Crimson Covenant (Onyx Assassins 1)

Doubt threatened to creep in, icy fingers clenching around the hope in my heart.

Remediums possess a muted strain of DNA capable of curing almost any ailment known to supernatural kind. A product of deep experimentation and cross breeding, remediums are rare and often confused with Seers as glamors have no effect on them and their instincts are unapparelled. Faced with extinction due to capture for healing purposes, they all but erased themselves from our histories around the eighteenth century.

I took one confident step toward our bed.

I’d spent my entire life between the pages of a book. Books were my only constant in a sea of unknown. I trusted books more than I trusted most people. And sure, this book was written by an ancient witch who had a passion for history as much as I did, but I’d never not trusted my research, my books.

I would not start now.

Another step.

“Alek,” I whispered as I reached the edge of our bed.

His midnight eyes glittered with unhindered bloodlust. His muscles bunched and flexed as he jerked and yanked on those chains.

“Everything will be all right,” I said and smoothed my hands over his chest.

He stilled under my touch, not due to any recognition, but more like a deadly predator inviting in the prey stupid enough to get this close.

I shifted, straddling his hips, leaning over him slowly.

“I’m yours and you are mine,” I whispered, my entire body shaking as I positioned my neck a breath before his lips. “This life doesn’t make sense without you. Now, feed.”

I held his pitch-black gaze, my neck craned so I could see the shift in him.

One second he was a statue, the next, his features turned absolutely lethal.

His fangs sank into my flesh, the pain instant and searing. This wasn’t like the bites Alek had given me before. This bite was a hundred percent primal. Animal. And it burned.

Pressure tugged on my insides as he sucked and drank, biting me over and over again so much I whimpered through my teeth.

My instincts roared to run, to bite back.

I clamped those down.

The tome didn’t say how much of my blood was needed to heal a poisoned creature, and I wasn’t about to guess. Not with my mate.

He could take all he needed.

As long as he lived.

The iron chains rattled as he drank and drank, the blood gushing out of me and dripping from the corners of his mouth.

Beautiful.

He was hauntingly beautiful. I’d thought that from the moment I first saw him.

I love you.

I sent the words down the bond as the edges of my vision blurred.

My heartbeat slowed, hiccupping as if it couldn’t find its proper rhythm.

My arms fell to my sides, weak and limp.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Alek ripped his head back, the black in his eyes like pure night. I held his gaze and smiled. “Alek—”

He sank his fangs into the other side of my neck. My body jolted from the force of the bite.

My muscles seized, shaking with each deep pull he sucked from the wounds.

Icy tingles brushed over my skin as the shadows around my eyes pulled in and in.

When had it gotten so cold?

A wet growl skittered along my bones, and a tear raced down my cheek.

“Alek—”

Those shadows bled over my eyes, blanketing everything in darkness.

21

Alek

Blood.

But it wasn’t just any blood roaring down my throat. It was the finest, sweetest, sustenance on the planet. I could live another four hundred years and never taste anything quite this perfect again.

It was somehow familiar, spiced with cinnamon and sugared with honey. It was an intoxicating blend of sex and home and slid across my tongue like wine. It belonged to a female…I wasn’t sure of much, but that I knew.

And it wasn’t just the taste—that would be too simple. Every swallow somehow soothed the snarling, drumming need to destroy and drink. Each sip and pull felt like a hand extended to a rabid beast, a stroke of a kind hand along matted, bloodied fur.

The burn that now lived within me, that had its claws in every molecule, screaming at me to feed harder and take more—it eased just slightly. Cell by cell, the sharp talons of flame simmered, then cooled, then chilled and released. God, drinking this woman was relief.

My fangs bit into the silken skin of her neck again and again, trying to get closer in the only way I could comprehend. I didn’t just want to drain the female—I’d been fed so many bags of stale blood I didn’t even know if there was room in my body for another ounce—I wanted to be within her.

I wanted to crawl inside and make a home that smelled like vanilla and cinnamon. To breathe when she breathed and sleep when she slept. This woman contained my entire reality within her body and I couldn’t get enough. I wanted her peace, her calm, her love to live within me, to cancel out whatever I’d become.