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Kyla felt like a hobo in contrast to how these women were dressed. Kyla was wearing skinny distressed boyfriend jeans, t-strap black sandals, and a white chiffon button down that had a big cut-out in the back, making it almost backless. She had her hair loose in curls down her back as well as a little bit of make-up but she looked casual, completely casual.
She was Walmart or Old Navy, or maybe H&M or The Gap on a good day and they were Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus or whatever. She didn’t even know many of the expensive names and brands. Tristan was in jeans and a tee-shirt but he still looked like Armani. He didn’t even look Walmart when he’d worn Walmart!
“Celia,” Tristan nodded but didn’t break stride.
“Catch up later?” The dark-haired beauty blatantly flirted but glanced at their linked fingers. Kyla wanted to claw the woman’s beautiful face but held her temper in check.
“Absolutely not,” Tristan gave her a tight smile and the woman snickered. As they passed one another, he gave Kyla’s hand a squeeze.
Adrian opened double doors and ushered them inside.
Kyla let out a breath. Tristan gave her hand another reassuring squeeze. Adrian motioned for them to sit down in front of the desk. It felt like a professor’s office in an old-world style university. The wall behind his desk was lined with books and the desk was adorned with antique desk accessories.
Kyla removed her sunglasses as she sat. Adrian’s gaze met hers and their gazes locked. He gave her a warm smile. Despite its warmth, her blood ran chilly for a second as some sort of awareness prickled along her spine. She tilted her head and regarded him carefully. She almost felt like they’d met before. Something about him was familiar and unsettling.
“Why is Celia here?” Tristan demanded, his voice harsh.
“I needed some of her skills for a project. Unrelated to yours, not to worry. She’ll be busy.” He waved his hand dismissively and then he leaned back in his chair and said to Tristan, but kept looking at Kyla, “How much does she know?”
“Not much,” Tristan answered.
Kyla tore her gaze away from Adrian and looked to Tristan.
“Why don’t you begin? I can fill in gaps where needed,” Adrian said.
“Brace, baby,” Tristan said, “there’s a lot that’s about to come at you.”
She nodded. But there was no way to brace for what was coming.
Her world was about to be blown to smithereens.
“Adrian is your grandfather.”
Kyla’s body visibly jerked, “My what?”
“He’s your mother’s father. Your mother? She was half royal vampire. Your father had vampire DNA as well, though not quite as much as your mother and it was from a turned vamp. They both had rare blood types. Because of that and because you’re not turned, this is what makes your blood what it is. Enchanted.”
Kyla frowned.
Adrian spoke up, “I’ve devoted my life to science. Science that often helps our kind. Some that has even helped your kind. I’ve sired a number of vamps in my life but I’ve also fathered a number of children as part of my work, which has included many efforts in a various medical trials. Some children have survived. Some haven’t. Some of the women survived birth, some haven’t. Your grandmother survived giving birth to your mother. We’ve been interested in seeing how things would pan out with you, particularly since you’ll be the first among some very specific experiments to reach the age of 25, next week, in fact. If you’d roll up your sleeve…” He stood and reached into a drawer and removed a syringe.
Kyla felt panic rise, “Um…”
And her birthday wasn’t the following week. Her birthday wasn’t for a few months.
“Roll up your sleeve, Kyla,” Adrian repeated, staring right in her eyes.
She remained frozen but glanced at Tristan.
Tristan straightened up, “A minute, Adrian.”
Adrian smiled and nodded and then left the room, closing the door behind himself.
“What the…?” Kyla whispered, wide-eyed.
He put a hand on her arm reassuringly, “Right, so I told you my visit was enlightening. Sam had the blood taken from the lab I was using. It was rerouted and sent here. Adrian examined it but he wants to examine your blood now, after the bonding, as well as mine, after having had your blood for this amount of time as well as because of the nectar I consumed.”
She gave her head a shake and thrust her fingers into her hair, “Excuse me, um, I’m a little…stunned over here. Do ya think just maybe… it might’ve been good to drop that, all that, in advance for me?”
“I’ve been weighing the right way to handle this, Kyla. I planned to talk to you yesterday but with what you went through I decided to wait until we got here. You can ask questions this way. Adrian watched your mother grow up from a distance and she didn’t know she was half vamp until everything went down. Your parents, due to having specific highly coveted blood types, with vamp DNA, were matched to meet up. They were mesmerized into meeting and mating. They had you. You were taken. Adrian eventually found you and you’ve been watched ever since. As you were approaching your 25th birthday, they arranged for you to be delivered to me so that they could see if---”
