Page 26 of Ellie 3

Amen to that.

Nothing could be easy, but it wasn’t remotely as bad as it could have been. Only one of the four told someone and his son wasn’t on board with his dad’s evil. He hadn’t told anyone else and understood why we showed up. Luckily for him, we believed him and had one of the witches helping us gently take the information.

I also confessed to the president what had happened and we’d made a mess. He cleaned it up with the federal police, and a story was released that some of the former board had stolen proprietary information from ASH that included an early version of our blood additives. They tried to recreate it and basically made themselves brain-dead.

Wow, that was one way to scare people into not trying to do what we did. That was insanely helpful because someone was always promising they had the formula or had the same blood on the black market.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Ha-joon asked me quietly later when the report came out on the news. “You’re the additive. Your blood is.”

I blinked at the TV before slowly looking at him. “Your intelligence is so fucking sexy that I cannot put it into words.”

“The clues were all there,” he sighed. “You need more blood than a normal vampire and you take from me more than a normal vampire your age. You guys normally need less after two hundred. You need more. Fine, you can do magic too but… If you have fae blood in you—it just fits.”

“Yes, it’s my blood diluted in ahugebatch of donated blood. It’s some sort of reaction—it has to be a mix. It can’t just be added to vamp, shifter, or magic blood solo. It has to be all three.”

“I didn’t see that coming,” he muttered.

I nodded and swallowed loudly. “I think that was what fae did—brought everyone together as best as they could. When they failed at that, they left, or maybe the ones here just died out because we’re all monsters—no matter the species. But if vamps drink directly from me, they go insane. Absolutely fucking feral.”

“But you survived,” he hedged, really asking the question of how I survived and we both knew it.

“Amanda Hope saved my life,” I rasped, focusing back on the TV. “She—someone…” I took in a shaky breath, always having a hard time talking about that night no matter how many years—centurieshad passed. “A group of male vampires found me alone and thought I was easy prey. I’ve had advanced fight training, so I wasn’t.

“They wanted—I couldn’t hide that I was from a wealthy family. They wanted to rape a noble, not really knowing anything about me. It’s how I carried myself. Back then it screamed—I fought back. I killed two, and when I disarmed a third, he defaulted to survival instincts and his fangs came out. He bit me and tried to drain me.”

“And went nuts.”

“And went nuts,” I rasped. “Amanda had helped me a few times and kept several of us safe. When she received word there was a problem at the hostel a few of us rented rooms from, she ran right over. She arrived to find him trying to drain me, others cheering to rape me now. She didn’t hesitate. She stabbed the one on me and…”

“She was no match.”

“She was no match,” I sobbed, flashes of that night hitting me harder than normal because of everything else that had happened. I cried as Ha-joon pulled me onto his lap and hugged me tightly. “I survived because they got distracted with her and others came to help because she was involved. She was a great woman who helped me, and she died for me.”

“She died because she cared and helping you was the right thing do to,” he whispered. “She died because she was a good person and she was right to save you, Ellie. Look at how manyyouhave saved. Look at all you have done in her name and to honor her.”

“It’s not enough. It will never be enough,” I mumbled once I was done crying. “She deserved so much better.”

“So did you, Ellie. So didyou,” he whispered as he held me tightly and kissed my hair. “It’s not your fault. Even if you knew what you were and your blood did that to—none of it was your fault. You didn’t kill her. Those horrible men did. You didn’t do it.”

I think maybe I finally started to hear someone and believe that as Ha-joon whispered it over and over again. Hundreds of years and I still acted as if I’d killed Amanda myself.

The guilt as if I’d done it ate me.

Funny how logic didn’t work much when pain and emotions distorted our perception of things?

But that night, Ha-joon was my logic and the key to helping me process my pain, even rework my emotions maybe. He gave me a priceless gift that I wouldn’t ever forget.

Ever.

8

Ha-joon

Saturday morning there was a planning meeting for the first outreach date set in a few weeks. We were doing it in London where we would have the support we needed from my family. They were doing press conferences and more saying that the blood drive they’d done to help in an emergency wasn’t enough for what our vampire brothers and sisters deserved.

It was a good PR campaign for not just my family or London, but shifters. And it was needed.

It was a few of the shifter department heads that were running it along with five of us who were shifter attendings. We would need more to add to the program, but it was a good start. We had nurses and staff signing up to help, understanding there was more going on than they had realized.

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