Essence (Nectar 3)

Tristan took a breath. Sasha put her hand on his arm and gave him what looked to be a sincere smile, “I want to help. Please believe me.”

Kyla swayed and swatted at Sasha’s hand, clearly not as strong as she’d been upstairs in the kitchen. Sasha moved away.

Kyla wobbled and Tristan steadied her and pulled her behind him,

“Don’t do that, Kyla. Sasha wasn’t hurting me.”

“Sorry. I’ll keep my hands off him, Kyla.”

Kyla didn’t respond to Sasha. She was weak. Really weak.

“Tristan, this family has been torn apart from the start. Maybe Kyla can help her brother, once she’s restored to herself, too. Never know. It could be completely symbiotic. He’s very special to me. I want him conscious as well as breathing and I know that he wants his sister to be okay. He has felt her absence. I remember them as babies and later as toddlers. They were inseparable the few times we had them together at The Center. They’d fall asleep sucking one another’s thumbs. Adorable and so close. They’ve both been orphaned, in essence. Their parents, as they knew them, no longer exist. It’d be wonderful if they had one another. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have my own brother in my life again. The twin bond never goes away.”

“What if he wakes and doesn’t want to feed you any longer?” Tristan interrupted, expecting to see some truth in her eyes and he did. He didn’t see a sneer or anything deceptive, only a sadness.

“If that’s what he decides, I’d have to cope. But I know Kyle and he won’t. He’ll do whatever he can to help. I honestly believe that. He’d want to help Kyla and he’d want to help me.” She shrugged but her posture slumped.

“And if he doesn’t?” Sam asked, moving in to the room.

Her eyes filled with tears, “I’d rather be dead, Sammy. But I won’t force him to feed me. I’ll die first.”

Sam’s expression dropped, “A bit extreme, Sash…”

“I can’t kill anyone else. I really can’t.” Her hands went into her hair and she looked mortified, “I took fourteen lives before I drank from Kyle and I dream of every one of their faces over and over.” She removed her eyeglasses and wiped her now wet and red eyes.

Tristan was flabbergasted that this woman was actually a vamp. She was a woman. She was soft, emotional, sweet. Not hard, calculating, and callous.

Tristan looked to Kyla to see if she had any recognition looking at her brother. But she wasn’t even looking at him. She was staring off at the television on the wall, eyes glassy. She looked like a shell of herself. Weak. Pale. Her scent was even muted, diluted. His chest got tight.

He sat her down at the sofa and tucked her hair behind her ear and looked over at Sasha and said, “I’ll do the blood draw and the cheek swab. No one touches her.”

Sasha perked up with a hopeful expression, “I’ll be back with the supplies.”~~~Tristan and Kyla were in the room Sasha had given them. He was lying on his back and she was asleep with her cheek on his chest. She’d kept the sports drink and the juice down, thankfully. He’d told her to lie there and snuggle with him. He was deep in thought, sifting his fingers through her hair for a good long while, pondering all of it.

He would never trust easily again but he currently had no doubt that as long as Kyla’s brother fed Sasha, she wasn’t a threat to Kyla. It wouldn’t stop him from taking an assessment every time he saw her, though. He’d cringed while letting her examine Kyla at the kitchen table. He hated anyone’s hands on her.

Sam had gone off wandering to explore the island and meet up with a female vamp who he’d known a long time, after Sasha explaining how well the vampress was doing with micro-dosing of her ‘special formula’. Sasha was in her lab working on the Kyla mystery.

As Tristan hadn’t been sleeping much, he drifted off, but was woken by her having some sort of seizure. Her body was jerking and bucking to and fro and she wouldn’t open her eyes despite him ordering her to wake up and stop.

“Kyla, baby; please. Stop shaking. Wake up. Talk to me. Talk to me.”

She wasn’t responding. She just kept trembling, her body jerking, and then she started to whimper, her face holding an expression of severe pain.

She uttered his name with her eyes closed, as if she was dreaming of him, and it felt like a blade sank into his heart. She said his name with so much agony in her voice. Tears sprang to his eyes and he just held onto her, rocking her.

“T-Tristan!” she cried out, louder this time, eyes bolting open, unfocused, the colour dull and the whites of her eyes still pink, and she tilted her head off to the side, exposing her throat. She wanted him to feed? She seemed far too weak. But she wouldn’t stop trembling.