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RAHIL

And things had been going so well, too.

Not perfectly—Mercer was still not flirting back, nor touching him more than necessary—but their on-and-off banter and the occasional brushes of skin he did receive were as good as Rahil could have possibly expected, teasing ruthlessly at both his body’s desire and his slowly mounting blood hunger. Better still, the emotional depth their conversations were hitting forged something deep and lovely in Rahil’s chest, and as much as he knew it would make the pain of losing Mercer hurt worse later, he couldn’t help but bask in it now. He had not realized how much he’d needed to get off his chest; how long he’d hidden these things that weren’t even properly secrets, for lack of someone close enough to tell them to.

And then it turned out Mercer had a kid. Which wasn’t a problem, because Rahil would never meet this kid. Would never get the chance to screw them up the way he’d ruined his own. It was all fine, good, dandy.

The moment he’d heard her voice though, with that snarky little edge that was trying so hard to seem older than she was, Rahil had realized just how wrong he’d gotten it. Rahil already knew Mercer’s daughter. He’d made her do his chores and let her fall asleep on his roof and told her that life sucked.

And she thought he was testing her in order to turn her into a vampire.

Oh fuck.

Rahil felt the bottom fall out of his stomach and he suddenly wasn’t so hungry for anything—blood or body. His fingers felt like putty, and his legs were moving of their own accord—and not always the ways they should have—which made the sill of the shed’s escape window no longer quite within his reach. As he slipped, his heart leaped into his throat. Tunnels latched around the edges of his vision, focusing in on Violet’s shocked face. She asked him something, and all he could manage in response was, “Hey, kid.”

Then he fell again.

The next thing Rahil knew, he was on the floor, a pair of hands wrapped around his arm—small hands, gripping him just as tightly as Mercer had while Violet shouted, “Ray!”

“Lydia—” Mercer said from behind, like he meant to tell her to get back, as though Rahil was some wild animal that might attack once he was conscious enough.

Wait, Lydia ?

Huh.

Her little hands did vanish then, replaced by Mercer’s large, calloused ones as he lifted Rahil’s shoulders. His fingers brushed along the side of Rahil’s head—a misplacement, surely. “Rahil? Are you hurt?”

“I only fell out of the window,” Rahil grumbled, but he didn’t really want to move, because moving meant losing Mercer’s touch and facing whatever came after. But that very touch became more insistent and with his vision clearing, he could see the worry on Mercer’s face. It was so tender. Rahil forced himself to admit, “I’m fine, really. Just an inconvenient loss of consciousness.”

Mercer breathed out, but Rahil could tell he was trying to force himself to feel a relief that wasn’t truly accessible. “Leah used to call them that,” he muttered, then seemed to realize what he was saying, and the wall of stone fell back over his features. But the way that stoicism had gone and returned: it meant there was something beneath it. Maybe that there was always something beneath it.

Rahil didn’t have time to dwell on that, because Violet—Lydia?—pipped in, “You know each other?”

Merc turned his attention to her so suddenly that he nearly dropped Rahil, before proceeding to detangle himself from Rahil’s presence quickly enough that he might as well have dropped him. Instead of answering his daughter’s question though, he narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m more surprised to learn that you know each other.”

Lydia-Violet looked like a deer in the headlights. Her throat bobbed, and her jaw clamped shut. Clearly sensing her refusal, her father turned his stare on Rahil instead. The moment his attention was off her, Lydia-Violet shook her head slightly.

No… No what? They couldn’t deny that they’d met. But why they’d met… Oh .

The way Lydia-Violet had spoken about her father clicked into place. Of course this man—this lovely, protective, terrified man—would not take well to learning that his daughter had been pursuing the same transformation that killed her mother. Oh god. Lydia-Violet’s mother had been killed by a vampire. And here she was…

Rahil was missing something, he was sure, he just didn’t know what, and as much as he hated lying to Mercer, the pleading in Lydia-Violet’s gaze slayed Rahil’s objections. He couldn’t break her heart like this, especially when he didn’t know everything yet. But Mercer was still watching him, with an increasing ferocity in his gaze that made Rahil worry that if he left the question unanswered much longer, Merc would come to an even worse conclusion about Rahil’s dealings with his daughter than the already harsh reality of the situation.

“We, um...” He tried to smile and then thought better of it. “I needed someone to help with yardwork, and shopping, and you know—things I can’t do in the sun. She’s been riding her bike down the street in front of my place since the summer started, and my sons used to make a bit of money mowing lawns and stuff when they were her age, so I thought she might…” If he kept going much longer, it was going to sound like a full-fledged lie, so he ended with a shrug, and a pathetic look.

Lydia-Violet jumped in for him. “You wouldn’t let me babysit, so I found something else.”

“Lydia,” Mercer started, the war of emotions in his voice making it tremble. He drew a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and continued, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Definitely-Lydia shrugged. “You knew I was out on my bike some.”

“Not multiple miles away!” Mercer sounded like his throat was closing. Rahil fought the instinct to reach across the divide Merc had placed between them and squeeze his hand. “What if—”

“If something bad happened?” Lydia finished with an eye roll. “Ray was there. He could help.”

Rahil doubted the extent to which that was true, but he nodded anyway. “I would never have let anything happen to her,” he lied, wishing with every cell of his body that it could have been the truth, for her, for his sons, for his ex-wife who’d refused to let him turn her at the end, and for the woman he had turned only to be met with horror and death.

Mercer’s scowl deepened.

Before he could speak, Lydia snapped, “You have to chill , Dad.” And with that, she stormed out of the shed.

Her father’s anger grew into a desperate kind of fury. He stormed after her, calling her name. With the sun high overhead, Rahil tried to keep within the building’s shade as he watched them cross the yard, unsure whether to stay or leave. Lydia refused to stop, throwing open the Bloncourts’ back door so hard it banged. Merc just stood there, halfway across the yard.

His shoulders slumped.

Rahil lifted his hand, like he could reach out, stretch through the sun and wrap an arm around Mercer and tell him that not everything would always be okay, but that in itself was okay, too. That for him, things would get better. He was good; he was doing well. He had not ruined anything.

The desire scared Rahil enough to force him back, up against the shed wall, pressed into the shadows like the night creature he was. Emotional comforting and soft embraces was not where his relationship with Merc had ever been going. Merc would have to find that elsewhere, if he chose to accept it at all.

But when from inside the house, Lydia screamed, Rahil still ran in Mercer’s footsteps without a moment of hesitation.