Page 29 of Vampire's Hearth

“Rory, there’s an entire world in which the Cure could live, and your coven didn’t even know he existed. Do you truly believe you are powerful enough?”

She barely lifted her eyes as I guided her to the steps.

I furrowed my brow when she didn’t answer. “And all because you refuse to work with a vampire?”

“Cannot.” She glared at me as though there was a commandment behind the words.

I held out a hand and helped her to sit before I turned my back to her, hesitating, my head hanging forward. Would the truth be enough to convince her? I pressed my teeth together, willing my heart to stop racing. This was something my family didn’t speak of often. I turned my chin to my shoulder, my eyes to the ground, not wanting to see her face or her to see mine as I uttered the words. “What if I told you…” My words hitched in my throat before dying.

“Told me what?” Her voice held a mixture of curiosity and concern. The concern gave me hope. Would she accept me for what I was?

I spun around to face her, to see her eyes. I needed to know how my words affected her. I pulled a quick, deep breath into my lungs, trying to steady myself before the truth tumbled from my lips. “What if I told you I’m not a vampire?”

I closed my eyes, a tightness in my chest at the acknowledgment my family almost denied. I knitted my brows together and willed my body to relax, then opened my eyes.

Her face twisted in confusion. “What?”

I folded my hands in front of me to hide the tremble in them, forcing myself to spread my legs wide as I shifted my stance into a relaxed posture I didn’t feel, falling back on my instinct to project a calm control in every situation. “You told me we can’t work together because I’m a vampire.”

She pulled her brows together, her gaze falling to my clasped hands before raising back to my eyes. “If you’re not a vampire, how—”

“Vampire blood runs through my veins, but so does human blood. You see, my mother is human—the oldest vampire mate.She drinks my father’s blood daily to live. But that makes me a dhampir.”

Her mouth twitched as she tried to process my words, trying to put together the puzzle pieces in a way that made sense in our cursed world. I sat on the step next to her, wanting to take her hand, but I suppressed the desire and dropped my voice. “Surely you can work with half of me?”

She narrowed her green eyes but didn’t shift away from me. “If you are over eight hundred years old, shouldn’t your human half have died already?”

I nodded. “My parents started giving us blood-laced wine when we were young. If I ever stop feeding on human blood, then I’ll die. But I assure you, while I have all the characteristics of a vampire, part of me remains human.”

She bit her lip, causing my heart to flutter, the move equally endearing and erotic. “How many of you are there?”

I tilted my head, unsure what she was asking, so she continued, “Dhampirs?”

“Including my brothers and me, probably not even a hundred throughout the entire world.”

“How does it happen?”

I chuckled and drew in a deep breath. “Well, when a vampire loves a woman very much...”

Aurora’s eyes lit up as her laughter rang like birdsong through the air. “Oh my God.” She playfully swatted at my arm. “Ass.”

I smiled, my eyes connecting with hers. I searched them for any hint of fear and found only her pure soul. My gaze dropped to her lips, focused there, wondering if I would ever dare to touch them with mine, if I could hope to be given a taste. I twisted to look into the woods in front of the house. “A vampire can impregnate a living woman. Most of the mothers die in childbirth. My mother survived. I often wonder if I’m part witchbecause I don’t understand how she didn’t suffer the usual fate after multiple births.”

“You weren’t made?” I could tell from her voice that she was searching for answers, a search that lightened my heart. Could I keep her with me?

I shook my head. “I was born just like a human. My brothers and I aged until we were thirty, and then we stopped.”

Her eyes searched around us like she was trying to figure something out before lowering her voice. It was tinged with sadness. “Being a witch wouldn’t have stopped her from dying in childbirth.”

I nodded and swallowed my fear that I would say something that revealed my identity and shattered the fragile trust I sensed between us. “The curse on your coven has been spoken of over the years but not in detail. I only know the fate of the High Priestess is to die in childbirth.” I lifted the lynx pendant, pulling it out of her shirt from between her breasts, my fingers grazing her milk-white skin as I did. She drew in a sharp breath, and her legs twitched. “But then, you are to be High Priestess...”

She gazed into my eyes, removing the pendant from my fingers as she spoke, her voice soft and strained. “There is a saying that the curse will be broken by the witch who is sustained by blood, but no one understands because a witch loses her powers if she turns.”

I stitched my brows together. Why was it every curse that damned us had a cryptic answer? An anger burned in my stomach for her, a desire to free her and allow her to love freely, without fear that it would end in her death. “It seems like we both have questions surrounding our family. Please, Aurora, let’s confront them in unity.”

A silence fell between us as her eyes searched my face. She pulled in a sudden breath and hit the wooden steps, shaking herhead. “We should go back into the house and figure out what to do.”

I smiled at her, my gaze moving this way and that as she tried to look away from me. “Does that mean you think we can work together?”

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