Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [359]
And then there was the woman.
Tegan exhaled a ripe curse as his gaze followed the blood-filled tube running from the Rogue’s mouth to the inner forearm of a young woman lying on another exam table a few feet away from him. Garbed in a white clinic jumpsuit without sleeves, she lay very still on her back, calmly in fact, but her freckled cheeks were stained with tears.
“You sent a female in there with that beast?”
“She’s his Breedmate,” Kuhn replied. “They’d been together for many years before he succumbed to Bloodlust and turned Rogue. She’s been coming in every week to feed him, and to take her own nourishment from him as well. She must keep her own health and longevity in order to continue to care for him. Truly, he’s lucky to have her devotion. Most of our other patients have no Breedmate to look after them, so they must be fed from human donors.”
Elise inched closer to the glass now, obviously as transfixed by what she was seeing as she was repulsed. “How do you find those other donors, Director Kuhn?”
He shrugged when she glanced back at him over her shoulder. “We never have to look far. University students willing to join medical studies for a little money, prostitutes, the homeless…drug addicts, if we’re desperate.”
“Well, shit,” Tegan drawled, full of sarcasm. “This is a real class operation you got here.”
“No harm done to anyone, generally speaking,” Kuhn said with an annoyed smile. “The procedures are very closely monitored and none of our recruited Hosts maintain a single memory afterward. We simply return them to their lives with a little cash in their pocket that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. A little time spent here is the best thing to happen to some of the unfortunates we collect as donors.”
Tegan was ready to spit a cutting remark at the pompous Darkhaven male, but it had been less than twenty-four hours since he himself had been hunting for blood on Berlin’s darkened streets. He’d killed, even though he could justify it with the knowledge that there was one less human criminal around to violate a defenseless woman. But that didn’t make him a saint by any stretch. At heart, all of the Breed were self-serving, ruthless predators. Some just attempted to hide the fact behind sterile white walls and a fleet of clinical equipment.
“There now,” the facility director announced when a small beep sounded on the console near the viewing window. “The feeding procedure is complete. As soon as the patient is alone and resting, we can go in.”
They waited as Odolf was disconnected from his feeding tube. The vampire fought the removal, his insatiable blood addiction making him snap and growl behind the wire-mesh face mask as the attendants cut off his supply. He struggled against his body restraints, but the effort was sluggish and ineffective, no doubt from the sedatives Kuhn had mentioned earlier.
The Rogue’s dermaglyphs were still seething from deep purples to red to black, the colors of ferocious hunger traveling along the pattern of markings that ran up his bare chest and over his shoulders.
His huge fangs flashed bone white with his sudden roar of protest. His pupils were fixed into vertical slits, the irises throwing off a blast of amber light every time he tried to raise his big head up off the table. Even though he was drugged, the taste of blood had inflamed him to the point of madness—as it did all Rogues.
Tegan ought to know. He’d lived a similar thirsting, angry as hell himself. He hadn’t progressed as far Rogue as this male, thankfully, but he’d come damn close. Seeing