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Megan frowned and shifted uncomfortably on the worn blue couch she was seated on.
“I don’t know—I don’t think so. I tried to get her to come out to see you, Ari but well…she just won’t. I think she’s still trying to get through everything that happened to her all at once.”
“It did happen really suddenly,” Avery remarked. “I mean, first she almost gets eaten by the Guardian—which is not supposed to want to eat any humans or Others—and then she finds out she’s a vampire and then she finds out she’ll never see the people she considered her family again for the rest of her life. I mean, give the poor girl room to breathe!”
“I am trying to,” I said, struggling to control both my own impatience and the impatience of my Drake, who was demanding that we see our chosen female. “But I am also responsible for her well-being. I swore an oath to protect her and provide for her—how can I do that if I never see her?”
“You’ll see her again tomorrow,” Megan said, obviously trying to soothe me. “In your History of Magic class, right?”
“That isn’t the same as seeing her in a place where I can give her my vein and you know it,” I said tightly. I must nourish her! Or do Made Nocturnes not need to drink blood as often as the Born ones?”
“You know, I don’t know about that.” Avery looked thoughtful.
“I’ll ask Griffin the next time I see him,” Megan promised. “Though you know, it’s possible that your blood is really, um, strong since you’re such a high-ranking Drake. Maybe a little bit goes a long way and Kaitlyn really isn’t hungry right now because of it.”
I didn’t know if I believed that or not.
“If that’s the truth then I won’t worry,” I told her. “But until I hear from Kaitlyn that she’s truly not hungry or thirsty, I will be concerned for her. Will you please go ask her one more time if she would like to take my vein? If not, I’ll leave you all alone and I won’t come back until she asks me to.”
Megan sighed.
“I’ll ask her,” she said, getting up from the couch. “But I’m pretty sure she just wants to be left alone right now.”
39
Kaitlyn
“I’m sorry, Megan, but I just want to be alone right now,” I whispered from the depths of my pillow when she came in to ask me if I was thirsty.
Of course I was thirsty. I’d been crying all weekend—I couldn’t seem to stop no matter how hard I tried. I had lost count of how many times I’d sent my pillowcases through the laundry chute and still they were spotted with red dots and blotches from my endless weeping.
I couldn’t get over the feeling of loss—the feeling of abandonment that washed over me every time I thought of how coolly and calmly Alastair Breedlove had ended my relationship with his family and especially with little Allegra. He had cut me out of their lives as neatly as a surgeon excising a particularly nasty tumor. He had called me a “mistake” and that was what I felt like. Like something that shouldn’t have been allowed to exist in the first place.
Being cut adrift from the only family I had known since The Fire made me feel helpless and alone and frightened all at once. As vulnerable as a snail out of its shell, exposed for any careless pair of heavy boots to stamp into the mud at any moment.
Of course, I still had my friends and Coven-mates. That knowledge was all that was holding me together. I clung to it like a life preserver because I had nothing else to hold on to.
And yet there was fear there too. Twice now, in my life, I had lost people that meant everything to me. Twice my whole world had been torn away from me in a matter of moments. You don’t get over that kind of trauma easily or well—at least, I didn’t.
And every time I thought to myself, At least I still have my coven. At least I still have Megan and Avery and Emma and Griffin, a little voice would speak up and ask me when I thought I might lose them too.
Because once you lose one person in your life suddenly and randomly and for no apparent reason, a veil is torn away from your vision and you realize that you can lose anyone—anyone—in the blink of an eye. You understand that no one is safe—that no one is off limits. That anyone can die or be taken away and there is nothing you can do or say to stop it.
And that realization—that knowledge—makes the world a bad, sad, scary place. A place it’s too hard to walk in alone…and even harder to walk in with the people you still have left. Because who knows which one of them might be next to go? Who knows how much longer you’ll have them?
