He didn’t want me.
I was a means to an end.
I closed off my mind to the feelings he’d brought out in me and focused on the road.
Drive to the immortal compound.
Water the plants.
As I had done since the day I was hired.
I tried to conjure up the memory and was left seeing an image of myself at the compound listening to the human training coordinator rattle off instructions. But how had I known about the job? How had I even gotten there?
Already being with the immortals was muddling my mind if I couldn’t even remember what I had been doing two years ago!
Or was it days?
Panicked, I turned up the music and pushed all thoughts of Alex and the immortals away.
Alex
London, England 1815
THEIR EYES WERE empty, as though someone had sucked the souls directly from their bodies. The scent of earth filled the air.
I fell to my knees amidst the gory scene before me, dipped a finger in the blue blood… and tasted.
The youngest elf had just left to get Sariel.
They’d been nervous about another one of the elves.
The scene unfolded before me like a play. One of the elves, the smaller, announced a pregnancy.
A hush sounded around the room as a moment of silence descended over the chosen women.
Elves were capable of mating with immortals and humans alike, they helped further the races — though every time they brought a new life into the world, it meant that they sacrificed their own.
To bring life.
It meant their own de
ath, no matter who they mated with, human or immortal.
That was why they were a protected race.
But weak.
Weaker even than a human. Even though they had blood that fused with both worlds, they were a lot like Dark Ones — they didn’t belong in either.
And yet, it was a great honor, to carry an immortal into the world.
“Who is the father?” one of them whispered with leeriness in her voice.
“He is beautiful.” Her sigh was heavy with longing as the scent of burning wood and charcoal filled the air. “He said he would take care of me… of us.”
One of the other women stood. “You smell wrong.”
“Maybe it is the pregnancy?” another piped up.