Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night

I’m a completely different person.

A pang of sadness brought tears to my eyes, and Nathan looked up sharply. “What’s the matter?”

And then he shrugged, as if answering a question I hadn’t voiced. “I think I’ve been cooped up with you too long if I’m starting to read your mind.”

The lighthearted comment brought echoes of something to the surface of my consciousness. A medicated haze settled over me, and my words slurred as I spoke. “You should get some sleep. You don’t look too good.”

His hand was cold against my forehead. “Likewise, sweetheart.”

I’d been dead. That was the important detail I needed to remember. I’d been dead, and he’d been there.

But I drifted off again, and it was two more days before I woke.

Nathan lay on his side next to me, curved protectively around my body. If I turned my face, I could snuggle against him, listen to his heart beat. It felt so comforting to have him there. His hand stroked my hair, and I opened my eyes.

The gauze around my chest had been replaced by a navy-blue T-shirt that had seen better days. There was blood on it, and vomit.

“You had a bad, bad reaction to the morphine. I’d been giving you the meperidine, since you’d had it before with no trouble, but I ran out.”

His voice was hoarse. He still hadn’t slept.

“Well, reaction or not, it must be working okay. I don’t feel a thing.” The pain of my injuries was a distant nightmare, and only the lingering stiffness of a long bed rest plagued my bones.

He chuckled softly as he slowly sat up. “You’re probably healed by now.”

Like flashbulbs going off, I saw Cyrus looming over me, blood on his hands. My chest split open like a cadaver for dissection. Nathan’s stricken face when he found me in the alley.

One of the first things Nathan had explained to me about the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement was that they expressly forbid medical treatment for life-threatening injuries. I was dead when he found me. And here I sat. “You broke the rules.”

His back went straight at my accusation. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

I scooted up, wincing at the soreness in my unused muscles. I propped a few pillows behind me and drew the covers to my neck. “Why?”

I had a suspicion he rummaged a bit too long in the dresser for another T-shirt so he could think of an excuse. “I like to live dangerously?”

Of all the vampires I’d met so far, Nathan was the most serious, the biggest stickler for the rules. In the two weeks I’d been deciding whether or not to join the Movement, he’d called nearly every night with some new bit of information I’d never use, but that he felt was vitally important for me to know. He’d held Ziggy, the person who’d mattered most in his life, and watched him die when he could have easily turned him and spared himself the pain of loss. But he hadn’t, because of his affiliation with the Movement.

Yet, he’d saved me.

“Why?” I asked again.

When he looked at me, his expression was somber. “I can’t explain it.”

“Let me know when you can.” I made a move to get out of bed, but Nathan gruffly pulled the covers back over me.

“You need rest.”

“I’ve had plenty of rest. I want to get up.” I tried again, and he gripped my arms.

“Will you just listen to me and lie back down?” With a frustrated curse he handed me a clean T-shirt and turned his back.

“Something on your mind, Nathan?” I quickly slipped out of the soiled shirt and into the fresh one, pausing at the sight of the bumpy scar that bisected my chest.

His shoulders sagged with exhaustion. “This isn’t the first time I’ve gone against the Movement. I’m on probation as it is.”

I arranged the sheets around my bare lower half. “You can turn around now.”

When he did, I saw him eye the scrap of bare leg that peeked out from beneath the covers. He quickly averted his gaze.

“Are you sorry?” What would I do if he said yes?

Nathan didn’t answer immediately. “Carrie, when I found you, my only thought was to stay with you until you died. But it took so long. Just when I thought you’d actually…you’d pull right back. Honestly, I’ve never seen anyone fight so hard. But the damage was too much. There was no way you could have healed yourself. Not as new as you are.” He sat on the bed, facing me.

“Did you look at the scar?” He touched the front of my shirt, just below my collarbone, and a jolt went through me.

“Yes.” I couldn’t manage more than a whisper.

He closed his eyes and didn’t remove his hand. “He cut you from here—” His fingers slipped down, passing between my breasts and coming to rest on the hollow of my rib cage. He opened his hand and rested his palm against my stomach for a moment before tracing back to my neck. “To here. But it wasn’t just a cut, it was like—”

“How a book opens?” I knew what it must have looked like to someone not used to such a sight. “You can pry the ribs apart pretty wide. But I’m in one piece now.”

“I helped you along.” He smiled and pointed to the nightstand where a stack of surgical texts rested. “Like I said, you’re too new to heal something that serious.”

“Nathan, how on earth—”

“If I told you, you probably wouldn’t want to know. I didn’t exactly have high-tech surgical instruments here.” He motioned to the folding table, where the handles of rusty pliers jutted out from the first aid kit.

My stomach churned, but it could have been leftover nausea from the morphine. “Humor me.”

“I used wire to hold your…sternum?”

I nodded at the correct terminology and let him continue.

“To hold it together.” He looked away. “I had to wrap it around and around. I wouldn’t go through any metal detectors, if I were you.”

Wanting very much to change the subject, I cleared my throat. “Well, thanks for the advice. But if I couldn’t heal the damage myself, why am I better now?”

He squinted at me. “You really don’t remember that night?”

“No. I know exactly what happened. I just want to hear it from your point of view. You know, just to waste time.” I leaned back against the pillows. “If there’s something you need to tell me, I think you should just say it.”

“You’d lost too much blood. Even if you had been conscious enough to feed, it would have just run straight through you. And you did die, Carrie.” He sighed in frustration. “If I had known what would happen….”

My pulse throbbed in my ears. But more disturbingly, I could hear his, as if I had a stethoscope against his chest. “Nathan, what did you do?”

He looked me straight in the eye, and heat flashed through my body.

“I revived you the only way I knew how. I gave you my blood.”