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Jay couldn’t, and it made him almostangrythat he couldn’t. So much of his personality could be attributed to one person. One person who hadn’t even loved him. Not really. He knew that, somewhere underneath the loyalty and the long-standing habit of his devotion.

Jay wanted to be his own person. To be independent. He really did. But it was hard, and it was lonely, and he just didn’t want to mess with poor humans’ brains to do so.

“Okay. Let’s take stock.” Danny was using what he called his stern nurse voice. “The manager of the café where Jay works knows he’s a vampire and has for some time. Is that right, Jay?”

“Right.” Jay nodded, glad they were all finally getting on the same page.

“And now your new…regular…also knows, and maybe also about some of us too, and he’s seducing you with his body and his blood and maybe also his baking prowess. Isthatright, Jay?”

“Right,” Jay agreed, although with a little less certainty this time. He wasn’t so sure it was a seduction going on, not when Jay had agreed so readily. “Just hand stuff so far, but I’m hoping to get to mouth stuff very soon.”

“How is this my goddamn life?” Roman muttered, downing the rest of his wine in one swallow.

“And we’re just going to support the revealing of all our secrets so Jay can get some action?” Gabe asked, sounding pretty cranky about the whole idea.

Soren and Danny looked at each other, once again communicating something without words. Jay didn’t protest because it seemed like this time they were talking around everybody, not just him.

Also, it was kind of funny to see Gabe and Roman so put out about it.

Finally Danny nodded, and Soren cleared his throat. “Yes, Highness. Yes, we are.”

Jay beamed at each person seated at the table in turn.

All in all, that had gone better than expected.

eight

Jay

Itwasn’tuntilJaygot home and started drawing, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his living room, his pencil sketching an all-too-familiar female face, that the bad thoughts and feelings surfaced again.

He considered Soren’s anger toward Jay’s maker, his clear irritation with Jay for his inability to renounce her.

Jay couldn’t help feeling like it was just a bit unfair though. Jay and Soren were different in that way; they always had been. They may have been raised in the same toxic den, taught the same lessons: obey your maker, humans are cattle, no vampire makes it alone in the outside world. But Soren had been brave—he’dalwaysbeen so brave—and he’d escaped anyway.

True, Soren’s maker had definitely been the kind of vampire to run from; Hendrick had been much crueler, more physically violent, and more aggressive than Vee. And he’d wanted certain things from Soren Vee had never wanted from Jay. Vee had wanted a…servant, Jay supposed it came down to. And not of the sexual kind. Someone to keep things neat and tidy and put on a good face for visitors. Someone to keep her company—reading quietly or playing the piano concertos she’d taught him—during the long, cold nights. Someone to never talk back and never contradict her and never look dirty or unkempt or wild. And as long as he’d done all those things perfectly, she’d been…kind. She hadn’t yelled or hit. Sometimes she’d even hugged him, or praised him when he’d done a particularly good job. Those were the very best moments,

And if he hadn’t done all those things absolutely perfectly, then Jay had been simply…left alone.

Which wasn’t so bad, right? Not compared to what Soren had been through, that was for sure.

Locked in a room by himself for hours or days, nothing to look at or play with or read. It could have been worse. Jay had learned to pass the time in his head. He sometimes still did, even without meaning to. He sometimes lost hours that way.

It didn’t happen when he was around people though.

Jay’s pencil paused. His throat felt thick, like it was hard to swallow. He wished he weren’t alone now. He wished…

He wanted to call Alexei, to ask the human to distract him with his good smell and his nice hands. But calling someone in the middle of the night, just because he was lonely…that was for boyfriends, wasn’t it? Alexei wasn’t Jay’s boyfriend.

Jay was never going to get to have a boyfriend, was he?

Jay stabbed his pencil back into his paper, running back over the familiar lines, an angry, roiling heat filling his gut. He shouldn’t mind being alone. He should be able to be brave. He should be able to raise his voice at the dinner table without feeling like he needed to be punished.

Jay tried it, tried tasting the words out loud. “Fucking Veronique.” He tried again, putting as much spite and malice as he could into the words. “Fucking Veronique.”

It wasn’t enough.

He scribbled over his drawing, crossing out the eyes with heavy, repeated strokes. He turned the whole page into a mass of gray-black sludge, then crumpled it into a little ball and threw it at the wall.Fucking Veronique.

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