Just Bite Me Already

Chapter 4

They had indeed stuck Alec in the basement when he had gone for Raphael, the moment that he had scented the former Vampire. Everything else had faded away and all that had been left was the hunt for something warm and wet and quite frankly, delicious smelling. Even Raphael's pulse had called out to him.

It was different with Alec's family. As delicious as they all smelled, they were just that. But he had no emotional bond with Raphael and the new mundane had just been stood there, like a particularly juicy steak, ready to become his dinner. Luckily, Simon was faster and stronger than he looked and had taken him down before he could reach Raphael, snapping him out of it. And Raphael was more forgiving than he had a right to ask for.

The situation had mortified Alec when he had come to his senses and it was a good motivation for not losing his cool like that again. That and the thought of what Magnus would say if he knew that Alec had almost chowed down on his foster son.

So they had stuck Alec in the basement. For a few hours - until he had gotten bored of looking at the walls and the curious gazes of his siblings. That had been two days ago. He had told them that he would have to test whether he was a Daylighter at some point.

Izzy's answer had been to try him with a witchlight first. When Alec's skin hadn't started smoking the second he had come into contact with the glow from the witchlight, they had tried him with a UV lamp. When he still hadn't burst into flames, he had ventured out of the basement and cautiously stepped into a beam of morning sunlight in the training room.

It had gone against every one of Alec's new instincts to go near the shaft of light but he had forced himself forward anyway. To say that relief had been the prevailing emotion when he had felt the warm sunlight on his skin would have been an understatement. As much as he had accepted that he would be a creature of the night, he could only be grateful that Jace and Clary had tricked him into drinking their blood.

The relief had been short-lived. That was the moment when a handful of Alec's former Shadowhunters had decided to show up for training, all of them staring at him and the blood that still coated his clothes. They had no showers in the basement. He had barked at them to get back to work and they had been so attuned to following his commands that they had actually done it, even after his fangs had snapped out.

After a hot shower and a couple more baggies of blood, Alec had fallen into his own bed and slept like the dead. Literally. The baggies had been an experience that he would never forget. He had pierced them with his fangs and drained them like a couple of juice boxes, not as grossed out as he would have thought. They had tasted better than he had been expecting and dimmed the hunger that was a constant inside him. The shower had been unforgettable too.

The loss of his runes had momentarily thrown Alec. Of course, he had known that they would disappear when he died but it had been disconcerting, to say the least when he had looked down after peeling his filthy clothes off to find them gone. Hoping that Magnus wouldn't be too disappointed with the loss of them, he had hopped into the boiling hot shower, trying not to think about how proud he had been when he had received his angelic rune and all the others after it.

The next morning had brought a couple of visitors to New York. The expression on his father's face was nothing short of furious at first and the rant that had followed about jumping into decisions without discussing it with them had lasted a few hours. Alec had endured it because he knew that his dad needed to get it out.

But after Alec had talked to him, explained that there was no other way for him and that he was happy with his decision, Robert had pulled him into a hug that lasted longer than any hug he had ever given his son. Alec had held on just as hard.