"To me?" I choked out, feeling this wild panic race through me. "I don't want to be a vampire, Mik." Vampires and kitsune ... like oil and water, right? My people were of the earth, as natural as the ground beneath my feet; his people were dead but walking. No, when I passed away, I wanted to go into the ground where I belonged.
"I fucking know that," he growled out. "It happened, and I can't take it back. I would never force you to spend eternity with me, but remember, I've lost my chance of finding someone to do that with." He slid into the driver's seat as I latched onto the door. I needed more information. I needed to tell him what'd gone down in the cave, about the teenagers, about the Komodo shifter.
And yet, when he looked up at me, I couldn't find the words.
"By the way, you're suspended indefinitely. Don't go to the training facility or the offices, and don't think that you're getting paid for tonight's hit either." My mouth gaped open and I began to protest. "You'll be lucky if you don't get fired, Thea."
At that, my mouth went completely dry.
Fired in our world ... did not mean a severance check or unemployment.
It meant death.
"Mik," I started, but when he paused again and waited for me to speak, I didn't know what to say.
"What about the sex?" he asked me quietly. "If we'd slept together, would you have fucked the alpha wolf?"
Still, I said nothing.
Mik yanked his door from my fingers, slamming and locking it before he started the engine.
Suddenly numb inside, I stepped back and watched him drive away.
My high was gone, dead, and now I was going to have to go home alone.
Well, not completely alone; I had Ziff.
But as much as I loved Ziff, he wasn't what I needed right now.
Thoughts of Riot and Fin sprung to mind, cuddled up on either side of me, keeping me warm and happy and content.
With a shake of my head, I unlocked Lola's door, made sure the broken glass from the window wasn’t on my seat, and took off into the morning light.
Revel Jones was waiting for me when I got home.
I was not surprised to see that she rode a goddamn motorcycle, a Harley, too.
"What do you want?" I sniffled as I climbed out of Lola and stabbed some buttons on my gate remote. Mikhail's new security system sucked, and I was far too gone to bother trying to figure it out properly.
"Whoa, what happened to you?" Revel asked, her nostrils flaring as she took in the dried blood on my knees and calves, my borrowed t-shirt, my red-rimmed eyes. She snatched the remote from my hand and within seconds, had it sliding open. "Are you okay?"
"I shot a teenage girl in the face last night," I said dryly. "My boss is turning me into a vampire. Oh, and I fucked a man I don't know or like last night." Revel cringed as I climbed back into the car and slammed the door. She followed me in with her motorcycle and then closed the gate for me and unlocked the front door of my house, none of which I felt capable of doing in that moment.
"I came to talk to you," she said as I made my way up the steps and started stripping right there in the foyer. My katanas went on a sideboard along with my guns. Maybe I should've been more careful and kept a weapon on me, just in case. After all, I knew little to nothing about Revel Jones; she could very well be here to kill me.
I almost hoped she was. Would save me a hell of a lot of trouble dealing with the mess of my life.
"Talk as I walk," I said as I went into the kitchen, opened the massive commercial-sized fridge and grabbed a soda. Next, I ripped a piece of brownie off a plate and shoved it in my mouth. These weren't just any brownies, but ...
"Special brownies?" Revel asked and I shrugged, trying not to notice how beautiful she looked in tight skinny jeans, a leather motorcycle jacket, and a fucking crop top that showed off the perfect lines of abs in her belly. "Thank fuck. I could use a break from my own neurosis, you know?"
Before I headed upstairs, I fed Ziff a bit of plum and a few seeds, then went straight for the shower. Revel followed along, examining my naked body in a manner that was not unlike Bennett's or Mikhail's observations.
She thought I was hot, didn't she?
"Not just any special brownies," I said as we headed up the steps and into the master bedroom. "Those are made with my special pot butter." I kicked open the door to the bathroom and turned the shower on, popping the top on my soda, and grabbing a gulp.
Revel's green eyes shimmered as I stood there with my long dark hair silhouetting my pale body. As soon as she noticed that I was allowing it, she really started taking me in.
"It's a sativa," I said dryly, still talking about the pot, "an upper. I call it Foxy Colorado Sunbeams and Bullshit."
"That's a long name for a marijuana strain, cupcake," Revel said as I set my soda aside, climbed into the shower, and closed the glass door, leaning my head against the tile wall and closing my eyes. Hot water streamed over me, but as it drained away, I found that it wasn't taking my stress away like it usually did. This time, it felt like it was melting away my shield.
"Not my strain," I said as I cleaned the blood from my skin, the cum from my thighs, Bennett's sweat from my forehead and chest and breasts. Ugh. The sex was great, fucking awesome really, but now ... I was starting to regret it. First off, I felt like an asshole now that Revel was standing here. Second, Mik had scared the pants off me with his bonding bullshit. And third, well, the alpha male of the Vail Valley Pack was fucking insane. "My friend, Chris, grows it. He's the weed-nerd, not me." I turned off the shower and stepped out.
Revel, a virtual goddamn stranger, moved aside as I grabbed a towel and started to dry off. Should weird me out that she was here, but I was just too ... something to care about it.
"Tell me about the kid you shot," she said as I whipped my long, wet hair over one shoulder and picked up a brush. But looking at the tangled mess, it just did not seem worth the effort. Instead, I braided the mussy strands as best I could while Revel watched, her own locks loose and wavy and somehow miraculously free from helmet-hair syndrome.
I looked at myself in the mirror for a long moment, at the almond shape of my eyes, the point of my chin, my small nose. Nothing looked out of place, but something was definitely off.
"She was a wolf," I started, still looking into my own eyes. "Pre-teen probably, but it was hard to tell."
"How so?" Revel asked, shedding her leather jacket and tossing it onto the bathroom counter, like she lived here or something. She crossed her arms under the full heavy mounds of her breasts and waited.
Telling her about the infected drugs and the STDs, about how shifters weren't able to shift, that was enough to get me 'fired' from the guild a dozen times over.
"There's a sickness going around," I said, oversimplifying the matter for convenience's sake. "It keeps us from making the change. And when that happens ..." I stepped back from the mirror and flicked my attention over to Revel.
Her eyes were still on my face and not on my breasts. Good for her. She was attracted to me and she was managing to look me in the eyes. There were few men I knew who could pull that one off.
"When that happens, they go crazy. Fucking rabid. They ..." I thought about the mutated werewolves I'd seen and shivered, turning and moving back into the bedroom. Ziff was waiting on the bed for me, and didn't bother to let me put on any clothes before he clawed his way up my bare skin to sit on my shoulder. "They don't look like human or animal anymore. It's like they're decaying from the inside, out."
I opened the top drawer of my dresser and selected a button-up satin top and matching pants, both in rainbow stripes with glitter, both gifts from Fae-Bitch. Speaking of, I seriously needed to give him a call. If I missed too many of his messages or took too long to respond, he usually started freaking out and—
The intercom—mind you, this was a Mikhail add-on as I'd never had a frigging intercom before—buzzed, and I stumbled over to it, squinting as I tried to figure out how to answer the damn thing.