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But to turn him would be to hurt him. Jamie thought he was ready, but he didn’t know .

He didn’t understand the brutal reality of being a newly turned vampire.

The endless, overwhelming urges. The horrible mix of feeling at once too empty (key pieces of humanity simply gone) and too full (filled with a new, hungry presence).

Luc wondered again how the poor, lovely boy he’d turned was doing. Did Danny regret giving in to his mate bond? Did he regret his choice, staying by Roman’s side, even knowing what he was?

Luc pondered Jamie’s suggestion to just…call them up and ask. What a fucking concept. To call Roman on the phone and ask how he was faring.

But Luc needed to make a choice.

He didn’t have his old friend’s number, but he had someone else’s…

If Soren would even pick up his call.

“Did you have to kill our driver? We have to be hours still from the nearest town.”

Evrard sighed deeply in that way he did when he was driven to the edge by Lucien’s very existence. “Don’t whinge, Lucien. We can travel faster by foot than carriage.”

“It’s raining though.” Lucien knew he sounded petulant, but he couldn’t stop himself. The skies were pouring down, thundering onto the carriage roof, and now they were stuck, unless one of them was willing to take the reins.

Lucien certainly wasn’t. It was just as wet in the driver’s seat as anywhere else outside the carriage.

He didn’t understand Evrard’s actions. They’d both fed two nights ago, each having their fill of an unsuspecting village girl. And still, halfway through the journey, Evrard had leaped out of the carriage window and into the driver’s seat, draining poor Jacques in less than a minute.

And for what reason?

“You can’t have been all that hungry,” Lucien grumbled, folding his arms against his chest. He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. There was a strange rotting smell in the carriage, one that couldn’t be coming from the freshly dead driver.

Evrard shot him an irritated look. Or at least, Lucien assumed he was irritated by the sighing. His maker’s face was incredibly hard to read, even at the best of times.

At first Luc thought Evrard wasn’t going to explain himself at all, but after a moment, Evrard sighed again, deigning to reply. “It’s not only hunger for blood that drives us,” he told Luc haughtily. “You’ll see as you put more years behind you. Sometimes you just need to…devour.”

How many years Evrard meant, Lucien had no idea. His maker had never told Lucien his age, and it was impossible to tell just by looking at him. And not only because his physical signs of aging would have halted the moment he was turned.

Evrard just had one of those disconcertingly ageless faces.

The palest skin Lucien had ever seen, framed by white-blond hair he kept unfashionably loose, hanging down past his shoulders.

And at night, such as now, he insisted on maintaining his “true face.” Black eyes, sharp fangs.

Sometimes he seemed ancient. And sometimes he just seemed… other.

Inhuman.

Like he was driven by monstrous instincts Lucien—even in his newborn, blood-hungry state—couldn’t begin to comprehend.

Like with this useless fucking attack ruining their night.

Evrard tapped a sharp fingernail against the carriage window. “It’s all for the best anyway,” he mused.

“How?”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“I’m not going to Limoges with you, Lucien. You’ll be continuing on your own.”

On his own? Lucien hadn’t been on his own for a single minute since he’d been turned. They were coming onto a year now, and Evrard had always been by his side. “But—I can’t— When will you return?”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

An interminable silence. Then, “Don’t be dense,” Evrard scolded. “I won’t be returning.”

It was like a punch to the gut. However frustrating, however unknowable Evrard may have been, Lucien had assumed they were tied together. Bound by blood. “You’re…leaving me?”

Evrard sighed deeply at the frantic edge Lucien knew was in his voice. “I’m doing you a favor, young Lucien. Staying by my side at this point would only be a danger to you.”

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“It’s simply a bore to explain. I’ve raised you enough. You know the basics. How to hunt, how to turn another. I don’t feel like playing Papa anymore.”

Evrard opened the carriage door as if to leave, and the rich scent of wet soil flooded the carriage. Panic gnawed at Lucien’s gut. “Why did you even turn me, then? Why did you choose me?”

It was a question that had been plaguing him since the day he’d died.

Despite their constant physical proximity, Evrard barely seemed to register his existence half the time.

So why had he been turned at all? But asking direct questions usually only resulted in strained silence.

Evrard passed on knowledge when he wanted to, never more and never less.

This could be Lucien’s last chance for answers.

Evrard shut the door quietly, turning to face Lucien fully. It was almost more than Lucien could bear, the weight of those black eyes boring into him.

“ Choose you?” Evrard’s voice was quiet, contained, but it still rang out over the drumming of the rain.

“You think you were chosen? Let me tell you something. I was on a rampage on that battlefield. Half-mad with the need for blood. The need to kill. It was a veritable buffet of dying soldiers, and no one to care if a few more died, or by whose hand.”

Lucien remembered it. The screams. The pain.

“By the time I got to you, I was stuffed full. I couldn’t stomach more than a gulp or two. So I thought, why not? I turned you instead. I thought it would be…amusing. A distraction. You weren’t special, Lucien. You were just there.”

So Lucien’s life—his humanity—had been taken away as—as an amusement ? He’d thought there had been some point to it. He might no longer be human. He might be a goddamn monster. But at least he’d been wanted. He had a…father figure…of sorts.

But he was just an annoyance after all. An afterthought.

And what was more, now his maker was leaving. He would be alone.

Panic drove him to speak, to beg. “I can be better. I can be useful.”

Evrard laughed dryly. “To what end? What are you failing to understand? It’s all pointless. We’re lost souls, Lucien. The damned.” He flicked lazy fingers into the air. “I don’t care what you do. You can make yourself another companion if you like. But whoever you choose, you’re damning them too.”

Slender pale fingers gripped Lucien’s chin.

“How strong is that moral compass of yours? Will you suffer alone or drag another into hell with you?” Gazing straight into Lucien’s soul, those black eyes lit up with more interest than Evrard had shown the entire past year.

“What delicious pain you have, young one. Maybe you’re a little diverting after all. ”

But in the next moment, he’d dropped Lucien’s chin, the carriage door opening and closing behind him in the blink of an eye. His parting words rang through the air.

“But not diverting enough.”

Luc woke with a startled grunt, his mood dark, his monster agitated.

He soothed himself by turning to the side, looking to Jamie’s peaceful sleeping form. His human didn’t stir in the slightest at Luc’s rustling.

Luc must have really rung him out.

Luc sighed. He hated sleeping—the little that his body required of him—for this very reason. He hated dreaming . The mind’s way of forcing him to relive old memories against his will.

He wished he had Jamie’s gift. To be able to see glimpses of the future rather than his dreaded past. If Luc had seen Jamie coming, if he’d known what had awaited him, maybe he wouldn’t have done all those awful things. Maybe he would have had the patience to resist his monster.

Or maybe it had all been inevitable from the moment he’d turned.

Fucking Evrard. Selfish, distant, and entirely unconcerned with the vampire he’d created.

Although, Luc supposed, looking back, that maybe Evrard had tried his version of his best. The other vampire had clearly been losing his grip on his humanity, giving in more and more to his monster’s urges.

The fact that he’d lasted a whole year guiding Luc as much as he was able… it was almost admirable.

Almost.

Luc had heard from another vampire in passing years later that Evrard had been put down somewhere in Romania, a feral beast ravaging the countryside.

He’d lasted only five years after leaving Luc’s side.

At the time, Luc had thought he could bear the loneliness. He’d decided he wasn’t going to take anyone else with him on his road to damnation. After all, he’d believed in heaven and hell then. He’d known deep in his marrow he was going to burn for eternity, if he ever perished.

He’d tried to find other vampires to bond with as a substitute, but any encounters had only led to brief exchanges of information and then the inevitable fighting. Brutal territory disputes and threats of beheading or fire.

No one wanted him around for long.

And then ten years after Evrard’s departure, Lucien had learned his moral compass wasn’t very strong at all.

He’d found Roman dying at Waterloo, his lower half broken into pieces from round shot, barely hanging on to consciousness. Luc had told himself he was saving a life, even as he’d known he was ending one.

Luc couldn’t even say why he’d chosen him, other than the obvious: he’d seen a bit of himself in Roman. Lost, scared, willing himself to be brave even at the very end. Another expendable soldier on another pointless battlefield.

It had seemed like destiny.

But maybe it had just been chance. Roman had been unlucky enough to be there when Luc’s loneliness finally got the best of him, when his selfishness won over his morals.

Roman had used to tell Lucien he didn’t blame him. That he’d take the life they had—blood-soaked as it may have been—over no life at all. But Luc had seen the look in Roman’s eyes when his family had renounced him, chasing him out of their home, calling him a demon all the while.

Roman would rather have been dead then , Lucien had no doubt.

Luc having tried to kill Roman in his rage may have been the trigger for their falling-out, but Luc had long since had other sins to atone for when it came to his oldest friend.

Luc had stolen Roman’s humanity.

That was crime enough.