Page 32 of Blood Ties

The bedroom door locked with a heavy click. I put the keys and case under the pillow, placed the largest kitchen knife on the bedside table and sat on the edge of the mattress.

The bed was soft. The room was warm. I could still feel Stellan at the other end of the passage.

Pain came first, dull and steady where the chains held him. Hunger followed, no longer sharp enough to frighten me but too deep to ignore.

He was trying to keep both from reaching me.

That made them harder to dismiss.

I lasted ten minutes before unlocking the door.

Stellan looked towards the passage as I returned with one of the sitting-room chairs. “The bedroom failed to meet your standards?”

“The bedroom is fine. You’re the fucking problem.”

“I did warn you.”

I placed the chair near the service doorway, safely outside his reach, and sat facing him. “I’m not feeding you tonight. I’m also not leaving you alone while you pretend the hunger isn’t getting worse. Tell me when your control changes, and I’ll decide what happens next with all available information.”

His expression lost its amusement. “Staying close will let you feel more of it.”

“I already feel it. At least here I can see whether you’re about to tear a chain out of the wall.”

He looked at the chains.

I stayed in the chair.

He leaned his head back against the dais and closed his eyes.

For a while, the room remained quiet. I watched the red marks fade along the floor. Stellan’s breathing slowed. My own pulse followed it.

Then his free hand closed hard around the edge of the stone.

A copper taste filled my mouth.

My stomach cramped with a hunger that wasn’t mine.

Stellan opened his eyes. His fangs were down.

“It’s getting worse,” he said.

9

STELLAN

Bryony sat in the chair near the service passage, safely outside my reach. Her bandaged hand rested in her lap. The clean cloth hid the cut, but it couldn’t hide the pulse beating in her wrist.

I could hear every beat.

She’d scrubbed the blood from her skin and changed the bandage. The royal rooms smelled of soap, tea and woodsmoke now. None of it covered the warm human scent that had filled the throne room since she arrived.

Her return to the chair hadn’t helped. Distance softened the hunger, but seeing her choose to stay made a different need settle beside it. I wanted her closer for reasons that had nothing to do with survival.

That was exactly why she needed the locked fucking door.

The stored blood had given me control for a while. The Claiming was burning through it much faster than I’d expected.

“Go back to the bedroom,” I said. “Lock the door and stay there until this settles.”