Page 10 of The Human’s Heart

Jett and I exchanged a look, amazed for sure, but also a little horrified. I couldn’t imagine living that long. Wouldn’t you get bored? Sometimes I couldn’t stand people even after my measly twenty years of life. But thousands? I was afraid I’d go on a rampage after spending that much time around all the idiots of the world.

I looked at Zaos.

Okay, I could imagine it—without the rampage, even. I kind of… even wanted it. It was just difficult to think of living that long when I was so much younger now.

Thousands of years… damn.

Anton, Phaeron, Beshiro… holy shit.

I blinked when I registered who he was talking about. My mouth blurted out, “Jed’s thousands of years old?” Holy shit. I thought he was my age or maybe even younger with the way he acted.

All three of the vampires laughed, and Emrys nodded his head. “Yes, he is. He acts like a kid, but he’s a lot older than all three of us put together.”

That was difficult to comprehend, to put it lightly, but I still nodded. “Right. Okay. That’s…”

“Wild?” Toby smiled at me, clearly amused. “Jed’s young at heart.”

Emrys added, “But old as fuck in body.”

That made all of us laugh.

After Zay stored the blood in the fridge, his uncles sat down and stayed for a while. Turned out they were actually pretty cool and really nice people. That shouldn’t surprise me either. They were Ellwoods after all.

I didn’t mind that they stayed for a few hours, but I had to admit I was happy to have Zay, Jett, and Ward to myself for a little while, even if that time was going to be spent with Jett and me drinking blood.

Julius’s blood.

Ewwww.

“Do you want it in a drink or in some food?” Zay asked after he saw his uncles out.

“Drink,” I said. “I’m not that hungry, and having to eat it like that sounds even grosser than drinking it.”

Jett chuckled. “I agree. Drink, please.”

“Coming right up.” Zay got up and walked into the kitchen.

I was already gagging, and I couldn’t even see or smell it yet. This was going to be so disgusting.

Zaos brought in two glasses of red wine—or at least I hoped it was red wine and the blood hadn’t turned white into red. Ew, ew, ew, ew.

Zay rolled his eyes at me, looking amused again. “It’s red wine. The kind you two cooed over a few weeks ago. Try it. I bet you can’t even taste it.”

We each took a glass, looked at one another, clinked our glasses together, and brought it to our lips.

I’d planned on hemming and hawing over this, but after what Jett had said earlier, and after seeing and feeling how upset Zay was yesterday, I figured I needed to just go for it.

So after one little breath where I purposefully didn’t breathe the wine scent in, I took a big gulp.

I was prepared for a metallic taste, or maybe for something simply gross, but all I tasted was… wine.

Jett sighed. “Huh. That’s delicious.”

My brow furrowed as I examined my glass. “Um, are you sure you put some in here?”

Zay smiled. “Yep. You really don’t need that much to begin with, but it also goes well with wine. Vampire blood doesn’t always taste like human blood.” He shrugged. That was… weird and kinda gross, but I’d take it.

“How do you know that?”