Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [773]
Reichen attempted to deny it with a shake of his head, but Tegan was no fool. When Reichen looked up into the warrior’s face, he saw bleak understanding there. Hell, he saw a male who’d tasted this same blinding thirst himself. A male who, from the grave look of him now, was still haunted by the memory of an even deeper blood addiction than the one Reichen battled each time his pyro overtook him.
He wanted to ask him how he’d fought it—how he’d won against the fierce thirst that could turn even the strongest members of the Breed into savage killers—but just then his gut gave another violent twist. He snarled with the spasming pain, his limbs contracting in on his body.
“Breathe through it,” Tegan commanded him. “You gotta be stronger than the thirst. Don’t let it own you.”
Reichen did as he was told, willing to grasp at any advice if it would help alleviate some of his agony. It took several minutes before the worst of it passed. Once it had, he nodded weakly, relieved by the sliver of peace that followed the pain.
“Tell me about the pyrokinesis,” Tegan said when Reichen huffed out a breath and dragged himself up to a sitting position. “How have you managed it so well until now? Hell, we’ve known each other off and on for the better part of a couple centuries, and I had no clue about your ability.”
“I’m not proud of it,” Reichen murmured, an understatement if ever he’d uttered one.
Tegan’s expression was sober but not condemning. “You think I haven’t done things that I regret? It’s hard to walk through even a year of life without hurting someone or something when you didn’t intend it. If I started telling you about all the shit I’ve done wrong or wish I could take back… trust me, we don’t have that kind of time. So, why don’t you go first. Tell me about the pyro.”
It might only have been the warrior’s way of distracting him, enticing him to talk instead of anticipating the next round of agony, but whatever Tegan’s motives, Reichen found himself explaining how he’d lived most of his life with no knowledge of the curse that lurked inside him. He told Tegan how he’d first come to discover the fires through Roth’s treachery some scant thirty years ago … and how abhorred he’d been to realize for that first, godawful time what his pyrokinetic heat would do to anyone careless enough to get near him.
“I killed an innocent young girl, Tegan. In mere seconds, she was so charred I couldn’t even recognize her as human.” He felt sickened all over again—not from blood hunger but from a profound self-loathing that hadn’t dampened and likely never would. “After that, I was determined to never let my power surface again. And I worked damned hard to make sure it didn’t. Then Roth sent his death squad to my Darkhaven and there was nothing I could do to hold the fires back. He took away everything and everyone who mattered to me.”
“Almost everyone,” Tegan said, those shrewd gem-green eyes unflinching. “How long have you been in love with Claire?”
Reichen expelled a deep sigh. “So long, I don’t even recall what it was like not to be in love with her.”
“You’ve drunk from her, yeah?”
He nodded, seeing no point in denying it.
“How about after the pyro? You drink from her then?”
“Yes,” Reichen said, recalling that first time he’d put his fangs into her throat, the night in Roth’s office in Hamburg. It seemed like a lifetime ago to him now. “I drank from her the night after I went to Roth’s Darkhaven.”
“How’d you feel after you drank from Claire? How bad was the thirst after you had her blood inside you?”
Reichen considered it for a moment. “Better, I guess. Not as severe.”
He hadn’t noticed it then, but now he was certain that drinking from Claire had lessened his need to overload on blood. He craved her always, but in a much different way than the post-pyro urge that turned him into something close to an animal.
Reichen nodded. “I would do anything