Page 57 of Bride

I wince. “I’m sorry. For Ana, mostly, but also for you. People usually ease into parenthood. We’re not born knowing how to change diapers.”

“Ana’s potty-trained. Not by me, obviously—I’d have somehow managed to teach her to piss out of her nose.” He runs a hand over his short hair and then rubs his neck. “I was unprepared for her. Still am. And she’s so fuckingforgiving.”

I rest my temple on my knees, studying the way he stares into the distance, wondering how many nights he’s comes up here in the witching hour. To make decisions for thousands. To beat himself up for not being perfect. Despite how competent, self-denying, and assured he appears to be, Lowe might not like himself very much.

“You used to live in Europe? Where?”

He seems surprised by my question. “Zurich.”

“Studying?”

His shoulders heave with a sigh. “At first. Then working.”

“Architecture, right? I don’t fully get it. Buildings are kind of boring. I’m grateful they don’t fall on top of my head, though.”

“I don’t get how one can type stuff into a machine all day andnot be terrified of a robot uprising. I’m grateful forMario Kart, though.”

“Fair enough.” I smile at his tone, because it’s the poutiest I’ve ever heard. I must have found his touchy spot. “I do like the style of this home,” I volunteer magnanimously.

“It’s called biomorphic.”

“How do you know? You learned it in school?”

“That, and I designed it as a present for my mother.”

“Oh.” Wow. I guess he’s not just an architect—he’s agoodarchitect. “When you studied, did you do the Human thing?” Their school system is often the only option, simply because there’s more of them, and they invest in education infrastructure. In Vampyre society, and I assume among Weres, too, formal degrees are not worth the paper they’re printed on. The skills that come with them, however, are priceless. If we want to acquire them, we create fake IDs and use them to enroll at Human universities. Vampyres tend to take online classes (because of the fangs, and the whole third-degree burns in the sunlight thing). Weres are undetectable to Humans’ naked eye, and could come and go from their society more easily, but Humans have installed technology that singles out faster-than-normal heartbeats and higher body temperatures in plenty of places. Honestly, I’m just lucky they never expected Vampyres would go to the trouble of filing their own fangs and never developed the same degree of paranoia about us.

“Zurich was different, actually.”

“Different?”

“Weres and Humans were attending openly. A few Vampyres, too. All living in the city.”

“Wow.” I know there are places like that around the world, where the local history between the species is not so fraught, andliving side by side, if not together, is considered normal. It’s still hard to imagine, though. “Did you have a Vampyre girlfriend?” I point at my ring finger. “Once you go Vamp, you can never go back, huh?”

He gives me a long-suffering look. “You’ll be astonished to hear the Vampyres didn’t hang out with us.”

“How snobby.” I fold my hand back in my lap, but start playing with my wedding band. “Why all the way to Zurich? Were you on the run from Roscoe?”

“On the run?” His cheeks stretch into an amused grin. “Roscoe was never a threat. Not to me.”

“That’s brave of you. Or narcissistic.”

“Both, maybe,” he acknowledges. Then quickly turns serious. “It’s hard to explain dominance to someone who doesn’t have the hardware to understand it.”

“Lowe, was that acomputermetaphor?” I get another of those don’t-sass-me looks, and laugh. “Come on. At leasttryto explain it.”

He shakes his head. “If you met someone without a nose and had to explain to them what a smell feels like, what wouldyoutell them?” He looks at me expectantly. And I open my mouth half a dozen times—only to close it just as many, frustrated. “Yup.” He doesn’t even sound too told-you-so-y. “It was like that with Roscoe. He was a grown adult, I was barely past puberty, but I always knew that he was never going to win a fight against me, and he always knew it, and everyone in the pack knew it, too. As much as I despise him now, I’m thankful that he gave me long enough without a reason to challenge him.”

Without becoming a despotic leader, he means. “What changed him?”

“Hard to say. His views escalated very suddenly.” He licks hisfull lips, looking faraway, in the grip of a memory. “I got the phone call and didn’t even have the time to stop by my apartment on the way to the airport. My mother had vocally opposed a raid. She was wounded, and Ana was defenseless.”

“Shit.”

“It was eleven hours and forty minutes from the moment I got the phone call until I pulled up Cal’s driveway and found Ana sobbing in Misha’s room.” His tone is emotionless, almost disturbingly so. “I was terrified.”

I can’t imagine. Or can I? Those first few days after Serena was gone, and I was so frantically preoccupied with looking for her that it didn’t occur to me to bathe or feed until my head pounded and my body was feverish.

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