She shook her head. She didn’t know what more to say and she definitely didn’t want to speak the truth aloud that she could never serve a man who killed wraith-pairs the way Zeph did.
“I want to take a shower.” She shoved her mug at him. When he took it from her, she threw the comforter back and headed swiftly to the bathroom.
Once beneath the warm spray of five jets, she let loose with a heavy fit of screaming.
And Zephyr showed great sense by leaving her alone.
***
Chapter Four
Zephyr listened to Alesia shout her rage and oddly enough, the sound eased something inside him. Similar feelings held him captive and he was pretty sure that her venting somehow gave expression to his own deep frustration.
Now that he’d grappled with all that had happened in the last few hours, he knew they were in trouble. The incredible taste and effect of her blood on his system and how extraordinary it was to make love to her had thoroughly disrupted his view of his world.
For one thing, he hadn’t been free of pain like this from the time he’d first become a mastyr vampire over thirty-five years ago.
Now he was free, yet at the same time, he felt possessive of Alesia, something she really didn’t need to hear. Gerrod had warned him that other mastyrs would be drawn to her from this point forward and unl
ess he was willing to complete the bond with her, she’d be fair game. In addition, she’d feel compelled to serve any mastyr who came to her.
The thought of Alesia with another men set him to pacing in front of the living room fireplace. He couldn’t bear the idea of anyone having access to her body either from sex or from her vein.
But the worst part was that nothing about Alesia being a blood rose changed their substantial differences. The fact that she could relieve him of his chronic blood starvation didn’t eradicate her belief that what he did night after night was a great evil. During the past year, she’d made her opinion clear a hundred times over.
He didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do.
But as he paced and as Alesia’s shouts finally grew fewer and fewer, he knew one thing for certain, that he didn’t want to go back to his life without her. He loved her and he needed to be with her and it sure didn’t help that he’d been celibate since they’d broken up.
He didn’t know how to make this work, but he wanted to bond with her, more than life itself.
But how he was going to persuade Alesia to get on board, he had no idea.
* * * * * * * * *
Alesia slipped into her work jeans, red t-shirt and thick-soled diner shoes. Using Zephyr’s blow dryer, she even achieved a fairly decent look for her hair. Her shoulder bag had disappeared—probably left behind in the gravel parking lot during the attack.
Above all, however, the earlier feel-good from the sex had disappeared entirely in the face of her new, horrifying reality.
A blood rose.
How could she be a blood rose? From what she understood, only the most powerful women in the Nine Realms had that capacity, which didn’t exactly describe her.
But was that really true? Or did she have more ability than she thought? More potential?
After all, she’d seen the red wind of the Invictus before the first pair had arrived and as far as she knew, very few realm-folk could do that. Add to the equation that she’d actually knocked a power-enhanced Invictus vampire out of the sky with her battle energy, and maybe, just maybe, she possessed greater capacity than she’d ever thought possible.
But what was she supposed to do with this information? Was she supposed to bond with Zephyr?
And while the physical part of her did the happy dance at the sheer notion of getting to share his bed full-time, the rest of her cringed. He held an opposing view about what should be done with wraith-pairs and she saw no way around that, since deep in her heart, she hoped that one day her mother would be found, rescued and rehabilitated.
Alesia, and the fae part of her, was absolutely sure that one day her mother would come home.
She sat down on the long bench at the foot of the bed, and called for Zephyr. They needed to talk, get everything out in the open.
Zephyr appeared in the doorway and the mere sight of him filling her with tremendous longing. But she could never be with a man who slaughtered wraith-pairs, something she had to make him understand.
She would have opened the subject, but he spoke first. “I want us to form the blood rose bond.”