VET Vampire Romance 01 - Covet

he had to. He would have faced their rulers and whatever sentence they would have given him now that he knew she was free of her master and safe.
    Callum held the door for him and waited while he walked towards him, each step more painful than the last.
    He would tend to his female.
    He would cherish her forever if she would have him.

Chapter 10
    Lilah woke slowly, her head strangely free of pain and her body warm and relaxed. Why had she expected to wake in agony? She fluttered her eyes open and Javier came into focus, lying next to her on his back, his face littered with thin red lines and bruises. His lip was swollen and split, and there was a nasty dent in his nose. She frowned and lowered her gaze to what she could see of his bare chest. More red lines marred his shoulders and torso. There had been a fight. Was that why she had expected to wake in pain?
    She slowly raised her hands from under the midnight blue covers and frowned at them. They were dirty and there were cuts on them, but they were healing and had already passed the scab stage. Each mark was like a dark pink scar, several weeks’ old rather than mere hours.
    There were more marks on her dirty elbows and she could feel that her lip had split too, but it wasn’t swollen like Javier’s.
    She touched it and then her cheek, recalling that Lord Ashville had dragged her through the theatre searching for Javier and everything had turned chaotic.
    Lilah sat up abruptly and pain speared through her this time. She pressed her hands to her stomach and held down the bile and her urge to be sick. Her vision swam and she waited for it to stop wavering before she looked around Javier’s blue bedroom. The long black coat folded neatly over the chair in the corner told her that part of her memories had been real. Snow had tried to protect her.
    Had he killed Lord Ashville?
    Her gaze tracked back to Javier where he slept beside her. Every cut and bruise on his beautiful face and body told her that he had been the one to fight for her. Had he killed her master? She placed her hand over her chest between her bare breasts and tried to feel Lord Ashville in her blood.
    Her eyes widened.
    She felt something but it didn’t make her skin crawl and the presence was close to her. In this room.
    Lilah touched her lips and then drew her hand away and stared at it and the healing cuts on her arms. The bruises on her skin were faded too, and she could no longer feel the internal pain from Lord Ashville’s abusive behaviour towards her.
    Javier had given his blood to her.
    “Forgive me,” Javier uttered in a raspy voice and slowly opened his chocolate brown eyes. Concern touched his expression and he wearily raised his hand and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. The worry in his eyes turned to fatigue and his hand drooped, falling to her breast, as though he no longer had the strength to lift it. She took hold of his hand for him and brought it to her face, holding it there so he could stroke it. “I wanted to give you a choice this time.”
    Lilah closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against his hand, feeling his apology deep in her blood. She wasn’t angry with him. He had only given her blood so she would heal rapidly and he had probably saved her life by doing so. When Lord Ashville had thrown her against the wall, she had felt her life forced from her body, the pain so intense that her heart had struggled. She had expected to never wake at all. Javier hadn’t forced a bond upon her, not in the way Lord Ashville had.
    He had gifted her with life by giving his blood to her and she could feel in her veins that he wished there had been another way to save her.
    “There’s nothing to forgive.” She drew his hand away from her face. Her gaze fell to the deep bite mark on his wrist, a mark that he must have made for her. She pressed a long kiss to it, thankful for the gift that he had given her, a chance to be with him. Her heart whispered that he would never use the bond between them against her or treat her as Lord Ashville had done. He had given her blood out of love not out of a desire to own her. “I would have done the same for you.”
    She looked at the cuts and bruises on his body.
    “I will do the same for you.” She leaned over him on the bed, reached around behind her neck and pulled the hair away from her throat, revealing it to him.
    Javier stared at her throat and then at the other side where he had bitten her. “You have no bite marks other