Carefully, he removed Lucy from the vehicle and carried her into the house. He took her upstairs and settled her on the bed. Sitting beside her, he bit into his wrist again. Melanie opened the closet and searched inside before going through the dresser.
She opened and closed doors and muttered something to herself before leaving the room. He hated having her out of his sight and almost jumped up to follow, but he couldn’t leave Lucy behind.
“Melanie!” he called after her, but she didn’t reply.
He listened as she made her way through the house and out the door. She returned a few minutes later with the sheet from the couch and one of the guns.
“The other guns are downstairs,” she said as she set the rifle against the wall.
Once he saw her again, some of the strain eased from his body. “Don’t wander off like that again.”
Melanie frowned at him, but the growing fire in his eyes and the set of his jaw silenced her reply. They’d all been through enough without her adding more stress, even if she didn’t mean to.
“I won’t,” she assured him and smiled when his shoulders relaxed.
She walked over to Lucy and, careful of her wound, opened the sheet and laid it across her friend.
“None of the water works,” she said. “I’d like to clean her up.”
“I’ll figure something out,” he assured her.
She sat on the bed beside him and rested one hand on Lucy’s leg and the other on his knee. “I’m sorry for what happened to you in there,” she said.
“You didn’t do it.”
“Maybe not, but…” her words trailed off, and she shrugged. “But I knew what was happening there and did nothing to stop it.”
“What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing as I believed they were all monsters.” She tore her gaze away from Lucy to focus on him. “Until you.”
“Some of us are, but not all.”
“I know that… now. But then…” She shrugged again. “The only thing I knew then was that I wanted to get free, go to college, and never look back. I never wanted to go back there. Turns out, I didn’t have a choice. Do you hate me for my role in all this?”
“I could never hate you,” he said honestly.
“But… but my father did horrible things to you in there. I know he did.”
“You didn’t do them. Do you hate me for what I am?”
“No,” she said and then, with a smile, added, “I could never hate you.”
“Good. Did you know they were going to take me?”
She recoiled as she vehemently shook her head. “No! I didn’t know what you were. I didn’t even know he was still in the city or following me, which they must have been doing. And if I had known you were a vampire….”
“What?” he prodded when she stopped speaking.
“I couldn’t have done that to you. I would have been so angry with you for keeping this from me, and I was, but I couldn’t have handed you over to them. No one deserves what happens in there.”
Kyle studied her pale features, the shadows under her eyes, and the gauntness of her cheeks. She’d lost weight in there, and he didn’t like the haunted, lost air enveloping her.
“What happened to you in there?” he asked.
Melanie shifted her attention back to her friend. “Nothing as bad as what happened to you.”
When he cupped her cheek, her eyes shifted back to him. “But something bad did happen.”
“I grew up in that place; nothing they did to me this time could be any worse than that.”
And she meant that. The confusion, drugs, interrogations, uncertainty, and starvation she endured, as well as the week she spent locked in her room, were nothing compared to growing up in that isolated, desolate place.
“Lucy’s the only reason I remained sane while growing up. If it weren’t for her, I would have lost my mind in there. I can’t lose her now.”
Kyle leaned forward to kiss her forehead. “And I will do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen. Now, tell me what you went through in there. You know what they did to me, or you can at least guess,” he said as he waved a hand over his body. “Tell me, Melanie.”
And so she did. She rested her head on his shoulder and stared at the wall as she told him what happened. She gave him the watered-down version, but she didn’t keep anything back. When she finished, she felt the wrath thrumming through his tense body, but he held her tenderly as he continued to feed Lucy.
She wasn’t sure how much time passed before he pulled his wrist away from Lucy’s mouth. Staring at her friend, Melanie tried to find some difference in her, but she didn’t see any.
“Kyle…?”
He hated to tell her this, especially after all she’d endured, but he couldn’t keep it from her any longer. “This isn’t going to be enough to heal her. She’s too far gone. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m weak from blood loss and everything done to me, or if it’s the amount of damage she sustained, but I can’t heal her.”
Melanie tried to speak, but words failed her. She stared at her friend as memories of their childhood flitted through her mind. When they were too young to understand what was happening, they were content to play in the woods, laughing, and daydreaming about their trolls and escapes from capture.
As they got older, they realized being locked away wasn’t normal. They saw other kids going to school on TV and wanted to do the same, but their schooling remained inside the facility, where they whispered over their notes and endured the disapproving scowls of their tutors.
She’d watched Delilah repeatedly beat Lucy down with her words, only to watch Lucy spread her wings and fly when they went to college. Though sheltered, they succeeded in living a somewhat normal life once they were free. That life had been taken from them.
Worse, he was saying Lucy wouldn’t see tomorrow.
Her heart was shattering into a thousand pieces, and each of those pieces sliced her veins, tore them open, and shredded her heart. Life wasn’t fair; she’d learned that lesson when she was young, but this was exceptionally cruel.
She didn’t realize she was crying until tears dripped onto her hand.
“I can change her,” Kyle said.
Melanie’s head snapped up. She glanced between him and Lucy and back again. Her mind spun as she tried to process exactly what he was saying. Change Lucy?
“Into a vampire?” she squeaked and felt like an idiot because she knew that’s what he meant.
“Yes, but it’s your decision.”
“I… I… can’t make that choice for her,” she stammered. “How am I supposed to choose between her life and… and… I don’t know what.”
He squeezed her hand. “I realize that until meeting my family and me, you’ve only ever known about Savages, but not all vampires are like that. Many are like me, my siblings, and their mates.”
“Mates?”
Kyle quickly explained what a mate meant to a vampire. He didn’t tell her that she was his mate; she had enough to deal with, considering her friend’s life was in her hands. Lucy had saved him, and he didn’t want to see her die; he’d prefer to change her, but he would let Melanie make the choice. She knew Lucy far better than him and would be better at deciding for her friend.
“My siblings and their mates are all happy together,” he said. “Some of them have children.”
Her jaw dropped so fast she wondered if it unhinged. “Vampires can have children?”
“How else would I have siblings?” he asked teasingly and managed to coax the smallest of smiles out of her.
“When I learned you were a vampire, I thought… well… I’m not sure what I thought. That maybe you called each other siblings, or the same vampire who turned you also made the vamps you call your siblings… or maybe brothers and sisters and so on meant something different to vampires.”
“No weird terminology or same vampire creating us. They are as much my brothers and sisters as any human siblings. We were all born this way. I’m what we call a pureblooded or purebred vampire.”
“Shit,” she hissed out. “I believed there wasn’t anything about vampires that could shock me anymore, but there’s so much I don’t know.”
And there was still more to tell her, but he would wait.
“Is that why your skin turned that weird color when you broke the glass and again today?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “As a purebred vampire, I’m a lot closer to the demon part of my DNA.”
When she gulped, he continued. “Do you know why vampires are the way we are?”
“No.”
He told her about the demons who once mated with humans to create the vampire and hunter races.
“Fascinating,” she murmured.
He pulled his wrist away from Lucy’s mouth; it wasn’t doing any good anyway, not unless he gave her a whole lot more. He captured Melanie’s hand with both of his.
“You have to let me know what you think she would choose,” he said. “If I keep giving her blood, I’ll take the choice away from both of you.”
Melanie stared at her friend as she tried to figure out what Lucy would choose. Then she recalled Lucy at college and how she threw herself into classes and originally wanted to throw herself into life, but she’d only managed to dip in a leg. Still, that leg made her come alive in a way Melanie had never seen while they were at the facility.
That leg had caused Lucy to become an entirely different person. She embraced the wilder side of her nature, got tattoos and piercings, and learned more about her sexuality and people.
Lucy had developed into herself and become the person she was meant to be. She’d also smiled in a way she never had while they were in the facility.
Lucy also loved life and was courageous in a way few people were. If anyone would take this lemon and turn it into lemonade, it was Lucy.
She hoped her friend didn’t hate her for the choice she was about to make, but if she did, Melanie would live with the consequences of it. She just hoped Lucy could also live with those consequences, but at least she would be alive. But first, she had to know….
“What if she becomes like one of those other vampires? One of those Savages?” Melanie asked.
“Do you think she’ll make that choice?”
“Is it a choice?”
“For many, yes.”
He didn’t want to go into the whole demons capturing vampires and turning them into Savages thing right now. However, if Melanie was to decide for her friend, she should know everything Lucy would face. So, he told her all of it.
By the time he finished speaking, she’d paled considerably. She didn’t talk as she gazed at Lucy and tried to figure out what to do.
“Lucy would hate it if someone did that to her,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But… if anyone can kick a Savage or demon’s ass, it’s her.”
Kyle didn’t speak as she pondered her choices. A few minutes passed, and he started to tell her that she had to hurry, but he bit back the words. The last thing she needed was more pressure.
Finally, her eyes met his. “Do it,” she said. “If she hates me afterward, I’ll deal with it. If it’s not the choice she would have made, then I’ll destroy her if that’s what she’d prefer. It will destroy me to do such a thing, but I’ll do whatever makes her happy. However, she has to be alive to make the choice.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he said and bit into his wrist again.
Before he could bring his bloody wrist back to Lucy’s mouth, she seized his arm. “Are you okay to do this?” she asked. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I’ll have to hunt afterward, a lot, and she’ll also require blood when she wakes, but I’m fine to do this now.”
“Where will she get the blood?”
“At first, from me, and then from animals. I’m sure there is plenty of deer, foxes, and coyotes roaming around here. I’ll find them, but we won’t kill them.”
Melanie released his arm, and he put his wrist to Lucy’s mouth again. She hoped she was doing the right thing and Lucy wouldn’t hate her, but she truly believed her friend would choose life over death.
She didn’t realize she was trembling until Kyle draped his free arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She rested her head on his shoulder as he gave more and more blood to her friend.