Alex
Skye doesn’t turn around. I slide my phone free from my pocket, noticing the three missed calls from Toby and the dozen other notifications from my horrified colleagues, but I ignore them, taking three steps and setting my phone on my desk.
I look at Skye, taking in the way her hair shimmers in the lamplight when she turns to watch me move. Her eyes gleam like polished amethyst, swirling with power so different from mine.
She’s right. I’ve been weak. I’ve kept myself weak. I’ve kept her at arm’s length even though everything I want is right in front of me, and for the first time in my life, I considered risking someone’s safety to have something for myself.
“I haven’t been honest with you.”
“I know,” she snarls–trying to look furious. But tears shine along her lower lashes.
“I understand this is confusing. It is for me, too. And I hate that you feel like I’m gaslighting you about how I feel, but I’m looking at this through the lens of… I want you. I like you. I respect you, and I know, firsthand, how difficult an interspecies relationship can be because I’ve seen it be both successful and devastating.”
She reaches up to wipe her tears, her eyes brighter than before now that I’m finally submitting to what she wants. Skye is like me in that way–she needs to know everything to understand her own feelings and convictions. We both need hard evidence to move forward. Our brains are wired to seek answers before jumping into something with both feet. The constant war between our emotions and instincts versus our need to rationalize our feelings and actions is… unfortunately unique for what we are.
It makes her a horrible shifter.
It makes me an even worse vampire.
“My name isn’t Alex. Not officially.” I lean my leg against my desk, crossing my arms over my chest. “I am called that back home, by my parents, but….” I take a breath. “When I came here, I had to forge papers to enroll at the university. I’m sure you deduced that.”
More interested, she slowly turns to fully face me, edging toward one of the armchairs situated in front of my desk.
“Scarlett Thunder is the name of my kingdom. My parents still rule. My father is a king, and my mother–my name is Kieran Alexander, Prince of Scarlet Thunder.”
“Kieran?”
“Kieran,” I say, fixing her pronunciation of the name, but the way she said it is off, her accent harder and sharper.
The corner of her mouth twitches. “You say it so differently. I have a cousin named Kieran, but it sounds like Keer-an,” she says, meeting my eyes, her voice softer and calmer than before. “You say it like… Ky-ren.”
“Our languages are actually shockingly similar,” I reply, feeling like some of the tension is actually lifting. “It didn’t take me long to learn it. Weeks, honestly.”
She perches on the arm of the chair and watches me expectantly, waiting for me to continue. I suck in a breath.
“My mother named me, and my father hated the name, so they started calling me Alex. My grandfather, Lex, went by our last name, so it felt fitting. No one calls me Kieran, so don’t start.”
Her cheeks redden, but her soft smile works through my body, untangling some of the grief, making it hard to focus.
I angle my body toward hers. “I’ve never had to explain this before.”
“Take your time.”
She’s not going to leave until I’ve explained everything, truly. She’s like a persistent little owl with those big eyes and statuesque expression, soaking every word I say in like a sponge.
“I mentioned there were two distinct types of vampires. I was born a vampire. So was my father. The woman I call mother… she was turned. She was turned against her will.”
Shadows creep over Skye’s face, painting lines of grief under her eyes.
I clear my throat, looking down at my hands as my fingers curl into fists against my thighs. “She was a witch before she turned. She was very young–nineteen or twenty. She can’t remember. But vampires stormed her village on the day of her wedding. They killed her entire family, her entire village. And she and her twin sister were spared for some sick, twisted reason, and turned against their will. That was… over two hundred years ago.”
Skye makes a small, surprised noise.
I kick off my desk and begin to pace. “You want to know the difference between us, so I’ll say this much. Born vampires are very similar to shifters and witches, and whatever else haunts our shared, but separated, worlds. We can have children. We age, but differently. Turned vampires are cursed to a long life, but they’re sterile. They cannot have children. There’s a wide variety of biological differences between born vampires and turned vampires, and it comes down to the fact that turned vampires are simply just… dead.”
“And you’re not?”
“No, I am very much alive.”
“But… your mother had you?”
“No.” Memories of my early childhood bleed into later years, when I started to unravel the truth about my parents and their story–how hard they had to fight for not only me, but just to be together. Two different species aligned by love. “I don’t know my birth mother. She died when I was born, but she was a born vampire, like my father. They didn’t know each other. My father was supposed to marry the princess of another kingdom but was in love with my mother and had been for years at that point, forsaking all others, but she knew they couldn’t be together. He needed heirs. She couldn’t give that to him. But my father had a drunken night, and I was the result. My mother, Emelda, raised me and loved me as her own. She has always wanted to be a mother. She was robbed of so much when she was turned, and I have dedicated my life to finding a cure. To… bringing her back to life. Still a vampire, maybe, but like me and my dad. Giving her a chance to have a child that’s part of her and part of him, something I can never be.”
I go on to explain how I trained in apothecary medicine in my kingdom; how I had the freedom to have my own practice shortly before I had to go, but I leave those details for another time. It’s such a complicated web to weave.
“And you came here?”
“I did, but I had no idea that Lunaria had a place like this. I spent a year in Aurorium, making connections, gathering forged paperwork and giving myself a fake background I could use to gain entrance to the university. I was young, in my early twenties, and easily passed for an undergraduate student, and when I was able to enroll, everything changed for me. I had access to the tech I needed to actually find a cure, but it’s been a decade. I moved through the motions. I’ve been in every lab, run every test, but my mother isn’t here. They don’t know where I am, and I’ve been gone for over ten years now. I chose to specialize in paleomicrobiology because I deduced I’d find the answers to my questions in a world that no longer exists, and I’ve come close. I get close to a conclusion, and something changes, new evidence reveals itself, and I fall back again. But then I met you. Then I saw the very particle I was looking for in your blood, like you’re made of it, but that’s the thing. It’s not something I can use to cure my mother. It’s not something I can bottle and sell to the masses. It’s your magic, Skye, and it cannot be replicated.”
Silence spreads through the room. My phone has been buzzing repeatedly, a constant reminder of the situation at hand.
But this feels more important.
“I don’t know how to move forward with you because my time here is limited, especially now,” I admit. “This goes beyond me being a vampire.”
“Because Laney died?”
I look down at my hands. “I am at fault.”
“Unless you killed her–”
“It was not me, but based on what I’ve heard, this was a vampire's work. And if I’m honest, I’ve had suspicions about the two other murders in and around Aurorium.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because this falls back on me.”
“I can help you,” she cuts in, rising. “I can find this person. I just need–I could try to look into Laney’s mind and find out who attacked her.”
“She’s dead, Skye.”
“But–”
“I do not want you involved.”
“Why? Why not?” she says in a near shout, and that electric tension soars once again. “I’ve been honest about who I am and what I can do.”
“And I have been clear about the dangers involved!” I square my shoulders, my tone bitter and stern. “I killed someone very, very important a decade ago and ran to protect my family. I killed someone to prevent a war, and I knew, eventually, that would catch up with me, and if there is a vampire here, he or she is hunting me, Skye, and anyone in their way is collateral, including you. I don’t care that you have powers and can protect yourself. Vampires are designed to hunt and kill, more so than shifters. A vampire will always be two steps ahead, and I need you to look me in the eyes and hear me when I say I cannot involve you, which means this–” I wave a hand between us. “This cannot happen unless you understand the consequences. This is what I want. I want you. I want to sit and talk to you about everything and nothing. I want to sit in the observatory and listen to you lecture. I want to bring you to my lab and show you everything I’ve ever touched and researched. I want you however I can have you, but I refuse to use you as a feeder, and I refuse to put you in the middle of what could end up in a fucking war.”
She narrows her eyes, biting back another argument I won’t hear. I refuse. Skye isn’t used to people drawing hard lines in the sand. I assume people tiptoe around her, ever cautious, and now? With me standing up and putting a firm boundary in place?
She doesn’t like it. Not one bit.
“I kissed you because I wanted to and because it was all I’ve been thinking about for days. Weeks, if I’m being totally honest. I kissed you because it’s what I needed. Now, I’m telling you–firmly–that you are not going to get involved in what happens next. Laney is my problem. I will find who did this to her and end it. I do not need your help.”
“You do.”
“I do not.”
We stare at each other, glaring in the glow of the lamplight.
“Have I made myself clear?” I ask in a tone I normally reserve for my students.
She scoffs. “Don’t ever use that tone with me again.”
“Skye,” I warn, edging toward her, “I am not going to allow you–”
“I don’t need your fucking permission. The entire campus is locked down. Someone died. Your student died in a vicious attack, and if, on the off chance, someone starts putting the pieces together and what you are gets out, you’re the prime suspect. If–” She closes the distance between us, pointing her finger directly into my chest. “If my family finds out about this, and I’m sure they will, there will be an investigation, and my aunt Maeve will find out that vampires are in Lunaria, and you can’t escape that, and I can’t save you from it. I’m helping!”
“No!”
“You can’t stop me!”
“Enough! You are not a part of this because if I lose you–if I’m responsible for your death–I will have to live with that for the rest of my long, unending life, and I can’t.”
She rears back, startled by the raw emotion woven through my words. She searches my eyes and softens a bit but steps away from me toward the door in what I hope is defeat.
I hate doing this to her. She’s brave but naive. She has no idea what this situation could become.
“How are you going to get blood if the campus is locked down?” she asks in a tone that’s meant to sting, and honestly, it does.
“Not from you.”
She rolls her eyes, furious. “You’re being so fucking stupid.”
“So be it. Knowing you’re safe and uninvolved is enough.”
“Fuck you, Alex.”
I look away, and she slips through the door, slamming it so hard it rattles.