Wild Creatures

Chapter 103

15.30 pm Sunday

For a few seconds, there is only silence as many eyes watch the severed head roll away.

"Are you alright?"

Wei Ying looks up at the urgency in his grandmother's voice.

"What? Yeah...I'm fine, just dandy, but, but what about you, grandmother?" Wei Ying snaps out of his reverie, grabbing her arms and checking out her wounds which had already disappeared.

There wasn't even a shadow left of the cut inflicted by Xue Yang.

"Remnants of your blood," Baoshan Sanren explains, at his astonishment. "Lucky I fed recently enough for me to recover faster. Besides, a cockroach like him couldn't harm me."

"But why were you worried about me?" Wei Ying's thumb traces over her neck one more time before he lets her go.

"Xue Yang tried to compel you...didn't you notice? I mean, he's dead now, so I guess it doesn't matter, but still. I hate the thought of anyone being able to control you like that."

"That's what I thought he was trying to do, so I didn't make eye contact." Wei Ying tells her happily.

"You did! I would swear on it!" Baoshan Sanren exclaimed. "I was wondering why he wasn't successful!"

"Could it be the Primary Exception?" Xiao XingChen says, coming forward after cleaning his sword on Xue Yang's clothes.

"What the hell is Primary Exception?" Wei Ying crosses his arms over his chest.

Lan Zhan wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him closer, finding any distance unbearable right now. He was finding out more and more about his own powers, the more he spent time with different vampires, but even he hadn't heard about this.

It was fascinating for him.

"It's a rare occurrence," his grandmother explains, fixing her intense gaze upon her grandchild. "It only happens when the person being compelled has already been bonded to someone else."

"You think that's happened to me?" Wei Ying taps his nose, thinking hard. "Is that why it didn't work?" And then he grabbed Lan Zhan's arm. "Oh my God!"

"Mn?"

Before Wei Ying can answer, Baoshan Sanren puts in her twopence.

"Usually the bond occurs when the compelled meets the one doing it, for the first time. But since they're almost always the first meal as well, it doesn't last long." Her voice becomes lower and lower and then she ends it, sheepishly. "Sorry," she mouths at them.

"But that's what I was saying!" Wei Ying carries on. "Lan Zhan! You saved me, even without trying."

"Explain." Lan Zhan is looking only at him, the focal point of all his concentration and Wei Ying shivers for another reason altogether.

It is a heady feeling, to have all of Lan Zhan's attention all to himself, like this.

"Remember that night, when you told me to sleep because you thought I needed it? And then you apologised when you realised what had happened, but I think we must have bonded then, you and me! However inadvertently, you were my first." He reaches up to kiss Lan Zhan's cheek, too aware of the many people watching them now and wanting to keep it clean. And then the naughty part of his brain made him add, "in more ways than one."

And in his head, Wei Ying was making a list of how he was going to show his fiance how grateful he was.

Lan Zhan is making cow eyes at him now, full of wonder.