Page 45 of Firedrake Betrayal
Shep just looks shocked. “If they didn’t want you to be together, why didn’t they just tell you?”
“That would have required feeling and a willingness to do the right thing. To care.Noneof those traits I would have used to describe my family,” Isaiah says.
“Used to?” Dominik asks.
“Yes.” Isaiah gives Dominik a passing glance then refocuses on me.
Maybe he thinks I’m the one most likely to run away, given it wasn’t all that long ago he buried his teeth in my throat.
I try not to think about how it would feel to have every drop of blood sucked out of my body. I try not to, but I must not be successful for Isaiah to lean back an inch, as if to reassure me that he intends to keep his distance.
He’s not a monster. He called himself one before in Chicago, and I think this is why. His family made him do something awful, and it wasn’t even his fault.
He doesn’t hide his surprise when I take his hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Isaiah.”
“If there had been a piece of wood in the cellar, I would have saved her from my hunger.” Isaiah gives my hand a gentle squeeze and then releases it. “That doesn’t change what I did.”
“What happened then?” I want to take his hand again, reassure him it wasn’t his fault, but I have a feeling years’ worth of guilt aren’t going to be so easy to shrug off.
“My family soon released me. I killed them, left Paris, and came to Chicago to start over. I had a distant relation there.” He shrugs as if it was nothing.
Killing the love of his life. Then killing his family and leaving his home to start a new life. None of that could have been easy.
“You think one of Amelie’s family shot that stake through the window?” Shep asks.
“Her family’s descendants might have spent years hunting me to get revenge.” Isaiah shrugs again. “No one else would have a reason to kill me.”
“I don’t know about that.” Patten sounds thoughtful as he considers Isaiah through narrowed eyes. “You’re pretty good at pissing people off.”
“Patten,” Shep rumbles warningly.
“It’s true. He is,” Patten says.
We all focus on Isaiah.
“So it could be Amelie’s family wanting you dead,” Shep says. “They could have stolen your cooler.”
I hadn’t understood all this talk of coolers and blood bags before, but everything I’ve overheard comes together in my mind. Isaiah hadn’t trusted himself to feed on a person, so he packed a cooler of blood to sustain himself when they came to rescue me from the collector.
Now someone has stolen the cooler, probably a member of Amelie’s family, leaving Isaiah no choice but to feed on someone to survive.
Isaiah nods. “Perhaps.”
I don’t understand how he can view himself as a monster when he would change his very nature to avoid accidentally killing someone.
“Is there any way we might convince them it wasn’t your fault?” I ask gently.
“But it was,” Dominik says.
I glare at him. “No, itwasn’t. If his family hadn’t locked him in that cellar with?—”
Isaiah’s soft smile as he shakes his head captures my attention. “You don’t need to defend me, Jade.”
“Clearly, I do.” I abandon arguing with Dominik in favor of something more important. Isaiah’s paleness, and the reason he fainted. “So you haven’t been feeding since someone stole that cooler of blood?”
He shakes his head.
“I don’t understand why they didn’t try to take you out before.” Patten sounds thoughtful.
