Page 77 of Vampires of Eden

He chuckles. “Raph told me to grow up and text you.”

Thank you, Raphael. I might like this manservant-best-friend-brother figure. “And when have I ever ‘raked you over the coals’?” I ask. “I know that I can be rude sometimes, but I don’t think I’ve ever outright yelled at you.”

“You haven’t. Maybe it’s me? Maybe I’m still… I don’t know. Right near the end with Oliver, something happened that scared me. Something that I did. He was angry—and rightfully so. But I might be paranoid about my nature doing funny things. It’s like I don’t trust myself anymore.”

I want to know what happened and how serious it was—to the point where he doesn’t trust himself. That’s a heavy confession. However, I don’t want to ask him to relive the ordeal bytelling me the story. Especially if it’s still impacting him this meaningfully.

“I’m not Oliver,” I say.

He frowns. “I know that.”

“Then don’t assume I’ll respond the same way as him.”

“I hear you,” he says. “I have a long way to go, growth-wise. Hopefully, by the time I’m a hundred, I’ll be like other vamps around that age—all suave and unbothered like Aries was. Confident and cool, you know?” He lifts his head and chin a little, wearing a smug expression on his face. “Like this.”

A hefty laugh bursts from my chest. “You look like a jerk.”

Alexander chuckles as well, laying his head back down on his arms. His hair is like a mirror reflecting the golden sunlight. “That’s not good. Christ, I sincerely hope that I don’t turn into an old and lecherous purebred, like Lord Cherrington.”

“Lord Cherrington?”

He had closed his eyes, but he lazily opens them. “The conceited and awful vampire that my parents are going to sell me off to.”

I sit up straighter, alarmed. “What do you mean by, ‘sell you off to’?”

“He’ll be my new bonding arrangement now that the situation with Oliver has fallen through. It’s… nearly decided. It’ll be announced before summer, I guess.”

“Do you want this arrangement? With Lord Cherrington?”

“Fuck no,” he exclaims, his voice pitching.

“Have you expressed as much?”

Alexander shrugs in his hunched position. “My parents know damn well that I don’t want this. Hell—Lord Cherrington knows I don’t want him. I told him plainly yesterday after I’d been avoiding him for weeks. He’s way older than me and thinks that my disgust with him is a challenge. Like I’m playing hard to get. But with my dowry gone, I don’t have a say anymore. The loss of that money means the loss of choice and autonomy.”

Repulsed, I shake my head. “Is money really so important toyou upper-crust vamps? That you’d force these kinds of distasteful arrangements?”

“The money doesn’t matter to me,” Alexander says, sincerely. “If I cared about the money, I wouldn’t have given it away in the first place.”

I pause, absorbing this statement. Leoni guessed that this was probably the case. She told me that stuffy purebred fathers like Oliver’s don’t simply let things slide. She assumed that there must have been something substantial given in exchange for Oliver’s passport to freedom.

It sounds like she was right. “This is how Oliver was able to leave Eden, isn’t it? You gave up your dowry for him. To his father in exchange for his travel documents.”

Alexander sits straighter. “Yes. Technically, the dowry money was always meant for him. In my eyes, anyway. It wasn’t used for the outcome we all imagined, but still… I don’t have any regrets about that. I’d just rather not be forced to bond with someone I hate.”

Biting the inside of my cheek, I breathe. It feels as if I’ve been kicked in the chest with a combat boot and I’m winded. Angry and affronted. I want retaliation for this sickening circumstance that Alexander has to deal with, but I’m also mad at myself.

Not even five minutes after I finally admit that I like him, I’m hit with this news.

Iknewbetter. From the first glint of embers igniting my nature, in my head, I knew this would end badly for me. But what have I done? Embraced these irrational feelings. Trusted in them and my garbage instincts.

Like a true dumbass.

“Danny?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever think that… despite everything that happened with Josefina, you might be capable of falling in love again? Or at least, finding something real? Not something just made up in your own mind. A vampire who values you as much as you value them.”