Page 117 of Claimed By Blood

“For traps?” Draven shrugs. “I’d have put one at the front door.”

“The ghouls probably triggered most of them—if they existed at all,” I point out.

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t more,” Silas argues. “Or we might stumble on some clues about witches if we’re lucky.”

“It’s unlikely that he’d have kept anything,” I mumble. “Honestly, searching here is a waste of time. Cain would’ve burned almost anything he found that had even a hint of witchcraft about it.”

It’s not like they’re going to find my sire’s long-lost diary floating around. He’s not the sentimental type. If he was, maybe he’d have bothered taking the art that is still hanging on the walls, rotting.

“That doesn’t mean there’s nothing here. He might’ve left some records of his hunts for other witches. And I still have questions about how he was ‘made’ in the first place,” Draven says, clearly on Silas’s side.

“We should at least search his rooms to try to confirm Samuel’s hunch,” Silas agrees. “Let me guess, he took the biggest suite in the place on the top floor?”

I shake my head and tug the two of them along the hallway, our footsteps echoing on the broken tiles. “No. He was very keen on emphasising that we were ‘family.’ His rooms were beside ours.”

“Creepy,” Silas growls. “Especially considering how he treats Callista.”

I shrug, glancing at an old portrait that still hangs drunkenly on the wall. “Callie isn’t his daughter in truth, and given that all vampires are descended from him, it wasn’t like any other woman would’ve been much better. I don’t know, it just… never seemed weird until recently. It justwas.”

“Challenging the status quo is a luxury,” Draven mutters. “Every second you spent living under Cain’s thumb was focused on survival. Believe me, Callista does not regard Cain as a father figure. She’s too self-centred to see other people as anything beyond a plaything or a means to an end.”

“Which were you?” I ask, quietly.

If I thought Draven was cold before, he turns arctic at the question.

“Both.” He hisses, but doesn’t remove his grip from my waist. “She knew I hated her, and she got a twisted sense of pleasure out of it.”

Grimacing, because I’m fully aware of how sadistic Callie can be. “You want revenge?”

He meets my eyes levelly. “Planning on pleading for your sister’s life, doll?”

My fangs sink into my lip as I consider my answer. “I should,” I whisper. “We were all children, forced into a hellhole together, and I think she’s still that same scared girl even now. But… fear has warped her. She could’ve tried to help me, or warn me before Cain punished me.” I would’ve done so for her, even if it meant disobeying our sire. “Instead, she smirked as they forced me into that coffin.”

Draven’s curt nod reveals nothing, so I’m surprised when he speaks. “She smiled when she forced my wife into my cage and let me drink her to death on my first night as a vampire. Then she laughed as she fed me the rest of my family.”

His family? Oh God.

He’d told me something similar before, but I never knew he was married. Did they…? Oh, please, tell me they didn’t have children. I wouldn’t put that kind of evil past my sire, or Callie, unfortunately.

How is Draven still alive? How on earth did he stand there and let Callie speak to him—touch him—without screaming or attacking her? The more I think about it, the more that wall of ice he has begins to make a horrible kind of sense.

It’s his survival mechanism.

“Shit.” Silas grunts and both of us startle as we remember we’re not alone. “That fucking bitch.”

Draven eyes us both coldly, but there’s no mistaking the pulse of pain burning away beneath his ice. “I spent seventy years as her pet. Believe me, a quick death at my hands was a mercy to them.”

Seventy years doing Callie’s bidding during a time when she—a vampire who thrives on attention—was forbidden from taking other pets or lovers… It’s not hard to figure out what such a life would’ve been like, and I won’t make him relive it.

I never meant to make him confess to his family’s deaths either.

It wasn’t his fault. Newborn vampires have no control. Turning requires energy. Energy requires blood. In those initial days, they’ll drain anyone they come into contact with—family, friend, lover. It doesn’t matter to the primal instincts which drive them. Callie knew that. Which makes her responsible, not Draven.

I want to reach out and comfort him, but it’s like wanting to touch an enraged tiger. I’m not sure if he’ll accept the gesture or snap my hand off. So I settle for pushing all of my comforting feelings down the bond towards the ice. I’m not sure it makes much difference, but he doesn’t reprimand me for it.

“And after you get your revenge?” I continue, trying to change the subject subtly as we reach the first of our family rooms. “What will you do then?”

Draven freezes, and his ice disappears for a second.

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