Slip of Fate (Werelock Evolution Book 1) (28 page)

“Milena, it’s not …”—Remy shook his head, holding his hands up in supplication—“really not like—”

“Stop fucking saying that!” I blasted, tasting a level of rancor I was unaccustomed to. “It is
exactly
like that!”

The tingling, swirling sensation in my hands had come back full force, and this time it continued to spread, traveling all the way up my forearms.

“Milena, please?” Remy appealed. “Please calm down?”

Alex sighed and set his teacup aside in a manner that suggested he was put out by my outburst and my misunderstanding of the situation. Then he proceeded to address me in his most patronizing tone.

“Milena, as you know, humans aren’t my first choice of companion, as they are Remy’s,” he insulted. “But it’s not like we hurt any of these girls,” he had the nerve to maintain, just as Remy had. “Believe me, they have a very,
very
good time while they’re here.” He smirked. “A better time than I suspect your virginal inspiration could possibly conjure.”

I reached for the remaining empty teacup at the table, and I could’ve sworn it jumped off the table and into my palm before I had the chance to pick it up this time. I threw it at Alex’s head. Again, he deflected it.

“You finished? I believe you’re out of teacups,” he observed with condescension. “As I was saying, they have a good time and are then returned to their human lives in perfect health, their memories erased of all activity here, naturally.”

I was far from finished!
A wall of anger was tunneling its way up through my stomach into my chest.

“How
convenient!”
I screeched in a high-pitched shrill that contrasted a bit strangely with the subsequent growling sound that began emanating from my chest
.
The tingling was all the way up to my shoulders now, and my heart was hammering out of control.

“If they don’t remember, it doesn’t count, huh?” I directed my ire at Remy that time. He looked panicked as our eyes met.

I swiveled my head from Remy to find Alex frowning at me in the strangest manner, his body suddenly tense and his entire countenance markedly changed from only a moment ago.

“Oh … my …
fuck
…” Remy cursed dazedly. “Alex …?”

Alex persisted in staring at me, his frown morphing into a horrified scowl that chafed my last nerve as I realized he was right; I was out of teacups.

So I slapped him instead. Hard.

I heard the sound of fine bones fracturing as my hand made contact with his face. But I didn’t feel any pain. It must’ve been the adrenaline rush. Alex’s mouth came ajar, and he gaped at me in disbelief. I couldn’t fathom why.
It was hardly the first time I’d broken my hand against his face.

I slapped him again
. Harder.

More splintering of bone combined with a highly rewarding smacking sound that by some sweet, impossible miracle managed to jerk Alex’s head to the side. I felt a wild surge of satisfaction that further fueled my adrenaline buzz.

But Alex captured my wrist before I could pull it back to strike him again.

“Stop!” he ordered, his face reflecting an unmistakable measure of panic I’d not seen him display before.

I realized my whole body had begun trembling like crazy, vibrating like the blood inside of me was doing. And then I felt it—foreign, yet familiar, a deep and ancient pain that was mine, though not mine, as the reverberation of some unsung, long-dormant violence overdue to have its day rolled up through my chest, past the back of my throat, and out across my bared teeth.

Oh, holy shit, I definitely was growling!

“Alex, do something! Her heart … it’s too fast … everything … it’s all going too fast.”

“Get Kai,” Alex enjoined, his voice annoyingly calm and even, his wide eyes never abandoning mine.

“Why aren’t you stopping it? You have to slow it down! She’s changing too fast. She’ll never make it at this pace.”

Alex didn’t answer, just continued to stare at me like I was some freak with three heads. My right wrist remained captive in his grasp, and my injured hand that was attached to it had begun buzzing and swirling with an energy that was uncomfortable, prompting me to contract and then flex my broken fingers. With sick fascination, I heard the bones re-break and realign themselves, knitting together and healing all on their own.

Alex and Remy heard it, too.

I yanked at my imprisoned wrist. “Let go of me!”

He continued to stare stupidly back, appearing to be lost in some manner of deep and strenuous concentration. It was really starting to tick me off! I raised my left hand to hit him, but he caught that wrist as well.

I overheard Remy instructing Thy to take the other girls back to the house and to send for Kai.

“I want Alcaeus!” I told Remy, followed by an impassioned, “Please?” as my eyes caught his. “I need him. I need to …
smell
… Alcaeus …” I awkwardly confessed, much to my own surprise and total confusion as the words escaped my lips.

I wasn’t sure why; I just knew I did. When I’d been in my coma, Alcaeus’ brief presence had comforted me most. His scent had been the most appealing and soothing. And in the hours since I’d awakened, I’d been petitioning everyone from Alex to Franco to help me get in contact with Alcaeus. Yes, I definitely needed to smell Alcaeus, I decided.
Clearly I was going nuts.

I couldn’t discern the emotions that flitted across Remy’s face in reaction to my request, but he ultimately nodded his concurrence, and that was all that mattered to me.

When my eyes refocused on Alex, I found him looking at me as if I’d just stabbed him through the heart, prompting me to want to hit him again. Unfortunately, he was still holding both of my wrists.

It was then I noticed that atop the stone pillars lining the back of the garden space behind him sat a row of pretentious-looking, ornate vases. How I yearned to wield one of those vases against his fat head.

As the idea came to me, so did one of the hideous vases, flying magically through the air of its own accord to collide with the back of Alex’s unsuspecting head!
I hoped it’d been terribly expensive—an irreplaceable family heirloom, perhaps?

I heard Remy swear and the girls scream and scatter, but Alex didn’t even flinch in response as broken pieces of vase fell to litter the ground around him. It made my tingling hands want to smash another one against his head. As before, just as the desire hit me, another vase miraculously leapt from the back row of pillars to fly at Alex’s skull. Again it shattered against his unflinching crown.

It couldn’t be
me
who was causing those vases to move?

A symphony of growls filled the garden as numerous guards, both in human and in wolf form, swiftly encroached upon me in defense of their precious Alpha. Alex snapped from his bizarre, focused trance then, arising from his seat to pull me close and shield my body from the guards as he shouted orders at them to back off, strictly forbidding anyone from touching me.

Some inner, angry beast of my own was already too threatened and freaked out by their intrusion, though, and every ugly, ornate vase in the garden went flying, attacking and smashing haphazardly against my perceived assailants.

Sweet Jesus!
I was a token wrist corsage and a bucket of pig’s blood shy of being
Carrie White
on prom night at this rate. What the fuck was wrong with me? I couldn’t possibly be doing all this with my thoughts, could I?

“Please calm down?” I heard Alex beseech, his voice sounding curiously far away for someone who was embracing me. “Please breathe, baby? You need to calm down and breathe! Please,
please,
baby?” He sounded terrified.

As he said it, I realized I couldn’t.
I couldn’t breathe
. And I couldn’t see!

I could scarcely hear him or feel him holding me a moment later as my whole world became nothing but pain.

Uncompromising, inconceivable pain!
It pulsed through my entire being, robbing me of all my other senses. It felt as if my bones were incinerating, my insides exploding.
I was dying.
I had to be! Because I didn’t think I could live through it if this level of torture persisted for much longer.

I heard screaming. It was horrific.
Bloodcurdling
. I knew it came from me. But I was helpless to stop it—blind to all else save the immense pain searing through me as I writhed in agony, my arms and legs flailing against Alex’s iron hold on me. Vaguely I registered another set of strong hands restraining my arms, extending and holding the right one out flat against the grass.
When had I wound up on the ground?

Kai’s muffled voice spoke to me as if it were coming from the opposite side of a long tunnel as a needle pierced my arm. He said something about morphine. And then my world was spinning: my head dizzy, my entire body throbbing with a dull ache as tears poured unchecked down my cheeks.

Kai’s voice, along with Alex and Remy’s, floated over me. But I couldn’t understand their words. And I couldn’t see anything—although it felt like my eyes were open.

Alex’s hands were on me, running everywhere, stroking and calming my trembling limbs, his fingers wiping the tears from my cheeks, his lips feathering kisses over my face. Eventually I grew lucid enough to realize they were talking to one another in Portuguese. I sobbed that I didn’t understand, followed by a pathetic, “
Please make it stop!”

“You’re okay. I promise it’ll be okay. Please, stay calm, baby?” Alex entreated, his face nuzzling mine. “You need to preserve your strength. Please try to relax? Is the pain a little better now?”

I choked and blubbered through my hysteria in response as he pulled me into his arms. While it did feel better—
bearable
rather, it was still the worst physical agony of my entire life. Beneath the dizzying effects of the morphine, I could still feel the pain radiating through me, decimating my insides.

“I’ve gone blind! Am I dying?”

“You’re not blind,” Alex reassured me, kissing my eyelids and stroking my hair. “It’s a temporary side effect. You’re going to be fine.”

I couldn’t help but note the fear in his voice and wonder if he believed that. I was cradled in his lap now. It felt good to be held by him. Irritatingly, disgustingly comforting, in fact. Amidst the unprecedented physical torment, the confusion and terror consuming me over what the deuce was happening, it further angered me to know he could still induce that response in me.

“Side effect?” I croaked. “From your blood?” Jesus, I didn’t think I could handle any more side effects from my blood transfusion! I was starting to regret he’d ever saved my life with his blood in the first place.

“Milena, I’ve been up all night analyzing your last two blood draws,” Kai responded, his tone grave, “comparing them to the blood samples we took upon your arrival prior to your accident.”

“And?” Remy’s voice prompted. “What the fuck is happening to her? Why are we blocked? Why is she changing this fast?”

Changing? Oh, dear Lord, help me …

“Her werelock blood count appears to be multiplying rapidly. At an alarming rate.”

“Alex’s blood?” Remy balked in disbelief.

“No, not Alex’s blood. As you know, blood cells don’t reproduce. Not even our werelock blood. Her body is somehow
generating
werelock blood, producing it in her bone marrow—all on its own.”

“Impossible!” Alex rejected, his arms tightening around me.

“She’d have to be in possession of some latent werelock gene,” Remy pondered aloud.

What?
Fucking Jiminy Christmas, I really had moved those vases with my mind!

“Yeah … well, you could … say that …” Kai muttered cryptically.

“How rapidly is she creating them?”

“Faster than anything considered remotely normal. Based on the rate of increase from the draw I took yesterday afternoon to the one I took last night, I’d estimate her werelock blood count has now more than doubled the amount she took from Alex.”

“
What
?” I was taken aback by how desperate my voice managed to come out.
This couldn’t be happening to me.
“My parents were not
Cujos!”

“I know,” Kai said, his tone apologetic. “There was no trace of werewolf or warlock heritage found in the genetic testing performed on your original blood work. We checked thoroughly for that. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Try making sense of it anyway!” Alex demanded.

“A genetic mutation has occurred within her system, and it’s building momentum. It’s as if a switch was flipped, triggering the emergence of some hidden genetic coding that was there all along, although untraceable. Her human cells are dying off and being replaced. The morphine I gave her won’t last much more than ten—maybe fifteen minutes.”

“What does that mean?” I bleated. “My human cells are dying? I’m dying?”

“Shh—it’s okay; you are not dying.” Alex pressed kisses to my brow. “I won’t let you die.”

“You’re
changing,”
Kai clarified.

Changing?
Oh, my God! By “changing” did he mean …

“We know she’s changing into a werewolf,” Remy said, clinching my worst fear. “But how soon? Why so fast?”

“I estimate within less than twenty-four hours.”

“That can’t be right,” Remy disputed. “It’s way too fast a transition.”

“I know,” Kai agreed. “Unless we’re somehow able to slow it down … her survival chances aren’t—”

“Shut up!”
Alex barked. “She’ll be fine!”

A moment of unnerving silence followed while my life passed before my temporarily blinded eyes.

“You’re … positive, my Alpha? You’re completely blocked out of her mind?” Kai seemed to be hesitantly attempting perilous terrain. “Maybe … if you tried again? Now that the morphine has subdued her?”

“I haven’t stopped trying since her eyes first shifted, Kai! What the fuck do you think I’ve been doing here? I’m completely fucking blocked! I’ve approached access from every remotely conceivable angle I know of.”