I shrug. I wasn’t aware, but I’m not surprised. “Isn’t it obvious?” It’s not, judging by his puzzled look. “Okay. I’m going to be super vulnerable with you.” I take a deep, theatrical breath. Steeple my hands. “You may not know this about me, but I’m not like you. I’m actually another species, called—”
“Misery.” His hand comes up to snatch my wrist. My breath catches in my throat. “Why do you hide your fangs?”
“You’re the one who told me to.”
“I asked you not to respond to an act of aggression with another act of aggression, to avoid coming home and finding my wife torn to pieces—and someone torn in even smaller pieces next to her.” His hand is still around my wrist. Warm. A bit tighter. His touch flusters me. “This is different.”
Is it? Would you not tear me into pieces?
“Come on, Lowe.” I free my arm and cradle it to my chest. “You know what my teeth are like.”
“Come on, Misery,” he mocks. “I do know, and that’s why I don’t get why you hide them.”
We stare at each other like we’re playing a game and trying to make the other lose. “Want me to show you?” I’m trying to provoke him, but he just nods solemnly.
“I’d like to know what we’re dealing with, yeah.”
“Now?”
“Unless you need specific tools, or have a previous engagement. Is it bath time?”
“You want to see my fangs. Now.”
His look is vaguely pitying.
“It’s just . . .” I’m not sure what’s so concerning about the idea of him seeing them. Maybe I’m just remembering being nine, and the way my Human caregivers always stopped smiling the second I began. A driver, making the sign of the cross. A million other incidents through the years. Only Serena never minded. “Is this a trap? Are you looking for an excuse to watch my entrails fertilize the plumbago?”
“Would be highly inefficient, since I could just push you and no one in my pack would question me.”
“What a beautiful flex.”
He makes a show of hiding his hands behind his back. “I’m harmless.”
He’s as harmless as a land mine. He could destroy entire galaxies with a stern look and a growl. “Fine, but if your wolfy sensibilities are repulsed by my vampyric tusks, remember you asked for it.”
I’m unsure how to initiate it. Snarling, pulling my upper lip back with my fingers like Human dentists do in toothbrush commercials, biting into his hand for an applied demonstration—all seem impractical. So I simply smile. When the cold air hits my canines, my lizard brain screams at me that I’m caught. I’m found out. I’m . . .
Fine, actually.
Lowe’s pupils splay out. He studies my canines with his usual unalloyed attention, without recoiling or trying to eat me. Little by little, my smile shifts into something sincere. Meanwhile, he looks.
And looks.
And: looks.
“Are you okay?” My voice snaps him back into his body. His grunt is vague, not quite affirmative.
“And you don’t . . .” He clears his throat. “Use them?”
“What? Oh, my fangs.” I run my tongue over my right one, and Lowe closes his eyes and then turns away. Either too gross, or he’s scared. Poor little Alpha. “We all feed from blood bags, with very few exceptions.”
“What exceptions?”
I shrug. “Feeding from a living source is kind of outdated, mostly because it’s a huge hassle. I do think that mutual blood drinking is sometimes incorporated into sex, but remember how I was cast out as a child and am universally known for being a terrible Vampyre?” I should force Owen to explain the nuances of it to me, but . . . ugh. It’s not like I plan to get that close to another Vampyre, ever. “I’m not going to bite you, Lowe. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.” He sounds hoarse.
“Good. So now that I’ve shown you my fearsome weapons, you’ll take me to Emery’s with you? It is, after all, the honeymoon you owe your bride. Pleasure doing business with you. I’ll go pack, and—” I make to stand, but his hand snatches me back down.
“Nice try.”
I sigh and lean backward, wincing when the tiles press into my spine. The stars crowd the sky, drift us into a moment of silence. “Want to know a secret?” I ask, weary. “Something I thought I’d never admit to anyone.”
One arm brushes against my thigh as he twists to look at me. “I’m surprised you’d want to tell me.”
I am, too. But I’ve carried it so tirelessly, and the night feels so soft. “Serena and I had a huge fight a few days before she disappeared. The biggest ever.” Lowe remains quiet. Which is exactly what I need from him. “We fought plenty, mostly about trivial shit, sometimes over stuff that took us a bit to cool down. We grew up together and were at our most annoying with each other—you know, sisters? She spat into the pockets of the caretakers who were mean to me, and I read smutty books to her while she was so sick she needed IV drips. But also I hated that sometimes she just wouldn’t pick up her phone for days, and she hated that I could be a stone-hearted bitch, I guess. That last fight we had, we were both fuming, after. And then she never showed up to help me put on the duvet cover, despite knowing that it’s the single hardest thing in the universe. And now the things she said keep circling in my head. Like sharks that haven’t been fed in months.”
I can’t see Lowe’s expression from down here. Which is ideal. “And what do the sharks say?”
“She got a recruiter from this really cool company interested in me. It was a good job—something challenging. Something only a dozen people in the country could do. And she kept telling me how perfect I’d be for it, what an opportunity it was, and I just couldn’t see the point, you know? Yes, it was a more interesting job, with more money, but I kept wondering, why? Why would I bother? What’s the end goal? And I asked her, and she . . .” I take a deep breath. “Said that I was aimless. That I didn’t care about anything or anyone, including myself. That I was static, headed nowhere, wasting my life. And I told her that it wasn’t true, that I did care about stuff. But I just . . . I couldn’t name anything. Except for her.”
. . . this apathetic spiral of yours, Misery. I mean, I get it, you spent the first two decades of your life expecting to die, but you didn’t. You’re here now. You can start living!
Dude, you’re not my mother or my therapist, so I’m not sure what gives you the right to—
I am out there, trying. I had a fucked-up life, too, but I’m dating, trying to get a better job, having interests—you’re just waiting for time to pass. You are a husk. And I need you to care about one single fucking thing, Misery, one thing that’s not me.
The sharks gnaw at the inner walls of my skull, and I won’t be able to make them stop until I find Serena, but in the meantime, I can distract them. “Anyway.” I sit up with a smile. “Since I so selflessly opened my heart to you, will you tell me something?”
“That’s not how—”
“What the hell is a mate, precisely?”
Lowe’s face doesn’t move a millimeter, but I know that I could fill a Babel tower of notebooks with how little he wants to have this conversation. “No way.”
“Why?”
“No.”
“Come on.”
His jaw works. “It’s a Were thing.”
“Hence, me asking you to explain.” Because I suspect that it’s not just the Were equivalent of marriage, or a civil union, or the steady commitment that comes with sharing monthly payments to multiple overpriced streaming services one forgot to discontinue.
“No.”
“Lowe. Come on. You’ve trusted me with far bigger secrets.”
“Ah, fuck.” He grimaces and rubs his eyes, and I think I won.
“Is it another thing I don’t have the hardware for?”
He nods, and almost seems sad about it.
“I understood the whole dominance thing.” We really made some strides in the past fifteen minutes. “Give me a chance.”
He turns to me. Suddenly he feels a little too close. “Give you a chance,” he repeats, unreadable.
“Yeah. The whole rival-species-bound-by-centuries-of-hostility-until-the-bloody-demise-of-the-weakest-will-put-an-end-to-the-senseless-suffering thing might seem discouraging, but.”
“But?”
“No buts. Just tell me.”