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“You aren’t human, are you?” Matthias asked one day when we were sitting in my cabin. I gave in and paid for his ticket after he had secretly followed me onto the ship, was discovered as a stowaway, and nearly thrown overboard.

“What makes you think that?” I asked wearily. Did I slip up? Getting away to source blood was getting harder with the young man dogging my footsteps but I thought I masked my actions well enough.

“One, I remember bits from how you rescued me.” Matthias counted on his fingers. “I was buried under a whole ass house and you got me out single-handedly, without any tools to help you. Two, you tend to disappear in very shady places and you act suspiciously... And three...” Here he gave me such a dry I felt like I was back in the desert. “...when I was convalescing, a fennec cub got into my room and changed into ahuman baby.”

I groaned out loud. Of course. As usually no outsiders were allowed at the fennec compound the shifters didn’t have air-tight secrecy procedures like their feline counterparts. I should have expected that during the weeks Matthias spent there he would have learned about their abilities.

“I’m not a fennec fox,” I said.

“Then what are you? Who are you?” Matthias asked, his eyes bright and focused all on me.

I told him.

I told Matthias I was a vampire and he immediately asked to become one.

My refusal to turn him was firm but I already knew then, from the moment I decided to tell him the truth, that we were irrevocably connected.

In the end, we made a deal. I wanted Matthias to experience life, to grow both his body and his mind, to have a chance to be human before he threw that away.

“I want to protect and to be strong,” he told me. “I’m never going to have a silver-quick mind like yours, Tristan, but I can hone my body.”

We traveled and Matthias trained and learned fighting styles from different cultures. He molded his body and mind into exactly what he wanted.

I killed him and brought him back to life when he was twenty-nine.

When the bond between us flared to life I was afraid. Was it going to feel like a noose around Matthias’ neck the way the bond with my Sire felt? Or like the discordant, vile threads that once connected me to Adalbert’s victims, which I inherited when I took my Sire’s power?

When Matthias opened his red eyes the bond between us sang. The joy and exhilaration at the thrum of it between us sent me to my knees. It felt right.

Like finding home after hundreds of years of exile.

Chapter Eight

Victoria

“Hey, isn’t it time for lunch?” Matthias stretched and I had to look away from the tantalizing glimpse of his jacked midriff as his shirt rose up.

“I have to finish here. You can go eat something,” I said, focusing on getting a stubborn red stain, which could be ketchup or could be blood, out of a military style jacket.

“Um. No? I can’t? I’m not leaving you even for a moment. Theo left you to go to the bathroom and look what happened. C’mon, let’s get some chow.”

“Look, it’s not so simple. I’m a persona non grata in the staff dining room, so the chance for me to get my hands on the lunches the kitchen prepares is slim. Usually, I can get some leftovers if I go straight to the kitchen about two hours after lunch.”

Matthias looked horrified then thunderously angry.

“Those fuckers are starving you? I will punch their faces in.”

I grabbed his arm to keep him in place.

“Wait! No punching, remember?”

“Tristan only said to not punch Carl, everyone else is fair game!”

“That won’t help with anything. Just… don’t,” I said. My fingers pressed around his arm until I could feel the steely muscles under the skin.

His fists clenched in impotent rage.

“But I don’t know what else to do! It’s not fair!”