Chapter 38

Sleep leftme at two in the morning, and I was burning. I had nothing but a thin satin nightgown on, but I still felt like I was lying in purgatory, not a bed. My skin was on fire and logic said I should have been sweating like a pig, but I wasn’t. The heat was coming from deep inside me, somewhere I couldn’t see, somewhere almost out of my reach. So, I got up and I went to the window, and I opened it as far as it would go, but even the night air felt hot against my skin. I stayed there, almost falling asleep on the windowsill, breathing in fresh air until I cooled down somewhat, thinking maybe I had caught a bug in Faeries’ Aerie. Maybe I got sick with a virus or something because I was most definitely feverish.

And that was okay. I’d been in contact with foreign creatures, magical creatures, and my immune system needed a boost. No need to panic. I was just a bit sick. Nothing some good sleep and some soup couldn’t fix.

By three a.m. I went back to bed again, feeling a tiny bit better having breathed in that fresh air.

What could have been minutes later, I heard the door opening as if from a dream.

But my eyes seemed to be glued together, the sleep-like state I was in not letting me go, pulling me under harder.

Fuck, I was burning. I was going to combust into flames any second. It hurt in the pit of my stomach, deep in my bones. It hurt as if someone was digging holes all over me or cutting my skin with a blade on fire or pulling me apart all at the same time.

A hand on my cheek. Cold.

“Fall.”

Grey’s voice traveled inside my ears and gave a small shock to my entire system. I wanted to open my eyes so badly, but my body didn’t obey. I wanted to call out his name, to tell him to keep his hands on me because I was burning, but the sound that left my lips was just a moan.

“You’re okay,” Grey said, and I felt his breath blowing against my mouth. Cool breath. He was there, in my bed, right over me. I felt him but he was standing on all fours, not falling on top of me. He only kept his hands on my cheeks.

Move! I shouted at myself in my head, and I somehow managed to move my arms up just a little to grab him by the shoulders. Naked shoulders.

Fuck, his skin was ice-cold. It was heaven.

“Grey,” I whispered, desperate to tell him to keep touching me, but I couldn’t get my jaws to function properly yet.

“I’m right here. You’re okay, Fall. You will be just fine,” he promised me over and over again—but he didn’t understand. I focused all of my being in my eyes, to open them, to see his face.

I needed him to understand, damn it!

By some miracle, it worked. My eyes opened a slit and Grey was right there, his face over mine, his wide grey eyes bloodshot…his fangs extended just below his lower lips.

Chills shot down my back, relieving me from the fire if only for a moment, and my eyes opened wider. His fangs were showing, and his face was full of sharp edges—a monster, but he looked to be in pain at the same time, too.

My God, he was so beautiful my eyes refused to blink because of him.

“Something…something’s wrong,” I managed to choke out. “Grey, something’s…”

“Your blood, Fall,” Grey said with a growl, pressing his forehead to mine—and it felt so, so good. So cold.

I dug my fingers in his shoulders, desperate. “Please, touch me,” I said, my words slurred together, but he understood.

His growl became louder, ringing in my ears. His hand closed around my neck, squeezing a little, and it felt like he breathed life back into me. My eyes opened wider, and I saw all of him, bloodshot eyes and extended fangs, his naked chest full of muscle and smooth-looking skin.

I was going to fucking pass out if he didn’t do something to me. Anything. Anything at all.

“Grey,” I breathed, sliding my hands down the curves of his muscles.

“Hold on, Fall. Hold on a little longer,” he said, moving his hand lower on my chest, cooling me down as if by magic.

The more he touched me the easier I moved. The easier it was to run my hands up and down those arms, and that chest… “So beautiful,” I whispered, grabbing his face in my hands, touching his lips, then his fangs. Fangs, yet I wasn’t scared. I was in awe of them as I ran my fingers down their curved length. “You are so beautiful, Grey.” Everything about him, from the madness in his eyes to those smiles he’d only let me see a couple of times… “Perfect.” His body, his wide shoulders, the way his skin felt under my hands. All of him was exactly right. Madefor me.

A string of curse words fell from his lips when Grey continued to lower his hand down to my breasts, caressing the shape of them, then going lower, to my waist. But the thin fabric of the nightgown I wore stood in the way of our skins touching, and so I moved, trying to pull it up. Trying to take it off. I didn’t want clothes on me or him. I wanted our bodies touching everywhere.

But Grey stopped me. He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled up my hand over my head, and his body leaned closer to mine in the process, cooling me down instantly, making me even more aware.

“No, Fall. Not yet,” he told me.

“I need you,” I choked. “It…it hurts, Grey. Please.” It hurt so much, but it didn’t hurt when he was touching me.

Again, he growled, and I could have sworn his fangs became longer. “I know, baby. I know it hurts. It’s your blood, calling for us.” I stopped breathing altogether. “The Blood Call has begun. I can’t take you yet, but I will soon. I’ll take all your pain away. Be patient. Stay with me.”

His hand slipped down to my leg and on my naked thigh, making me moan when he pulled it up. Fuck, he felt so good that I forgot what he said instantly—but only for a moment.

Blood Call.

My God, I wasn’t sick at all. I wasn’t feverish. I hadn’t caught a fucking bug—my blood was rushing so incredibly it made me feel like I was on fire. My blood was calling.

And the door opened once more.

“Finally, it begins.”

Romin’s whisper filled my ears, and my instincts jumped. His hands would feel cool against my skin, too.

“Hold on tight,” Grey whispered, pressing his forehead to mine for another second.

But then Romin said, “Move, brother.”

And he did. Looking at me like he might burst into flames, too, Grey moved away from on top of me and to the side of the bed, and Romin was already climbing on the other.

“Don’t start the party without us,” said none other than Emil, as he, too, entered the room with Tristian in tow.

Behind them was Valentine.

All the Evernight brothers were here.

They wore only bottoms—some jeans and some sweatpants. They were all ripped, beautifully made as if art carved out of marble, and they all had their fangs extended as they prowled toward me with their heads down and their bloodshot eyes on me.

I was going to fucking die for real.

God, how I wanted them. I wanted all of them to put their hands on me right now and cool down the fire that was boiling my blood. I needed it to stop hurting so badly, but when I tried to talk, all that came out of me were moans. Desperate moans.

And the brothers growled like the beasts that they were as they all climbed on the big bed with me, surrounding me on all sides.

I was afraid. I was aroused. I was burning.

And I needed Grey to be touching me again, so I reached for him with all my strength. He was kneeling on the left by my head, with Romin on the right. Tristian and Emil were next to them, and Valentine was by my feet.

They were all on my bed, half naked, fangs in full display, looking at me like I was their salvation as well as their doom. Like they both loved me and wanted to eat me at the same time. And I understood deep in my bones that all of those things were true, but that still didn’t stop me from burning.

Grey’s hand wrapped around mine, cooling me down a little, but it was nothing compared to what I needed.

“Please,” I breathed, looking at the brothers, begging them to save me from this internal hell. They looked like angels of death, and I’d die any day at their hands—or their fangs—if only it stopped hurting so much. If only I could start breathing properly again.

“Oh, our beautiful bride,” Romin said, running his fingertips down my chest, stopping at the lacy neckline of my nightgown, but even that small touch cooled me down. Even that small touch helped me focus.

“We can hear your blood singing,” Tristian said.

“It sings so beautifully,” said Emil with his eyes closed, throwing his head back for a moment as if he was lost in ecstasy.

Please, please, please, I begged them in my mind, pulling at Grey’s hand with all my strength. He squeezed my fingers between his but didn’t touch me anywhere else, and the others were all waiting, too. They were fucking waiting, when they could see how much it hurt, how I was writhing in between them. How desperately I needed them.

And the heat kept on climbing.

“Almost there,” Romin said. “We’re going to give you release soon, young one.”

A scream ripped from my throat before he’d even finished speaking.

The sun must have decided to hide under my skin tonight. It was scorching every single cell in my body, yet somehow, I was still there. I was still lying on the bed with all the Evernight brothers looking down on me, listening to me pleading as their fangs extended lower and lower.

“Just a little longer,” Grey whispered, so slowly I barely caught it. Just a little longer.

I held onto his hand still—he was the only one touching me, and I suspect it was because I refused to let go of his hand. Fuck that—I needed him. He was my only source of cold. He was my lifeline right now and when I screamed at the top of my lungs with the second heat wave that crashed inside of me, I held onto him with everything I had.

The Blood Call. The fucking Blood Call had caught me right in the castle, in the Whispering Woods, on the night I least expected it. When I’d already convinced myself that it wouldn’t happen, that it wasn’t my destiny, that I’d be long gone by the time my blood decided to fucking call for the Evernights.

And now here I was.

When the third heatwave hit me, there was no longer any voice in me to scream with. My muscles locked and my eyes rolled in my skull and I thought, this is it. This is how I die. My life had finally come to an end.

But then Romin was close, his lips right next to my ear when he whispered, “Erchin vinna meio.”

Before I could blink, he bit the side of my neck lightning fast, and I felt his fangs clearly as they slid inside me.

Cold. He sucked my blood into his mouth, and I felt it, and in return, my body was filled with blissful, heavenly cold.

I moved.

Instinct took over and I wrapped a hand around the back of his neck to keep him there. He felt so good, I needed him to be biting me forever. So fucking relieving…

But a second in, he let go.

The frustrated scream that left my lips this time was different, and as soon as Romin’s fangs were no longer inside me, I felt the heat doubling, tripling at an incredible speed.

Fuck, they couldn’t do this to me. They had to help me—I was dying! How could they not care?!

But before I could plead with them again, the silhouette of a man came over me, and I could barely see at that point, so all I was able to make out were the eyes—Emil’s eyes. He leaned closer and closer, and I held perfectly still, knowing exactly what he was going to do.

“Erchin vinna meio, setie,” he whispered, and he bit me on the other side of my neck.

I had never felt a more satisfying release in my whole life. Cold slipped from the tips of his fangs and reached deep inside me, cooling down the rushing blood in my veins, lowering the intensity of the heat that was going to drive me fucking insane. I breathed, trying to reach up to hold him there, but Emil moved away much too soon. His eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth and fangs a deep red, and he threw his head back, growling.

“Do—” I started to say, but before I could finish spitting a single word, Grey was there, right in front of my face.

He was there.

Those eyes. Those lips. Those fangs…

The world stood perfectly still for a moment, and even the sun under my skin forgot to burn me. The room, the bed, all the other brothers disappeared, and it was just him holding me in this timeless space, his hands on either side of my face, his lips parted.

I don’t know what it was about this guy, but my body was a stranger to me when it came to him. I raised my head before I knew it, and I kissed those lips, fangs and all, like I knew I was going to be burned to ashes any second now, and I didn’t want to die without knowing his taste.

Spicy. He tasted spicy, just like the scent of him. He tasted like Grey.

His tongue slipped between my lips and I moaned, and the sensations returned full force—the heat and the sound and the feel of his hands on me, his tongue in my mouth. He licked the inside of my lips, but he didn’t kiss me, didn’t have the time. I felt his urge in the way he bit my neck, on the same side Romin had.

The moment his fangs were inside of me, I was alive again.

My blood was in his mouth, my arms locked tightly around his neck. My eyes rolled in my skull again, and the more he took, the lighter I became. The more he took, the more power that heat inside me lost until I was finally breathing again.

I was breathing.

“That’s enough,” said Romin from somewhere to the side, and Grey growled, still latched onto my neck.

I held onto him tighter. It wasn’t enough. I needed more. Just a little more…

But Romin wouldn’t have it. “Grey, that is enough.”

The power that charged the air was instant. It nudged both Grey and me as if with a finger, and the next moment, Grey began to move back. He let go of my neck and licked my blood off his lips, staying there in front of me for a second as if to make sure that I was okay.

But I wasn’t, not anymore.

Please, I said to him with my eyes, and he understood. That’s why he refused to move away from me, and Romin had to actually push him to the side so that another one of them could come closer—Tristian. It was Tristian’s turn, and when his fangs were inside me and my blood in his mouth, the heat began to retreat again, slowly.

My body had developed a mind of its own because no matter how scary the name Blood Call had seemed to me, and no matter how many nights I’d lain here awake, terrified of the idea of being bitten by a vampire, right now I craved it. It was all that mattered. It was my salvation, and I never wanted to stop giving.

But Tristian moved away from me, too, my blood dripping off his fangs that he caught with his finger and licked clean.

Then he gave way for the last brother—Valentine.

Sweet Valentine whose little dragon had chosen me. Sweet Valentine who’d somehow gotten under my skin without my even realizing it, who’d claimed me as his at first, and now we were right where we were always going to be.

He didn’t look at me now the way he did in the beginning. It was different. Better. And call me crazy, call me naive, but I believed with all my heart that he cared about me. Maybe he even considered me his friend, too.

Valentine crawled over me, on his knees and hands, looking down at the sides of my neck as if he were both in awe and disgusted. I gave him time because with all that biting until now the heat had lost its intensity, and though I was still burning, it was about to get cooler inside my body any second.

Valentine came closer and closer, his beautiful face filling my vision—so young. So smooth. Everything about him was brand new.

“Ready, Sunshine?” he whispered, and a brand-new chill ran down the length of me.

Fuck, yeah, I was ready, but he didn’t wait for me to say it out loud. He whispered those same senseless words in my ear, then bit the side of my neck like his brothers had done.

Cold slipped inside of me one more time. I was completely lost to the sensation as Valentine drew blood out of me, just a little, but I felt all of it. I heard every last drop filling his mouth, and it felt incredible to know I gave him life with it, just like he was giving me.

My eyes opened and I saw the ceiling of the room, and my thoughts began to fall in order.

I remembered the ring and Faeries’ Aerie, and Emerald with her Storyteller. I remembered Syra and her siren sisters and the curse—and I remembered Grey.

My heart skipped a long beat.

Valentine let go of me and fell back, his lips red, my blood dripping down his chin.

It was over. The Evernight brothers had all drunk from me now, even if most had taken only a little.

Even so, I could feel my body shutting down.

Over. The Blood Call had ended.

Now, one of them claimed me for himself, and the life I always thought I wanted would remain a fantasy forever.