A chill zipped through me from the tip of my head to the tip of my toes.
“I came from a noble family in Bristol.” He started unbuttoning his white flannel, and saliva filled my mouth from the pale, toned muscles peeking out from underneath. He opened up each side, exposing his torso, and I gasped.
“What happened?” My voice came out a little above a whisper as I traced my fingertips over a smooth stark-white scar just above his belly button.
He shivered under my touch but made no moves to stop me. “Unlike Blaise and Kai, I didn’t choose this. I wasn’t already dying.”
“You said you have to be close to death to be turned.” I placed my palm flat against the scar.
Jax hissed from the nearby counter at us.
“That’s right.” A pained look crossed his face as he gripped my wrist and moved my hand before buttoning up the shirt. “My father was a scholar close to digging up the existence of the supernatural. I’m not sure about the details, but there was an older bloke in town that was quite odd.”
Jax pawed my arm until I scratched behind his ear.
“My father approached him and accused him of being a vampire. This particular vampire was a monster, and to get back at my father for the accusation, he turned me by shoving a fire iron through my torso to bring me to the brink of death. He dropped me off at my family home before I awoke.”
I stopped petting Jax, who protested with an irritable meow. I remembered the blood-lust of first awakening and couldn’t imagine what I would’ve done without the guys forcing a blood bag down my throat.
“I did his dirty work for him. I awoke in a blood-lust haze and murdered my father, my mother, and my younger brother,” he spat.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I grabbed my pendant. “What happened after?”
“The Order of the Void found me and took me in to show me the ropes of being a vampire. They allowed me revenge on the monster who made me slaughter my own family, and I reveled in it.”
“He got what he deserved?”
“And more.” A wicked gleam shone in his eyes. “After that, they made me the head of the Draven clan, and I recruited Blaise and Kai the same year.”
I took a tentative step toward him and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
The commotion from the next room made me jump. Hunter shouted obscenities at Blaise, getting progressively louder, as Kai tried to keep the peace in the next room. The stench of Corbin’s death surrounded me.
Hot tears kept flowing from my eyes as a lump formed in my throat.
This is all because of me.
A frown overtook Thaddeus’s face as he rubbed his cheek. “I need you to be strong right now, love.”
Static filled my head. I didn’t want to lose my family, but I knew they didn’t deserve to go through what happened tonight or what they would go through in our world. Corbin didn’t fucking deserve what happened, and that was on me. It was my foolish decision to come here on a whim because I wanted closure. It wasn’t about giving them closure like I’d thought. It had been selfishly about me.
I see that now.
I sighed, pressing two fingers between my brows. “I know they won’t be safe if they have anything to do with me.”
His strong hands pulled me into his chest as he cupped the back of my head with one hand and caressed my lower back with the other. I stiffened a bit in his hold before my muscles finally relaxed.
Thaddeus had never initiated anything remotely intimate between us, and even if it was just a hug, somehow, it meant more.
“You smell like coffee,” I mumbled and sniffed him.
“You fancy coffee, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“I guess that’s a good thing, innit?”
I nodded, glancing back at the living room. I could hear Hunter asking Blaise a ton of vampire-related questions.
