Essence (Nectar 3)

Kyla’s body jerked, arms going straight up, like that sleeping baby reflex and Sasha winced. Kyla’s arms dropped listlessly and she took a deep breath and then whimpered through her exhale, brows drawn together tight.

Tristan nodded, “She seems like she’s getting worse. If she gets any worse tonight, just try it. I can’t lose her. If she’s stable through the night, wait for the morning for your return email. Tell me if you get any replies. Tell me if you find out anything.”

She nodded, “It’ll help if we move her downstairs, I think; all my equipment is there and I can set up another room, watch her stats, set up IV fluids, vitamins. Then she’ll need to be next to Kyle for a few hours for the procedure.”

“Just set her up in your safe room. Put a bed in the room with Kyle,” Tristan said, “I’ll stay down there with them. But don’t try to lock me in. I can undo the locks hands-free but I’d rather not break your security system if I don’t need to.”

“I’ll be there, too,” she said “I sleep on that sofa most nights anyway. But tonight I’ll be pulling an all-nighter in my lab so you can take the sofa if you want. Or sleep here. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Not leaving her. I’ll stay with her there.”-6-Kyla was sedated, on a hospital bed with just a foot-wide gap beside her and her brother’s bed and Tristan was watching from the nearby sofa.

Fuck, she was gonna freak when she found out that she had a brother. She’d almost lost her mind when she found out that her parents were alive. He and she hadn’t even had a chance to talk about the fact that her junkie ex-boyfriend wasn’t dead, either; that he’d been hauled to Adrian’s compound brain dead and then turned into a vampire.

She had a twin and he had enchanted blood, too. She’d had no one, she was all alone with nothing but a chip on her shoulder for most of her life. And now it was all different.

She had vampire parents, two vampire sisters, a dead human sister, and a comatose twin human brother. There might be other relatives that came outta that breeding program, too. He didn’t count Constantin as her family because that fucker didn’t deserve the privilege.

And she had him, her vampire prince boyfriend, as she’d called him. He thought back to that moment when she flopped on the bed at his condo with her eyes bright and her hair fanned out, a huge slice of pizza in her hand, globs of cheese hanging off it, declaring with so much fucking light in her eyes,“My vampire prince boyfriend is AWESOME!”He smiled through his pain at the memory. He wanted to give her everything he could to make up for the fact that she’d had to endure all this so far.

He moved to her and leaned over to kiss her forehead, “I’m so in love with you princess. I’m gonna find a way to get you back.”

He said a silent prayer that it’d work. He hadn’t prayed in probably twenty-five years, not since he was a kid.

Except no… He’d prayed once, the night he’d been turned, and those prayers weren’t answered.Taryn used to kneel with him every night and say the Child’s Prayer with him. She used to take him to Sunday School. She used to believe that faith could move mountains. Now she had zero beliefs beyond sating her own desires and fulfilling whatever agenda she had.

He hadn’t prayed since the night he was turned when his prayers that what was happening to him was just a bad dream proved to be fruitless as he watched body after body fall limp after being drained without his hunger waning even a little bit.

He’d missed his mother so much in those first few months of being a vamp while wreaking carnage all around him. He’d left his mother alone, stayed away once he knew who he was, once he knew the truth about his roots, about Alexander Kovac, about who his father was, a man who’d also been murdered while Taryn was pregnant, but he’d never been told much about his father. He hadn’t seen photographs and Taryn hadn’t said much about him.

Growing up he’d been told his father had been killed while being mugged. After being turned he knew that there was more to it. His father was turned before his mother got pregnant but she’d had some sort of relationship with him before and after.

His mother had been adopted. She never sought out her biological parents. Her adoptive parents were older when they’d adopted her and had died before Tristan was born. After Tristan had been turned he’d been told that Alexander was beheaded by enemies and that his own father died protecting secrets. He was told that when the time was right he’d learn it all. He hadn’t pushed back then.