point, staying alive was the important thing. If I was alive, there was hope. Hope for what, I wasn't sure. Right now, I knew I was in shock.
I was hurt, I was dying, I'd just killed a kid.
Fuck.
"How ... intense?" I managed to choke out, but Bennett just smiled at me with big, white teeth. He let his blood spill into my wound until I was coated in him, and then he leaned forward and brought his wrist to my lips.
"Drink." A simple, sharp command. This was a man who was used to telling people what to do and getting his way when he did it. But I didn't have the strength to argue, and I knew how powerful an alpha's blood could be. Fighting him now would cost me everything and there was a big difference between being stubborn and standing up for one's beliefs, and being stubborn simply for the sake of it. I didn't need to prove a fucking point; I needed to live.
Bennett's coppery blood sluiced between my lips, down my throat. I drank it like it was water from the Holy Grail, all of that scalding crimson liquid sliding across my tongue and filling my belly.
The more I drank, the better I felt, the sleepier I felt.
"Relax, fox," Bennett said as my eyes drooped again and I started to fade. It was a different sort of fatigue from before. That felt like death, but this, this was just sleep. "Let yourself into the wolf's den ..."
I passed out with Bennett's ragged, bloody wrist pressed to my mouth.
The next time I awoke, there were candles flickering, the wooden walls of the lodge room glowing orange in their light. When I told my body to move, it did, and I sat up with a groan that soon became a scream.
Shoving the blankets back, I caught sight of my wound. My leg was no longer nearly severed from my body, but the gash was deep and there was a nick to my femoral artery that was oozing slowly onto the bed.
"We'll need at least one more, if not two, rounds of blood therapy," Bennett growled, lying on his back beside me, his long fingers gripping the base of his rigid shaft. His gold eyes were focused on mine, his mouth twisting into a sideways smirk. "Or we could fuck. That might help."
"Eat shit," I choked out, happy to find my voice. But there was this sense of relief that washed over me, this nightmare of blood and death fading away as I blinked back a sudden surge of tears. They were tears of joy, honestly, because I had so much shit that I needed to work out before my soul would be happy pushing up daisies.
"Oh for fuck's sake," Bennett said, sitting up, giving me this look, like I was an anomaly he didn't know how to deal with.
"I killed a kid last night," I said, my voice devoid of emotion, my fingers probing my wound. Without my magic, I couldn't heal this without medical—or supernatural intervention. I needed Bennett to finish what he started, but I also couldn't let this go.