Chapter 55: Blood sucker

Chapter 55

Isabella’s hands flew up instinctively, her fingers digging into Lucian’s iron-hard wrist as the rim of the cup bruised her lip.

Her body jerked against his crushing weight, a desperate, frantic struggle against the inevitable.

The liquid was thick, hot, and cloyingly sweet, hitting her tongue with a flavor that was terrifyingly potent.

The sheer thickness of the blood made her throat seize. She choked, sputtering out a small, dark trickle of red that trailed down the corner of her mouth to stain the expensive charcoal silk of the sheets.

But Lucian didn’t budge. He was an immovable mountain of cold resolve. His hand remained locked on her jaw, his thumb pressing firmly into the hinge of her cheek to keep her mouth open, ruthlessly guiding the heavy liquid down.

“Swallow,” his voice commanded, vibrating through the bond. She gasped, the liquid nearly sliding into her windpipe before she instinctively gulped to keep from drowning.

The moment the blood hit her stomach, the effect was instant.The bone-deep cold she had carried since waking—that lingering, ghostly dampness from the spectral cliff—was incinerated instantly.

A searing heat exploded from her core, racing through her limbs until her very fingertips tingled with electricity.

The dark veins on her neck, which had been throbbing with the blight’s parasitic hunger, suddenly fell silent.

The suffocating pressure in her lungs lifted, replaced by a rush of air so clean it hurt. The moment the cup left her lips, Isabella bucked upward, coughing violently and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Her eyes were watering, her throat raw from the forced intake. “Are you trying to fucking choke me to death?” she cursed in an angry rasp.

The curse echoed sharply against the walls, but Lucian remained seated on the edge of the bed, the cup still held steady in his hand.

He didn’t look offended by her foul language, if anything, his crimson eyes held a flicker of grim, dark satisfaction.

The frantic fear she had sensed through the bond earlier had settled into a cold, hard resolve.

“I am trying to keep you from fading and if that means choking you is the price of keeping your heart beating, I will pay it every few hours.” he simply stated, his voice dropping dangerously low.

Isabella glared at him, her chest heaving as the heat of his blood continued to hum beneath her skin.

“You could have asked,” she snapped, though her anger was already losing its edge to the strange, euphoric rush the blood was giving her.

She felt sick, her tongue still coated in the metallic tang of him. She felt like vomiting, the nausea rolling in her gut, but every eye in the room was fixed on her—Marco’s, Clara’s, and Lucian’s—watching her like a specimen, daring her to break.

Isabella swallowed hard, trying to force back the bile. The heat in her veins was intoxicating, but the psychological weight of what she’d just done—drinking him—felt like a permanent stain.

“I feel sick,” she whispered, her hands trembling as she clutched the duvet. Lucian didn’t soften.

He handed the empty cup back to Clara without breaking eye contact. “The nausea will pass. Your body is rejecting the power because it still thinks it is human. Eventually, it will learn to crave it.”

“Crave it?” Isabella’s head snapped up. “I don’t want to crave you, Lucian. I told you I don’t want to be a blood sucker!”

A dark, unreadable flicker crossed Lucian’s face—a flash of bitter resentment. To him, her disgust for his kind was a stinging reminder of the monster he had become over centuries.

“Desire has little to do with survival, Isabella. You will take the blood because the blight is patient, and I am not.”

He turned toward the window, his silhouette cutting a sharp line against the moonlit grounds.

“And you aren’t getting turned. My venom is not in you. This is a transfusion. I didn’t bite you.”

Isabella let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh, her hand flying to the side of her neck where the skin still felt raw.

“Oh, so now we’re lying?” she snapped, turning her head sharply to the side to emphasize the obvious mark he had left there.

“You’ve bitten me countless times, Lucian. You’ve had your fangs in my body more often than I’ve had a decent meal lately. Don’t tell me you haven’t polluted me.”

Lucian’s face turned away from the window, his movements so fast they were a mere blur, stopping just inches from hers.

The shadows seemed to cling to the hollows of his face, making him look more like the Prince of Ruin from her dreams than the King she knew.

“When I bit you before,” he said, his voice terrifyingly calm, “it was to drain you. To feed. To take.” He leaned down, his eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that made her blood still.

“Vampiric venom is a conscious release, Isabella. It is a choice. A gift—or for you a curse—that I have withheld from the world for longer than you can imagine. To turn you would require me to replace your soul with my hunger.”

He reached out, his cold fingers hovering just a fraction of an inch from the mark on her neck. “You are still the wolfless abomination, Isabella. Your heart still beats with its own pathetic pace, however fragile it may be. You aren’t a blood sucker.’You are simply… anchored. To me.”

Isabella shivered, the heat of his blood in her stomach clashing with the chill of his proximity.

The words he used—wolfless abomination—were cruel, yet in her twisted reality, that insult was a comfort. It meant she was still human.

“Anchored,” she whispered, the word feeling like a noose. “That’s just a pretty word for leash, isn’t it?”

Lucian didn’t deny it. he thought they had already established that. He simply stood tall again, his expression hardening as a muffled, heavy thud vibrated through the floorboards from the levels below.

The sentinel still at his foyer. “Clara,” Lucian said, finally breaking his gaze away from Isabella.

“Stay with her while you find a way to get your magic back. If anything happens, contact me immediately.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep