Tate’s self-satisfied grin dipped slightly. “Do you think she still has them?”
“What?” I cocked my head.
Tate’s shoulders bunched up, his eyes dipping to the sidewalk. “Her nightmares.”
I swallowed at his words. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I wished I didn’t. It would make all of this so much easier. For weeks, I had snuck into Jack’s bed and held her. Not that she knew at the time, but it seemed to help settle her when she cried out in her sleep.
Knowing what I know now, it wasn’t hard to imagine what she was dreaming about. While I’d never experienced that type of trauma, I was sure for a child it had to have left scars. Scars that, even as she pretended she was alright to everyone else, took their toll on her while she slept.
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t my problem anymore. Someone else would have to chase away her nightmares. Besides, I doubted she wanted me there. The spawn of the vampire who caused her nightmares.
And yet, a part of me wanted to run back to her, climb into her bed like always, and chase those bad dreams away.
“Kyren?”
My eye jerked back up to Tate’s concerned ones. Forcing my facial expression to show nothing, I stared hard at him. “That’s none of my concern.”
“But Kyren...” Tate grabbed for my arm, but I shrugged him off, letting my shadows wrap around me.
I appeared inside my car, the windows tinted so dark that no one on the outside could see in. But I could see out of them, where Tate stood not too far away, his hand still outstretched.
He stood there for a long moment before his fingers closed into a fist. His face filled with such anguish I wanted to kiss those crinkles in his brows away.
My fingers tightened around my steering wheel, the maroon leather creaking beneath the pressure. Even if there wasn’t a blood bond between us, I would still want to comfort him and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to move toward him.
Maybe that made me a coward, but I couldn’t face him or her. Not now. Not yet. I was still wrapping my head around the face that the woman I loved, obsessed over, practically stalked, was the daughter of my enemy.
Fate truly was cruel.
I pushed the button to start my car, and the engine vibrated beneath me as it came to life. Where would I go?
My instincts were telling me to stay. To find Tate, to find Jack, and to make this right. Except I didn’t know how.
If I made up with Jack, did that mean I was turning my back on my sire? As his only spawn, it was up to me to get vengeancefor him. That meant showing the Durands the same pain they caused me in equal measures.
Vengeance would require an equal sacrifice. Someone in the Durand family that would hurt the same way that they hurt me by taking my sire away from me. Seeing as I was the child of the vampire killed, logic would demand that I take their child from them.
But that would mean... Jack.
I glared at my steering wheel as if it was the vengeance that was causing me so much grief.
It wasn’t just the need for vengeance that ailed me. I’d spent the last decade or so hating the Durands and everything they stood for. Just last year, I was complaining to Tate every moment I could about how I wanted to rip their family apart, sink my fangs into their precious daughter, drain the life from her body.
Well, I had unintentionally sunk my fangs into her, and yet I couldn’t imagine her screams of pain being better than the sweet cries of ecstasy.
I could still taste the memory of her on my tongue, her blood pumping through her veins into my mouth as I pumped my cock into her tight pussy. Feeling it clench around me, her hands clinging to me, pulling me closer, urging me harder.
She never flinched from my shadows. Even Tate had been hesitant to let them touch him at first. But Jack... she accepted them as a piece of me. I wanted to shove them inside every one of her orifices until she passed out from how many times she’d come apart.
Now, I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance.
I slammed the palm of my hand against the steering wheel with a growl. A slew of curse words came from me as I pressed the heel of my palms to my eyes. How did everything get so outof control? Maybe I should never have come to this school. Then I’d never have met her, and I wouldn’t be in such a bind. I just—
A knock at my window froze my thoughts. I lowered my hands, turning my head toward the sound, thinking it was Tate come to push me once more.
Instead, standing in the place Tate should have been was Gavin, his stupid grinning face framed by the door frame. For a hot moment, I contemplated ignoring him. I wasn’t really in the mood to exchange pleasantries. Especially not with a bottom feeding, suck up, who was shy of a decade old.
Gavin bragged to anyone who would listen about how many humans he’d fed from, implying that many times it ended in more than just feeding. Whether he meant killing or fucking, he didn’t really seem to care who heard him.
