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Sebastian
WHEN KADE CAME BACK into my office, he reeked of blood.
I shot to my feet and balled my fists, fully prepared to fight.
“What did you do to her?” I growled.
My brother held his hands up in the air. “Chill out, brother. I didn’t do anything to her. I told you I was going to put a little fear into her and I did. You should have seen the look on her face.” He let out a little laugh. “What’s with you and this girl, anyway? It almost seems as though you like her.”
“I don’t even know the girl. It’s just a little bloodlust.” I shrugged, feeling foolish. I wasn’t sure if I felt foolish because I did feel something for her—a human—or if it was because I’d gotten caught feeling something for a human.
“A little bloodlust, huh?” Kade asked with a smirk.
I ignored his comment. “So, what, exactly, did you do to her?”
“I drank from one of my slaves until she died right in front of her. I told her that’s what we would do to her if she doesn’t tell us the truth about her identity.”
“You probably terrified the poor girl.” I stared at him evenly, trying not to let my anger show.
“Oh, I did. Trust me.” Kade was clearly proud of himself. “Here’s the thing, brother. I saw the look of fear in that girl’s eyes. If she maintains her story, I think you should believe her. There’s no way that girl’s going to keep lying to us, not after seeing what we could potentially do to her.”
I walked over to the window and glanced outside. I stared down at the courtyard for a few long moments. Glancing back over my shoulder at him, I asked, “So, what you’re saying is that if she still says she’s Lila DeHaven... she really is?”
Kade nodded. “That’s my personal belief. She wouldn’t want to risk having the same thing done to her as what I just did to Cynthia.”
“Cynthia? Wasn’t she your newest slave?” I asked with wide eyes.
“Yeah, I acquired her about two weeks ago. It was a big mistake. The girl was a total bore.” He feigned a yawn.
“I’ll never understand the way you treat your slaves. You act like they’re completely disposable.”
Me, on the other hand... well, my slaves offered me a service, sometimes several services... services that went beyond blood donations. It was bad enough that they’d been ripped away from their homes, just to serve us. The least I could do was treat them with some level of decency, some level of respect. I killed girls who claimed they were Lila DeHaven without pause, but when my slaves were serving me... keeping me alive... I owed it to them to make them as comfortable as possible.
I may have been an immortal vampire, but when it came down to it, it felt as though it wasn’t so long ago since I’d been a human, too.
Kade laughed. “This is where you and I are polar opposites, Sebastian. You need to look at the bigger picture. Our slaves aren’t like us. You know just as well as me that eventually their lives will come to an end, anyway.” He met my gaze with a more serious look in his eyes. “Besides, do you think they really want to spend their entire lives here, serving us? Getting rid of them just puts them out of their misery.”
“I guess I’ve never looked at it that way before,” I admitted. Personally, I’d always wished that we could just keep our slaves for a short time before releasing them back into the human world, but that had never been an option. It was simply too risky. The last thing we needed was for the wrong humans to find out the truth about us.
No, once a slave was brought to our kingdom, that slave was here to stay. They would continue to serve our kingdom until they either died or their slave owner decided they were no longer needed... in which case, they usually ended up dying, anyway.
Sometimes when owners got bored of their slaves or decided their blood was no longer appetizing (which often happened as humans aged), they traded with another vampire. But that was a very rare occurrence.
See, once a vampire drank from a human directly, that human became theirs. Our souls became connected. We weren’t able to hear every thought they had, but if we allowed ourselves to tune in hard enough, we could sense their emotions. And we were always about to determine their whereabouts.
There were two ways to undo a vampire’s connection to a human. It would be broken once the human died or if the vampire died. There was also a spell that could break the connection, but it wasn’t easy. Only a few witches in history had ever been able to perform such a powerful spell. And once vampires were connected to humans, they would have rather seen them die than break their connection, making it possible for another vampire to drink from the human and form a new connection with them.
I realized then that was why it’d made me so angry when I’d smelled blood on Kade and thought he’d drank from the girl in the dungeon. If he were to drink from her, that would have meant she belonged to him. And that wasn’t what I wanted.
I didn’t want anyone else to drink from that girl. I wanted her to be mine.