Page 13 of House of Royals

“Enough with the formalities,” Ian breaks in. His table manners aren’t any better than mine. He’s got one leg swung over the arm of the ornate dining chair, his dirty boot hanging in the air for all to see. “Can we get down to business?”

“For being from the South, your manners are atrocious,” Rath tells him through clenched teeth. “Most would find it inappropriate to discuss the intricacies of the vampire world over breakfast.”

“Breakfast seems as good a time as any to talk insanity,” I say before I take a huge bite out of the biscuit. I then see the gravy that was supposed to go over the top of it.

I have so much to learn about my new world—and not just about vampires.

“See, she gets it,” Ian says. And he freaking winks at me.

“Very well,” Rath says, wiping his already spotlessly clean hands on a napkin. “I suppose we’ll start from the very beginning.”

I pop a few grapes in my mouth and angle myself toward him.

“Some several thousand years ago, a man named Cyrus was a bit of a scientist, you could say. Not many details have survived the millennia, but somehow he found a way to make himself the ultimate predator—and immortal. The very first vampire. He was stronger, faster, better than everyone around him. At first he thought himself the pinnacle of human perfection. But he also craved blood, from his own past kind. Ignoring the horror of the last fact, he desired that his wife become like him.”

I take a drink of my orange juice, but it doesn’t taste right. I swear I taste a hint of copper and rust. I look down in my cup to make sure it hadn’t changed to blood.

“His wife, however, was afraid of what her husband had become. While he was strong, healthy, and incredible, a more enhanced version of his previous self, but he was also brutal, a more enhanced version of his previous self. He’d attacked people, killed them as he drained them of blood.” Rath’s eyes have drawn inward, as if seeing the story he’s painting. “She loved him, despite his flaws. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to be like him.”

Rath takes another draw of his coffee. “In the end, Cyrus changed her anyway through the same process. What he did not know, though, was that she was with child.”

Something cold snakes its way up my spine. Something dreadful and so very wrong.

“Sevan conceived as a human and gave birth as a vampire.”

“What was the baby?” I ask. I didn’t realize until now that I’m sitting forward, nearly on the edge of my seat. “The baby was born a vampire?”

Rath shakes his head. “The child was born seemingly human. Ate, lived, looked exactly as every other human out there. Two unique, genesis vampire parents with a human baby. Everything seemed right and natural. Until the child died just after his eighteenth birthday.”

My brows furrow and the room is so silent, I hear it when Ian scratches at his jawline.

“They buried their son. Mourned over him. But then, just four days later, he rose from the grave.”

I swear under my breath. Ian looks over at me, but he doesn’t have that mischievous smile on his lips like what I’m learning is so common for him. He’s as dead serious as that son should have been.

“The son resurrected as a vampire. Exactly the same as his parents.”

“That’s why you called me a Born, isn’t it?” I ask as I look back at Ian.

He nods. “Only a Born could recover from a bite like you did. Anyone else would have turned.”

“The son resurrected as himself,” Rath continues the story. “And after a few years, they all realized he was not aging. He, too, was immortal. Realizing what he was and what he had defied, he became obsessed with creating others like himself. He took many women for himself. Horrifically, some of them conceived. Not all, but enough. Children were born. And once each of them reached their prime age, he killed them all.”

“That’s awful,” I say in shock. This man, father and murderer in the same breath. The thought is terrifying.

Both Rath and Ian are looking at me with a weight I don’t quite understand.

“The Born were not the only new creature to walk the earth, though,” Rath continues. “Those that Cyrus had bitten and nearly killed turned into something new. Different than Cyrus and his family. They still aged. They craved blood more than the Born. Without it, they withered and died. They were the Bitten. They had never died, but they would. Their lifespans were the same as if they’d lived as a normal human.”

We’ve been in this room for quite some time now, and I just now realize that not a single attendant has re-entered the room since Rath began his story.

I’m starting to understand now why they look at me with fear in their eyes.

“The son had created seven sons of his own and eight daughters. But still he wanted more. He wished for an army to dominate those around him. He was cruel and reckless. Seeing what his son had become and the threat he posed to his reigh, Cyrus killed him.”

“But I thought the Born were immortal?” I ask leaning forward, my forearms on the table. “How did he kill his son?”

“A few of the stories you hear about vampires are true,” Ian says, resting his forearm over the edge of the arm of the chair.

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