Filed To Story: Chasing the Rejected Luna's Heart (Clara & Liam) Book PDF Free
Marcus grinned. “Consider it a side hustle.”
I gave him a look. “I still don’t understand how you’re even conscious. You’ve probably lost two pints of blood, best-case scenario.””Thereabouts,” he conceded. He must’ve seen the look on my face, because he added, “I know what you’re thinking.””Try me.””I’m not human,” he answered.”Decent guess,” I echoed. “Am I wrong?””Yes,” he said with a heavy sigh. “…Sort of.””How can you be ‘sort of’ human?”
He replied, “How can you be ‘sort of’ a wolf?””Fair enough,” I mumbled. “But if I knew the answer, I’d tell you.””Honestly, I’m not sure I do know anymore,” he said, his voice gravelly and tired. Weirdly, it didn’t seem like it was the injury that was affecting him the most.
I was still reeling, but keeping him talking seemed to help distract him from the pain. Even if he wanted to pretend it wasn’t bothering him, it had to be. I’d seen seven-foot-tall shifters cry like babies over getting a blood test, let alone getting stitched up without anesthetic.”So you’re, what, a monster hunter? Is that why you run a gym full of shifters?”
I couldn’t help but feel slightly betrayed. Either Sam knew and she hadn’t told me, or Marcus was keeping this from her, too. Maybe even Cole.
I should’ve been scared, not worried about dressing his wounds, but just like Alexander, there was something about him that I couldn’t quite bring myself to fear. At least not enough to walk away from him.
Marcus had given me the benefit of the doubt, and I figured I owed him that in return.”It’s not like that,” he said, sounding earnest enough. The fact that he cared to reassure me was a good sign, I guess. “I fell into the shifter world by accident. I became a hunter for the same reason. I don’t go after supernaturals who aren’t hurting anyone.”
Maybe it was foolish, but I actually believed him. And yeah, I wanted to believe him, but I also didn’t want to believe my judgment of character was that far off after everything I had learned and experienced since striking out on my own.”I guess there are plenty who qualify,” I mused, thinking back to the vampires who attacked me. I still didn’t know exactly why Alexander had been patrolling the streets that night, but if he felt the need to police his own, which seemed likely the case, it stood to reason that humans who were aware of supernaturals would do the same.”There are,” he agreed. There was something distant in his gaze as if whatever thought that had conjured was more troubling than what was presently happening to his body. “More than you could imagine.””You’re human enough,” I said, more certain of that than I had been a few minutes ago. More even than he seemed to be. “You could get killed.””I’m not unprepared,” he said. When he saw my confusion, he gestured to the symbol tattooed over his heart. My eyes widened as it glowed a faint blue, so brief I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.
He gave me a crooked grin that made my heart skip for a different reason in response to my amusement. “It’s a sigil. Sympathetic magic. The ink is mixed with the blood of a vampire, so it gives me certain regenerative abilities.”
One of the few things I knew about vampires was that they couldn’t transmit their nature through a bite any more than we could. It looked like Marcus had found a way to get around it. “But you don’t need to drink blood?”
He grew distant again and looked away. “Magic always exacts a price,” he murmured like he was quoting some often cited adage he had committed to memory. He absently ran a finger over the lines of the tattoo. “In order to keep a sigil alive, you have to feed it.”
I frowned. “So…you do drink blood?”
I wasn’t really sure why he was making such a big deal out of it. If I was going to freak out on him, I would have when I learned he hunted my own kind, however justified he was in doing so.”Not exactly,” he said, looking down at my work. I was halfway through the second deepest gash. “You’re good at that. You have a steady hand.””Thanks. Maybe I’ll think about becoming a field medic if the whole bartending thing doesn’t work out,” I said flatly.
His eyes glimmered with familiar amusement, and he seemed more like the version of him I was used to. “You should. You can stop there. That’ll hold until I can get enough juice to heal.”
I hesitated. If there was one thing I never thought I would do, it was offering my blood to a vampire-or something vampire adjacent. And yet, here I was, about to do it twice. “You can drink my blood if that will really help,” I said, trying not to sound as unnerved by the prospect as I was. Not nearly as much as I should have been. “I don’t know if it’s the same as a human’s, but…”
He seemed surprised by the offer. “It is,” he admitted. “Better, actually, but that’s not how the sigil charges.”
I looked up from tying off the last stitch and clipped the thread. “Then how?”
More silence. He seemed more uneasy about this topic than he had about admitting how he had gotten injured in the first place. “Have you ever heard of an incubus?”
I blinked, not expecting that answer at all. “Yeah. I’m notthat sheltered, I read books. But those are demons…”
There were enough debates as to whether demons even existed in the modern world, but I had to admit, I was newly wary looking at the man before me. Not that he looked like he could be a demon. He certainly didn’t act like one. Hell, I wasn’t even sure what a demon was supposed to act like, but…not him. No fucking way.”I’m not a demon,” he said, looking down at the finished stitching. I must have done a good job because he seemed satisfied and got up to start wiping the blood off his torso.
I hated my brain for fixating on the way his muscles flexed. Actually, I was starting to see where that whole incubus thing might come in… Maybe it would justify my unforgivable fixation on his body.”But killing rogue beasts is what feeds the sigil on my chest. The other one…” I watched in confusion as he rolled down the top of his waistband to reveal the top of another sigil. Like the first, it was enclosed in a circle and I could see the complex twists and turns of a unique design within.