Page 167 of Cruelly Bitten
“No, I didn’t,” Emine replied, a hint of amusement touching her lips before they flattened and she moved to me. “Darius, son of Armand and Junia. Mated to Juliet, daughter of Human Male Breeder Number Twenty-Seven and Blood Virgin Number Sixty-Five.”
I… My parents?Juliet’s soft mental voice pierced my heart, her wonder mingled with a hint of sadness and overwhelmed by uncharacteristic shock.She knows who… who created me?
I didn’t get a second to reply, Emine’s focus having returned to me. “Darius was made by Cam.” Her attention shifted to my maker. “Cam, son of Cronus and Cava. Mated to?—”
“How did you know my surrogate’s name?” Calina interjected before Emine could continue with hershow-and-tell.
“You know my… my parents?” Juliet echoed aloud, her typically subdued demeanor having disappeared in the face of Emine’s blunt commentary regarding Juliet’s origins.
I again glanced at Cam, expecting some sort of reaction. Yet he was still admiring hisErosita, his disinterest in this conversation palpable.
Emine had mentioned Cava—Cam’smother—and he hadn’t even flinched.
What the hell is happening here?
Cava was a sore spot for him. He’d never liked talking about his mother, let alone hearing someone else mention her name.
And how did Emine know all these things?
Juliet’s mother was noted in her records, but not her father. The breeding camps made it difficult to tell whose sperm went where. There were usually a dozen or more men assigned to over a hundred women, their sole jobs to fuck the females until they became pregnant.
And the males were often replaced after their services were complete.
From what I could tell, their records barely existed.
Yet Emine knows the name of Juliet’s sperm donor…?
Not to mention what she’d just said about Jace’sErosita.We’d only recently learned about Calina’s ancestry through some of Lilith’s informational logs.
And none of those logs had included the name of Calina’s surrogate.
How could this baby vampire know such a thing?
“It’s fascinating, yes?” Khalid asked, his lips twitching. “Imagine my surprise when she addressed me asMy Princeafter I’d been wandering the Blood University grounds for days without anyone recognizing me.”
My brow furrowed. I supposed if anyone could move around without being recognized, it was Khalid. He usually masked his features with a headdress or a low-hanging hood. But I would know him even without those items, his features rather remarkable in nature.
His images in my political preparation courses depicted him with black eyes, long hair, and a thick beard,Juliet informed me, her mental tone lacking her previous shock.
She’d recovered quickly, a habit that had been trained into her during her formative years. She was still surprised by the information Emine had shared, but she was forcing that surprise to subside.
Humans were taught to suppress emotions in this world.
And Juliet was a master of that suppression.
He looks nothing like the photos I’ve seen, she added.The trimmed beard and shorter hair, I understand. But his eyes?
His eyes are naturally turquoise. They only turn black when he feeds,I told her, aware of Khalid’s tells because of Cam.
Cam had taught me everything I knew about the vampire royals. About politics. About what the world could be like if humans and supernaturals worked together.
Yet he still sat there now with an air of disinterest hovering around him.
“Aside from Cedric, the Blood University staff were all too young to realize who I was, particularly as I chose to go without my usual robes,” Khalid went on. “But Emine saw right through me. Directly into my bloodline.”
He gazed at her fondly.
She stared back at him, her expression bored.
