Dragon Blood

Chapter 31

"Okay, okay, hold the fuck up." Ian stopped dead in his tracks and crossed his arms in an X in front of him. "Let me see if I understand this right: your vampire doctor boyfriend is his king's right hand; the king has a hard on for getting his way and threatened you to get it; vampire boyfriend then dropped the love bomb just before he fed from you; you might be a half-blood that, somehow, no one's picked up on until now; you go to a dragonkin who isn't under the purview of the dragons for help and almost get yourself killed... and you're still going?!"

"You forgot the part where it's been three days and we still haven't talked about the whole love bomb thing."

Rhia aimed and tossed the basketball. It bounced off the rim of the hoop and straight into the garage. She sighed heavily and looked at her friend. Arguably he was the only friend she still had after her time with Church. "I didn't, because that is actually the most normal part of this." he snapped. "Are you insane! Where do I even start?"

"How is that the part that's normal?" she demanded.

Ian gave her a look drenched in withering annoyance. "Do you not remember when I told Nathan how I felt? He didn't say it back and I pretended it didn't happen for like, two weeks. That's normal. What's not normal is you letting a vampire suck on your neck! You should have called the consulate or... or something!"

"I asked him to do it." she told him for what felt like the hundredth time. She thought she'd made that clear when she told him that part of the story because she knew he would react like this. "He has an exception. He wouldn't have gotten in any trouble anyway."

"Jay-sus," he didn't have even a hint of a Celtic accent, but when he was this agitated, he tended to mimic the way his Irish mother cursed. He cracked his knuckles one by one as he spoke, a nervous tick he'd had since before they met. "Why would you ask him to feed from you? You know what the venom high does to people."

"I'm not turning into a junkie." she rolled her eyes.

"That's not the point, and you know it! One slip up and boom. Fangs. No more sun. Your existence is dependent on the contents of a P.V.C. bag of expired blood. It doesn't matter how good the sex is, it isn't worth that!"

"Thousands of humans would disagree with you." she shrugged, thinking of the publicized reports of how many people applied to be turned into vampires everyday.

Ian blanched. "Do not tell me you're actually considering-"

"No, that's not what I meant. I don't want to be a vampire any more than you want me to be one."

"Then why-"

"Because if he didn't, Constantine would have, and he wouldn't ask for permission, he wouldn't take precautions to keep me from turning... it wasn't a matter of if, but when. This way, my vampire-venom-cherry has been popped. He can't take that away from either of us."

She tossed the ball again, missed again, and this time Ian caught it before it rolled into the garage. He tucked it under his arm, forcing her to stop fucking around and actually look at him. "That brings me to my next point;" he snapped. "If the vamp king is vocally planning on using you to get under Nolan's skin, why the hell are you going with him? You haven't been with him all that long, Rhia, you can break it off without any reason."

"That's what Constantine wants. I'm not going to let him win."

"He wins either way! You go, he gets a shiny new toy to rip apart. You stay, he gets to torture Nolan over it. At least if you stay here, you don't put your own life in danger! Hell, forget about the king for a second. The reason they're going to France is to fight a civil war. Don't you think you'll be the first person they go after once they realize you're the girlfriend of the king's right hand?"