your relationship with Morgan is not... at its strongest."
I nodded.
"Glamour can catch us in a weak moment. Not to change the subject, Merit, but while you were out, it looked as if you experienced a portion of the change again," he added.
"The chills, the fevers. The pain."
Ethan, of course, knew what the change felt like.
He also understood now the thing that I'd finally figured out. That despite the three days I'd spent making the transition from human to vampire, it hadn't completely worked.
And I had a guess why that had been the case.
"I wasn't going through it again," I told him. "This was the first full time, the completion of it, anyway."
His gaze snapped to mine, a question in his eyes. And I answered it, offering the conclusion I'd reached. "I was drugged the first time I went through the change. After you bit me, drank me, fed me, you drugged me."
His expression blanked, eyes muting to forest green.
I continued, my gaze on his. "I know other vampires' changes were different from mine.
I don't remember the things they remember. I was groggy when you sent me back to Mallory's house. It was because I hadn't fully shaken off whatever you'd given me. And whatever happened today, I remember more than I did the first time."
Including the fact that I'd taken his blood. That I had, for the first time, taken blood straight from another. I'd taken blood from Ethan, gripping his arm like it was the ballast that would anchor me to earth. I'd searched his silvered eyes as I drank, as I cried, as I shivered from the inescapable pleasure of it, of the whiskey-warm essence that still flowed through me, that healed the wounds he'd inflicted and erased the lingering pain of Celina's attack.
Erased the pain, but not the memories.
"You drugged me," I repeated, not a question.
He respected us both enough to nod - barely a nod, more a closing of the eyes in answer - but it was enough.
And then he stared at me for a long, quiet moment. This time it wasn't the House Master who stared back, but the man, the vampire. Not "Sullivan," not Liege, just Ethan and Merit.
"I didn't want you to feel it, Merit." His voice was soft. "You'd been attacked; you hadn't consented. I didn't want you to have to go through it. I didn't want you to have to remember it."
I searched his eyes and found that to be truth enough, if not the whole of it. "Be that as it may," I quietly said, "you took something from me. Luc told me once that the change, all three days of it, was like a hazing. Horrible, but important. A kind of bonding.
Something I could share with the rest of the Novitiates. I didn't have that. And that's put distance between us."
His brows lifted, but he didn't deny it.
"I'm not like them," I continued. "And they know it. I'm separate enough from them already, Ethan, with the strength, my parents, our weird relationship. They don't see me the same way." I looked down, rubbed my sweaty palms across my thighs. "They didn't before, and they certainly won't after tonight. I'm no longer human, but I'm not like them, either. Not really. And I imagine you know what that's like well enough."
He looked away. We sat quietly together, gazes everywhere but on each other. Time passed, maybe minutes, before I looked at him and he looked away again, guilt in his eyes. Guilt, I assumed, for his forcing me to relive the experience, but also for precluding, however well-intentioned, the complete change the first time around.
Still, whatever the reason, there was nothing to be done about it now. Whatever his motivation, it was done, and we had more immediate problems.
"So what do we do now?"
He looked up, green eyes instantaneously widening. Surprise, maybe, that I wouldn't push the issue, that I would let it be. And what could I do? Blame him for trying to ease the transition? Berate him for the sin of omission?
Most importantly, wonder why he'd done it?
"About this, I've no idea," he finally said, his voice the flat tone of the Master vampire, whatever had passed between us fracturing again. "If it truly was related to your incomplete change and the process is now complete, we'll deal with your strength, assess it. As to Celina, this would have been an added bonus of her Breckenridge game. Start a war between shifters and vampires, manage to capitalize on