night in February. One of our servants betrayed our location. The lessers came in a pack of fifteen or twenty and slaughtered their way through our estate before breaching our stone battlements. I'll never forget the sound when they pounded on the door to our private quarters. My father shouted for his weapons while forcing me into a crawl space. He locked me inside just before they broke through the door with a battering ram. He was good with a sword, but there were so many of them.”
Beth's hands came to his face. He dimly heard soft words falling from her lips.
Wrath closed his eyes, seeing the ghastly images that still had the power to rip him from sleep. “They massacred the servants before killing my parents. I saw it all through a knothole in the wood. As I said, my eyes were better back then.”
“Wrath—”
“While it was happening, they made so much noise, no one heard me screaming.” He shuddered. “And I fought to get free. I pushed against the latch, but it was solid and I was weak. I tore at the wood, scratched at it until my fingernails splintered and bled. I kicked with my feet…” His body responded to the remembered horror of being confined, his breath growing ragged, his skin breaking out in a cold sweat. “After they left, my father tried to drag himself over to me. They had stabbed him in the heart, and he was… He gave out two feet from the crawl space, reaching for me. I kept calling his name over and over again until I lost my voice. I begged for him to live even as I watched the light in his eyes dim and then go out. I was trapped there for hours with their bodies, watching the pools of blood get bigger. Some civilian vampires came the following night and let me out.”
He felt a soothing stroke down his shoulder, and he brought Beth's hand to his mouth, kissing the skin of her palm.
“Before the lessers left, they pulled back all the tapestries from the windows. The moment the sun rose and came into the room, all the bodies burned up. I had nothing to bury.”
He felt something hit his face. A tear. Beth's.
He reached out and stroked her cheek. “No crying.”
Though he cherished her for her sympathy.
“Why not?”
“It changes nothing. I cried while I watched, and still they all died.” He turned on his side and gathered her close. “If only I could have… I still have dreams about that night. I was such a coward. I should have been out there with my father, fighting.”
“But you would have been killed.”
“As a male should. Protecting his own. That's honorable. Instead I was sniveling in a crawl space.” He hissed with disgust.
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-two.”
She frowned, as if she'd assumed he'd been much younger. “You said it was before your transition?”
“Yeah.”
“So what were you like then?” She smoothed his hair back. “It's hard to imagine you fitting in a crawl space, the size you are now.”
“I was different.”
“You said you were weak.”
“I was.”
“So maybe you needed to be protected.”
“No.” His temper flared. “A male protects. Never the other way around.”
Abruptly, she backed off.
As the silence stretched between them, he knew she was thinking through his actions. Shame made him remove his hands from her body. He rolled away, onto his back.
He never should have said a thing.
He could just imagine what she thought of him now. After all, how could she not be revolted by his failure? By the reality that he'd been weak when his family had needed him most?
With a shrinking feeling, he wondered if she'd still want him. If she'd still welcome him into her slick heat. Or would that be gone for her? Now that she knew?
He waited for her to put her clothes on and leave.
She stayed in the bed.
But of course she did, he thought. She understood that her transition was coming no matter what, and she needed his blood. It was a matter of necessity.
He heard her sigh in the darkness. As if she were giving up on something up.
He wasn't sure how long they lay together, side by side but not touching. It must have been hours. He fell asleep briefly, only to wake up when Beth shifted against him, her bare leg moving over his.
A jolt of lust went through him, but he beat it back savagely.
Her hand brushed over his chest. Drifted down his stomach and across