Page 32 of Veradel
Fangs.
How long have they been like that? I swear, they weren’t there the last time she smiled at me merely a couple hours ago.
Shock wells in my chest, but in the back of my mind, all the pieces begin to click together. The reason Saskia was able to traverse the catacombs without any of the other vampires detecting her—because she was one of them all along. The reason Arad’s venom seemed to give her a highrather than a low like her fellow Chosen Ones—because it was affecting her differently. The reason she was able to survive the fall from the top of the Wall—because she’s not human.
But she doesn’t look like she’s surviving well now.
With a newfound urgency thrumming through my body, I turn back to Taika. “There’s a journal on my father’s desk. I need it now.”
He blinks. “What?”
“Please. I think it’ll help.”
He roves a concerned look over Saskia before he nods.
“Saskia,” I whisper when he’s gone, crouching beside her and tucking a stray strand of her hair behind her ear. “I’m going to figure this out.”
Her painfully slow heartbeat is the only response. I count them—three for every minute Taika’s gone.
A vampire. Avampire?
But she can’t be. Vampires are parasites. Cold leeches who prey on innocents. Saskia is the complete opposite in every way: warm, giving, compassionate.
By the time Taika limps back through the door, I’ve only reached nine, and her heartbeats only seem to be getting slower and slower.
Panic replaces the doubt caving in my chest cavity.
Leaping to my feet, I grab the leather book from his grip and sit beside Saskia to pick up where she left off.
And in someone with the vampire gene, the venom activates their vampirism. The process takes a few weeks, but eventually, their body will transition from needing food as sustenance to needing blood. Their heart rate will slow to barely a beat a minute, their teeth will elongate and sharpen, and their eyes will start to turn crimson upon their first drink. This is why the Guardians are careful to never impregnate a Chosen One. Doing so would create a vampire offspring—another contender to one of the limited thrones.
“She has a… a vampire gene,” I stutter, trying to wrap my brain around it. A gene that Arad unknowingly triggered from the moment he first sunk his teeth into her.
Taika pulls a chair up next to the bed in silence, eyes glued to Saskia. His eyebrows pinch deeply until he finally asks, “How?”
I flip back to the earlier entries. The ones where my father talks about a vampire in love.
He claims he’s fallen in love with one of the humans… And he’s afraid they’ll kill his lover if they find out.
“The Thirteenth Guardian,” I tell him. “They never found out he loved a woman. Ahumanwoman, who must have been pregnant with his offspring.”
“Who was born with a dormant vampire gene that was never activated,” Taika breathes. “All his descendants must have carried the same gene, until…”
“Saskia’s father,” I say, remembering how she’d described her father’s peculiar death. “He had to have been bitten, even though he was never Chosen. And then Saskia…”
Taika sighs, picks up her wrist to press two of his fingers against her pulse. “All that time, and none of the Guardians ever knew.”
I listen to Saskia’s faint pulse, my mind stretched in a million different directions.
This woman isn’t just a woman born on the other side of the Wall. She’s my mortal enemy. Has been all along, apparently, although that side of her has stayed dormant until now.
And yet…
“She’s going to die without blood,” Taika warns, shifting uncomfortably in his chair before he rises and walks out the door, giving us privacy. Room for me to make a decision.
An alpha werewolf giving a vampire his blood—it’s ludicrous. Risky in and of itself. A betrayal to my pack. Not to mention the excruciating pain I’d be putting myself through.
Despite every warning bell telling me to never touch her again, my hand reaches out of its own accord and skims her cheek. Her skin feels cold, and my heart skips when her eyes dart around beneath her eyelids.
