Page 72 of No One’s Daughter

“For what it’s worth,” I said after a while. “I’m sorry. Sorry that you can’t be honest with her. I take it you two are close?”

​“Yeah,” she breathed. “We were.”

“What’s it like?” She asked, catching me off guard. “In the vampire families? You said before that it isn’t kind to women. What about the children?”

“They’re coveted, kept close. I’ve actually never seen one,” I said, absent mindedly rubbing at my jaw. I truly didn’t know much about vampire offspring. As a turned one, I wasn’t permitted anywhere near them. “But, from what I’ve heard, their childhood isn’t great. Even worse if they’re girls.”

“Oh,” she said, a sadness etched on her face. “So I was doomed either way.”

“You didn’t have a good childhood?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. I knew it was none of my business, but with everything that I knew was going to happen, I hoped that she’d at least experienced joy and had a good life—up until now at least.

She shrugged. “My upbringing wasn’t all sparkles and unicorns.”

I stayed silent, unsure of how to respond. I understood more than she’d ever know, but that wouldn’t be of comfort to her. Did I even want to comfort her? I still wasn’t sure, though I felt strangely compelled to.

“All we had were each other,” she added. “Our mother was the type of woman who shouldn’t have had children. It broke her and in turn, us.”

​She didn’t need to expand.

I felt the weight of her words and couldn’t help but feel a pang of sorrow at the fact that she’d somehow managed to escape the fate of one horrible up bringing only to be dealt another. I had wrongly judged her human life as a good one.

We stayed out there—watching people go about their ordinary lives—a little longer before resuming our routine.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Ailsa

TWO WEEKS, FOUR more bedsits later and we had arrived at yet another new location. At this point, I’d stopped asking where we were or where we were going. It wasn’t like it mattered, none were home. Davien insisted that we had to keep moving. The goal was to stay one step ahead at all times, and that meant we couldn’t relax. Ever. We lived out of bags, always looking over our shoulders.

​At first, it had worn me down. I wasn’t used to being around someone like this twenty-four-seven, and all the added extras on top had left me exhausted.

The constant moving. The training of abilities I didn’t know I had. Not being able to see anyone I cared about. The way my own body had changed and didn’t feel like my own sometimes. The fact that I’d killed—and not really cared about it. The not knowing anything about myself or this new world. And him.

But somewhere along the way, something shifted in me.

I’d come to accept this as my new reality.

At least enough to no longer drown in it.

​I sat back on the bed, pressing my palms into the thin mattress as I tested it. It dipped slightly beneath my weight—lumpy in places, springs not quite right—but it wasn’t the worst we’d had. It would do.

​Still, what I wouldn’t give for a decent night’s sleep in a nice bed by myself, without his huge frame taking up seventy percent of the bed.

“Urgh,” I groaned as he rounded the corner, two bags of stale blood in his hand. “Don’t you get sick of those?"

He paused.

Actually paused mid-step. “You're right.”

I blinked.

“Wait… what?” I sprung to my feet. Was he serious?

“Come on,” he said simply. “Let’s go hunt.”

Before I could even manage a response, he was gone. The door swung shut behind him before I could form a proper response.

I scrambled after him, catching up to him in the stairwell a second later. “I thought hunting wasn’t allowed?” I called, my voice echoing slightly as I hurried down after him.