Page 87 of Thicker than Blood

Tristan frowns, his expression morphing into true concern now. “It’ll happen again, you know. The vampires will always choose defiance.”

“And I’ll be here to extinguish it.”

“Tristan,” Lucius says. “You were involved in this?”

“He tried to kill my consort,” Elias says, pulling me closer. “I plan to make his death long, painful, and tortuous to his fragile psyche.”

Lucius chuckles. “Ooh. Delicious. Are we invited to watch?”

“I’m afraid not, my friend. You see, the one thing Tristan wanted more than freedom is me. He’s going to watch me choose another man.”

“Damn, that’s savage,” Enyo says, clinging to Jagger’s arm. “Lucky.”

I wink at him. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Yeah, of course.”

I lead Enyo away and we sit on a loveseat. It takes me a minute to find the courage to tell him what I remembered about myself today, but as usual, I sense nothing but acceptance from him.

“You know how my family was killed during the war?”

Enyo nods, his expression sympathetic. “Yeah.”

“I guess with the trauma of it all, I blocked out the details. Elias unlocked my memories. Or maybe Tristan’s attack did. I don’t know, but I remembered. All of it.”

His brow creases. “What happened?”

“My dad was turned. Before I was born.”

“Before you were—” Enyo’s eyes go wide. “Wait. Are you saying…?”

I nod. “I’m part vampire. Me and Emma.”

“Whoa. Why were they killed then?”

I shake my head, dragging a hand through my hair. “The war triggered something in my dad and he was trying to change me and Emma. Apparently, we needed to be fed vampire blood for our vampiric traits to come out.”

“Shit,” he whispers.

“My mom staked him after he turned Emma. I don’t know why. Elias thought maybe it was something my folks talked about. Then the vampires busted in. They attacked Emma and my mom, but they left me there. I don’t know why they did that either. One of them told me I would be ready someday. My guess is that they killed my mom because she killed my dad, a vampire. I’m not really sure why they killed Emma. Maybe just because she was trying to attack them instead of my mom.”

“Fuck, Geordi. You’ve been holding on to that for five years?”

“I buried it. Forced it into a place in my head where it didn’t exist and convinced myself I was just fascinated by vampires, but now it makes sense that I’ve always been drawn to them. It’sthe reason I wanted to know everything about them. It’s why it was so easy to break all the rules with Elias. I’m one of them.”

“But… but your mom was still mortal?”

I nod. “I’m a dhampir.”

His jaw drops.

“That’s the real reason for the ‘no romance with vampires’ rule. It can lead to people like me. People who seem normal and mortal, but deep inside us…” I blow out a breath. “How do you choose, Enyo? Your mortal side or your monster? I suppose it depends on who gets to you first. Maybe I would’ve become someone like Tristan, wooed by evil. Because of Meredith, I avoided it.”

Enyo throws his arms around me in a surprise hug. “I don’t care. You’re still my friend.” He pulls back, holding my shoulders. “You’re good, just like Elias and his friends.”

“I don’t know if I would describe them as good.”

He laughs softly. “Okay, maybe that’s not the right word, but I know you, and no matter what, you wouldn’t turn on mortals.”

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