Dragon Blood

Chapter 25

"Oh, sweetie," Madeline stepped back from Rhia and looked her over. "It's stunning. We didn't hold back at all this year, did we?"

Rhia turned slowly to look herself over in the tall mirror. "Are you sure it doesn't look too much like a wedding dress?" she asked nervously, running her hands across the fabric of the skirt.

"What are you talking about?" Madeline gawked. "It's silver!"

"With a white overlay." She insisted and turned the other way. "Maybe we should have gone with the black and green."

"You would have looked like a snake." Madeline stepped back up to her and tugged the bodice tighter. "We'll have to get this taken in. You've lost so much weight since we ordered it."

"Well, it was before Church and I broke up." She looked at the loose fabric Madeline was pinning. "I didn't think I lost that much."

"Given the depression you were in, I'm surprised you didn't lose more."

"I don't know," she shrugged in an attempt to hide the tension in her shoulder. "I thought I bounced back pretty quick."

"Honey," Madeline turned her gently and cupped her face. "I am just starting to see the old you back. It's like you've been on autopilot until your brother's accident shifted you back into gear."

"You mean when I met Nolan?"

Madeline scowled. "No. I don't believe that the presence of a new man suddenly changes your outlook on life. That it just so happened that you two have found a connection is great, but otherwise a coincidence."

A buzzing came from Rhia's purse and she pulled out her phone. Nolan's name danced up at her. She tapped the volume button to silence the tone and tossed it back into her bag, neither answering nor sending him straight to voicemail. She turned back to see Madeline raising a judgmental eyebrow. "What?" she asked innocently. "We're busy."

She stepped back in front of the mirror to let her mother start pinning the looser parts for the seamstress. "Is everything alright?"

"It's fine!" Her voice cracked and leapt a full octave higher than normal. Damn it. She was really bad at lying to her mother. She could lie all day to Richard... but not to Madeline. "Nolan... told me he loved me yesterday." She said slowly.

It wasn't the entire reason she had ignored his call. Partially, yes, but not entirely. Saying 'I love you' didn't exactly compare to the aftereffects of his feeding on her. She had gone home before he'd woken up, leaving him a note on his bedside table. She arrived home expecting the effects of his venom to have worn off and to collapse exhausted in bed, only to find that she had more energy than the goddamn battery rabbit. She took Nova out for a ten-mile run and while the dog collapsed when they got back to the house, Rhia felt like she could do it all over again. She felt better than she ever had before. It was weird and disconcerting.

But she wasn't about to tell Madeline that her vampire boyfriend fed on her, let slip that she might be magical to some degree, and that she was secretly hoping he was wrong.

So, the 'I love you' thing was going to have to do. She met Madeline's gaze through the mirror, hoping she wouldn't probe further. "You haven't been going out all that long." She said thoughtfully.

"That's what I was thinking."

"Did you talk about it?"

"No," Rhia shifted uncomfortably. "He said it while we were having sex and I kind of snuck out before he woke up."

"Classy."

"I panicked! What are you supposed to do when someone just drops that on you in the middle of sex?"