The Turning-Blood Ties 1 by Jennifer Armintrout

the bureau. I’d just met Nathan. Spending the night in his bed was

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    intimate enough. I didn’t need to wear his clothes, too. But the thought of sleeping naked didn’t appeal to me, either. I undressed, grimacing at the pain that tore through me when I moved. When I eased into the bed, I hissed in agony. Loud footsteps charged down the hall, and Nathan burst into the room just seconds later.
    “Are you okay? Do you need something for the pain?”
    His immediate reaction to a sound I didn’t think he’d been able to hear unnerved me. So did the sincere concern etched on his face.
    He didn’t give me a chance to answer him. With a speed that surprised me, he left and reappeared with a large metal toolbox. Sitting on the bed, he placed the box in his lap and sprung the latches. “Okay, what do you want? We’ve got morphine, meperidine, Vicodin… I’ve got local anaesthetic, but I’d really like to save that.” As he continued to rattle off drug names, I peeked around his arm. The man’s first aid kit was better stocked than the Pyxis medicine cabinet in the E.R., but I was willing to bet he didn’t come by the stuff legally. “How’d you get all this?”
    “Connections in the Movement.” He lifted out a bottle of pills and squinted to read the label.
    “I thought you guys were all about the extinction of your species.” I reached for a syringe and the vial of meperidine. “This should put me right to sleep. Got a tourniquet?”
    He handed me the stretchy strip of latex. “The rules state we can’t save a vampire’s life, not even our own. If our healing abilities don’t take care of things, that’s the end of it. Nothing in here is going to save me if I get in a bad way. There’s no rule against keeping yourself comfortable for your last few hours. Do you need a hand?”
    I had the tourniquet between my teeth and tried to wind it around my arm the way I’d seen them do it in Trainspotting. I’d started enough IVs in my time that it should have been a piece of cake, but doing it yourself wasn’t as easy as it looked. When I shook my head no in answer to Nathan’s question, the stretched length of rubber shot from my lips, snapping me painfully in the face.
    “Here, let me.” He chuckled as he deftly tied the tourniquet and thumped the fat vein on the inside of my forearm. “That looks like a good spot.”
    I watched as he carefully filled the syringe. This obviously wasn’t the first injection he’d given. “Did the Movement teach you how to do this?” I asked. He tapped the air bubbles toward the needle. “I picked it up somewhere. Now, hold still.”
    I felt the needle slide into my unsterilized arm. I remembered what I’d read in The Sanguinarius regarding disease: The humors that delight in causing sickness and death will not touch the vampire. He will not be affected by the plagues of Pandora. I could only assume the same went for modern-day germs and bacteria. The medicine stung as it entered my vein, but Nathan’s touch was gentle and reassuring. Even so, I fixed my gaze on his face to keep from looking at the needle in my arm—I was never good at being the patient. “So we can heal from serious injuries on our own?”
    “The depth of severity is determined by age. If someone had done to me what I did to Cyrus, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I would’ve healed from your stab wound in an hour, whereas you’re lucky you didn’t need stitches. By the time I found you, though, you’d already started to heal. It’s a good thing you’d fed some.” He held his thumb over the injection site as he withdrew the needle, then reached for a Band-Aid. “There. That should take the edge off, and it will help you get to sleep.”

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    “What about me? How long will it take until I’m