He stroked her hair and slowed his breathing so his rising chest didn’t disturb her too much. “What else do you want to know?”
She was quiet for a moment, and he listened to the sounds of rushing water mixing with the crickets chirping nearby.
At heart he was a predator, more dangerous than any of the other nocturnal forest creatures emerging from their dens to begin their evening hunts. There was a peacefulness to the night that he could never find in the day, as if the shadows settling over him forced a pressure to drop away from his chest. With night vision better than any of the owls watching over them, he was just as at home in the dark as any human was during the day.
Eventually it would become too cold for her, though. Or she would be too nervous to be in the woods late at night. Until that time came, he would cherish every second of contact with her.
“I guess tell me more about this whole rogue hunting thing,” she said a minute later. “When you first brought it up, I thought you were just a method actor trying a little too hard to get the role. Now that I know the truth, I’m kinda curious about what it all entails.”
He let his gaze lock on the stars above him for a second, searchingfor the answer in their glittering brilliance. He didn’t remember what it was like to look at the night sky as a human, but he knew it was a damn shame that Cora couldn’t see what he could—a tapestry of constellations spreading out over a blanket of swirling sapphire and violet. An explosion of stardust, like grains of twinkling salt tossed up into the sky with abandon.
To his disappointment, the stars didn’t hold the guidance he was looking for. The answer to her question was easy, but what he struggled with was how much truth to reveal. Too much, and she might bolt like a rabbit. Too little, and she would think he was hiding things from her.
In the end, the reality of the situation made the decision for him. He had precious little time with her, so best to get it all out in the open that way he could judge her reaction and determine the amount of damage control needed.
“There are laws within our society,” he began slowly, keeping his tone soft and casual as if discussing the Treaty of Ghent.
Nothing too disturbing here, just a little lesson in how much of a murderer I am, he thought.
Damn, he would kill for Tressa’s calming ability. She could tell a person their entire family had been brutally massacred, and they’d take the news no worse than hearing they stepped in dog shit.
“One of those laws,” he continued, “is regarding the creation of more vampires. Secrecy is paramount to our existence, naturally, but it’s also necessary to control the population. If vampires were allowed to go unchecked, siring more and more of our kind, eventually we would have no food source.”
He felt her stiffen and kicked himself for phrasing it like that. He made it sound like vampires looked at humans the way Cora looked at a hamburger. Like mortals were little more than twitchy, irrational,anxiety-filled cows.
Smooth, Saiden. Smooth like butter filled with pop rocks.
“I guess I can understand that,” Cora accepted, relaxing slightly, and he thanked Lilith that she reacted to things better than the average high-strung bovine.
“To prevent the inevitable downfall of our kind, a bunch of vamps got together long before I was born and established two rules. The first being that no vampire can sire more than one other vampire, and the human they choose has to be willing. It keeps our population relatively low and still allows us to turn our mate.”
Cora ran a hand leisurely over his chest, and the casual relaxed motion almost caused him to shiver with delight. He wanted to stay there with her forever, hiding from the pain of reality.
“You said that word before. ‘Mate.’ I’m guessing you aren’t referring to the Australian definition?”
He chuckled. “No. A vampire’s mate is essentially the other half of their soul. The only other person who could happily endure spending eternity at their side. It’s a supernatural bond that transcends reason and science. More than love, more than devotion, it’s a connection that can’t be explained, only felt. When a vampire meets their mate… they just know.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Cora replied, her voice full of awe and maybe a hint of wistfulness.
“It is.” Saiden gulped, wondering if it was the right moment to tell her. “Or so I’ve heard,” he added, chickening out.
A heaviness settled over them until Cora eventually broke the silence. “What’s the other rule?”
Saiden ran his fingers down the curve of her hip, wishing they could go back to the conversation about mates so he could try again to tell her. “Rule two is the obvious one. Not telling anyone about our kind.”
“Which is why you brought me here; you need Marquin to wipe your existence from my brain.”
There was a sadness to her voice that nearly broke his heart. He wanted to believe it was for him. That she hated the idea of being forced to forget their time together.
He knew better than that, even if he wished he didn’t. All she wanted to do was make her movie before she died, and he was likely nothing more than a pleasant distraction for her.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. That’s why.”
She nodded. “So, a rogue vampire is what then? Someone who broke the rules?”
“Essentially,” he replied. “Sometimes it’s a vampire that isn’t being careful and is letting mortals learn about us. Most of the time, a rogue is one making more of our kind beyond their allowed single turn. Oftentimes that behavior just ends up breeding more vampires who don’t know about our rules. A rogue might change three mortals then grow bored and abandon them. Those three don’t know anything about how to survive, so they resort to what little they’ve heard about vampires from books and movies—brazenly killing and feeding. Then they go make more like them. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, and it’s my job to stop it.”
“You hunt them down and kill them,” she said. A statement, not a question.
