“Where’s the male solidarity?” Dalton narrowed his eyes at Nick.

  Nick shook his head. “It goes out the window when it might negatively affect whether I get to explore the information your mate’s about to give us. Jewel”—he motioned with his hand to the room—“you have the floor. Please, enlighten us.”

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  “It’s frustrating when a person crawls out of the hole you’ve put them in—and no, I don’t mean that literally. But seriously, how dare they? You’ve got them shoved into a nice little box, and then they come along and tear down its walls, challenging everything you thought you knew. I mean, c’mon. What the hell?” ~Alice

  “You’re an asshole. And since you’re so freaking old, I bet you’ve been told that many times in your life. And, if you’ve been told that many times, one would think that you’d work on that massive personality flaw. But my observations tell me you haven’t even acknowledged it. You realize that acceptance is the first step to overcoming a problem, right? It’s not like—”

  “Are you done?” Cain snarled, his fangs on full display.

  Alice raised a brow at him. “Considering I was still speaking, that answer should be obvious. Which means you’re not just an asshole, but you’re also an idiot. Idiot-asshole is not a great qualification if you’re looking for a female friend.”

  Cain paced the room, his room, where he’d forced her to stay with him. He scraped his fangs over his bottom lip several times and shot her a scathing look.

  “You know, I could stay in a different room,” she suggested. “It’s obvious you don’t really want me here, and if you’re worried I’m going to run off, you don’t need to be.”

  “Stop!”

  Alice’s mouth snapped closed. She sat up straighter in a chair that occupied the far wall of the room. An enormous bed covered in a dark black comforter and a plethora of red satin pillows, which were artfully arranged, took up the middle of the room. On the opposite wall, a partially opened walk-in closet held rows of suits—all identical, from what Alice could tell.

  “You said you wanted to talk.” Cain turned to face her. He slipped his hands into his black slacks. She’d noticed black was a common theme with the vampire king. “I was in the middle of dealing with some important matters, but I dropped them to accommodate you. If I’d known you were going to insult and berate me, I would have had Willis give you a sedative and continued on with my business. So, if you have nothing relevant to say, I will take my leave, and you can go to bed.”

  “Take your leave?” Alice tried to hide her smile. “How old are you? Do you break your fast in the morning, too? Or break bread in the evenings?”

  Cain rolled his eyes. “You obviously know what those terms mean, so how old are you?”

  “I read.” She leaned back in the chair, relaxing a little now that he wasn’t hissing at her. “And I like to watch television. Both of which afford a person an opportunity to learn about the past, including the vernacular of the age. You, however, use ancient phrases as a matter of course.”

  He stared at her, his dark eyes seeming to see past her face and into her mind. Alice really hoped he couldn’t read minds. That was a thing on some vampire shows, wasn’t it? Who knows if that myth held a kernel of truth?

  “Why do you suddenly look scared? You were just chewing me up, and not in a good way. Now you appear to be ready to run away like a rabbit.”

  “Can you read my mind?”

  His lips slowly turned up into a wicked smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  She blinked several times. “Yes, yes, I would. Hence why I asked you.”

  Cain chuckled, and the sound was as wicked as his smile. “As much as I would love to have that ability, no, I cannot read your mind.” He walked over to the wall just a few feet from her and leaned his shoulder against it. “Is that what you wanted to speak to me about?”

  Alice blew out a breath. “No. I wanted to speak with you about Lizzy. She asked to see Finn.”

  His smile evaporated. “No.” Cain bit out the word through clenched teeth.

  “Why not?”

  “They’re true mates. Any time they spend together will make the bond stronger.”

  Alice frowned. “Why is that a bad thing?”

  “Because I have no idea how that will affect the change in her,” he explained. “It’s bad enough that she has a true mate. The bond between true mates is powerful. I need to see how her body responds to the virus without introducing his blood.”

  Her brow drew down even lower. “Why would his blood be introduced?”

  Cain’s eyes flipped up to the ceiling. “Because if they were together, the urge to complete the bond would be too strong.” His tone suggested the answer should be obvious. “They’d wind up biting each other, and then his blood would be in her system. For all I know, that might fight the virus, and she wouldn’t become a hybrid.”

  Alice ran a hand through her hair and tried to focus. Her mind was a mess with the information she’d learned about healers, the guilt of helping Cain with his experiments, and the nagging thought that she needed to call her father and report back in. She really did not want to speak with her father. He was an ass on the best of days. If she didn’t give him any information that he felt was relevant, he’d be insufferable. She pushed the thought away and refocused on her conversation with Cain. “What about if they couldn’t have physical contact? What if you kept them somewhere where they could see each other and speak to one another, but not … bite each other?”

  Cain shook his head before she even finished speaking. “They’re already speaking. They have a mind connection. And as you pointed out”—his lips pursed—“I’m old. I know much about the true-mate bond. They are having plenty of communication, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, short of sedating them both. And even then, they might be able to speak to one another.”

  She fought the urge to stomp her foot. I can’t believe I want to stomp my foot. I’m a grown, freaking woman. Alice had a feeling stomping her foot like a ridiculous child would only amuse Cain, and she did not want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was getting under her skin.

  “Are we done?” Cain pushed off the wall and then pulled at the cuffs of his dress shirt to straighten out the sleeves. Without giving Alice another glance, he moved to the door. “Try to get some rest. I will monitor Lizzy. If something happens, I will need you, which means you need to be well-rested and functioning at maximum capacity.”

  “What could happen?”

  He pulled the door open and looked back at her. “Anything, everything, nothing.” He shrugged. “She’s the first of her kind in history. I have no idea. It’s been two days since the transfusion. The virus is infiltrating her organs. Her heart will slow more and more with each passing day. The changes her body is undergoing might awaken the dormant wolf in her. Again”—he sighed—“I don’t know what will happen if that comes to pass.”

  Alice blew out a breath and rested her face in her hands. She was tired. She wanted to go back to her life as a rational scientist who didn’t know a thing about the supernatural world. Ignorance is bliss and all that.

  “Why do you look like someone just told you that your career is over and your dog died?”

  She dropped her hands and looked at him. For someone so evil, he was incredibly handsome. Weren’t evil things supposed to be ugly? If they weren’t, then they ought to be. It should be a rule or something. “This isn’t the kind of thing I ever expected to be doing with my career. I never imagined I’d have to learn about supernatural creatures and then be asked to help create a new species. It’s not easy for me to reconcile this with my moral code.”

  His brows raised in surprise. “You’re experiencing conflict with your conscience?” Cain seemed bewildered. “Are you perfect?”

  “What?” She huffed. “Of course I’m not perfect. Nobody is perfect.”

  “Then why are you struggling with your moral code?” He repeated her words, only his tone made them sound absurd. “You’ve done things your whole life that fall under the ‘stuff that is wrong to do’ category. Did you lose sleep over them?”

  Alice shook her head incredulously at him, knowing he probably saw a look of disbelief on her face. “I might have made mistakes, but I’ve never done something like this. Do you really think that something small, like swearing at someone in traffic, is the same as taking away a person’s freedom of choice? Not even close.”

  Cain shrugged. “Wrong is wrong.”

  “These people may not want to get injected with blood. And they sure as hell don’t want to be imprisoned here.” She stood up, nervously brushing her hands down the front of her pants. “Why am I talking to you about this? It’s almost funny to think that a vampire would understand the concept of morality.”

  Cain stepped back into the room and closed the door. “You say that like you’ve known many vampires.”

  “Oh, okay, vampire morality runs the spectrum. You’re not all evil parasites that want to create a new supernatural race and take over the world? And not all of you are willing to work with the human government in order to make that happen. I guess if I traveled the world, I’d find all sorts of vampires. I’d find vampires that were the very essence of paragon and virtue. Why do I seriously doubt that? Tell me, Cain, that you’ve been honest with the government about what you’re doing. Tell me you’ve told them the whole truth.” She crossed her arms in front of her and glared at him.

  Cain’s shoulders tensed, and he lifted his chin, his eyes piercing her in place. He clenched his jaw, and he seemed to wrestle with whether he wanted to voice a thought. Finally, he spoke. “You’ve admitted that you’re not perfect, and yet you stand there and judge me?”

  “Doing something like telling a white lie and sucking someone’s life out of their body are not the same thing,” she snapped. “I’ve never killed anyone. Or forced them to do something against their will. You can’t tell me all those comatose bodies are here because they agreed to be.”

  His head tilted, and he suddenly looked very … other. Not that he ever looked quite human to begin with, but this was strange on a different level. “Wrong is wrong, Alice,” he said coolly. “It doesn’t matter what it is you’ve done. If it wasn’t moral, then you shouldn’t have done it. Correct?” He didn’t give her time to respond. “You are no different from me. I’ve just lived longer, which has given me much more time to accumulate wrongdoings. Do you think I’ve always been this man?” He pointed to himself.

  Alice bit her lip. To be honest, she’d never considered the fact that he had to have been human at some point in his life. He wasn’t born a vampire. She tried to imagine Cain as a human, but it was difficult to reconcile that with the creature that stood before her now. “I never thought about it.”

  He walked over to a pair of chairs and held out a hand, indicating for her to sit. He took the other chair and waited.

  Alice just wanted to call her dad, get the bitching out of the way, and then go to bed. At this point, she didn’t even care whose bed she slept in. She threw down her arms and stomped over to the chair before dropping unceremoniously into it. Her lips pursed as she looked at him and held her hands out, palms up. “Let’s hear it.”

  Cain rested an elbow on the arm of the chair and perched his chin on his fist. “I know what it’s like to have your choice taken from you.” His voice was low. “I didn’t choose to be what I am. Who would?”

  “Umm, a person who enjoys having power over those weaker than themselves.” she scoffed.

  He gave a slight nod of his head in concession. “That wasn’t the type of man I was when my village was attacked by a nest of vampires.”

  “Village?”

  He used his left hand to point at himself. “Old. Remember?”

  Alice shrugged.

  “Once upon a time, I was a young man who’d just come of age to take a wife and move out of my parents’ home.” His eyes looked past her, as if his mind was in another place. “I’d been courting a young woman who lived in a settlement a couple of miles from ours. That might not seem like a big deal today. But back then, a couple of miles was a lot of walking every day to see the object of your affection, especially when you had a job, chores that your family depended on you to assist with. Not to mention, traveling after dark wasn’t exactly easy to do. No streetlights.” He smirked. “As such, I only saw her sporadically, twice a week at most.”

  Alice noted the affection in his voice, even after all this time. She didn’t know how much time that was, exactly, because she still didn’t know the vampire king’s age.

  Cain swallowed, and his eyes moved back to her. “The day she said yes to my marriage proposal was the best day of my life.”

  “You loved her.” It wasn’t a question, but Alice found herself shocked this creature could be capable of the affection she heard in his voice.

  His chin dropped a little before he lifted his head again. “I adored her.” His lips lifted in an almost-shy smile. “She was lovely. Kind. Giving. She never complained about anything. She didn’t care how much or how little we might have.”

  “You were poor?” She couldn’t reconcile poverty with the finely dressed man before her.

  “We had enough, but we weren’t high society, so to speak.” He lifted one shoulder. “Alice didn’t care.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” she spluttered. She knew the puzzled look on her face was probably comical.

  Cain gave a sardonic smile. “My betrothed. Her name was Alice.”

  “Is that why you’re so interested in me? Or is it the gypsy healer thing?”

  The vampire’s grin slowly vanished. “No, your name is simply one of life’s odd coincidences. For starters, you look nothing alike. Where you have hard features with a serious brow, she was gentle. Her face always wore a smile, and her eyes showed compassion. She had long, radiant blonde hair that glittered when the sun touched it, and she was a very petite girl.”

  Alice’s lips compressed into a tight line. “Good to know that despite our shared name, your Alice was an angel, and I’m a wicked, fat Alice with dull, dark hair.”

  He chuckled. “That’s your interpretation. I said you didn’t look like her. I never said she was more attractive than you.”

  “Did you ever consider that I have hard features because I deal with you all day long? Or that my serious brow is because the life of a young girl, as well as the other people you’ve taken, is in my hands? Am I just supposed to go around frolicking and picking flowers to give to everyone?” Alice cringed at the tone of her voice. Why did she care if he thought she wasn’t beautiful? She balled her fists and tried to hide them from Cain.

  “No, but I have thought that this version of me would be much too difficult for her to comprehend. She would love me regardless, as it was in her nature to do so. But I would have ruined her. She’d start as a beautiful rose, but over time, all she’d have been left with are the thorns.” He twisted away from her, and the lamplight illuminated only half of his face, the rest hidden in shadow. Alice thought the sight fitting—a reflection of his conflicting character, part light and part darkness. There was much more to Cain than she’d thought. Though she should have known better, considering his age. People change over time.

  “How old are you?”

  He kept his face turned from her as he answered. “I was born in the year 1690 anno domini in a small village in Serbia.”

  “You have no accent,” she said, and then realized how stupid the statement was. Cain was over three centuries old. He’d no doubt lived in countless places. Of course he could lose the accent over time.

  When he spoke next, it was in another language and with a heavy accent that must have been Serbian, though she wouldn’t have known it from Russian or Romanian. If she hadn’t heard him speak before, she wouldn’t have thought there was any way that he could speak without an accent from his homeland. “What did you say?”

  Cain tilted his head slightly so that the light showed more of the contours of his face. “I said”—though he now spoke English, he still held the Serbian accent—“just because something is different doesn’t make it any less lovely.”

  Heat filled her cheeks when his dark eyes met hers. She cleared her throat. “So what happened? I mean, to Alice, and you?”

  He shifted his position and brought his hands together in front of him, gazing intently at her. A wave of unease washed over her as his eyes roamed her face.

  “At the time, of course, I was unaware of the existence of supernatural beings. So little did I know there was a battle between the Canis lupus in the area. The vampire clans in the vicinity ran away to avoid danger, but they fed off humans and changed some to increase their numbers. Unfortunately, my village lay in the path of their escape, as did my Alice’s. Some wolves followed the fleeing vampires.” He paused, and Alice’s stomach twisted as she watched pain roll across his face.

  Cain’s eyes dropped. “The vampires struck before we even knew what hit us. They moved fast, like locusts across a field. Most of the villagers upon which they fed died. Some, like me, were given blood and changed. But after I was bitten, I fell and feigned death. My sire left me, assuming he had fed too much and killed me. When they were gone, I rose. I could already tell something was different, but I didn’t stop to think what. I took the first horse I could find and rode as fast as the beast would carry me to Alice’s village. When I crested the hill above her town, I knew the vampires had already been there.

  Then I heard the howl of wolves. I didn’t know what it meant. I kicked my horse and raced down the hill. As I entered the village, I found the source of those howls. A pack of massive beasts were fleeing the town, following the path of the vampires. They were snarling and growling, sprinting away from me. None bothered to look back in my direction. They were consumed by bloodlust, hot on the trail of the vampires. By the time I reached the village, there was no one alive. I could tell the people had been killed by something other than vampires. It was…”