“I just don’t know what to do.” I had to gulp down air to keep from crying, and Ezra shifted uneasily.
“We’re going to protect you, Alice,” Ezra said. “We just haven’t resolved everything yet.”
“Have you resolved anything?” I asked pointedly.
“We will,” Ezra replied firmly.
“I found your phone.” Milo stood at the edge of the room, holding my phone out towards me and looking unsure. When he had left, I was mostly okay, but now I was hunched over, hugging myself tightly, and fighting to keep from sobbing.
I held out my hand, and he brought it over. I was surprised there weren’t messages or missed calls from Jane, but it was still fairly early in the morning, and I saw how badly Milo had knocked her out last night.
“I need to get home. I have school tomorrow, and I still have to talk to Jane, and I don’t even know what I’m gonna tell her yet.”
“It’s still very early. You’ve barely gotten any sleep, and you have plenty of time to worry about all that later. Why don’t you stay here and get some rest, and we’ll take you home in the morning to get you ready for school?” Mae suggested.
“Why in the morning?” I asked. “Why not tonight?”
“We’d just feel a little safer if you were here tonight.” She ran her fingers through my hair.
Jack was probably the least of my worries. My blood was already tainted. He couldn’t do anything worse than what he’d already done.
Outside of this house, however, there were Lucian and Violet, and not to mention Peter. Plus, I still felt incredibly weak, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to be under observation for a little while.
“Why don’t you and Mae take the master room? I can take the couch in the den,” Ezra said.
“I couldn’t kick you out of your own room,” I shook my head.
“I insist.” He turned to Milo, who stood awkwardly to the side of us. “Go upstairs and get some sleep. We’ve all had a long night. Mae will be with your sister, and I’ll be right next door. Nothing will happen.”
“You’re sure you’re okay, Alice?” Milo looked at me, and I nodded.
“I’m just gonna get some sleep, and he’s right. You really need to do the same.”
Reluctantly, he went upstairs to his room. After last night, he had to be exhausted. He’d been in his first fight ever, and it’d been with a pissed off vampire. That had to take a lot out of him.
When I stood up, I almost fell over, and instantly, Ezra’s arms were around me, carrying me. I had become accustomed to the feeling of Jack’s arms and the way they made me feel safe. It wasn’t that I thought Ezra would drop me, but it felt familiar and unusual all at once.
He left me on his bed to sleep on a couch in the den, and I felt guilty. I tried to protest, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He kissed Mae before departing, and she smiled wanly at me.
I crawled under the covers, trying to get comfortable in their sea of blankets and pillows, and she climbed in next to me. She was still in her pajamas, as they all had been, because Jack and I had woken them up.
“Are you comfortable?” Mae asked before she turned off the bedside lamp.
“Yeah,” I nodded, and she flicked off the light and settled in. “Thanks.”
“I’m really glad you’re here, even with all of this,” she said.
“Can I ask you something?” In the darkness of the room, it felt okay to address something that had been bothering me.
“You can ask me anything, love.” She moved in the bed, and although I couldn’t see her, I could tell she had turned on her side to face me.
“Milo bit Jane last night, and it was… I don’t know.” I wanted to say animalistic or predatory, but I didn’t want to say that about my brother. “But when Jack bit me, it was entirely different. And I know it was happening to me and I wasn’t witnessing it, but I don’t think that it looked the way it did when Milo bit Jane.”
“And you want to know why it was different?”
“Yeah.” I said.
When Milo bit Jane, it really freaked me out. When Jack bit me, it had been perfect and magical, and I wanted to do it again.
“Milo is younger and much more inexperienced with that sorta thing,” Mae explained carefully. “He was also starving when he bit her, and Jack wasn’t, so Jack was able to have more control.” She sighed, as if that wasn’t quite what she wanted to say.
“Forgive me for a lack of a better analogy, because I’m not saying anything against your brother when I say this,” she went on. “But think of sex and rape. They’re both the same physical act, the same way that biting anyone is essentially the same thing. But one is for romance, and one is forced.
“That’s still not exactly right, though,” she said. “When Jack bit you, he did it for love, and Milo did it for food.”