Page 41 of Bound in Blood

“You think I didn’t notice?” Vik continued, sharp but not unkind. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, Logan. And I know?—”

“Been doing what?” Logan interrupts.

“Don’t make me say it, Logan. Just use your context clues,” Vik pleads.

“I don’t understand in what world a human would know anything about vampires. I didn’t even know until—”Until I woke up as one.

“Jesus, kid.” Vik scrubs a hand over his face. “A vampire hunter. Before I was estranged from my family, I was a vampire hunter.”

Logan’s stomach twisted.

Avampire hunter.

Vik, his boss, hishumanboss, the guy who had taken him in when he had nobody else. The guy who helped Logan establish his own life separate from the people who had raised him… had spent his lifehuntingpeople like him.

His mouth went dry, but his brain screamed for answers. “So what, you just… stopped?” Logan’s voice was quieter than he meant it to be. “You don’t justquitthat kind of thing.”

Vik sighed like this conversation was taking years off his life. “I did.”

Logan narrowed his eyes. “And I’m just supposed tobelievethat?”

Vik gave him a flat look. “Logan, if Ihadn’tquit, do you really think you’d be standing here right now?”

Fair point.

But Logan wasn’t done. “So, what? You kill vampires your whole life and then just open a bar in the middle of Boston like that’snormal?”

Vik’s jaw tensed. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

For a long moment, Vik didn’t say anything. He just stared Logan down, like he was weighing his options, debating whether to brush him off or tell him the truth.

Finally, he exhaled. “I couldn’t do it anymore. So I walked away.” He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, posture tense. “My family didn’t take it well.”

Something in Logan’s chest twisted. “So the part of your story about your family kicking you out, that was actually true?”

Vik let out a humorless laugh. “I gave you a very tame version of it, but yes.”

Logan frowned. “Why?”

Vik looked away, expression darkening. “Because I decided notallvampires deserved to die.”

Logan inhaled sharply.

Notallvampires.

The words settled deep in his bones, shifting something in him he wasn’t sure he wanted to examine.

Before he could respond, Vik shook his head. “Look, I don’tcarewhat you are, Logan. You were my friend before this, and you’re still my friend now. As long as you don’t start snacking on the customers, we don’t have a problem.”

The joke didn’t land.

Logan barely heard it.

Because somethingelsewas clawing at his mind.

The feral.