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Blaire gripped the edge of her chair, knuckles white. She was having one long nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. The professor just confirmed all the fears she had voiced to Lukas earlier.

“I told Blaire I could stop, that we could complete our bond without me killing her.”

The professor sighed. “Perhaps that part is true, but to turn Blaire, to take so much of her blood to nearly kill her… that’s not as simple as the intimate sharing of blood in the bonding ritual.”

Blaire held her head in her hands. “No… No way… I can’t… I won’t…”

Sitting in her chair on the other side of the desk, the professor said, “You don’t have to. It is simply an option and the easiest way.”

Blaire looked up at her. “You said they might still pursue me anyway, so what’s the point? What benefit is there to becoming another being entirely? To risk my life?”

“At least it would keep you from bleeding to death,” Riley tried to add helpfully.

Kai crossed his arms and nodded his agreement. “Riley has a point; one I believe you should strongly consider if you’re going to follow through with bonding with Lukas.”

“Yes, but only if he can stop himself,” the professor added. “If you become a Vasirian, you wouldn’t die if the Order did come again. Your bonding would likely be more stable than it has been thus far. Beyond that, I am unsure how transitioning will affect you as a human beyond obtaining the same abilities and physical benefits we have—for example, accelerated healing.” She waved at Blaire’s covered arm.

This was too much. How could they be talking about this so casually? Don’t they understand she’s been a human her entire life and to just throw that away wasn’t as easy as deciding to change your clothes?

Blaire jumped up from the chair. “I can’t do this. I just can’t.”

She looked at Lukas with tears in her eyes before rushing from the room, though she still heard the professor speak as the door remained open.

“You may need to convince her, as it may be her only fighting chance at survival.”

Aiden said, “Until we get it sorted, we’ll protect her.”

Blaire bolted down the hall.

Blaire sat in the corner of her bed against the wall with her arms wrapped around her legs when Lukas entered the room, Aiden and Riley following close behind. She didn’t want to see any of them. They wanted her to give up who she was. It didn’t make sense to her. While her heart had changed, and she couldn’t deny she was falling for Lukas, she was not okay with losing her humanity forever when she didn’t trust that he would be hers forever.

Lukas sat on the side of his bed, running a hand through his hair before holding his head in his hands.

Riley flopped down onto Blaire’s bed. “Don’t worry about it. Being a Vasirian isn’t so bad, really. I’ve been one my whole life!” she tried to lighten the mood, but Blaire didn’t feel like laughing.

Lukas rolled his eyes and shook his head in his hands.

“Besides, one of the perks of it all is you won’t get old for a really, really long time,” Riley continued, nodding. “Despite how it looks, Professor Velastra is actually seventy-four.”

Blaire stared at her blankly, her expression slack.

“No one told you about how we age?”

“No… Only that you live a long time.”

Riley sat up on the bed. “Well, we actually slow down aging in our twenties, and by the time we reach our seventies, we don’t look older than a human does in their early thirties. Cool, right?” She didn’t give Blaire a chance to respond. “And what’s really awesome is when we reach that age, our body’s aging slows down again, so we only look about forty when we reach one hundred years old! We actually stop aging entirely when we turn one hundred fifty years old.”

“How old do you look when you stop aging?” Blaire asked, her curiosity piqued.

Riley grinned. “Sixty in human years.”

“So, wait a minute… how do you get away with it?”

“Get away with what?” Riley tilted her head.

“Well, working… being around humans when you never age. I mean, eventually, someone is going to notice.”

Riley laughed and shook her head. “See, usually we just look like we age gracefully for a while, but at some point, we have to transfer to different locations if we’re working with humans. Many of our kind work in jobs that are run by Vasirian or travel a lot and do business with several people, so it makes it easier.” She crossed her ankles beneath her and began picking at the buckles on her boots. “But it’s easier just to lie about our age and use fake documents. That way, we can prolong how long we can be in the fields of our choosing without question. It also allows us to work different types of jobs, because we can spend twenty years doing one thing, and then move on to something different starting over at whatever age we look like then. Rinse and repeat for centuries.”