Essence (Nectar 3)

“Tr-Tristan, I.I…”

He was in absolute panic.

“You’re dead,” Tristan said calmly, a sneer on his face.

Adrian shook his head rapidly, “No, no. No. Please. I can help her.”

“She isn’t here.”

“She’s not? Oh God, she’s not gone?” Adrian looked ravaged with despair.

“Not yet.”

Adrian breathed relief.

“But she’s dying. Your fault.”

“I... I need a feed. Please. Let me get my bearings and we can talk.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’d have killed her yourself if I hadn’t protected her during her cycle, Tristan! You turned her because she would’ve died!”

“After the cycle that only happened because of the drug you gave her to force a miscarriage? And turning happened after the safety you promised wasn’t delivered.”

Tristan’s chest was rising and falling, his nostrils flaring, cold fog streaming out of his mouth.

Adrian’s fear spiked higher.

“You know we couldn’t take that chance. We had to make sure she could survive. You needed me. You needed… help. I helped. I can still help. There’s so much I can help with. Please, let me---”

Tristan looked right into Adrian’s eyes “Do you have other enchanted pets on site? Besides Claudio’s?”

“Yes. Twins. My own pets. But you can’t feed from them.”

“My bloodline?” He didn’t want to feed from them. He wanted to know about royal pet blood sources on site.

“They are part Kovac. Your grandfather’s twin brother sired them.”

If Tristan cared a lick about his family, this might’ve bothered him. It didn’t. Obviously, it was how things went, disgusting as this breeding plan was and he knew it made him evil to be willing to exploit innocents but when it came to saving Kyla, he didn’t give a fuck what he had to do to succeed at saving her. If it was even possible. Constantin clearly went out of his way to breed pets for royals, to breed breeders for royals, to constantly do things for royal vampires, keeping them royal. This was the first he’d heard of Alexander having a twin. It was irrelevant right now.

“Non-related?”

“We probably still have Claudio’s here unless you know otherwise but no other royal bloodlines on site right now but there are a few unturned true vamps in the dorm. Twelve enchanted pets. Two or three, I think, meet your preferred specs.”

“But there are others? I want detailed information on your breeding program. I want all your information.” He wanted to know if anyone else was there with blood like Kyle’s.

“Take it. I’ll log you in, give you hard copies of my records, whatever you need.”

He threw a blood bag at Adrian, “Drink that and take me to the lab, your office, and to your feeder dorm.”

Adrian finished the bag, “That wasn’t enough. I need access to my girls. Take me to my suite?”

“Too fucking bad; up.” Tristan stared in his eyes and then told him how to act around his staff, cool, collected, aloof. He instructed him to be completely at his command.

And then Tristan followed Adrian to his office, where Adrian gave Tristan access to all of his files and where Tristan packed up his computer. He had Adrian follow him to Sam’s room where he’d grabbed Donavan’s laptop bag that Sam told him through a text was stashed underneath a chest of drawers. Adrian then took him to his office where they collected a variety of numbered blood samples on ice and then the dorm off the hallway and was really fucking disgusted with what he saw.

The dorm housed dozens. Some were pregnant. Some were being experimented on medically. Some children were on site. Jackson Curtis was there, part of the security team for the dorm. He tried to approach Tristan and Tristan knew by his expression that he would say something that pissed him off, just like he’d done when they’d first met before everything went wrong.

He’d knocked on the door and asked about Kyla and said he wanted to talk to her and Sam had explained who Jackson Curtis was and Tristan had reacted by throwing him bodily across the room, wanting to end the fucker for what pain he’d caused Kyla, not to mention the fact that the sonofabitch had touched what was his, period.

He glared in the guy’s eyes now and ordered, “Don’t fucking talk to me. Keep your mouth shut until I leave.”

He was also disgusted with what he’d seen on security cameras. The hedonism on the rehab floor was out of this world. He was beginning to see what Kyla and Sasha saw regarding vampirism and how fucking selfish it all was. He’d already started to feel that way after spending time with Kyla initially but now? Now it was even stronger.

Before her, he’d never thought twice about taking what he wanted in terms of blood and sex or anything else for that matter. There was a live and let live mentality among royals, though not among others. The royals watched those beneath them closely to make sure they stayed in line.