shower. Or perhaps you’d already taken one. It’s foggy. But I recall feeling ill. I think I took a shower, too. There was a towel. And food. But it made me sick.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what happened after that. Except, you were angry. I think I tried to apologize.”
“You did, and I wasn’t angry with you.” He cupped my cheek again and leaned in to kiss me softly, his lips plump and promising against mine. “I couldn’t figure out what was hurting you. That was when Damien mentioned the fragility of mortals. So I tried to turn you.”
My heart sped up with his words. He tried to turn me? “Into a vampire?”
“No, into a bat,” he drawled, nipping my lower lip before pulling back to give me a look. “Yes, into a vampire, pet. But apparently, you tried to bite me during the transformation instead. In all my millennia, I’ve never been bitten by a lycan. Or, I suppose, in your case, a partially turned lycan. However, it carried the same impact. I was high from blood loss, and my wound wouldn’t close. So Damien knocked me out and brought us both here.”
“I… I bit you?” That was what he’d said to Damien. Along with the tidbit about how I nearly killed him.
“I guess you were hungry,” he murmured, not sounding upset about it. “I’d almost depleted your blood supply for the transition, so you merely returned the favor. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out well for either of us.” He continued into a recollection of what happened once he woke up again, telling me the theory about how I’d been bitten the night we met, how his blood temporarily cured me with his immortality, and how the full-moon energy had demanded a shift my body couldn’t handle. Which had led to Edon’s arrival and his subsequent bite.
“Edon’s the dark-haired alpha?” I guessed.
“Yes, he ascended last night. Luna and Silas are his mates.” Ryder focused on me for a moment, his eyebrows dipping down. “You’ve never mentioned Silas before.”
It wasn’t a question, but I sensed his unease. “Does that upset you?”
“He claims to be one of your best friends,” Ryder replied, avoiding my question.
“He is. And Rae.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about them?”
“I…” I trailed off. “I didn’t know how to mention them.”
He fell silent, studying me. “Am I difficult to speak to?” he finally asked, his hand roaming down my side to my hip. “Do I frighten you, Willow?”
The question caused my heart to skip a beat. Did he frighten me? Sometimes. But a dark part of me enjoyed that fear. It could be sensual. Provoking. Invigorating.
Because while he held all the cards, his age and experience severely superior to my own, I felt connected to him in a manner that allowed me to trust him.
Perhaps it didn’t make sense.
Maybe it implied a fracture in my mental state.
But Ryder had shown me an odd sort of kindness in a world overrun by cruelty.
He tried to turn me, I marveled again. “Why?” I asked him, taking our conversation in a new direction. “Why did you try to turn me?”
“Because we’re not done yet,” he replied, his voice just as soft as mine.
“And what happens when we’re done?”
He stared into my eyes, his dark irises glittering with an emotion I could almost taste. Only, I didn’t have a name for it. Something dark and possessive. “Edon wants you to have a choice. We were in the middle of discussing it when you woke up.”
Another shift of topic, but that was Ryder’s way. Always unpredictable. Always thinking. “A choice of what?”
“Clemente Clan or Ryder Region,” he mused, closing the distance between us. I fell to my back as he moved on top of me, his thigh parting my own. “He wants you to choose an alliance. Remain with the lycans or play with me.”
His elbows settled onto the mattress on either side of my head, basking me in the warmth of his body and sending a shiver down my spine. He leaned down to skim his nose across my cheekbone to my ear.
“Do you want to choose, pet?” His teeth grazed my earlobe. “Should I agree to the new alpha’s demand?”
I shivered again. “Would that mean we’re done?”
“Mmm,” he hummed, sliding his lips to my throat. “We’re not done.” He kissed a path back up my neck to my jaw, then gently nibbled my chin before hovering his mouth over mine. “And we may never be done, Willow. My