Page 49 of Feral Born

“Right,” said Sylvan. “To my private room then.” He walked off, leaving me standing with my mouth agape.

“I’m not⁠—”

“You have questions, I have answers, and vice versa. So come on, Madam Wolfsbane. Let’s get this over with.”

Madam Wolfsbane? I convinced my legs to move, jogging to catch up with him.

The inn was unassuming like every other building in the big city. It was several stories high, had large windows with pointed arches, and stained-glass mosaics gleamed in the moonlight. A shiver came over me as I remembered that a week ago, I’d stood right in this spot. My attention turned to one window on the upper floor. When I turned back to Sylvan, his gaze shifted from that very same window to mine. His brows scrunched, a question etched into his face, but he didn’t say anything to me. He simply walked to the door and held it open, waiting.

I folded my arms. I didn’t need him holding doors open for me like I was some human lady courting a gentleman. We were anything but, and he needed to realize that. With an annoyed shake of his head, he walked through.

The interior featured ornate archways and a well-lit room surrounded by a multitude of candles bracketed to the walls. I followed Sylvan out of the lobby, down a dim corridor, and up the stairs in silence. He unlocked a door and, not waiting for me this time, entered, leaving it ajar. I remained standing in the hall, my chest tight.

There was no sensibility behind the sensation, but as Sylvan disappeared, I dipped my head in, glancing around. The room was humble, featuring a large bed pushed up against one wall and a small desk against the opposite wall, leaving just enough space for walking. My eyes were trained on another door, the sound of water being poured emanating from the room behind it, as I closed the door being me.

My steps were loud in the silent room as I stalked to the curtains. I drew them back and opened the stained-glass window, peering down at the city below. It wasn’t often I saw Aethermore from a height, as I didn’t spend time at the university looking through the window, and the view from Nygaard Manor was more landscape than anything else.

Humans milled about below, children and adults alike. They chatted among themselves, and a couple walked arm in arm while two children skipped ahead, holding hands. I pressed my hand against the windowsill. It was strange to see such codependence. Such intermingling lives. Vampires weren’t particularly clingy, and the Nygaards were especially distant. Even when most of us lived in the same household once upon a time, we were rarely in the same room.

I could remember Dahlia knocking on my door, her young voice calling to me. Do you know how to play chess?

It was before my mother had banished every memory of me from the child’s mind. Before the Lobofebris.

I do. Why? I’d asked her.

I want to learn.

It was something so mundane—too mundane to my mother’s liking. I’d gone out to buy a chess board, and later that evening as we sat at the table, Bellatrix walked by and declared the game to be a waste for a Nygaard.

Leave the children alone. My aunt had stood there, an arm around her partner’s waist. I saw the way my mother used to look at her youngest sister and her partner. He wasn’t a Primal Born, but a Turned vampire.

We live in Aethermore, my aunt had said. When Dahlia is old enough, and if she wants, I’ll support whatever she wants to do.

I wonder what became of them. I’d once asked Devlin to see if he could find any information, even if it was just gossip, but he hadn’t heard a word. I shut my eyes against the blood coating my hands the day they were driven from Nygaard Manor.

Awareness threaded through me, but not at the memory this time. At a presence. I turned to find Sylvan staring at me. He was shirtless and in a fresh pair of trousers slung low on his hips. How long had I been so lost in my own thoughts I hadn’t even heard him enter the room, let alone change? I closed the window and secured the latches.

My eyes settled on the scars across Sylvan’s defined abs before drifting to the beginning of a trail of hair just above the waistband of his trousers. He turned to grab something from the bed, and I stared at the elongated Z, I assumed represented the Zilveren pack, between two bands of ink wrapped around his bicep. The moon phases were inked atop the upper band, and two vertical symbols resembling ornate arrows below the lower band. I wondered what they meant.

He held up a glass bottle of something. “So only blood, or do you like nectar?”

“I do like nectar, but that brand is rubbish.”

He stared at the bottle then shrugged. “It tastes fine to me.”

“Utter swill.”

He huffed out a soft laugh and shrugged again. I watched as he stepped over to the small desk, grabbing a glass to pour the liquid into. “I would’ve liked to have something to eat as well, but apparently The Nexus was out of the picture.”

“You’re the one who wanted to talk,” I countered.

“Oh?” He took a sip, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “And you have nothing you want to know about? Like why you instinctively obeyed me outside of your own volition? Like why you feel all that you do with increasing intensity?”

“Stop acting like you understand me.”

He took another sip. “I think I understand you better than you understand yourself.”

My entire body flushed. But with what? Anger? That was unwarranted, and I hated the reality of it.