"You mean drink his blood?" She couldn't mask her revulsion. "Never. Why would you ask that? Why would you think it?" "He drank from you. I saw him feeding at your vein in his quarters at the lodge. I guess I assumed it was a mutual arrangement."
Renata hated to think about that, let alone be reminded that Nikolai had witnessed her degradation. "Sergei used me for blood whenever he felt the need. Or whenever he wanted to make a point."
"But he never gave you his blood in exchange?"
Renata shook her head.
"No wonder you're not healing faster," Nikolai murmured. He gave a slight shake of his head. "When I saw him drinking from you...I thought you were mated to him. I assumed you were blood-bonded to each other. I thought maybe you cared for him."
"You thought I loved him," Renata said, realizing where he was heading. "It wasn't that. Not even close." She exhaled a sharp breath that grated in her throat. Nikolai wasn't pushing her for answers, and maybe precisely because of that, she wanted him to understand that what she felt for the vampire she had served was anything but affection. "Two years ago, Sergei Yakut plucked me off a downtown street and brought me to his lodge along with several other kids he'd collected that night. We didn't know who he was, or where we were going, or why. We didn't know anything, because he put us all in some kind of trance that didn't lift until we found ourselves locked up together inside a large, dark cage."
"The one inside the barn on his property," Nikolai said, his face grim. "Jesus Christ. He brought you in as live game for his blood club?"
"I don't think any of us realized that monsters truly existed until Yakut, Lex, and a few others came out to open the cage. They showed us the woods, told us to run." She swallowed past the bitterness rising in her throat. "The slaughter began as soon as the first of us broke for the forest."
In her mind, Renata relived the horror in excruciating detail. She could still hear the screams of the victims as they fled, and the terrible howls of the predators who hunted them with such savage zeal. She could still smell the summery tang of pine and loamy moss, nature's scents smothered all too soon by that of blood and death. She could still see the vast darkness surrounding her in the unfamiliar terrain, unseen branches that smacked her cheeks and tore at her clothes as she tried to navigate her escape.
"None of you stood a chance," Nikolai murmured. "They told you to run only to toy with you. To give themselves the illusion that blood clubs have anything to do with sport."
"I know that now." Renata could still taste the futility of all that running. Terror had taken shape out of the black night in the form of glowing amber eyes and bared, bloodied fangs like nothing she'd ever dreamed in her worst nightmare. "One of them caught up to me. He came out of nowhere and began to circle me, readying for the attack. I'd never been more afraid. I was scared and angry and something inside me just...snapped. I felt a power coursing through me, something stronger than the adrenaline that was flooding my body."
Nikolai nodded. "You didn't know about the ability you possessed."
"I didn't know about a lot of things until that night. Every thing had turned inside out. I just wanted to survive - the only thing I knew how to do. So when I felt that energy flowing through me, some visceral instinct told me to turn it loose on my attacker. I pushed it outward with my mind and the vampire staggered back as if I'd physically struck him. I threw more at him, and still more, until he was down on the ground screaming and his eyes were bleeding and his entire body was convulsing in pain." Renata paused, wondering if the Breed warrior staring at her in silence was judging her for her total lack of remorse over what she'd done. She wasn't about to apologize or make excuses. "I wanted him to suffer, Nikolai. I wanted to kill him, and I did."
"What other choice did you have?" he said, reaching out and very tenderly brushing his fingertips along the line of her cheek. "What about Yakut? Where was he during all of this?"
"Not far behind. I had started running again when he stepped into my path and headed me off. I tried to take him down too, but he withstood it. I sent everything I had at him, to the point of exhaustion, but it wasn't enough. He was too strong." "Because he was Gen One."
Renata gave an acknowledging tilt of her head. "He explained it to me later, after that initial bout of reverb had knocked me unconscious for three full days and I woke to find myself pressed into service as a personal bodyguard to a vampire." "You never tried to leave?"
"In the beginning, I tried. More than once. It never took him long to locate me." She tapped her index finger against the vein at the side of her neck. "Hard to get very far when your own blood is better than GPS for your pursuer. He used my blood as insurance of my loyalty. It was a shackle I couldn't break. I was never going to be free of it."
"You're free now, Renata."
"Yeah, I suppose I am," she said, the answer sounding as hollow as it felt. "But what about Mira?"
Nikolai stared at her for a long moment, saying nothing. She didn't want to see the doubt in his eyes, no more than she wanted empty assurances that there was anything either one of them could do for Mira now that she was in enemy hands. All the worse when she was currently weakened by her wound.
Nikolai pivoted to the claw-footed white tub and gave the twin handles a crank. As water rushed into the basin, he turned back to her where she sat. "A cool bath should bring your temperature down. Come on, I'll help you clean up."