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"But you did feed," she reminded him. "Just last night, in fact. Didn't you take enough blood when you killed that Minion? I thought you said you only needed to feed every few days?"
"An expert on the subject already, are you? I'm impressed."
Boots hit the floor with a careless thump, one, then the other.
"Can we turn on some lights in here? I can't see you - "
"No lights," he snapped. "I can see you just fine. I can smell your fear."
She was afraid, not so much for herself right now, but for him. He was worse than on edge. The air around him seemed to pulse with raw fury. It came at her through the dark, an unseen force pushing her back.
"Have I done something wrong, Lucan? Should I not be here at the compound? Because if you've changed your mind about that, I have to tell you that I'm not sure it was a good idea for me to come here, either."
"There is no other place for you right now."
"I want to go back home to my apartment."
She felt a blast of heat skating up her arms as if he had just turned a deadly look on her. "You just got here. And you can't go back there. You'll stay until I decide otherwise."
"That sounds an awfully lot like a command."
"It is."
Okay, now he wasn't the only one bristling with anger. "I want my cell phone, Lucan. I need to call my friends and make sure they're okay. Then I'm going to call a cab, and I'm going to go home, where I can try to make sense out of the mess my life has become."
"It's out of the question." She heard the metallic clink of weaponry, the rough scrape of a drawer opening. "You're in my world now, Gabrielle. I am law here. And you are under my protection until I deem it is safe to release you from it."
She sucked in the curse that raced to the tip of her tongue. Barely. "Look, the benevolent overlord attitude might have gone a lot further for you back in the day, but don't even think you can use it on me."
The livid snarl that lashed out of him made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. "You won't survive a night out there without me, do you understand? If not for me, you wouldn't have survived your first goddamned year!"
Standing there in the dark, Gabrielle went utterly still. "What did you say?"
Only a long silence answered.
"What do you mean I wouldn't have survived..."
He swore through gritted teeth. "I was there, Gabrielle. Twenty-seven years ago, when a helpless young mother was attacked by a Rogue vampire at a Boston bus station, I was there."
"My mother," she murmured, her heart thudding hollowly in her chest. She felt for the wall behind her, and leaned against it for support.
"She'd already been bitten. He was draining her when I smelled blood and found them outside the terminal. He would have killed her. Would have killed you, too."
Gabrielle could hardly believe what she was hearing. "You saved us?"
"I gave your mother a chance to get away. She was too far gone from the bite. Nothing was going to save her. But she wanted to save you. She ran away with you in her arms."
"No. She didn't care about me. She left me. She put me in a trash bin," Gabrielle whispered, her throat burning as she spoke the words, felt the old hurt of abandonment all over again.
"The bite would have put her in a state of shock. It's likely she was disoriented, thinking that she was putting you someplace safe. Sheltering you from danger."
God, how long had she wondered about the young woman who'd given birth to her? How many scenarios had she concocted to explain, to herself at least, what might have happened the night she was recovered on the street, as an infant. Never had she imagined this.
"What was her name?"
"I don't know. I didn't care. She was just another victim of the Rogues. I hadn't thought about any of it until you mentioned your mother tonight at your apartment."
"And me?" she asked, trying to put everything together. "When you first came to see me after the killing I'd witnessed, did you know I was the baby you saved?"
