Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
For a moment, nothing happened…then the virus recoiled.
Severin stopped breathing as he watched the reaction.
The black filaments that usually latched onto healthy cells with ravenous speed curled away from Cassandra’s honey as though burned. Viral shells fractured and replication halted. The infected cells did not immediately recover, but they stopped degrading, and that alone was extraordinary.
He watched the reaction for several long seconds, hardly daring to move.
Then, slowly, the glow began to fade.
The viral filaments twitched…and the Hunger Virus started creeping back.
“Damn it!” Severin whispered fiercely.
He sat back and rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to force himself not to feel the crushing disappointment too deeply. The honey worked—it worked better than anything else he had tried.
But it didn’t last.
Outside Cassandra’s body, the active compound degraded too quickly, collapsing almost as soon as it was separated from the living hormonal field that created it.
Still, it was closer—so much closer than he had ever gotten before.
He ran the next test with Ravik’s post-pleasure blood markers added to the sample. The reaction strengthened at once, the glow lasting longer this time before it began to dim. Severin added a tiny amount of his own blood and saw the reaction stabilize further. For nearly a minute, the virus remained suppressed.
Then the sample destabilized again.
Severin’s jaw clenched. Clearly, blood was not enough.
He had known that before the final test, though some foolish part of him had hoped otherwise. The ability of a Blood Kindred to heal his mate did not live solely in the blood. It lived in the essence glands…in the fangs…in the bite. His essence was not merely fluid—it was a carrier, a bonding agent, and a delivery system designed by biology and the Goddess to enter another body and change it. To heal it, pleasure it, and bind it to the Blood Kindred doing the biting.
The thought made his fangs ache.
Severin took a careful breath and reached for the small vial he had prepared weeks ago, when he had still believed his own essence might one day prove useful against Ravik’s infection. There was only a minute amount inside, drawn with a painful extraction procedure he had no desire to repeat unless absolutely necessary. He added the smallest possible drop to the sample.
The result was immediate.
The glow flared bright gold and the Hunger Virus collapsed.
It didn’t just slow or retreat—it completely collapsed and melted away into nothing. It was gone—completely gone.
For several seconds, Severin could only stare. His heart pounded too hard and too fast, and for once his mind was silent. After months of failure, after so many ruined samples and partial responses and false hopes that dissolved under magnification, the sight of the virus breaking apart felt almost unreal.
Then the essence outside his body began to degrade and the glow of the mixture flickered.
The sample held longer than before—much longer. But the instability was there, clear and unmistakable. Severin could see the edges of the reaction fraying, the active compounds breaking down as the essence lost its living charge.
He closed his eyes.
Of course…of course the cure could not be simple. Of course it couldn’t be bottled neatly in a vial and injected like any civilized anti-viral. Cassandra’s body created the catalyst, Ravik’s Beast Kindred markers strengthened it, and Severin’s essence stabilized and delivered it.
But it wouldn’t work if he injected it with a syringe, like a normal anti-viral. The cure needed to come from a living host and be carried in a natural, biological medium that was already inherently meant for healing.
It needed to be delivered in his essence, in the form of a bite.
Severin opened his eyes and stared at the sample until the last flare of gold faded to a dull shimmer. The conclusion was unavoidable—if the cure was going to work, he had to carry it.
He had to make his own body the vessel. His blood could metabolize the combined compound, his essence glands could bind it, and his fangs could deliver it into Cassandra and Ravik.
A vial would fail. A syringe would only deliver dead chemistry. But a Blood Kindred bite…
That might save them—both of them.
Or the volatile compound might destroy him.
Severin looked toward the doorway. Down the hall, in the mating chamber, Cassandra and Ravik were waiting for him. Or sleeping, perhaps—he hoped they were sleeping. Cassandra had been through too much today, and Ravik’s mind had only just begun to clear again. They both needed rest, warmth, and whatever fragile comfort they could steal from the night.
He wondered if he should wake them. Should he tell them what he’d found? Should he explain that he believed he had discovered the delivery mechanism and that the only possible carrier was his own body?
Maybe so. Maybe he should admit that the compound he needed to inject into himself contained active Hunger Virus fragments altered by Cassandra’s honey, Ravik’s infected blood, and his own essence sample. He should tell them that if he was wrong, he might infect himself with a mutated strain no one knew how to cure.