Page 27 of Nightshade

Aleks narrowed his eyes, hesitating before he shook my hand and frowning, probably at the relative coolness of it. He looked me over slowly, and rather than let go of my hand, he gripped it harder and pulled me a step in. His nose flared as he smelled me.

When he let out an exhale, he hummed. “You don’t look starved and feral.”

I slipped my hand free and stepped back, edging toward Leo again. “Miraculous, what a bar of soap and a couple of good nights’ rest can do.”

Aleks arched his brow. “I didn’t say you were clean.”

I huffed, looking down at myself.

That was fair enough. I was covered in dirt, the clothes Leo had given me damp and heavy with it. I doubted my hair had fared any better.

Heaving a sigh, I brushed some more off onto the floor. “Yes, well, we do our best, don’t we?”

Aleks crossed his arms, and his gaze slid toward Leo. “I guess we do. So tell me, Altair”—he looked my way again, and I clenched my jaw to keep from a more noticeable flinch—“what’s keeping you fed, elk or wolf?”

It took every bit of self-control I had not to look at Leo, but that’d give the whole thing away, wouldn’t it? Leo’s alpha, his brother, wouldn’t tolerate a vampire eating him alive. The truth would only land us both in a pile of trouble, and Leo didn’t deserve for that to be the outcome of his kindness.

And I didn’t want my best shot at safety ruined already.

“Honestly? Mostly rodents,” I said.

That wasn’t exactly a lie. If we were talking quantity, not quality or volume, I had eaten more rodents than anything else.

Aleks’s brows inched higher. “Really?”

I shrugged. “You get used to a diet, and it’s hard to break. What else do you think I had available in a basement cell?”

“Since when?”

“What?”

“Since when? I never saw you at the coven house, so how long did the witches have you?”

“Since eighteen fifty-one.”

Aleks exhaled long and slow through puckered lips. “That’s a hundred and seventy-five years.”

“Thereabouts.”

“What did they want you for?”

The mask he wore was too controlled, like he already knew the answer and was trying not to give himself away prematurely.

I summoned what little pride remained to me, rolled my shoulders back, and spoke without inflection when I answered. “Any creature sustained by magic can awaken any latent practitioner, and I had the sense that they were hoping that by mixing awakener species, they would achieve a new form of power. When that failed, a vampire’s blood is rather a difficult ingredient to source for potion making and spellwork. So my uses to them were twofold. I ate best when they needed my blood or required my . . . performance.”

Leo’s breath hitched, like I’d hit him or something.

His brother only stared at me. “And you escaped by, what, burrowing your way out?”

I shook my head. “That is . . . new. One of the witches let me out of the cell where they’d held me. It was in their basement. He didn’t tell me why and left me little choice but to flee, though I suppose that was a kindness.”

“And you came this way because? Were you looking for us?”

I shook my head. “Just trying to put distance between them and me as fast as possible, though this direction . . . the trees were thicker. I can’t say I was thinking clearly—I was starving—but it seemed a safer course. Because the sun.”

“Right.” He rubbed the knuckle of his thumb across his forehead. “The pack is still reeling.”

That was no coincidental change of topic. The way he said it, heavy and resigned, was like he’d already passed down a verdict. I supposed he had, in a way, but at least he didn’t sound happy about it.