Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
It was useful knowledge—the power of her body chemistry was potent but not universal.
He moved on to the sample taken after Cassandra ingested Ravik’s seed, wondering what he might find. The analyzer hummed quietly. Tiny lights flickered across the interface. Data began scrolling down the side screen.
At first, Severin thought he had made a mistake. He checked the label—no mistake. He checked the timestamp—it was correct. He adjusted the scope and reran the sequence but the result was the same.
Cassandra’s blood had changed. Not subtly—dramatically.
Her viral particles were more active now, but not in the way they should have been. The Hunger Virus was no longer trying to bind to her ordinary appetite pathways. It had abandoned the Visskous template completely. It was no longer attempting the mouth-blood-sign route. It was not colonizing the olfactory bulb the way it had in Ravik, either.
Instead, it was clustering around reproductive endocrine receptors.
Severin’s mouth went dry.
“No,” he whispered. “Goddess…”
He zoomed in.
The virus had latched onto the hormonal surge caused by arousal, pleasure, and oral absorption of Ravik’s seminal proteins. It had not been able to turn Cassandra toward flesh-hunger, so it was doing what viruses did best—adapting.
In her, hunger was becoming desire. Instead of a predatory appetite, she was exhibiting a sexual appetite.
Severin’s fangs descended so suddenly they scraped the inside of his lower lip but he barely noticed—he was too focused on the data.
Ravik’s seed appeared to have introduced a surge of Beast Kindred immune factors into Cassandra’s mucosal tissue. Her body had responded by producing stronger anti-viral antibodies. That was good—very good. But the Hunger Virus had also responded. It had followed the same pathway, attempting to hijack the biological need for more of the material that had triggered the response.
In other words, Cassandra’s body had learned that Ravik’s seed helped fight the infection…and the virus had learned to twist that need.
Severin stared at the screen, cold realization spreading through him.
Cassandra was not going to crave flesh—she was going to crave seed.
Possibly also touch—pleasure…penetration…even biting. She was going to want any biological contact that delivered the markers her body was using to fight the virus.
Gods.
He stood so abruptly the stool skidded back behind him and clanged against the cabinet. The sound seemed too loud in the narrow lab.
Severin braced both hands on the table and then hissed as pain flared in his burned palm. He barely felt it. His mind was racing too fast.
If the virus was using her reproductive pathways, then her symptoms would not look like infection at first. They would look like arousal. Heat. Sensitivity. Need. Perhaps emotional attachment. Perhaps craving for Ravik’s scent and seed. Perhaps even Severin’s own essence. Anything that made her feel close and aroused would help fight the virus and her body was going to crave it.
He swallowed hard when he considered the implications. Blood Kindred essence was a healing agent, but it was also a bonding agent. It carried proteins, enzymes, and pleasure-triggering compounds directly through the bloodstream. His bite could deliver anti-viral components more efficiently than any injection, but if Cassandra’s infection was already rerouting through pleasure and reproductive need, then his bite might not simply heal her.
It might complete the circuit…or overwhelm her…or both.
He forced himself to sit again and ran another test—Cassandra’s post-seed blood mixed with Ravik’s infected blood.
The virus retreated more strongly than before. Cassandra’s blood, activated by Ravik’s seed, now attacked the Hunger Virus in Ravik’s sample with far more efficiency than her baseline blood had. The viral filaments shriveled away from neural markers, and Ravik’s cellular immune factors surged.
Severin nodded to himself. This was good—it was promising.
It might also be dangerous.
He then mixed Cassandra’s post-seed blood with a fresh Visskous infected sample.
This time there was a stronger reaction than there had been with her honey alone. The viral replication slowed by nearly forty percent. Some of the mouth-colonization markers degraded. But after several minutes, the virus began to adapt again, trying to rebind through another pathway.
Severin clenched his jaw—this was not enough. He needed more.
Then he added one microscopic drop of his own blood to the mixture and the reaction intensified.
Cassandra’s activated blood, Ravik’s Beast immune markers—carried through the seed she had ingested—and Severin’s Blood Kindred healing factors created a stronger response than any two components alone. The virus shuddered, for lack of a better word. Its replication machinery stalled. Protein shells cracked. The black viral filaments withdrew from the cellular receptors.
For twelve seconds, Severin did not breathe…then the reaction destabilized.
The viral shells began rebuilding. Slowly, but visibly, the sample clouded at the edges and the Hunger Virus started creeping back.
“Damn it,” he breathed. “Close…so damn close.”
He knew what was missing—blood was not enough.
His blood carried part of the answer, but not the delivery mechanism. Blood Kindred healing did not live primarily in the blood—it lived in the essence glands. In the fangs—in the bite. His essence was designed by biology and the Goddess to enter another body and change it…heal it…pleasure it…bind it.