Mate

Damien did not want to be feeling the things he was currently feeling. He was clutching the dagger Cain had given him so hard that the muscles in his hand were starting to cramp. But even that discomfort wasn't enough to draw his mind away from the dizzying, nigh-overwhelming sensation of the steady press of Cain's tongue against his bare skin. He'd known, at least subconsciously, that contact with his mate was meant to be soothing. And as much as he would have liked to forget, his body still remembered the way it responded the first time he caught the vampire's scent. The sensations were overwhelming - first was the gentle hold the vampire had on his hands as he slowly dragged his tongue over Damien's wrist, then up his forearm, pausing at every cut, every scrape, then there was the way his cool breath fluttered over the wet trails he left on Damien's skin, soothing yet raising goosebumps in its intensity, and finally, there was the moment when Cain hovered over a particularly deep cut, one of the bites Crowe had left on the inner crook of Damien's arm, where the veins hovered nearer to the surface. His lips had closed around the mark completely, and he'd sucked. 

Damien had wanted to scream, not because he thought the vampire was trying to drink his blood, but because he was suddenly, desperately, and utterly aroused. The insistent pressure of Cain's tongue and the pull of his lips against the sensitive skin was enough to make him want things he never expected to want from any vampire, much less this vampire in particular. But the shivers in his spine and the pulse pounding in his ears made it very clear that being sucked, the added pressure that pulled the flesh taut against the man's mouth, was not only welcome but longed for. 

He felt the barest scrape of teeth - of fangs - against the bite mark on his arm, and the heady sensation of attraction was swept away in a rush of sudden panic. He yanked his arm away, scrambling backwards, and said, "You said you wouldn't–!" He couldn't even bring himself to say the words, to string together a complete thought. He wouldn't. 

He might. 

Damien had no way to refuse. 

For a moment, the room seemed to be spinning. Damien felt his limbs growing weak. The dagger he'd been clutching all along - when had he forgotten it? - tumbled from his fingers to lie before him on the bedsheets. He stared at it for a moment, before tearing his eyes away, and looking to the vampire he hated, whose help he needed.

Cain's tongue darted out briefly to wet his lips, his eyes blood red and hungry as Damien had ever seen in a vampire's gaze. There was a hint of madness to the stare, too, like the man was teetering on the edge of something terrible. He always looked to be in a sorry state, but there was something worse, more raw to the madness in his gaze.

He was looking a vampire in the eye. A vampire that wanted his blood. A vampire that still, even now, was not trying to control him. Was waiting for him to make the next move. Was far more patient and gentle than he'd ever thought a vampire could be, especially a hungry one. 

"No teeth," Damien said hoarsely, repeating the promise Cain had made earlier.

"No teeth," Cain answered, his voice nearly as hoarse as Damiens. But where Damien's voice was roughened by arousal, Cain's sounded like the parched voice of a man dying of thirst. 

"You won't drink," Damien repeated himself again. 

"I will not," Cain said, also repeating.

"You seemed like you were thinking about it," Damien said, the roughness in his voice giving way to nerves. 

A mild look of contrition flashed across Cain's features. "It won't happen again."

Damien wasn't convinced. "How am I supposed to believe that?" 

"How else do you propose to recover before the full moon?" Cain answered his question with a question of his own.

Damien didn't have a good answer for him, but two could play at this game of answering questions with only-somewhat-related questions. "How are you going to stop yourself if you end up playing fast and loose with your teeth?"

"I won't -" 

"Won't you?" Damien stared hard at the vampire, daring him to contradict what he could already sense was fast becoming a losing battle with the man's blood-drinking instincts. He couldn't hold himself back much longer, and if he tried, he'd just end up failing. And Damien would probably end up taking the man's bite, because he was too weak to really fight back at this point. And if Cain bit him on the nape… well. Then he might actually end up mated to the man. And a true mating bite mate sickness would probably be a whole lot worse to deal with than a nascent bond's mate sickness. 

"What do you want from me?" Cain demanded. "I'm doing my best."

Damien considered the situation. He did need healed. But he didn't trust the vampire's instincts. "I just want to be sure you're in control of yourself."

"I am in control of myself," Cain insisted.

Damien took a bit of a risk, tilting his head to the side to display the bite from Crowe, the blood still oozing down the side of his neck. "So I guess if I do this, it doesn't affect you at all?"

 Cain took a lurching half-step forward, fingers curling into claws, a flash of utter madness in his eyes before he managed to hold himself back, turning his head away from Damien, swallowing a few times before finally speaking. "All right," he said, sounding defeated. "You made your point. What of it?"

Damien wasn't sure, but he just knew he couldn't trust the vampire for much longer. "How do we do this without you losing control?"

"I don't know," Cain said, sounding frustrated. "I haven't fallen into a blood hunger frenzy in years, and the last time that happened, I don't remember anything about what happened."

'Blood hunger frenzy' sounded like the most terrifying combination of words Damien had heard in a long time. It also made him think of when werewolves transformed without their packs, and became more like feral beasts than thinking wolves, when they lost themselves to the madness of the beast within, having no one beside them to help tame it. Damien was like that when he transformed. Had been, ever since he'd lost his family. But the thought made him remember how his mother and Dezzy handled his bouts of moon madness. "Can we lock you up?" Damien asked.

"Lock me up?" Cain asked, looking deeply suspicious. 

"Do you have, I don't know, restraints or something?" Cain looked so deeply insulted by the insinuation that Damien almost felt like apologizing. 

"Who do you think I am, Crowe? I don't chain people to walls or bind and gag the thralls I feed from," Cain sputtered, his voice tinged with disgust and revulsion. "I don't even feed from thralls at all!"

"Is that why you're so bad at controlling yourself?" Damien sneered.

"I'm struggling because I haven't been able to feed for two weeks," Cain snapped, his voice growing sharp. "And because my blood hunger is back after feeling true satisfaction for the first time since I was turned. So yes," he continued, his voice rising along with his apparent ire, "I am having a bit more trouble with control than normal. But I am not a mindless beast, and I do not intend to-"

Damien wasn't even paying attention to whatever Cain was trying to say, because the first part of his rant had sounded very strange. "What do you mean, your blood hunger is back?" He wasn't aware that vampires could just not want to drink blood. Wouldn't that make them not a vampire anymore? And what had he meant about not feeding for two weeks? Was that a long time for a vampire? A short time? Ugh, he should have asked Grace to give him more information about vampire habits. "And why didn't you feed for two weeks?"

Cain's rant died halfway through, and he scowled. "I thought my blood was blessed," he said slowly. "But now I'm not sure what happened."

Blessed blood? How could a vampire have blessed blood? "Wouldn't that be deadly, though?" How could a vampire live with a divine blessing literally running in their veins?

"It's typically quite fatal, yes," Cain said. 

"So… you were dying?" Damien asked, then thought back to how worn and absolutely miserable the vampire had seemed the past few times they'd interacted. "You were dying this whole time?" And Damien hadn't even realized! That felt somehow unfair, because it seemed like maybe Cain was dying a bit less now, and Damien hadn't even had the opportunity to properly gloat about the man's suffering!

"It certainly seemed that way," Cain said. "But I've never heard of blessed blood being curable. Usually once a vampire's blood hunger inverts, it's done."

Damien had no idea what a blood hunger inversion was, but it sounded unpleasant. "How did you get blessed blood, anyway? Didn't mom and Dezzy patch you up?"

Cain waved aside his question. "It happened after that business was concluded. A temple ritual. I got caught in it by accident."

Damien wasn't sure how unlucky a vampire had to be to accidentally get caught in a blood-purifying ritual. But he suspected there was significantly more to the story. "So your blood was blessed in a ritual," he said, "but then your blood hunger came back?"

Cain was frowning slightly, as if he'd only just now started thinking about his situation. Maybe he was, if he'd been too busy focusing on not losing his mind with the need for Damien's blood. "Yes," he said, haltingly. "Your blood is the only one I've been drawn to since the ritual."

Damien narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Cain. "Why would that be?"

"I'm beginning to wonder," Cain said, "if it has something to do with that damned mate-sickness of yours."

"Why would it have something to do with mate-sickness?" Damien demanded. 

"Because the temple was Brinn's," Cain explained. "And Brinn has been… not protecting me, exactly. But at least not actively harming me, aside from this blood hunger debacle."

Damien had never felt so betrayed by the moon in his entire life. "Brinn was helping you?"

Cain made a noncommittal gesture with his hand. "It depends on how you look at it, I suppose. But now I'm suspecting she had some sort of plan in mind all along."

"You think Brinn, my goddess, blessed your blood so that you could only drink my blood?" Damien knew he was shrieking, but he couldn't find the wherewithal to control his volume. "Like some twisted vampire version of mate-sickness?"

As soon as he said it, he fell silent, and they both stared at each other for a painfully long, silent moment. 

"Gods above and gods below," Damien swore. "It's … it's vampire mate sickness."

Cain looked utterly appalled. "Vampires don't have mates," he protested. 

"Maybe most vampires don't," Damien said, and felt almost vicious as he continued, "but you do."

Cain looked like he dearly wanted to deny this claim, but couldn't quite bring himself to contradict what they were both slowly accepting to be true. 

"Brinn did this," Cain said, grudgingly, "because of your mate-sickness."

"No," Damien said tiredly. "She did it because of the bond."

Cain looked like he wanted to argue the point, but wasn't sure how to word his objection. "What bond?" he said, gesturing between the two of them demonstratively. "There is no bond."

"That's the problem," Damien said, feeling a wave of exhaustion crash over him - impressive, because he hadn't realized he could feel more tired and sick and sore than he already was - as he said, "she wants a bond. A mate-bond. And I guess she's found a way to force the issue, the same way she forces the issue for werewolves with mate-sickness."

Cain looked deeply disturbed by this news. "That's going to be a problem," he said, which was precisely what Damien was also thinking.

"Yeah, because we hate each other," Damien agreed.

Cain frowned slightly. "I don't hate you," he said. "And that's not the biggest problem with all this."

It sure felt like the biggest one to Damien. "Oh yeah?"

"The problem," Cain said, "is that you can't stay here. Not with Crowe after you. I was going to get you out of the castle and… I don't know, find a way to make regular visits to solve that pesky mate-sickness business."

Damien frowned. "But now you have mate-sickness, too."

Cain sighed heavily, running a hand through his half-tangled black hair, gazing up at the ceiling as though he could see the moon from where he stood. "Yes," he growled. "That certainly complicates things." 

Damien thought it was a bit funny, actually. For once Cain was having to deal with the sort of misery that Damien had been dealing with all along. A significantly less amusing thought came to him then. "But wait, you said the only blood you can drink is mine?"

A muscle in Cain's jaw twitched as he clearly clenched his teeth before gritting out, "That's correct."

Damien had never felt more smug in his life. "What if I don't want you to drink my blood?" he asked, feeling almost giddy with the power of that question.

Cain's eyes dropped from the ceiling to glare at him with the full force of a blood-hunger-maddened vampire. "Then we'll both fucking die," he growled. "Me from starvation, you from mate-sickness once I've passed."

Damien had sort of forgotten about that in the midst of his gloating. "Oh. Right." That did put a bit of a damper on his plan for vengeance. "So how are we going to do this in a way that keeps me from being enthralled, then?" Because if there was one thing he absolutely didn't want, it was Cain feeding from his neck. Well. That and he also certainly didn't want to actually complete a mating bond with Cain. Hopefully the close proximity of - ugh - regular feeding of some sort (maybe he could just… bleed into a cup or something?) would be enough to keep the mate-sickness at bay. 

"I don't know," Cain gritted out, his eyes still fixed on Damien. "But we'd better figure it out soon because your blood isn't getting any less appealing, and you seem to have a problem with me being free to move around." 

Damien frowned, eyeing the bed thoughtfully. "Do you have rope?" he asked.

"Why would I have rope?" Cain demanded irritably. 

"To tie you to the bed," Damien explained. He hadn't known that vampires could blush until that exact moment, and it was definitely not a look he'd expected to see cross the face of the vampire he wanted to tie up. Maybe he should have proposed it more diplomatically. 

"I don't tie people to beds," Cain snarled. "There's no rope!"

Damien frowned at his answer. "There's bedsheets," he proposed after a moment. 

Cain stared at him for a long moment, before sighing, his shoulders slumping. "If that's what it takes," he said in a low voice, "then fine. Just get it over with before the blood-hunger gets any worse."