“Sorry,” Kai murmured.
Each one looked down at their plates.
I picked back up the fork and continued eating. “What do you mean anyway?”
“You’re eating your food before your blood. Not even we have that kind of restraint,” Thaddeus said.
I swallowed the rest of the food and blanched. My glass of blood was filled, and I’d just now taken notice. “I’ve always eaten my food and then drank whatever I had last unless I was really thirsty.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He grunted. “As a new vampire—”
“Hell,anyvampire,” Blaise chimed in.
“—you shouldn’t have that kind of control without years of practice.”
“And by practice, he means starving yourself by only allowing an ounce of blood a day,” Kai explained.
My brows shot up. “Really?”
Actually, once I thought about it, my focus was solely on the food rather than the blood. I couldn’t refocus during training very quickly, but as good as the blood smelled, my throat didn’t burn, and my stomach didn’t hurt.
I finished up my plate before I grabbed my glass and downed the contents. I sat the glass down and licked my lips. That one tasted even better than the A positive.
“That was B positive,” Blaise told me.
“It was good.” I sighed, feeling their stares once again. “So, what’s next, Kai?”
Kai’s smile widened. “Next up, we test you with a living, bleeding human.”
My stomach dropped. “Already?”
“If you want, you can stay on this lesson…”
“No thanks.” I rested my chin on my fist. “But how’re you all going to get me around someone to test me?”
“Ah, about that.” Blaise rubbed his palms together with a mischievous look in his eye. “That’s where Thaddeus comes in.”
Thaddeus set his jaw as he gave me a nod. “You’ll see.”
A disturbing thrill zipped through me. I wanted to know all the details of what a vampire—whatI—could do, but Thaddeus decided it’d be best for me to learn it all by experiencing it first-hand.
Lame.
“I don’t care how hot you are,” I told Thaddeus with a full pout. “You’re a hardass.”
The guys laughed at that, and even Thaddeus cracked a smile.
“Get some rest. You’ll need to be able to control yourself tomorrow.”
I was semi-confident in my control, but as I walked past the library to my room, a wave of hunger hit in the pit of my stomach. A spur of anxiety crept up, but I shoved it down.
I’ll be able to control myself...I hope.
FIVE
“I’m going to impress the hell out of the Order of the Void!” I put a bounce in my step as Kai gave me a playful eye roll.
Kai and the guys left in the middle of the night last night after a haunting, chilled-to-the-bones kind of shriek in the woods directly behind the manor woke me up. It freaked me the fuck out, but they returned an hour later.
