The Vampires #1: Alaric and Faina

Chapter 10 (Faina): Are You Ready?

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

I awoke the next morning after sleeping for twelve hours, not feeling refreshed as I would have expected but unsettled. As if I'd missed something critical, as if something had happened that was just tickling the edge of my consciousness but I couldn't pin down.

But all I had was vague, hazy impressions. Pain. Agony. Desperation. Then, as I shook off that just-awaking fog, it came to me that Alaric had fed from me last night for the first time in eight weeks. He'd compelled me to sleep immediately after as I'd compelled him to do, so once his teeth had sunk into my neck...nothing. It was a blank, but it seemed like it shouldn't have been.

Throwing back the covers, I smoothed down my nightgown and pulled on the matching thin robe that was at the end of my bed. Padding across the hall, I stood in the doorway of the room where Alaric had been detained -- a polite term for chained to the wall like an animal -- watching the activity. Two men were tearing up the bloody carpet and two other men were drilling the chains back into the wall.

"Can't believe he got one arm free of the wall," one of the men was saying.

"I can," another said. "Releasing isn't something that can or should be stopped. The Hunger was driving him and there's no force more powerful."

The sound of the drill stopped their conversation for a minute.

"It's not right, keeping him from a release after he fed. It's not natural," another one muttered. "We can't control that need or resist it."

"Surprised he didn't snap his neck. That fucker was fighting it with everything he had to try to get to her. Looked like a crime scene in here this morning with the way he was pulling against the restraints."

"Heard the guards talking. Lord Bellamy had ten men to stop Archambeau if he got free. All big fuckers, but they said they didn't know if they could have stopped him. He was pure Hunger at that point, barely human. Said they had no doubt he'd have killed to get to her."

Unable to listen to more, I stepped back across the hallway to my room and quietly shut the door. Sitting on the side of my bed, I ran my hand over my stomach, trying to push aside the conversation I'd just overheard.

A knock sounded at my door, and I called out to whoever it was to come in. My mother entered, followed by a doctor and a nurse. She flashed me an apologetic smile.

"Darling, they need to take your blood. They took some last night right after the feeding, as agreed, once Alaric compelled you to sleep."

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Archambeau," the doctor apologized. "I know this isn't the most pleasant way to begin your morning, but we want to check your blood after fasting."

I inclined my head. "It's no problem. I understand."

And I did -- to an extent. Twins would garner a great deal of attention and scientific curiosity and present the medical community with the chance to study something that had never before occurred. It would also ensure that the doctors knew exactly what was going on with my babies at any given time.

Admittedly, though, a tiny part of me wished I could just be left alone to experience this pregnancy as any other mother-to-be would. But then I thought that the pregnant women in our community would have their men right beside them, experiencing all the firsts with them and my heart would develop some more fine lines.

As the nurse drew my blood, the doctor talked with me about my protein levels immediately after Alaric fed from me last night. 

"Through the roof," he said. "We've never seen levels so high. Three times what we anticipated, even taking into account the twins."