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“No, it makes me a target.”
“No, listen.” Octavius set the steak aside to rest and met Jayden’s gaze. He’d sat up, giving the conversation his full attention. “We need you because you’re human. If you’re nyk, we can no longer… use you.” It came out sounding wrong, but he wasn’t sure how to make the truth sound any better.
“Right. I’m just a walking blood bag to you.” He crossed the room to the counter and grabbed a slice of cucumber off the plate, then crunched down with a baiting smirk.
He was more than that, and he was trying to make Octavius say it. “Forgetting the fact new nyks are generally rabid, monstrous killers for several years, you’d lose what makes you special.”
“My usefulness to you?”
“You’re going to make me say it? Fine. You’re special. You’re human. You live and breathe and care. You’re as complicated as you are simple. Humans, the good ones, are like…” He’d never been very good at words and was probably about to fail miserably in describing what Jayden meant to both him and Saint. “You’re like a sunrise that you didn’t expect, but it’s so beautiful, so fleeting, you cannot help but stop and watch its colors until its flare fades under daylight.”
Jayden scooped up his dinner plate, grinned, and sauntered toward the dining table. “I love you too.”
The man was infuriating. “You don’t need to be a nyk. It’s our job to protect you, and we will.”
“Hm, two big, powerful vampire monsters reliant on me eating this steak.” He sat at the table and grinned as he tucked in.
Octavius chuckled. Maybe Jayden had it right all along, and the people with the real power had always been humans. Without them, the nyktelios were nothing.
“May I er… ask something, Jayden?”
“Sure, anything, fire away.”
And now he’d begun, he had to continue, it was just that it was sensitive. “We are very different. You have an… enthusiasm for some things, that I…. don’t. Or didn’t. Until recently.”
Jayden looked up, chewing slowly, and frowned as though trying to guess where the conversation was headed.
“It’s just, as nyktelios—or rather, as Brotherhood, I suppose—I haven’t needed to engage in…” His throat was dry, making his voice creak. “Intimacies.”
“Are we talking about sex?”
Octavius winced. “Not just that. I… With Saint, I mean, there’s a… need. And when I’m with him, helping him, feeding him, I see him—look at him, I mean—and I have these… feelings, and I don’t know what to do with them.”
“You have had a sexual partner before?”
“I don’t know? I don’t remember. If I have, it was fleeting. But with Saint, I’m drawn to him. I can’t explain it. I look at him, and I think… things. Is it wrong?”
Jayden’s smile was the kind type, soft and understanding, and exactly what Octavius needed. He didn’t know how to navigate sexual needs, and while it wasn’t an issue now, it might be, later. If Saint survived. He could no longer deny his desire, or shun it as a biproduct of feeding.
“It’s not wrong,” Jayden said.
Octavius felt like a fool. Several thousand years old, and this kid human was coaching him about sex.
Jayden’s smile grew. “I knew I was right about you. You’re a good guy, Octavius.”
Was he a good guy? He’d never thought of himself as one. But he’d always tried to do the right thing, even when right was sometimes grey. “I’m going to try Saint again. Are you ready?”
Jayden nodded enthusiastically and kept on eating. “Also, if you ever want me to go down on you? Y’know, to take the edge off? I’m game.” He slid a piece of steak off his fork into his mouth and stroked the tip of his tongue across his lips.
“I uh… I think I’m good.” Octavius laughed. The pair of them, Saint and Jayden, were endless flirts.
With any luck, this might be the final time Octavius would have to feed Saint. Maybe he’d regain enough control not to kill Jayden. Once he could feed from Jayden, his recovery would be much faster. They were almost there.
As to what happened after? The Brotherhood, Raiden, rising nyks, the end of the world… They would have to face all of it, perhaps together.
He left the kitchen, and as he walked down the hallway, he considered how, even though the last few days and nights had been difficult, they’d also been the easiest and most rewarding days in many, many decades. No Mikalis, no Brotherhood, just him and Saint and Jayden. In many ways, it felt more right than the millennia he’d spent tracking down and killing nyks.
He couldn’t go back to the Brotherhood. He knew that much. Could it be just the three of them until the end of days?
