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“Yes, but it’s rare. They result only from mating with humans, and most of us avoid such entanglements.”

“Holy shit. This is unreal. How about wooden stakes?”

And this was where they would stop. He would not give a Cheld the means by which to kill him.

“Let us just say we are harder to kill than you’ve been told. Especially me.”

Alessandra cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

When Kenton had decided to tell Alessandra the truth, he’d contemplated lying to her about this one thing. Instead, he found himself telling her everything, leaving out only such details as were necessary to protect his brothers.

“My family are among the first vampires in existence. As such, I have grown stronger and more disciplined with age. Other vampires would find it difficult to kill me.”

“Family? Are you saying your family is still alive?”

He tried to ignore her nearness.

“Relatively alive,” he amended. “I have two brothers, though my mother and father were turned at the same time as well.”

He didn’t elaborate, and Alessandra was too polite to ask. He’d already told her his parents were dead.

“You said yours was one of the first. So Lawrence’s family was turned at the same time?”

He had just over one week until his truce with Lawrence was over. He knew what would happen then—Lawrence would share his secret about the relationship between his family and the Cheld, and the dark intentions that had brought him to Stone Haven. If there was any chance for Alessandra not to despise him when she did learn everything, this was his chance. Better to tell her the truth himself than to have someone else do it for him.

And yet, he found he simply could not do it.

He offered another truth instead. “Yes, Lawrence’s family and ours were the original two,” he said. “His father was once clan chief, although Lawrence took that title after he died. Just as I became an earl. His brother and sister are also still alive.”

As Alessandra tried to work out all of the details, he added, “I had the great pleasure of living just across the border from his clan, Clan Karyn—”

“And you have been enemies ever since.”

“And even before. In the borderlands, before the Border was drawn, both sides laid claim to estates that had changed hands for many years. Some, like Bowden Castle where Lawrence lived, were as English as they were Scottish, and vice versa. Most of us could hardly trace our origins—”

“And so you go on, year after year, fighting about whose property is whose.”

“Something like that.” Kenton sat back and crossed his legs and arms. He wouldn’t tell her anything further about their origin, and Clan Karyn’s involvement in it.

“And so you came here, to Stone Haven—”

“When we learned you were Cheld. Most of your kind know of their ancestors. They are trained and taught by their elders.”

Alessandra looked up to the sky, her gaze resting on the quarter moon above them.

“I suppose I would have been if my father had been raised by his parents. So,” she said, glancing back at him, “you were born in the Middle Ages and are an earl.”

“Technically speaking, yes.”

“Wait, am I . . .”

“You are not immortal, Alessandra.”

Taking her lower lip into her mouth, she continued to think about what he’d told her while he continued to stare at her mouth.

“Just one more question. And then I want to show you something.”

She said it with such conviction, Kenton wasn’t sure if he should be nervous or excited. Courting a Cheld was uncharted territory for him.

“Shoot.”

“Can you turn someone into a vampire?”

That was an easy one.

“Yes, I can.”

“Can you turn me?”