I came back.
“I get that you want to rush off to find Jane, but you aren’t one hundred percent, not yet. So…” She shoved him back on the bed. “Keep your ass here until you finish recovering. Jane is tough. She saved you, right? She can handle a few more hours on her own.”
It didn’t make sense to him. If Jane had gotten him out, why wasn’t she with him? Jane wouldn’t just leave him.
Vivian’s gaze darted away from him. “Sleep longer. We’ll talk more later.” She turned and headed for the door, her steps quick. “I’ll let the others know that you’re nearly back to fighting form.” Her hand reached for the door knob.
“Was Jane hurt?” A vampire should never have gone into the fire. She’d risked death…
For me.
They seriously needed to get the hell out of town. Away from blood and fires and danger. Maybe they should go on a cruise or some shit. Do what normal people did for a change. Cruises left from New Orleans nearly every day. They could go drink some rum in Grand Cayman.
“Jane was hurt…a little,” Vivian allowed. She hadn’t looked back at him.
A lot. “She’s alive.”
Her shoulders squared.
“Look at me.”
She turned. “She is alive but…”
He hated buts.
“But it was best for us to remove her from the scene in a body bag. People—humans—had just watched her fly out of a second story window and crash head-first into concrete. I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it or not, so I couldn’t count on you hunting down all of the witnesses and making them forget about Jane. So…we zipped her up.”
He grabbed for the bed covers. “Body…bag?”
“The humans at the scene bought the act. She was knocked out, barely seemed to breathe, and Dr. Heider was the one who pronounced her dead.” She paused. “Undead,” Vivian muttered.
His eyes narrowed.
“We got her out of there. She’ll wake up with him. He’s got a new lab that he’s using and he took her there.”
Right. Because his last lab had been destroyed—Aidan remembered that destruction all too well.
“He’ll check her out and then I’m sure Jane will be rushing back to your side.” Vivian gave a hard nod. “So rest, alpha. Your mate is safe.”
For the moment. “The place was wired to explode. The minute Garrison opened that back bedroom, he triggered a bomb. I heard the snick of the detonator. I only had seconds to get Paris out—” He gave a rough laugh. “He’s going to be pissed at me for throwing him through the window.”
“No.” She turned away. Yanked open the door. “I’m sure he won’t be pissed at all.” Moments later, the door closed behind her with a soft click. He heard the pad of her footsteps as they faded away.
And…
Aidan heard her crying.
Strange. Vivian never cried. She never showed any weakness at all.
She was lying to me.
He slipped from the bed and pushed to his feet once more. Dizziness swept through him. Dizziness and a dark, twisting hunger.
A hunger for…
Blood.
He staggered toward his bathroom. His hands gripped the granite countertop and he stared at his reflection. His skin was a light pink, but there were no deep blisters. No blood. He could remember the horrible agony of his flesh burning. The smell had made him wretch. He’d been trying to think of a way to get Garrison out of there, but the fire had been out of control.
He’d been about to collapse, in so much agony, hurting beyond measure. Desperate and…
Hungry.
He leaned toward the mirror and saw that his canines had lengthened. Sharpened. Sure, that happened sometimes—his teeth got sharper when he shifted into the form of a wolf.
Only he wasn’t shifting right then.
She’s changing you. Paris’s voice whispered through his mind.
There was a soft knock on his bedroom door. He inhaled and recognized his visitor’s scent. “Come in!” Aidan called, his hands still gripping the countertop.
The door opened. Footsteps shuffled inside.
“Vivian said…she said you were okay.”
Aidan shoved away from the sink. He stalked back into his bedroom. Garrison was there, pale, blistered, and…
Garrison ran his hand through his shaggy red hair. The tips of his hair seemed a bit singed. Maybe more than a bit. “I don’t remember much…The flames were everywhere. You—you were yelling at me to stay down…”
Aidan froze a few feet from him.
“I thought we were both dead,” Garrison whispered.
Aidan turned his back on the other man. He didn’t want Garrison to see his fangs. Vampire fangs. “Not yet,” he said.
But Aidan didn’t know if those words were true. Had he just healed from the fire?
Or had he fucking died?
And he’d come back…as something else?
“I need Jane,” Aidan rasped. She was the one who could help him. The one who could let him know just what in the hell was happening.
His anchor, in the fucking storm of his life.