Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [882]
“Kade, what the hell is going on? I need you to be honest with me.”
“I know.” He took her by the hand and led her back to the table. She dropped into her chair as he took the one next to her. “I should have explained everything to you earlier, as soon as I realized …”
Her heart sank a bit as his words trailed off. “As soon as you realized, what?”
“That you were part of this, Alex. A part of the world that belongs to me and those of my kind. I should have told you everything before you saw me kill that Minion. And before we made love.”
She heard the regret in his voice for the intimacy they’d shared, and weathered more than a little sting because of it. But the other part—the peculiar way he’d referred to himself and his kind, and the fact that he was somehow including her in that equation—was what made her mind stutter to attention. And then there was the odd word he’d used to describe Skeeter Arnold.
“A ‘Minion’? I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, Kade. I don’t know what any of this is supposed to mean.”
“I know you don’t.” He raked his palm over his jaw, then exhaled around a vivid curse. “Someone got to Skeeter Arnold before I did. Someone bled him, almost to the point of killing him, before bringing him back so that he could serve. He wasn’t human anymore, Alex. He was something less than that. Someone had made him into a Minion, a mind slave.”
“That’s crazy,” she murmured, and as badly as she wanted to reject what she was hearing, she couldn’t dismiss Kade’s grim, sober demeanor. “You also said that I am a part of this. A part of this, how? And what did you mean back at the clinic, when you said there was something more I didn’t know about the attack on my family? What could you possibly know about the monsters that took my mom and Richie?”
“What they did was monstrous,” Kade said, his tone unreadable, too level for comfort. “But there is another name for them, too.”
“Vampire.” Alex had never voiced the word out loud, not in relation to the murders of her mom and little brother. It stuck to her tongue like bitter paste, foul even after she had spit it out. “Are you actually trying to tell me—my God, do you really expect me to believe they were vampires, Kade?”
“Rogues,” he said. “Blood addicted and deadly. But they were also part of a race separate from humans called the Breed. A very old race, not the undead or the damned, but a living, breathing society. One which has existed alongside mankind for thousands of years.”
“Vampires,” she whispered, sick with the thought that any of this could be real.
But it was real. Some part of her had known this truth all along, from the instant her family was shattered by the attack all those years ago.
Kade’s eyes remained steady on her. “In the simplest terms, to say that they were vampires is fair enough.”
Nothing seemed simple to her anymore. Not after everything she had seen. Not after everything she was hearing now. And definitely not when it came to Kade.
She felt some measure of retreat in him as he looked at her, some amount of hurt in his bleak gaze, and it gnawed at her. “You told me once that nothing is simple. Nothing in your world is simply good or bad, black or white. Shades of gray, you said.”
He didn’t blink, just held her in an unflinching look. “Yes.”
“Is this what you meant?” She swallowed, her voice cracking just a bit. “Is this the world that you live in, Kade?”
“We both do,” he replied, his voice so gentle it terrified her. “You and I, Alex. We’re both a part of it. I am, because my father is Breed. And you are, because you bear the same birthmark as my mother and a small number of other, very rare women. You are a Breedmate, Alex. Your blood properties and unusual cellular makeup connect you to the Breed on the most primal level.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She shook her head, recalling how tenderly he had touched the odd little scarlet mark on her hip when they were together in the cabin earlier today. Without trying, she could still feel the heat of his fingertips