“And how did you end up as the Savages’ prisoner?” she asked.
Lucien focused on her again as he recalled the events that led to him chained to a wall. “A group of us was sent to check on some cameras at an underground site where Savages once lived. While there, Savages ambushed us.”
Now that he could think clearly again, he wondered how his fellow Alliance members had made out after the attack. At the beginning of his imprisonment, he worried about them often, but then his mind became more and more consumed by his obsession with blood while he wasted away.
Had he unknowingly left some of them behind when he fled that underground hellhole? Were some of them now Savages? He hoped some of them survived, but they were probably slaughtered or in the hands of their enemies. He’d tried to hold back the Savages spilling from that hole, but there were so many of them. He didn’t see how anyone could have escaped the tide of evil pouring forth.
“Do you remember how to get back to where we were?” he asked.
“Back to that tunnel?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
“I have no idea how to get back there.”
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Why?”
“Because some of my fellow Alliance members could still be there.”
“What’s the Alliance?”
“It’s what we, those who hunt and kill Savages, call ourselves.”
“Oh.” Callie fiddled with the bottom of her jeans. “You’d really go back there?”
“To save any others who might be trapped there? Yes.”
She didn’t know how to take the revelation that he would return to save others. He’d saved her life, but she still saw him as more of a monster than a man.
Chapter Fourteen
“You’re taking this all really well,” he said.
“What am I supposed to do? Break down and turn into a sobbing mess or run screaming into the night? Neither of those options will keep me alive.”
“Still, many do not take the knowledge of vampires in their world so easily. Many try to deny it.”
“Maybe it would be different if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but I did. I saw you and them, and I felt your bite. I can’t deny any of that and survive, and I am going to survive this. I may not be able to return to my old life, but I will have a life.”
He smiled as he admired her determination and courage. “Yes, you will,” he promised. “So, what do you do, Callie?”
Should she answer him? Would telling him more about herself be dangerous? She didn’t think things could get any more dangerous than they already were, and what harm could it do?
“I’m a vet tech and assist a vet who works with horses. We travel to farms and racetracks in the area. I love my career,” she added wistfully.
“It sounds like an interesting one.”
“Well, it’s no killing Savages, but it pays the bills. Plus, I love animals, and I’m happy.”
Or she was happy until Carter entered her life. But now he was out of it, and she was living this nightmare. She wanted to whine about never catching a break, but she couldn’t complain about how unfair life was when she’d survived what the Savages planned for her in that pit.
She’d been tossed a bag of shit, but at least the bag hadn’t exploded all over her.
“Do you think I can ever return to my life?” she asked.
“I’d like to tell you yes, but I doubt it.”
She closed her eyes as tears pricked them and her heart twisted in her chest.
Sensing her misery, Lucien rested his hand on her knee. His eyebrows rose as he realized what he’d done with the comforting gesture.
He did not comfort others; that wasn’t who he was—or at least not who he became. There was a time when someone loved him and he loved in return, but those days were long gone. Now, he hunted, he killed, and he survived because there was no other choice.
She tensed beneath his hand, and he expected her to move away, but she didn’t. He tried to pull his hand away, but the traitorous appendage gripped her tighter as he gave her knee a gentle squeeze.
“I’ll make sure you get through this,” he promised.
“And then what? I spend the rest of my life running and hiding? Or can I move to another state and hope they don’t find me? And then I can spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder and waiting for them to pop up and kill me. That’s no way to live.”
“I will help you figure it out.”
Callie didn’t know why, but his words were oddly reassuring.
“Where are you from?” he asked in the hopes of changing the subject and distracting her from the morose future she faced.
“Why are you asking?”
Because I want to know more about you. Lucien held the words back, mostly because the inclination to spill them startled him more than a unicorn farting rainbows would have.
It was yet another strange thing she made him experience. He rarely cared about anyone else or their history. No, not rarely, he never cared. He didn’t even know the history of his brothers in the Alliance, and that was the way he liked it.
Their pasts were their pasts, and his past was his. They didn’t need to know intimate details about each other. They already knew the most important detail—no matter what happened, they had each other’s backs, and nothing would change that.
However, he wanted to know more about her. He already knew she loved animals, a huge bonus in his book. He didn’t have a soft spot for many things in his life, but animals were one of them.
He’d never admit it, but he was the one who had brought a couple of stray puppies into the compound and left them out for the hunter children to find. It was a win-win in his book. The strays found loving new homes, and the children laughed as they hugged their new pets close.
His brothers would be shocked to discover it was him, and he would make sure they never knew.
“I’m not tired anymore, and we have some time to kill, so I figured I would ask,” he said.
“Where are you from?”
“I was born in France.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Three hundred and twenty years.”
Callie whistled. “Wow.”
Lucien chuckled. “I’m a youngster compared to some.”
“Wow,” she breathed, unable to fully grasp the concept. He was a youngster who was alive when they founded the U.S. That was insane to her. “So, vampires are immortal?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re French.”
“Yes. I am Lucien Fontaine.”
“You don’t have an accent.”
“My parents left France shortly after my birth. They traveled around Europe for a while before settling in Germany. I stayed there until their deaths, and then I came to the New World, where I met Ronan. I’ve been here for almost three hundred years.”
Callie’s eyebrows rose as he casually said the term “New World” like she said coffee break. Who still considered the United States the New World? A three hundred and twenty-year-old vampire, she reminded herself.
She suppressed a hysterical trill of laughter as she realized she was sitting beside an ancient who’d seen so much of this world.