Page 94
“Yes. My brother Rowan fell in love once with a French woman and turned her much too soon, against our advice. She wasn’t ready, and in her innocence, she made herself vulnerable just as a new Cheld aroused—”
“No . . .”
“Yes. Bad luck, karma . . . call it what you will. But you can see why Lawrence’s claim that all Cheld are not bad, that some even try to help us—”
Alessandra leaned toward him. She was listening intently, which was more than he could have hoped for. “They said there are places, around the world, where vampires and Cheld live in peace.”
“So we’ve been told. You think the Derricksons want us to know of such places? They protect the bloodline of their brother . . . even those who do not deserve it.”
He didn’t wish to speak further of Lawrence and his family. Or of ancient history. He’d only told her so she could understand.
Even if she no longer wanted to be with him, he hoped she would at least forgive him.
“I’d never hesitated before,” he said, not wanting to remind her of that day but knowing it was necessary. “I had planned to kill you in my house that day I sent you home. But I didn’t. I knew something was different about you, about us. I thought at first I was drawn to you simply because of what you are. I’d never been in such close proximity with a Cheld—”
“Without killing them.”
He couldn’t very well deny it.
“But Lawrence said it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t only drawn to you because of your ancestry. I was, am, drawn to you for the strength that bubbles up inside you and shines from your eyes every time you speak. I’m drawn to your smile and to the strength inside you. When I realized Rowan was in town—”
“He didn’t tell you he was coming?”
“No. And he was pissed I came here alone—”
“Why did you? Come alone and not tell your brothers?”
He took a deep, steadying breath. For a seven-hundred-year-old vampire, he really was having plenty of firsts here in Stone Haven.
“I thought it was because they, well, Rowan mostly, get . . . overly ambitious.”
How else could he say his brother was bloodthirsty, even for a vampire? Alessandra wasn’t the only person he’d worried about with Rowan loose, especially after last night.
“But now I think it’s because I was meant to find you.”
Alessandra took a long swig of her beer, drinking straight from the bottle rather than the frosty mug she’d been given, and he tried not to notice the way her pillowy lips wrapped around it. He’d already tried, and failed, not to notice how inordinately hot she looked in her outfit tonight. That was Alessandra.
“You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who believes in fate.”
“I don’t.”
Sitting back in her chair, Alessandra watched him as an osprey watches the water.
“Who is Simon of Winchester?”
“Excuse me?”
“Simon of Winchester? Toni’s aunt talked to someone who had heard of the Cheld, and she mentioned Simon. Despite all of my digging, I haven’t really found anything else.”
“Ahh, the day at the library.”
That furrow found its way between her brows again.
“You have to stop stalking me, Kenton.”
“Why?”
Alessandra’s exaggerated eye rolls were only one of the many things he loved about her.
