Refugee (The Captive #3)(14)

“I am offering my blood to you and so is that woman. You have to pick one.” She tried to keep her face impassive, tried to control the beat of her heart as she stared stubbornly up at him. She couldn’t reveal how much it would upset her if he went to that other woman, it would only stop him if he knew, and he couldn’t be stopped. Not this time.

He clasped hold of her wrist, his long fingers gentle as they wrapped around her. He could kill her; with a simple flick of that hand he could kill her so easily, but he would kill himself before he ever injured her. She waited breathlessly to see what he would do, as ever so slowly he bent his head and licked the blood from her arm. A shiver raced down her spine, her breath was frozen inside of her as he pressed his lips against the inside of her elbow and rose slowly over her.

She thought that she had won, that he was conceding defeat as he brushed the hair back from her neck. His fingers lingered upon his marks still on her skin, pressing ever so briefly against them. Then his hand entwined in her hair as he rested his forehead against hers. “You really are reckless,” he muttered.

She managed a wan smile as he kissed the tip of her nose. “And you are stubborn.”

“Soon,” he said tenderly. “When you’re stronger…”

“The woman.”

“When you are stronger. Let this go, it will not happen.”

Aria gave the battle up on a sigh. She leaned into him, simply enjoying the feel of him as they stood together in a stolen moment of peaceful silence.





***





He was starving, simply on fire with the necessity to feed. His veins felt as arid as the desert surrounding them. His body was sore, muscles he hadn’t known he had burned from the blaze licking through them. It was shear willpower that drove him forward now. He should have fed, he knew that, he needed it so badly right now but he’d sensed Aria’s unhappiness, sensed her anguish over the idea. She wouldn’t deny him the woman, she would understand, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that to her.

Instead, he was walking a thin line, bordering on complete loss of control. He was becoming even more of a threat to her with each passing moment. It didn’t help that Ashby looked far better than he had before. The color was back in his face and the spring was back in his step. He was whistling merrily, and annoyingly, as they followed the woman across the desolate landscape. The woman was a little paler but appeared otherwise uninjured. He could smell the fresh blood from the bites on her inner wrist, but it was nowhere near as sweet and potent as the scent of Aria’s blood on the rags covering her arms.

She was wearing William’s cloak now, the hood pulled over her bent head shadowed her features and hid her hair. He felt that simply touching her might help to ease the fire inside him, but he didn’t dare touch her in front of the woman that obviously held some loyalty to Gideon. Gideon may very well have been one of the strongest, and most human rights friendly aristocrats that Braith had known before and during the war. He’d fought adamantly against the enslavement of the humans, but Braith had no idea what a hundred years of living in these Barrens had done to him. He wasn’t entirely certain what to expect from Gideon, but Braith sure as hell wasn’t going to alert Gideon to the fact that Aria was his biggest weakness. Not until he knew if he could trust the once powerful aristocrat.

They rounded the top of another dune and like a beautiful mirage a town came into view. Heat rose from the sand in waves that made everything shift and blur. But the town was there, green and lush for as far as the eye could see. “How is this possible?” Awe laced Aria’s voice as she gazed over the town.

“At one time all of these lands were lush and fertile.” Braith forced the words out. “It was the war itself that left everything so desolate. Gideon must have found a water supply out here, probably deep within the earth.”

“Amazing, simply amazing,” she whispered to herself.

He gazed at her for a moment before turning his attention back to the town before them. There were already vampires lining the streets, waiting for them as they moved down the dune and onto the main thoroughfare.

For a moment he hesitated. He should have fed. It was too soon for Aria, and the thought of feeding off the woman was enough to make his stomach turn, but he was in no condition to fight if that was what this became. Aria went to touch him, but her hand fell limply back to her side. He almost grabbed hold of her hand to make it abundantly clear that she was off limits to everyone in this town. He didn’t want any more talk of someone possibly buying her, or her brother. However, he also had to keep her alive and there was no way to know what they were walking into.

He shouldn’t have brought her here, but in the end there had been no choice. They would need help if they were going to take down the king, and there was no one that hated the king more than the aristocrats that had stood against him during the war. Aristocrats that had power and followers of their own, or at least they used to, and judging by the growing crowd, they still did. The people and vampires all appeared healthy, the buildings were in good repair, and it was obvious that they had established some sort of unbiased system here as human and vampire stood side by side. There was astonishment on some of the faces surrounding them, a couple of which he vaguely recognized from the years before the war.

They were almost to the end of the street when a figure separated themselves from the crowd. Braith’s growing need for blood diminished under the shock of seeing a face he had never thought to see again. Uneasiness twisted through his gut. It took everything he had not to grab hold of Aria and shove her behind him, but though there was no surprise on Gideon’s features, there was also no hostility.