My blood approves

Slowly and somewhat reluctantly, I felt myself rising to the surface. I blinked several times, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light of the bedroom. In truth, I had rather expected to open my eyes and find myself in purgatory.

Instead, I was in the room in the turret, the bedroom that had been mine. There was this weird weakness over me, like I was laying underneath a weighted blanket, and there were still some residuals of the intense pleasure I had experienced when Peter had been feeding on me. I also felt relieved and apprehensive, but I couldn’t understand why. They seemed out of place with everything that had happened, but then I stirred a little and found the source of the emotions.

“Hey,” Jack whispered. He had been sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, but when he saw me waking up, he came over and climbed on the bed next to me. “How are you feeling?”

“Really, really tired,” I mumbled groggily, and when he smiled, I saw there were tears in his eyes. He pushed a strand of hair out of my eyes, and my heart ached at the thought of leaving him. After he brushed the hair from my eyes, his fingers traced down the side of my face, past my jaw line, and then lingering on the residuals of the bite Peter had left on my throat. His expression hardened painfully, so I swallowed and looked away.

“Am I gonna have to go?” I asked.

“You can stay as long as you want.” He moved his hand from my neck, resting it on the covers over my stomach.

“Peter said that I wouldn’t be allowed to see any of you anymore,” I told him thickly. A deep pain welled in my chest at the thought of it, and even without Peter here fogging up mind, suicide didn’t seem like that bad of an idea.

“No. That’s not going to happen,” Jack said firmly. “I had reluctantly agreed to it temporarily, until we could get things sorted out better. Peter was convinced that he couldn’t be around you, and apparently, that wasn’t far from the truth.” Just mentioning Peter made his voice fill with a deep anger, and I felt a jealous protectiveness radiate from him. “After what happened, we decided that was a horrible decision. So Peter’s gone.”

“What do you mean he’s gone?” I looked at him plaintively, and Jack tried to hide that it hurt him that I was even asking about Peter.

“He’s going to go out on his own for awhile. He’s done it before.” Jack shrugged, like it wasn’t anything for me to concern myself with. “We all just think it would be better for him not to be around you, at least not while you’re still human.”

“So he just won’t see you guys for three or four years?” I was tearing their family apart, and that did little to make me feel better. Admittedly, I wanted to be around Jack and his family more than I wanted to be alive, but not at the cost of ruining their lives.

“No, he won’t see you for three or four years,” he corrected me. “And maybe me too. But trust me, I don’t really have any urge to see him.”

“It’s not his fault,” I insisted quietly. Jack scoffed and looked away from me. “It’s really not. I asked him to do it.”

“He knew better.” He shook his head seriously. “He knows how much…”

Just the thought of me dying made agonized him. “If you had died, I would’ve killed him. It would’ve completely destroyed everything we had here, and he knew that.”

“You can’t kill him over me,” I insisted quietly. “I don’t want to be the cause of your family’s destruction.”

“Well, then don’t do anything stupid like getting yourself killed.” He had meant to sound joking, but it came out more like he was pleading with me. “It’s too late, Alice. You already mean too much to us. Dying doesn’t change that.”

“How am I still alive?” I attempted to change the subject.

“Ezra gave you a blood transfusion with the blood bags we have,” he explained casually.

“He can do that?” I felt a little wide eyed. Blood transfusions probably weren’t the most difficult of procedures, but still, he’d saved my life with one.

“He can do anything.” Brushing it off, he smiled at me. “When you’re around for three-hundred years and you’re life revolves around blood, you pick up a thing or two about it.”

“So what happens now?”

“You need to get some rest, because the blood loss makes you tired and weak. And then I’ll take you home in the morning, so you can go to school.” His blue eyes looked softly at me, and for the first time, I could really feel how much he loved me. It was like a warm, safe blanket wrapped around me, and I tried to ignore the aching pain in my chest that still went out for Peter.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“There’s nothing to thank me for.” Settling more into the bed, he reached out and pulled me over to him. Wrapping his arms securely around me, I rested my head on his chest and listened the slow, faint sound of his heart beat. I felt totally and completely safe with him, and I wanted to stay that way forever.