I explained it to her.
She eyed me when I was done, looking severely unconvinced. “How late were you up?”
“All night.” I was convinced enough for both of us. Or desperate enough, at least.
“Again? Don’t you remember what happened last time you pulled an all-nighter?”
It would be pretty hard to forget being tackled, bitten, and imprisoned. “I’m really hoping for a repeat.”
She snorted.
The shop was close, so we made it there pretty quickly. I’d planned to arrive after Velour, so he wouldn’t have time to run.
It helped that I no longer had to be in hiding, so I could tap into my speed if I needed to. Which he couldn’t do.
“Wait outside,” I murmured.
“You’re bossy when you decide to try to be a badass,” Harper whispered back.
“There’s no trying required.”
“Sure.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll order the lattes on the app so you can grab them when you’re done.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Let me help. Even badasses need sidekicks.”
It was kind of hilarious to imagine her being my sidekick. I was the paperwork girl. Pure, undiluted sidekick material. She was usually the confident go-getter of the two of us.
I found Velour immediately, sitting at the table closest to the door. He had light skin and messy blond hair that fell below his chin, looking much greasier than I’d ever seen it before, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
He and Harper had only been screwing, but he wasn’t a complete monster. What he’d done to her was enough to keep anyone up at night.
His gaze went back to the doorway as I took the seat across from him. “How is she?”
He couldn’t have seen her, but he could smell her on me.
“She’s fine, for now. She should have at least another two weeks.” My voice was as flat.
He peeled his eyes off the entrance and looked at me, lowering his voice below what a human would be able to hear. “You haven’t turned her in.”
“We both know what’s going to happen if I do that.” I spoke as quietly as he did.
He clenched his jaw and jerked his head.
Anyone who turned a vampire or was turned by a vampire was dead. Period.
“She’s going to devolve in a few weeks. Everyone knew you were fucking. The Guild and the families are going to find out what you did when she does. Unless we figure out a way to stop it,” I said.
“If there was a way to stop turned vampires from devolving, someone would’ve told us.”
“Would they? Turning vampires was outlawed after the war, more than a century ago. Born vamps were nearly wiped our during that war. How many of us are there who’ve been alive since before?”
We both knew the answer.
Very, very few.
Vampires hadn’t lost because we surrendered. We lost because our numbers dwindled so low that there weren’t enough of us left to fight, so our people went into hiding and the werewolves gave up.
