to test me." I shook my head. "One kick, Ethan. One kick, and I went down. I panicked, couldn't fight her." Tears spilled down my cheeks, which were warm from embarrassment. The warnings he'd given me in his office hadn't worked. I was a failure. "I panicked."
"She hurt you." His voice was soft. "Again."
"And again on purpose. I think she wanted me to let her out."
Silence, then, "Let her out?"
I looked over. He was sitting in the armchair, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, body language inviting candor.
"I'm not... I'm not normal," I finally confessed and felt some of the weight of it leave my shoulders. "Something went wrong when you made me."
He stared at me for a minute, unblinking, then said, with a strange kind of gravity,
"Explain."
I took a breath, wiped a fallen tear from my cheek, and told him. I told him the vampire had somehow been separate from me, had a mind and will of her own, and had tried, time and again, to claim me. How, time after time, I'd fought her back down again, tried to keep her contained. And how, finally, the pain of Celina's single kick, her carefully crafted words, the doubt she'd sprouted in my mind, forced the vampire to the surface.
After a moment of silence, when he offered no response, I added, "I don't know what else to say."
I heard a choked sound, looked up, saw him with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, blond hair spilling around them, his shoulders quaking.
"Are you laughing?"
"No. Not laughing," he assured me, then laughed uproariously.
Confused, I stared at him. "I don't get it."
He blew out a breath that puffed his cheeks, then ran his fingers through his hair.
"You attacked me. You attacked your Master, the one that made you, at least in part because the predator inside you was powerful enough to exist on its own - because the predator failed somehow to merge completely with your humanity. I'm not even sure how that's possible - biologically, genetically, metaphysically, magically."
He looked up at me, emerald eyes shining, and his voice went a little lower. "We knew you'd be powerful, Merit. This was a complete and total surprise." He gazed absently at the wall beside me, as if watching the replay of memories there.
"It's happened before, you said? When the vampire has... separated?"
I nodded sheepishly, wishing I'd spoken to him, to anyone, about this before today.
When the fight and pain and humiliation I knew were probably in store could have been avoided.
"Since the beginning," I told him. "When you and I fought the first time, when the First Hunger rose, when I met Celina, when I staked Celina, when I trained with Catcher, when I fought Peter. But I never... really let her out."
Brow furrowed, Ethan nodded. "That could tell us something - perhaps she, the vampire, was sick of being repressed, as it were. Perhaps she wanted airing out."
"I had that sense."
He was silent, then asked, tremulously, "What was it like?"
I looked up at him, found an expression of naked curiosity on his face. "It was like..." I frowned, picked at a thread in the blanket, trying to put it into words, then looked up again. "It was like breathing for the first time. Like... breathing in the world."
Ethan stared at me a long time, was quiet a long time, then offered softly, "I see."
He seemed to consider that for a long time. "You said Celina baited you, maybe tried to pull this reaction from you. How would she know?"
I offered my theory. "When I went to Red, Morgan's club, the first time, when she confronted me, I could feel that she was testing me. The same thing you'd done in your office after I told you about the confrontation. Maybe she had some sense of it there?
Some sense that my chemistry was off?"
"Hmm."
I wrapped my arms around myself. "I guess I succumbed to her glamour this time?"
She'd so easily swayed me, made me look for Ethan, made me blame him for my hurt and confusion. As much as I'd like to blame my alienation from Morgan and Mallory on
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Ethan, even I could admit that those things had nothing to do with him. They were about me.
"The stronger the mind," Ethan said, "the less susceptible the individual to glamour. You have withstood it before, from her, from me. But this time, you were in pain, and you've had some setbacks in your relationship with Mallory. I also assume