Bound by Blood and Fang

Chapter 12

Alora

The kitchen is warm when we enter. Not the suffocating, skin-too-tight kind of heat that’s been riding me for the past several days—this is real warmth. Hearth-warmth. The kind that smells faintly of freshly baked bread, woodsmoke, and something slightly herbal that I can’t quite place.

The woman guides me over to a small table that is tucked next to the far wall. My legs are still shaky enough that I don’t argue with her when she presses a hand between my shoulders and nudges me down into a chair.

“Sit,” she says firmly, already turning away like she knows I’ll listen.

She isn't wrong. I don't feel like my legs can hold my body up for much longer. The chair legs scrape softly against the stone floor as I lower myself fully onto it, my palms flattening against the tabletop to steady myself. The bond is still humming beneath my skin—low now but still very restless, growing irritated at once again being denied.

The woman moves through the kitchen with purpose. She crosses to the other side and immediately starts opening a row of cupboards and pulling down several jars without hesitation. The sound of glass clinking against wood fills the room. Corks pop free as she sniffs one jar, wrinkles her nose, before she shoves it aside to grab another.

She doesn’t ask me any questions. Doesn’t fuss over me. Doesn’t hover the way the maids do when they bring in my dinner in the evenings. They watch me like I’m some strange exhibit they can’t look away from.

Once she has procured the ingredients I assume she was looking for, she grabs a mortar and pestle from a shelf and sets it down with a solid thunk. Then she starts tossing things in—pinches of dried leaves, a few crushed petals, something dark and resinous that smells sharp enough to make my stomach twist all the way from the other side of the room.

She moves the pestle fast, grinding the contents with practiced ease that only comes from time and experience. The sound is rough and rhythmic, filling the space between us, and I close my eyes and breathe in time with the sound.

“What… is that?” I finally manage to ask, my voice is a little raw, like I’ve been screaming for hours.

She doesn’t look up from what she is doing. “Something to take the edge off,” she says shortly. “It's not a cure. Not a miracle. But it should be enough to keep you from climbing the walls and out of your skin.”

Now that sounds… incredible, actually.

She pours hot water from a kettle that I hadn’t even noticed was warming over the nearby hearth, the steam blooming up in a fragrant cloud from the crushed mixture in the waiting mug. The scent hits me immediately—earthy and bitter. My stomach twists again, and I cover my nose with my hand.

A few moments pass before she returns to the table and sets the mug in front of me. I lean forward to the inside of the cup. Dark, muddy brown liquid swirls as steam curls from it.

“Drink it slow,” she says, and I finally look up to see her watching me carefully. “It’ll taste awful. If it doesn’t, I messed something up.”

I huff out a weak, humorless breath and curl my fingers around the mug. The ceramic is warm against my palms.

“Are you… a healer or something?” I ask, glancing at her as I raise the mug to my lips. My nose wrinkles the moment the fragrance hits my senses again.

One corner of her mouth quirks as she pulls out the chair across from me and sits, folding her arms on the table like she’s got all the time in the world now that I’m not actively being mauled by kings.

Up close, she’s smaller than I’d first thought—but not in a fragile way. She proved that when she planted herself between a vampire and me without a single breath of hesitation. Her dark hair is braided over one shoulder, loose strands escaping to soften a face marked by freckles and laugh lines that suggest she smiles often. And her eyes are a warm honey brown that are framed by thick dark lashes that watch me like a hawk.

“No, I'm not a healer.” She tilts her head slightly. "It's just something I picked up years ago."

I nod my head and tip the mug back just enough for the liquid to touch my tongue. My stomach actively revolts as the bitter liquid slides down my throat. Yeah, this does taste awful. I cough, my body actively trying to expel the liquid.

“Yeah, it does that when the heat is this strong. You will want to drink this twice a day for the time being until you and your bonded's have sorted everything out. I’ll make sure to have one of the maids bring it to you.”

I am only half listening at this point. Not to be rude or anything, but with the tiniest bit of mixture in my system, now I can feel the effect starting. The intense pressure that has built and built for days since The Heat ritual begins to ebb. I no longer feel as flushed as I did before the two of them burst through my door. I take another sip before setting the cup in front of me with a deep sigh of relief. The pressure in my core is still there, but it's now dulled enough that I can think properly without wanting to climb on top of one of them.

“Wow,” I say with a grateful smile. “Thank you. It tastes awful, but it has helped.”

She smiles back in return and leans back in her own chair.

“I didn't think the heat would still be a factor after a bond was made,” I say, taking another sip, fighting not to wince at the taste, and forcing my stomach to keep it down. If this keeps me sane, I don't care what it tastes like; I will drink it.

“The forced heat cycle is always the worst,” she replies. “Your body stays in a perpetual state of readiness for a while before it finally starts to fade. Then the Heat only happens once a month—when your body is primed for conceiving. If you are lucky, you will have conceived the night of the ritual and will not have to suffer for much longer.”

She says it so casually. But I freeze, staring at her with wide eyes. “Excuse me?”

Her smile slips for a moment as she sits forward. “I take it you don't know much about what happens after the ritual yet, do you?”

I wonder what gave her that impression? Once again, I refrain from being short with her. It isn't like any of this is her fault. She doesn't deserve my anger when all she has done in the past twenty minutes since I met her is help me. I shake my head. “No. Nothing but what They let be known. My mother married my father before the ritual that year, so she wasn’t forced into it, so she could only share what stories she knew.”

“And your bondeds haven’t bothered to explain anything to you either, have they?” Her expression says that she already knows the answer to that question as well.

I let out a short, humorless laugh. “You mean besides declaring me theirs while they squabble like children the rest of the time? No. They haven’t.”

For a moment, fear claws its way up my chest. The last thing I want is to be pregnant.

“Idiots, both of them,” she mutters, snapping me out of my thoughts and back into our conversation. “I’ve told him a dozen times they need to stop keeping everything a secret. Things would go smoother if they would. But he insists tradition should be maintained. He has no idea what it’s like for us on the other side.”

“Us? You’re a human? I thought you were a werewolf like your bonded,” I blurt out, confused. She felt like a werewolf with the heat that was rolling off her, and the way she didn’t flinch in front of a Vampire King who could have killed her if he wanted. It all screamed werewolf. So how could she be human?

“See?” she says, exasperated, throwing her hands in the air in front of her. “If they were more open, none of us would be so blindsided the moment we cross over the threshold of the forest and see the truth.” She reaches across the table and takes my hands in hers. “Okay. Let’s start from the beginning. I’m Jenny—Beta Silas’s bonded. And yes, I’m human.”

And with that, she launches into a very detailed explanation of everything that I wish I’d known before I was forced to run through that forest. She talks about the ritual. About the bond. About how the heat doesn’t just vanish after the initial claiming until the female is pregnant.

She explains how the body reacts to the bond, how their instincts override logic, and how the bond will pull at all three of us constantly now. How now, because of that very bond, the three of us are connected. That the marks at the base of my throat are locks, keeping me tied to them.

She tells me about the Fates and how they are not just something non-existent that everyone curses when things go awry, but that they are real, almost like a deity, and how it is they that choose these connections, and that none of us had a say in the matter. How a Triad bond is considered rare. So rare, in fact, that the last known one that anyone knew about was so long ago that it was written in an ancient text that was now crumbling into dust. By the time she’s done, my brain feels like it’s been wrung out and hung up to dry.

Is it warmer in here than it was before?

Or is the tea already wearing off?

“Okay, so let me try and wrap my mind around what you’re saying,” I say, pushing my pale hair out of my face as I lean forward. “You’re saying the Heat will not stop until one of them impregnates me?”

She nods. “Yes and no, if you haven't already conceived, it will ease. It is just going to take longer, a month or two. It will only be Alpha Calder. The vampires have a much harder time conceiving. Which is why they turn others instead. It's not impossible, but a Blue Blood hasn't been born in centuries, I am told.”

Oh, great, like that makes the idea any better. The child I have to bear will just shift into a giant dog, stalking the shadows at night, ripping throats out. Yeah, that makes it all so much more reasonable.

What in the nine hells am I going to do now, when every option that I thought I might have feels like someone else's decision? Am I going to be forced to carry the Alpha’s child just to get a respite from this cursed heat?

F*cking Fates, this sh*t isn’t fair.

The words echo in my skull, loud and jagged, scraping against everything Jenny just told me. Tradition. Rarity. Destiny. All neat little words that dress up the fact that women are fed to bonds without being given the full truth until it’s already too late.

My hands curl into fists on the table, nails biting into my palms as my anger grows. Something hot and furious coils in my chest, pushing past the fear, past the panic, past the bone-deep exhaustion that I have been dealing with for days. They could have told me.

Both of them. They were Kings. Leaders. Creatures who were supposed to pride themselves on control and foresight and strength—and they let me walk blind into this like it was some sick sense of mercy. Like keeping me in ignorance was kinder than the truth. I shove my chair back and stand, the legs of the chair scraping loudly against the boards. Jenny looks up at me, startled now.

“Alora—”

“I'm sorry, but I think I need some air,” I say, already moving towards the door of the kitchen.