“I promised not to be Statue Man with you.”
“I understand your fears about getting close to people, Damian, perhaps better than anyone. Especially if you feel like they might be taken away. What’s happening with us reminds you of Anna, doesn’t it? It’s easier to have no expectations at all. Better really, than to have even the tiniest happiness so brutally ripped away.”
“Yes,” he said. “But I do not want to keep you out.”
“I know. Hey, life can really suck.” I kissed him. “But most of the time, it doesn’t.”
“You’re talking about the cupcakes again, aren’t you?”
“Yep.” I wiggled out of his grasp, and tucked in to the bed. He watched me hungrily, and I felt his need rising again (and saw it, too, given that I was looking at his crotch).
“I have to tell you something.”
Wariness immediately chilled his ardor. “Your tone suggests this will not be a topic I like.”
“I saw Aufanie and Tark again.”
“Aufanie.” He said the name slowly, as if he hadn’t uttered the word in a long time. He probably hadn’t. “She told you to call her that?”
“Yes.” I looked at him. “They want you to go to Germany. They said we should both be at the temple on the night of Winter Solstice.”
“What the hell for?”
“I think they want to see you,” I said. “And they want to help me. I get the feeling that maybe things aren’t gonna go my way once it’s time to go full lycan.”
Damian sat on the bed and gathered my hands into his. “She is a liar, and he … he is a fool. It’s been almost a century since she’s talked to anyone, and when she does, she calls on you. You have no connection to her.”
“You’re my connection. She says she can only call me because I’m still human enough to go through the barrier.” I traced his knuckles. “I think they’re trapped.”
“And yet they can port into the temple two weeks from now?” He snorted in disbelief.
“She made a bargain, and the terms are nearly done.”
“Bargain,” he said sharply. “What do you mean?”
“That’s all I know. She was reluctant to share details. She made whatever this bargain is and got sucked in to this other place, which FYI, looks like the woods in the dead of night. She said she couldn’t tell anyone—it was part of the terms.”
“And what could’ve been so important that she left us all without a word?”
I brought his hand up and kissed his fingertips. “Tark,” I answered. “Whatever she did … it was for love.”
My words didn’t nullify his anger, but I could tell he was mulling over all that I had said. He nodded. “It’s worth considering, Kelsey.”
“I think so, too.”
He tilted his head, and studied me. “Something else is bothering you.”
“Very perceptive. It’s like you’re a werewolf or something.”
“Maybe I’m an empath.”
“Hey, no horning in on my territory.”
He laughed. Then he said, “Tell me,
Schätzchen
.”
“I want a copy of my mother’s new book. I need to know what she wrote.”
I felt the shadow of his fury. He hadn’t been thrilled at Jess’s news, either, but he’d been much better at compartmentalizing it. “She had no right.”
“Oh, she thinks she had rights out the wazoo, believe me. I think it’s a side effect of being an advice guru. You tend to think you know what’s best for everyone. And it doesn’t hurt that she knows how to spin gold from straw—me being the lucky, lucky straw.”
“I will get you a copy.”
“Thank you.”
He brushed his lips over my temple. Then he pushed me back onto the bed and murmured, “You said something about smearing cupcakes all over me?”
Yes. Yes, I did.
The next two days, while Dr. Michaels ran his tests, I enjoyed the limitations of quarantine. Damian and I couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We’d be doing something mundane like making sandwiches in the kitchen and in the next moment, we’d be tearing off each other’s clothes and having hot monkey sex on the floor. Or table. Or couch. Or in the backyard underneath the branches of an old pecan tree. Damian kept several condoms in his pockets for these occasions. I didn’t mind the protection, but it made me wonder about the first times we were together, and whether my lycan DNA had been strong enough to accept his. Or maybe I’d been too human and the potential of making a baby had been nil.
I couldn’t stop thinking about children, and how very much I wanted to have them with Damian. But he was skittish about the idea, and I couldn’t blame him. We didn’t know if I would become a full-blood, much less have the ability to make babies. There were lycan females who could not conceive or worse, carry to term—what chance did I have?
Damian talked to me about werewolf basics, and he fed me rare steak and wine and cupcakes. He was always touching my hair or rubbing my back or kissing me. His emotions were as full and open as mine. It was almost like he could read me, too. Maybe it was the werewolf in him, or he was just a good man who paid very close attention.
On day two of quarantine, my mother’s book arrived. I left it in the living room and ignored it, even though I knew I would have to eventually confront all that she had written.
She never once asked me about what happened. She knew some of it, because she’d sat in on several police interviews. She’d written an entire book about me and my infamous patient, and hadn’t bothered to interview me. Or mention she was going to profit off one of the worst episodes of my life. It made me wonder if she’d cut me out of her life because I’d shamed her, or because she didn’t want me to interfere with her research.
But I had Damian, so I left the book and I turned to him. He was funny and kind, courtly in some ways, and barbaric in others (of course I’m talking about sex). Damian was the perfect blend of gentleman and ruffian.
Broken Heart ran on an evening schedule due to all the vampires and other creatures who appreciated the dark. So we slept all day, stayed up all night, and created our very own love cocoon.
Then, on the third evening, we got a visit from Dr. Michaels.
We sat on the couch, the doctor on one end and me on the other. Damian perched on the couch’s arm behind me and massaged my shoulder.
“It seems that Kelsey might have successfully transitioned to full-blood lycan,” said Dr. Michaels. “However, Dante’s serum has complicated the process.”
My heart dove to my toes. “You mean if Jarred hadn’t injected me with that crap, I’d be okay?”
“There are no guarantees, of course,” he said. “But yes, I believe that would be case.”
I shared a look with Damian. I could feel his concern wrap around me, and put my hand on his thigh because I needed the extra contact.
“You have an interesting genotype,” continued the doctor. “One that would’ve no doubt remained inactive your entire life. But with the introduction of Damian’s saliva into your system, this genotype was, for lack of a better word, awakened. It absorbed the new DNA and attempted to …” He paused, obviously searching for a word that wasn’t ten syllables long. “Um, replace it. Well, part of it.”
“I know that DNA strands are made up of forty-six chromosomes,” I said. “And that genetic material is donated from both mother and father—twenty-three chromosomes each.”
Dr. Michaels brightened. “Exactly. Half your DNA was human. The other half, too, but only as mimicry, if you will. The minute new DNA was introduced, the nonhuman chromosomes took on the characteristics of lycan.”
“Changeling DNA,” I blurted. I absorbed the enormity of what he was saying. I’d been only half human, which meant either of my parents had to be … well, something else. I could totally buy that my mother was the daughter of Satan. “But that would still make me only half werewolf.”
“Well, it does now,” said Stan. “My theory is that the… er, changeling DNA would have completely reworked both sets of chromosomes. You would’ve been lycan.”
“But the serum has interrupted the process,” said Damian. Fury was building within him, and I knew it was directed at Jarred. I wanted to be angry, too, but mostly, I was scared.
“Corrupted is a better word,” offered the doctor.
He was uneasy now, and I knew whatever he said next was not going to be good. For all my blithe thoughts and words about dying and living in the moment, I didn’t want to face the reality that I wasn’t going to make it. I wouldn’t be Damian’s mate or bear his children. I wouldn’t be lycan. I wouldn’t be
alive
.
“Whatever element was used to prevent shifting has … I suppose ‘confused’ is the best word here … the genotype. It’s trying to compensate, but in ways that further disrupt the process. It’s almost if it’s getting conflicting information—one set of instructions from the lycan DNA and one set of instructions from the serum.”
“Then it’s only a matter of the serum dissipating,” said Damian. “Unless you can extract it from her system.”
“I can’t,” said Dr. Michaels. “I’ve tried to figure out any number of ways to help her, Damian, but the truth is that her chromosomes are a mess—and they’re in a big fight.”
Hope leapt inside me. “You mean the lycan DNA might win?”
I could tell he wanted to reassure me, but his integrity was too solid. He shook his head. “The process is accelerating. My estimate is that you have two weeks or less before your system overloads.”
“Dante said the serum lasts thirty days,” said Damian. He was grasping at straws. His fingers dug into my arm. He radiated a rainbow of emotions: anger, fear, hope.
“She doesn’t have until the end of the month,” said Dr. Michaels. “I’m sorry, Damian. I promise I will work night and day on a solution, but …”
“You don’t think it’s going to end well,” I said. He looked so helpless that I leaned forward and patted his knee.
“A blood transfusion,” said Damian. Desperation tinged his voice. “Our royal blood conquered the Taint, so why not this?”
“It conquered the Taint for a few vampires, and all of them very old. Adding more lycan DNA to her system might make her cells implode. I don’t suggest we risk it.”
“Then the vampires can Turn her,” he said. “If Lorcan and Eva and the
loup de sang
can be both wolf and vampire, why not Kelsey?”
“Um, Kelsey isn’t groovy with becoming a bloodsucker,” I put in. “In case I have a vote this time.”
Damian looked at me reproachfully. “The choice is yours, of course. But
loup de sang
is better than dead.”
“You have a point.”
“I already considered that possibility. Unfortunately, she would be toxic to a vampire,” said Dr. Michaels. “It appears to be a defense mechanism of the genotype. Once the change has begun, anything interfering with it is attacked and killed.”
“Like the serum,” said Damian.
“Except the serum has properties that are similar enough to the genotype to make it believe its part of the process. It’s why everything is screwing up,” said the doctor. “The lycan DNA fights off any foreign matter, and the activated genotype fights off anything it perceives to be not lycan DNA.”
“Then there’s shifter DNA in the serum,” I said. “It would have similar properties, but be different enough to confuse the new coding.”
“It’s possible,” said Dr. Michaels. “But if there is shifter DNA in the serum, it’s unlike any I’ve ever seen. And I have collected samples and information about all known shifter species.” He turned his gaze to Damian. “Even if we were to drain her manually and allow a Master to perform the blood exchange and spellwork—it could have dire consequences for both the vampire and Kelsey. And that’s not including the consideration that only one in ten humans can be Turned.”
“You are saying we cannot help her,” said Damian.
“Not yet. And maybe not in time.” He stuck his hands into his jacket pockets. “I think continued quarantine until … um, this is over would be advisable. We don’t know how it will play out. You could get more aggressive, Kelsey. Unable to control your impulses or your temper.”
An uncomfortable silence fell, and the weight of it pressed on me until I wanted to scream.
“Thank you, Dr. Michaels,” I said, needing the conversation to be over. Facing my own mortality, the inevitability of dying, was freaking me out.
He took the hint, offering a tepid smile as he rose from the couch. He was halfway to the door when he paused and turned around. “Not that it matters, but I should also tell you that you’re in heat.”
My jaw dropped. “What?”
“Elevated hormones and—” He glanced at Damian, and visibly swallowed. “Er, other factors,” he said. “It’s a lycan female characteristic. Every month, females have a heat cycle. You’re in one.”
“How long does that last?”
“Seven to fourteen days.”
“Oh. Well, like you said,” I responded, “it doesn’t matter.” And then I thought:
Lycan females are in heat two weeks every month? Sheesh.
Not that it was a hardship, mind you. At least it explained why I was so crazy to jump Damian’s bones all the time.
After the doctor left, I looked up at my very worried lycan boyfriend. “I’m in heat,” I said. “What’s your excuse?”
“Kelsey.” My name was recrimination and sorrow, and hearing the grief in his voice broke me.
“Take heart,” I said, as my throat knotted and tears escaped. “You didn’t kill me after all.”
“No,” he said, wiping away the moisture from my cheeks. “Dante did.”
“And you will, no doubt, try to kill him back.”
“I would,” he admitted, “if he could be killed.”
“Oh.” Well, that explained a lot. Except the part where he wanted to claim me for himself. What would Jarred want with a woman with changeling DNA? It wasn’t a question I intended to ponder, especially given my current life expectancy. I literally didn’t have time to waste on answering questions that no longer mattered.
Damian stared at me, his jade eyes glittering with anguish and fury. “Would you beg for his life, Kelsey?”