What Rough Beast [Blood Oath 1] Read Online Free Page A

weakened, she'd fought for survival.
    Not anymore.
    He ran his fingers through her long, dark hair, comforted by its softness. “I'm sorry, bebe. So sorry."
    Once they'd gone to ground in Chicago, he hadn't dared leave her. Garrick prowled, closer by the day, and though Lucien didn't know what had happened to Malachi, whether his partner lived or died, he knew Krystiyan hadn't followed the vampyr elder. The dark master pursued him and the woman instead. Both Garrick and the master tracked him through the scent Lucien couldn't avoid leaving in the human prey he trailed behind them. The Russian's foul odor soon joined Garrick's seductive scent to permeate Chicago's West Side.
    Lucien couldn't hunt.
    His strength deteriorated with each feeding he missed, and he'd missed too many. He felt the loss in the deadweight of his limbs, the lethargic beat of his heart. Fatigue crept over him, through him, and saturated his every pore and muscle.
    His options had dwindled to a blur his mind refused to process.
    He needed blood, but he couldn't feed while their predators were so near.
    He couldn't run from them either.
    Kate's transition had grown more difficult—and dangerous—every night they'd spent on the road to Chicago. He'd flee if he could, but she wouldn't survive if they ran again. Better to starve than allow Krystiyan to snare them on open ground. And Garrick? Damn his conniving, manipulative soul! Luc would fight him, inch by cursed inch, before allowing the vampyr elder to take her so readily.
    Instead, Luc had gambled that he was strong enough to sustain them until the search wavered.
    He'd been wrong.
    He planted a kiss on the crown of her head.
    He must call Garrick.
    "I have fed richly, Luc, glutted myself for you and the woman both."
    His eyes flashed open.
    He tensed, tucked Kate against his side.
    A startled growl emerged from his throat.
    Garrick's eyebrow arched. “You would have called, and I would have answered.” He lifted his arm and slashed at his wrist with sharp incisors. “I found you first."
    The metallic scent of his blood burned Lucien's nostrils. “Stay away from her!"
    "She's dying.” Garrick shoved his streaming wrist toward him.
    Lucien flinched from the first blow of a battle he knew he couldn't win, but instead—
    "Feed."
    Garrick's fingers dripped sweet crimson.
    With the first splash on his lips, Lucien fastened one hand to Garrick's meaty forearm. He held it in his tight grasp, and bending to the wound, he drank.
    Had he been so dry? So cold?
    He hadn't noticed.
    But as blood poured into his ravenous mouth, he recognized the disorientation hunger had wrought in him. If he—a three centuries-old headhunter—was so frail, how much weaker would his ward be?
    "Restore yourself, and your ward will feed from you."
    She would live.
    She must live.
    Lucien clamped his teeth into the wound, satisfied when Garrick's breath hissed at the roughness.
    He drank.
    Within moments, Garrick's strength seeped into his drained body, first as a trickle, then as a flood. Nerve endings snapped. His heartbeat doubled, tripled, until his heart pounded against the wall of his chest as the power of the elder vampyr's blood stirred it to brutal life. Flush with the virus that made them vampyr, Garrick's blood singed his veins like an electric current and so filled him with life, with energy, and blessed God, the power, Lucien sucked greedily.
    "Drink deeply. The woman will need it."
    With the first urgent demands of his hunger appeased, Lucien slid his fingers into Kate's hair. Cradling her scalp, he guided her mouth to the opening he'd made on his chest.
    She sniffed at fresh scarlet gurgling from the cut, her nose wrinkling. They hadn't time to wait for Garrick's blood to steep inside his, but traces of Lucien's familiar scent would tempt her. It had to.
    It did.
    Kate traced the wound with the tip of her pink tongue.
    Lucien's body clenched.
    The violent bite of his teeth hurt Garrick, but Lucien couldn't help