Chapter 8 - Percy

With her bright eyes and slightly parted mouth, Veronica is more gorgeous than I ever remembered. I know the blood-bond is mingling with the current mating bond, and the more time I spend in her company, the worse I will feel. As the bond grows stronger, it will be harder and harder to keep from putting my hands on her.

As her torso presses against mine, I have to take deep breaths to keep from running my hands under her ass, exploring her body, trying to learn everything about her body now, see all the ways it's the same and all the ways it's changed from what I remember.

I want to take her right now, carry her back to my apartment, taste her, have her under me—

I cut the images off. Imagining her naked isn't going to do anything but make me feel worse. My cock is already hard at the thought of getting inside her, finally, after years of waiting. When I remind myself that it will never happen, that I could really hurt her, or even kill her, I get a chest pain and step back from her, putting my hand over my heart.

"Percy," Maisie says, "please sit down. I need to monitor you to make sure you're not going to destabilize again."

I sit down on the edge of a cot, watching as Veronica glances between me and the door, as though she's not sure what to do. I want to get on my knees, beg her to stay, plead with her not to leave me. But I won't. She doesn't deserve that.

Veronica didn't understand the gravity of the blood bond, and what it meant for her. Maisie didn't even understand, and the thought made my chest tighten. If they had blood-bonded us together in an attempt to save me, and I'd died shortly after, Veronica would have died, too.

Not only will Aris, and the rest of the team, be pissed when they find out, but there's not a doubt in my mind that they'll try to break the blood-bond between us. I don't know if something like that is even possible, but with how wonderful the blood-bonding felt, I can only imagine undoing it must feel like hell.

When I open my eyes, Veronica is still standing there, looking at me.

As a human, can she even feel the mating bond? The blood-bond? And what does it feel like for her?

I need to talk to her, figure out what we will do about it. But I'm not sure she's even open to talking to me, despite her support and affection for me here. That's just what she's like—a nurse, always looking for a patient.

"Maisie," I say, hearing how gruff my voice is and trying to clear my throat. After everything that's happened—the wound, the vampire venom, and the blood-bonding—I feel like I need to swallow gallons of water so I won't feel thirsty anymore.

"Yeah?" she asks, passing me a cup of pills. I don't ask questions, I just swallow them back, gratefully guzzling the cup of water she offers me.

"Can you alter Veronica's scent?" I ask, opening one eye and looking at the nurse, who looks startled. "If the others smell her, they're going to know the truth. I'm assuming you want that about as much as I do?"

Maisie's face goes white, and she glances back at Veronica, swallowing hard.

"That would be a fair guess," she says, her voice a little too breathy. "I know you can erase a scent. I don't know if you can alter one."

"I don't really see what our other options are," I mutter, "other than sneaking her out of here before they can catch her scent, but I imagine that would also raise some questions."

"I'm going to see what I can do. Rosa has been teaching me some things. Maybe all that chemical knowledge can come in handy."

"Alter my…scent?" Veronica asks, wrinkling her nose and stepping forward as Maisie goes around the corner to a series of tubes and computers. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

Despite myself, despite the entire situation, I laugh. It has been so long since anyone from the team joked with me the way they used to. It feels foreign, but it's so, so good. I get a flash of the person I used to be—joking, laughing, seeing the light in everything.

It's been hard to do that for a long time now.

"No," I say, rubbing a hand over my head. Whatever Maisie gave me is starting to kick in, taking the edge off the wound in my side, which is starting to itch from the healing process.

"What does that mean?" she asks, the corner of her lips quirking up. "That you wouldn't tell me if I smelled?"

"In the entire time I have known you," I say, before I can think better of it, "you have always smelled like cinnamon."

My sentence hangs in the space between us, heavy with meaning. The entire time I've known her—the length and weight behind our relationship. I close my eyes and pray Maisie doesn't read too much into that, or she might be the first to realize that Veronica and I knew each other before the whole kidnapping thing.

And this blood-bond to her is going to look a lot worse if anyone realizes we dated before. That I took time off of work to spend time with a human in New York City. That I fell in love with her. That, as far as I could tell, she was—and still is—my mate.

That is not going to look good. I drop my head into my hands, letting out a long breath.

"I'm sorry that you have to be here," I say, finally, and when I look up, to my surprise, Veronica is smirking.

"Yeah," she says, "I'd kind of wanted to go out on the lake tonight."

"Go out on the lake?" I ask, blinking against the stars in my eyes, which must be remnants from earlier, when I felt like I was going to pass out.

"In a paddle boat," she clarifies. I remember Bigby rallying donations to get free paddle boats for tourists and residents of the town to use. Technically, there's no rule about not using them at night, and I picture it—drifting to the center of the lake with Veronica, looking up at the stars, surrounded by nothing but calm waters.

I want it, all at once, more than anything.

I've struggled to keep myself in one piece for the past few months. Going to the bar with the team every once in a while, was the only thing I left my apartment for. No matter how many times Bigby invited me out to the lake, I said no. I didn't want to make anyone else uncomfortable.

I was a constant reminder of all the terrible things we had gone through together. And Gods forbid one of the humans I hurt saw me out there, and it ruined their family lake day. Each day, I felt like a monster, self-imposing house arrest to protect the local townspeople from my unique flavor of evil.

"That sounds nice," I finally choke out. I start to feel a little lethargic again, and wonder if Maisie gave me something to help me sleep.

"Yeah," Veronica says, tilting her head at me. "Are you feeling okay?"

I wave my hand in front of my face, as though it's nothing, but my blood is starting to feel thick again. Deep breaths, I tell myself, trying to calm down, but it doesn't matter. Maybe getting over the venom the first time was a fluke, and now Veronica and I are both going to die.

The thought makes me panic.

"Go get—" I start, just as Maisie walks into the room, carrying a syringe.

"That was surprisingly easy," she says but stops when she sees Veronica's face and me struggling to breathe again. "Oh, no—no, no, no."

She sets the syringe down on the tray and runs over to me, shining a light in my eyes. I pant, trying to ignore how my lungs are starting to feel like thin, shaking paper bags, squeezing in each time I try to breathe.

"We need more," she says, and Veronica has her sleeve rolled up and sits on the cot next to mine. She grabbed the little plastic band, tying it around her arm herself as Maisie runs across the room, grabbing a blood letting kit and sprinting back.

"It's okay, it's okay," Maisie says, using her teeth to rip packages and fumbling with some tubes and needles. The sight of them makes me feel even more faint, and I put my head back.

"Are we going to do a direct transfusion?"

"What about clotting?" Maisie asks, alarm in her voice.

"We'll just have to watch," Veronica answers, and when I glance at her, she's pumping her arm, and Maisie is preparing to put an IV in her arm.

"Oh, Gods," I mutter, and a moment later, Maisie has moved over to me. She pumps my bed all the way down, and Veronica's all the way up, then sticks a needle in me, too. The feeling of it sliding into my skin is enough to make me sick.

It's funny—of all the blood and gore I've seen, of all the bullet wounds and medical equipment, needles still make me feel the worst.

"I've never done something like this before," Maisie says, bouncing on her toes. "I have no idea if it's going to work."

"It will work," Veronica says, and it comes out like it's through gritted teeth. "It has to work."

Slowly, bit by bit, I start to feel better. After thirty minutes, Maisie stops the flow and takes the needles out, going back to monitoring my vitals.

"This is like nothing I've ever seen before," she says, gesturing for me to hold a piece of gauze over where the needle was in my arm. I watch as she winds wrapping around Veronica's elbow. "We did the blood-bond about an hour ago—I wonder if that amount was just not enough, or if this is something like chemotherapy."

"What are you saying?" I ask, right as Veronica looks up at Maisie, understanding dawning in her eyes.

"She's saying," Veronica says, "that there are two outcomes here. The first is that whatever blood thing we did earlier was just not enough, and this is. That would mean you won't be bothered by the pathogen again."

"What's the other option?"

"The other option is that the pathogen is strong, and your body needs more of whatever Veronica has—whether that's antigens or something else—and we're going to need an aggressive treatment plan."

"Aggressive treatment plan," I parrot, looking between the two of them.

"She means that if you start to feel the symptoms of this again, you're going to need another blood transfusion. Quickly."

Maisie chews on the inside of her thumb, glancing between the two of us.

"That either means that you need to spend every waking moment in this clinic," she says, "or—"

"No," Veronica says, getting to her feet and shaking her head. "Absolutely not. This whole thing has already been way too much."

"What are the two of you talking about?" I ask, wondering why Veronica is so up in arms. Without taking her eyes off of Veronica, Maisie continues.

"If Veronica just stays near you, she can do the direct transfusion herself."

Stays near me . It sounds perfect and amazing; it's all I've ever wanted. It also sounds like a nightmare. I wonder how I could possibly manage if she was near me all the time.

"She doesn't have to," I start to say, thinking that I'll just let the venom end me and be done with the whole thing, until I remember that if I die, she dies, too.

"Wow, thank you," Veronica snaps, all friendliness from earlier gone. Apparently, the idea of needing to be around me sounds horrific to her. "I didn't realize you respected consent now."

"I'm sorry," I say, lowering my eyes. "I don't know if I ever got the chance to say that to you, but I am."

"Sorry, it is not very helpful compared to what happened to me, Percy."

"I know that."

"Do you?"

"I don't even remember it, Veronica," I say, feeling a tear slip down my cheek. Maisie is looking between us, a question in the quirk of her eyebrow. "There are very few things I remember from that time."

"Oh, and I'm not one of them."

"I was sick," I say, balling my hands into fists. "I know that when you look into my face, all you see is the face of a monster. But that monster was wearing my body once it got inside me, and I wish, more than anything in the world, that I had been able to stop it from doing the things it did while wearing my face."

I stand up from the table, even though I feel like shit, and stalk out of the room, even as Maisie and Veronica call after me.