by Marcy Jacks
Miles shivered, recalling the terror that first night, how he wanted to obey, but his legs had trouble moving.
Seth had simply raised a single brow at him, grabbed their plates, and sat on the floor in the hall outside the dining room with Miles.
They ate together like that, and Miles still couldn’t believe the kindness of the man.
“You see it’s all right to eat with me now, yes?”
Miles had nodded.
Seth made one of the grunting noises Miles was slowly getting used to hearing from him.
“Good, then tomorrow we will eat at the table.”
“I won’t…get in trouble?”
And Seth’s eyes remained kind. “No, sweet, you will not.”
Miles liked the way Seth called him sweet. It brought out a warm feeling within him, something he never felt even when Varrick tried to give him little pet names.
Varrick liked to call Miles his little fox. It hadn’t been a bad pet name, except that sometimes, whenever Varrick called him that, it could be because he was pleased or angry and ready to lash out. Miles never felt happy to hear himself being called that name.
The strange thing about this new household was how little Miles was expected to do. He didn’t like that part. He didn’t like knowing Micah, Jesse, and the others were still doing laundry and cooking meals while Miles did nothing.
He felt antsy for it. He’d tried making the bed once when he and Seth finished their fun, and pleasurable, activities within it, but the dragon had insisted that nothing of the sort needed to be done at all.
“Let the others do that. That’s not your place anymore,” Seth had said, smiling at Miles, as though giving him a great gift.
Miles just wished he could see what it was, and he tried to be gentle as he explained his situation.
“My hands, they need something to do,” he said. “You don’t take blood from me or let me clean up.”
“Oh?” Seth asked, both red brows rising.
Miles loved the color of his hair.
“So you’re bored then? Well perfect. There’s a library in this house. Have you ever been allowed inside it?”
“To dust the shelves,” he admitted. “But I liked looking at the books. They are interesting.”
Seth clearly misunderstood Miles’s meaning. Miles meant that they were interesting to look at, not to read. He didn’t know how to read.
So when Seth assured him that he had free access to the library whenever he wanted it, and even had a spare key to the doors made so Miles would never have to worry about being locked out, Miles didn’t have the heart to tell his generous new alpha that he didn’t have much use for the library.
There was some music in the library, and at the very least, Miles knew the difference between the records because of how often he’d been commanded to change them, and some of the books had pictures. Those were nice to look at.
So he listened to music and looked at pictures of hands, feet, bodies, animals. Some of them were medical books, showing the best biting points and strongest veins. Others were art books, and those were easiest for him to understand because they were mostly color and pictures. The books he could hardly understand were the ones teaching instruments. Flutes, violins, and piano. They were even more difficult because there was another form of reading inside. Sheet music, he’d heard it called.
Miles ignored those.
He never thought he would live in a world where his greatest suffering was boredom. Even now he’d started to lose his anxiety of his former masters returning to reclaim the house. Seth’s dragon friends certainly seemed to think that was not the case, and then more still arrived after that.
Seth’s clan.
And there were so many of them.
They looked at Miles strangely, as well. He avoided that by listening to music, tucked away in his library.
He tried to teach himself some of the words. He knew some words and at least half of the alphabet, but reading had been forbidden among the omegas.
Varrick had said it was a waste of time for a bleeder to learn words when he had duties to attend to, but now it seemed…important.
Miles didn’t want Seth to think he was stupid or to put Miles back where he’d found him. Seth said again and again that they were mates, but that word meant nothing to him.
He wanted to learn how to read, but he needed someone to teach it to him first.
Miles wasn’t supposed to go down to the dungeon. Seth had said to him again and again that he didn’t want Miles to associate himself with Sorin, or the other vampire captives, but Miles knew Sorin would be his only hope. Only the vampires and dragons in this house knew how to read, and Miles didn’t dare bring this problem to Seth.
He took some books off the shelf. Not many, just three. At least this way there would be a variety. Now he just had to get downstairs and avoid seeming suspicious…
He was going to fail miserably.
* * * *
“Seth said it was all right for you to be down here?”
Miles swallowed hard. The lie left his throat with a heavy rock attached to it. “Yes. I…he said I could visit Sorin.”
Sorin blinked wide from his cage. He was separated from the other three vampires, likely as the son of Seth’s greatest enemy.
Lucian crossed his arms over his large chest. It made him look even larger. “That sounds hard to believe, little fox.”
“I know, I am sorry,” Miles said quickly but then showed Lucian the books. “But I need to continue reading these with Sorin.”
Miles glanced over to his friend, who continued to blink, confused, until something brightened in his blue eyes.
He still wore the day clothes for sleeping that he’d been in when the house had been attacked. They were messy now, and his sand-brown hair—usually combed and tied back properly—had been cut short. Cut terribly. Some patches were longer than others. Miles got the impression that had been done to him as a method of punishment.
He didn’t like that for his friend, and a swell of guilt rose up inside him that he’d waited so long before coming down to check on him.
“I, yes, that’s right. We were reading those together.”
“Thief!” shouted one of the female vampires from her cage. She gripped the bars with white knuckles, her pink day gown filthy from days of no washing or changing clothes. There was twenty feet between Miles and her cage, but he cringed away from the shriek of her voice.
“You would not dare take that from the library! That is not yours!”
“Shut up, Elsbeth!” Sorin snapped. “He can take what he likes.”
“You are not our master!” Elsbeth screamed, and that seemed to be all Lucian needed before he marched over to her cage and slammed his palm down onto the bars, and her fingers.
Elsbeth screamed from the pain and fell back.
“You will keep your lips shut, or I will shut them for you!” Lucian snarled.
The vampires in the cage had nothing to say to that. Just glares.
Lucian shook his head, returning to Miles. “Explain to me again how this makes sense? You think it’s still your job to read to him?”
“I…not a job, no,” Miles said.
“You know you’re not under their control anymore, right?” Lucian sneered at Sorin. “They can’t control anyone anymore.”
Sorin glared back at Lucian before turning away from him.
And Miles hated it, but in that moment, he knew that if he was going to get what he wanted, he had to be somewhat honest.
“Sorin…he is my…I mean…”
Lucian looked at him for some seconds then sighed. “All right, out with it. He’s your friend, yes? Vampires don’t keep friends.”
Again, another snarl at Sorin, as if he was personally responsible for some slight.
“I need him to teach me how to read,” Miles admitted, finally getting the words out.
Lucian’s eyes flew wide until Miles could see all the way around his brown eyes.<
br />
He was a rock dragon, if Miles wasn’t mistaken.
“You need to…but you’ve been in the library for several days now.”
“I know,” Miles said, ashamed for keeping this secret. “Please don’t tell Seth. I don’t want him to think less of me.”
Lucian continued to stare down at him, as if he didn’t understand at all.
He looked from Sorin to Miles and back again before turning his nose up at Soren and looking back to Miles. “Well, come on, I can teach you how to read if that’s what you really want. Seth doesn’t need to know, and you don’t have to get close to a filthy vampire.”
“If you would give us some water, we wouldn’t stink,” Sorin said.
“How about I drown you in holy water?” Lucian shot back.
Sorin crossed his arms, but he seemed to be pouting as he turned away, muttering to himself. “Not how it works, asshole.”
Miles looked between the two men. Sorin was his friend, but Lucian was Seth’s friend and one of the men now protecting the house. He didn’t want to anger either of them.
“Sorin isn’t so bad. He was nice to all the servants.”
“Servants,” Lucian sneered. “Right, I’m sure you got paid real well when he was, well, you know.”
Lucian suddenly looked embarrassed. It was strange to see such a large man, who had battle scars around his shoulders no less, avoiding eye contact with Miles, as if he had any reason to feel shame over anything.
Sorin, on the other hand, his eyes turned a shade of black that only happened when a vampire was angry. He showed off his teeth and hissed.
“Do not accuse me of that!”
“Of what?” Miles asked, once again looking between both men. “What’s going on?”
Had he said something wrong?
Lucian hissed back at Sorin, but the noise sounded more sarcastic and insulting than anything Miles had ever heard before in his life. “Get those fangs back into your mouth, dirty bloodsucker, or I’ll come down here with a pair of pliers and rip them out.”
Miles shivered. “Please don’t. I’m sure everything is all right.”
Lucian rolled his eyes and threw his hands to the air. “God, please stop apologizing for them!”
Miles ducked his head. “Sorry.”
Lucian blinked at him, as if he couldn’t quite understand what Miles was doing or why. Miles didn’t like that. He didn’t like being scrutinized because it usually meant he’d done something wrong or he was in some sort of trouble.
Seth had promised him that he could never do anything that would get him in trouble, but Miles couldn’t break the habit of thinking otherwise.
“You know what? Don’t worry about it. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Lucian promised. “If you want to go and read with your blood-sucking friend, you can do that. Just don’t get too close to the cage.”
Miles didn’t want to tell Lucian that vampires didn’t like being called bloodsuckers, but Lucian didn’t sound as if he was trying to be unkind when he said it, and he was giving Miles what he wanted, so there was even less of a reason to argue with him.
Miles just smiled and thanked him instead.
“I promise not to cause trouble, but Sorin really has always been kind to us.”
Something softened in Lucian’s eyes. Even with the other vampires glaring at the back of Miles’s head, that softness, that pity, was the only thing Miles could see.
“Look, you only think that because of the way you were brought up.”
“I know the difference,” Miles said softly. He hoped he knew the difference. “Please be nicer to my friend. If possible. I’ll stop talking now.”
If anything, he really thought he was just confusing Lucian more than convincing him of anything, which he should probably stop doing if he was going to get to his reading lessons.
Miles went to sit with Sorin. There was a small stool in the corner he was able to bring closer to the cage. Lucian watched him carefully then, but he didn’t tell Miles to get back, which was a good thing.
“How have you been feeling?” Sorin asked.
Miles managed a soft smile at his friend. “I should be asking you that, sir,” he replied.
Sorin lowered his eyes, as though he was ashamed of himself. “Yeah, well, aside from the starvation, not too bad, and you shouldn’t call me sir anymore. That wasn’t the point of being set free by the dragons.”
“You associate yourself with the enemy? A slave?” Elsbeth shrieked.
She seemed to be having the most trouble adjusting to her new surroundings.
Lucian went back and smacked his hand across the cage.
Miles didn’t listen to any of that. His only concern was what Sorin had told him. “You’re starving?”
Sorin turned his attention away from Elsbeth, blinking. “Well, only a little. There wasn’t much in the blood reserves, and they don’t give it to us that often. Miles, don’t concern yourself with that.”
But even as Sorin said it, Miles could now see the discomfort and hunger in his eyes.
Sorin was trying to be noble about it, but it would only be a matter of time before his hunger made him less polite about his situation. He might go mad.
“Well, you can have some of my blood if you need it,” Miles said. He raised his sleeve to expose his wrist.
Sorin’s eyes flew wide. “You…no, you can’t do that. You’ll get in trouble. Well, no, you won’t, but I will.”
“I’ll tell them it’s okay,” Miles said, leaning closer to the bars. “It’ll be real quick.”
But before Miles could even touch the bars, Lucian had apparently noticed how close to the bars he was getting, and he rushed forward, grabbing Miles by the shoulder and yanking him back.
“What are you doing?” Lucian looked back at Sorin, a growl leaving his throat as Sorin pushed himself quickly to the back of the cage.
“You were trying to feed from him?”
“No!” Sorin shouted.
And Miles didn’t like that shout. It sounded the way he’d overheard some of his friends shouting, in desperation and fear, when they knew they were about to be beaten.
Or possibly killed.
Miles grabbed the dragon by his shirt. “Leave him alone! I offered my wrist to him!”
Lucian rolled his eyes and then his shoulders. “No, that’s what he wants you to think.”
Miles had never allowed himself the luxury of being angry before. That always seemed like something of a mistake. Anger was for the people who knew they were about to die, so they let loose anyway.
Miles had no intention of dying, and he wasn’t about to let Sorin be killed either.
“I’ll…if you hurt Sorin, I’ll tell Seth.”
Lucian’s brows both rose up high. “Tell Seth? Tell him what?”
Miles swallowed. Sorin shook his head. “Miles, don’t do it. It’s not worth it.”
“Keep your mouth shut, leech,” Lucian growled, turning back to Miles. “Go on, what will you tell him? That I protected you from this bloodsucker? He’ll thank me for it.”
Miles thought quickly, and he said the first thing that touched his tongue. “I’ll tell Seth you threatened me. To hurt me.”
Lucian’s eyes popped wide open.
“He’ll believe me,” Miles threatened.
Sorin groaned, covering his eyes with his hand, and Miles and Lucian continued to stare each other down.
It didn’t go the way Miles thought it would.
Chapter Five
“You threatened him with…me?”
Seth sounded amused by that, but Miles was more embarrassed than anything.
“Yes,” he said, putting his hands behind his back and lowering his gaze.
Seth chuckled. His hand came under Miles’s chin, forcing him to look up at the man. “Don’t look away. You’re not in trouble, and even if I was angry, I wouldn’t hurt you.”
Miles breathed a heavy sigh of relief. He believed Seth every time he said it, but he j
ust seemed to need a constant reminder.
For now.
“I know,” he said softly. “But I’m still sorry.”
“Don’t be. I think it was kind of funny,” he said, that smile still on his face. “Just, uh, don’t do that too often. I seriously doubt any of the guys would every hurt or threaten you, but for the one in a billion chance that it happens, I want to believe you if you say it did.”
“Right,” Miles said, heat rushing up his throat and settling into his cheeks and ears.
Even he had heard of the “Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
It was a favorite among the wolf omegas, and that was on top of the fact that it was really a terrible thing for him to do, accusing one of Seth’s friends of something heinous.
The only reason why they were having this talk right now was because when Lucian called Seth down to talk to Miles, Miles broke down the instant he saw Seth and confessed to the threat.
Now they were alone, in the master bedroom where Miles had started to sleep regularly as if it were his own. Seth was being patient with him, but Miles couldn’t stop the feeling that he’d done something incredibly bad, but at the same time, he felt honestly justified for what he’d done.
“I don’t want Lucian to hurt Sorin. He’s a good vampire.”
“There are no good vampires,” Seth said.
Something in Miles stomach clenched to hear that. If those were Seth’s honest thoughts, then how long would Sorin survive in the basement? It was lucky enough he was even still alive when the dragons here wanted to do any number of things to the vampires in the basement.
“You don’t agree with me,” Seth said, and it was clear he wasn’t asking a question. He already knew the answer.
“Sorin isn’t like the others. He was nice. Ask Beth!” he said, suddenly thinking of her. “She’s been asking to see him, too. She was his nurse when he was young. She’ll tell you the same thing I am.”
Seth still didn’t look convinced. He looked anything but.
“It’s not the same. Of course she loves him if she practically raised him. I wouldn’t trust her opinion on it either.”
