Chapter 6 LEARNING TO LIVE

Elena's POV

Elena discovers the truth about Kai on her third day at the house.

She wakes at 6 AM and finds him motionless on the couch in the living room. Not sleeping. His eyes are open but empty like someone switched off the person inside. His chest isn't moving. His fingers are relaxed at his sides. He looks like a statue made of skin and bone.

Elena's first instinct is to check if he's dead. She reaches out to touch his arm and his eyes snap to focus immediately. Full awareness. Like he was there the whole time, just somewhere else.

"You're awake," Kai says. Not a question.

"You weren't sleeping," Elena says.

"No. I don't sleep the way you do. I rest. I'm aware but my body goes into a state of minimal function. It's what my kind needs to survive."

Elena pulls her hand back. She's lived with a vampire for three days and she's still discovering new ways that he's not human.

Over the next week, she learns other things. She learns that Kai can see perfectly in complete darkness. She learns that his house is surrounded by security cameras and sensors she didn't even notice. She learns that he has connections everywhere in the city. People who report to him. Information networks that track the Shadow Guard's movements.

She learns that he's been preparing for something for a very long time.

But she also learns that he's lonely.

Not the temporary kind of lonely that comes from being alone for a few days. The bone-deep kind that comes from being alive for three hundred years and watching everyone you love die. The kind of lonely that becomes part of your personality. The kind that makes someone spend centuries alone in a house on a cliff instead of being with their own kind.

It's on day five that Kai teaches Elena how to cook.

"You need to know how to do normal things," he says. He's standing in his kitchen with his sleeves rolled up. "Things that have nothing to do with fighting or surviving or running."

He shows her how to make pasta from scratch. How to mix flour and eggs. How to knead the dough until it's smooth. His hands are steady and careful. Like cooking is something he's loved for centuries.

"Where did you learn this?" Elena asks.

"Italy. 1800s. I lived in a small village outside Rome. There was a woman who taught me. She said that food was the only thing humans had that vampires didn't need but vampires could understand. Love made manifest in flavors."

Elena watches him work. For the first time, Kai isn't just a vampire. He's someone who's lived. Someone who's had experiences across centuries that Elena can barely comprehend.

"Did you love her?" Elena asks.

"No. But I cared about her. I still think about her sometimes when I'm cooking."

They make sauce next. Kai shows her how to taste it, how to adjust the seasoning. He tells her about spices he ate in different countries. About meals he remembers from centuries ago. About a market in Istanbul where they sold the best olive oil he's ever tasted.

Elena realizes that cooking is how Kai connects to his humanity. It's how he remembers that he was human once.

During meals, Elena starts asking real questions. Not interrogations. Just conversations.

"Where did you grow up?" she asks while eating pasta.

"Scotland. 1681. A small village in the Highlands. My father was a blacksmith. My mother died when I was young. I had two sisters."

"What were they like?"

Kai sets down his fork. "One was kind. One was cruel. One was brilliant. I can't remember which was which anymore. That was three hundred and forty-two years ago. Memories fade even for vampires."

Elena wonders if he's lying or if that's really what happens when you live that long. If people just become shapes without faces. If love becomes an abstract concept instead of a feeling.

"What was it like?" Elena asks. "Being turned?"

"Agonizing. I didn't want it. The vampire who turned me, his name was Lucian, he didn't ask permission. He just did it. He said I was beautiful and he wanted me forever. I spent the first hundred years wishing he'd let me die."

"Why did you stay alive?"

Kai looks at Elena like the question matters more than any question he's been asked in a very long time.

"Because I met Iris. And she showed me that I could be something other than what Lucian made me. That I could choose who I was even if I couldn't choose what I was."

Elena knows he means Iris. She doesn't ask for more details.

On day seven, Elena does something stupid.

She's exploring the upstairs hallway and she finds a door that's locked. Actually locked. Everything else in the house is open to her but this door has a deadbolt and a security panel.

Elena tries to pick the lock. She's good at locks. The Shadow Guard trained her. She has lockpicks hidden in her sleeve and she's working on the mechanism when Kai appears.

He doesn't seem angry. He just watches her work for a moment.

"That's where I keep my past," Kai says.

Elena stops. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have..."

"It's okay." Kai walks past her and enters a code on the security panel. The deadbolt clicks open. "You should see what you're dealing with. You should understand what you're getting involved in."

He opens the door.

Inside is a room that steals Elena's breath.

Objects from different centuries cover every surface. Paintings. Sculptures. Jewelry. Weapons. A lute. A camera from the 1920s. A book bound in leather so old it looks like it might crumble if touched. Everything organized with care. Everything treasured.

"This is my three hundred and forty-two years," Kai says quietly. "Every person I loved. Every place that mattered. Every moment I wanted to remember."

Elena walks deeper into the room. She touches a necklace made of opals. A painting of a Scottish castle. A photograph of a woman with dark hair and fierce eyes.

"That's Iris," Kai says, seeing where she's looking. "That's the only photograph we have. It was taken in secret. Vampires don't show up in photographs properly. She refused to believe that. She insisted on taking one anyway."

In the photograph, Iris is laughing. Genuinely laughing. Like she's just heard the funniest thing in the world. Like she's completely happy.

Elena's chest aches looking at her.

Then Kai points to something else. A small wooden horse. Dark from age. Worn smooth like it's been held thousands of times.

"That belonged to Marcus," Kai says. "He was three hours old when they took him. Three hours. I managed to grab this from his room when the Shadow Guard came. It was the only piece of him I could save."

Elena picks up the horse carefully. It weighs almost nothing. The wood is soft from being held by tiny hands that belonged to a baby Kai never got to know. A son that was raised by monsters to believe his father was a monster.

"We'll find him," Elena says. The words come out fierce. Certain. "We'll make David Price pay for taking him from you. We'll make him pay for everything."

Kai turns to look at her. His black eyes are full of something that makes Elena's pulse quicken. Gratitude. But also something else. Something darker. Something that looks almost like the way he looked at the photograph of Iris.

Something that scares Elena because she's starting to feel it too.

The distance between them suddenly feels very small. The air in the room feels thick. Like something is about to happen that will change the fragile balance between them.

"Elena," Kai says, and there's a warning in his voice, "you need to understand something about me before this goes any further."

Elena's breath catches. "Before what goes further?"

"Before I lose the control I've spent three hundred years learning how to keep."

He steps closer. Elena doesn't step back. She should. Every part of her training is screaming that she should back away from a vampire who's looking at her like he's about to either devour her or confess something that will break her.

But Elena is tired of listening to her training.

She's tired of being afraid.

She's tired of running from the feelings that have been building between them since that warehouse when he could have killed her and chose not to.

"Then don't," Elena whispers. "Don't keep control."

Kai's hands clench into fists. His eyes go darker.

"If I don't," he says, "I'm going to want things from you that could get you killed. I'm going to be dangerous in ways you can't prepare for. I'm going to love you so completely that it terrifies me."

Elena realizes that Kai isn't just warning her. He's confessing.

And everything is about to change.

Previous Chapter
Next Chapter