Blood Trial Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers #1) - Kelly St. Clare Page 0,124

known him a tiny blip of that. How could what lay between us mean or amount to anything ever?

Over a century and a half of living lay between us.

“Out with it,” I told him wearily, guzzling the rest of my water.

Kyros raised his head.

“You’re buttering me up for something. Spit it out.” I’d come up blank. Not surprising in this shitshow.

His lips twitched and he rested back, tapping his finger on the curved armrest again. “I came back an hour early because my seconds, several of my teams, and my siblings have raised concerns that our situation poses a moderate threat to the smooth running of Ingenium.”

Our situation. The temptation to scoff was real.

“More specifically, my… lack of focus.”

Phew. I imagine Kyros received that feedback with all the happiness of a grizzly bear recently woken from hibernation. “Right. Your response?”

He cast me a flat look.

“Thought as much,” I said. “But you know what I meant. You must have listened to them. That’s why you’re here and not on Level 66.” My hand inched up to my throat. “Holy fuck, are you going to kill me after all?”

Darkness flittered over his face. He stood in a blur, scowl firmly in place. “I’m not going to kill you, Basilia. Why would you say something like that?”

Uh, a lot of reasons.

I lifted a shoulder. “Wouldn’t it solve your problems?”

He shoved both hands in his pockets and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. “No, Miss Tetley. It would not solve my problem.”

I brightened. “Oh good.”

“Something needs to be done. Distance has not worked. Ignoring you was fucking pointless.”

From our conversation over dinner, I knew there was another option. “You want to drink from me again.”

Kyros sighed. “No, I want to exchange blood with you again.”

He was 200 percent out of his mind. Wasn’t that just another blood compulsion? That’s what got us into this mess!

I surged to my feet, crossing my arms. “No. Nope. Never again.”

“There are cases like ours where—”

Balling my fists, I rounded on him. “Cases like ours. Tell me straight, Kyros. You owe me three honest answers from dinner the other night. I’m calling one of them in. Why the fuck is this happening to us and what are the implications?”

He’d evaded the same question so many times prior that I had zero expectation of receiving an answer.

The vampire put the round sofa between us, leaning forward on it. He cursed under his breath, lifting his gaze to mine. “It means, Miss Tetley—”

Shit, I was getting an explanation?

“—that for reasons unfathomable, my blood considers you a potential mate.”

Mate, mate, mate.

The word bounced around his cold, empty lair.

Mate.

I gulped audibly. This seemed like bad territory to be in. I lumped the word mate in with irreversible matrimony. “Like dogs or something?”

Kyros didn’t laugh. His face was as solemn as I’d seen it.

“If we’re going with animal analogies,” he replied, “then much more like ducks.”

I didn’t know what that meant. Did ducks do one-night stands? Maybe there was hope. “What does that mean?”

“It means I want to drink your blood and fuck you forever. Potentially. If two people’s blood is compatible, the initial drive appears after the first blood exchange but can recede after the second and third exchanges. If the drive is still there after that, we’re a true match.”

The scraps of my hope evaporated.

I was human though! And— “How can it be that your clan knows so little about this? Or have you just strung me along pretending not to know what’s going on? Mates can’t be that rare. Can they?”

Kyros’s shoulders relaxed. Whoa, he should not take my question as a sign I was okay with this conversation.

“We rarely mate,” he said. “With our need for harems to boost reproduction rates, mating causes unnecessary complications.”

If his behaviour was anything to go by, I could imagine. “So there’s a good chance the mating drive will disappear if we share blood again?” I pressed.

He nodded.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Kyros, I know I called in one of my three questions, but I still don’t know if you’re lying to me or not, and I really need to know if you’re telling the truth.”

If Kyros’s yearning for me disappeared, half my problems could be solved—the more life-threatening half of my problems too. The other clan would lose interest once they heard Kyros had tired of me. Maybe we could leak rumours about another woman. More importantly, Kyros wouldn’t track my movements so closely. He may even let me leave the