Chapter 435: Mythic Immortals 3
"I did not need to read it. It is known," Nedra replied venomously.
She was taking his bait. She was aware of it, and yet she couldn’t help herself. If he thought he knew more about the fae than she did, he was mistaken.
"It is known by whom exactly? Are you fae?" He asked, straightening himself from where he had been bent over the book on the counter.
As he straightened himself, his height rose to tower over her. This vampire was tall. Nedra gulped, seeing him continue to rise and elongate. This vampire was very, very tall. How had he managed to disguise that fact just hunched over a book? She eyed his pants again, but they still hung just as perfectly as before. Was this some kind of trick of light? Was she hallucinating?
"You are scared now, are you?" His voice dropped, picking the menacing tone he must take on before attacking his victims.
Everything about this vampire seemed like a costume—his voice, his movements, his perfectly sculpted hair and porcelain face, the deliberately slow show of thumbing through the book, and now the way he was able to loom over her from an unnatural height like he was somehow controlling his physical appearance.
Vampires were not capable of changing their appearance at will, were they? She had never heard of it. Their appearance changed in a fixed way when they consumed blood or when they went without it, but this sounded more like...
Nedra’s eyes lit in surprise as a startling realization dawned on her.
"You are part fae," she stated, watching as her words landed, surprising him and delighting him at the same time.
"You can tell, can you?" He asked, a genuine smile blooming on his face this time, though it was still creepy to behold.
"How did a part vampire, part fae come to exist?" She asked, puzzling over it while the intruder slunk back down to an average height as if by some kind of distorted magic.
"We all have our secrets," he smiled coyly. "I will share mine if you share yours."
Nedra’s forehead cleaved with this suggestion. What secrets did he suspect she had?
"Not interested?" He asked, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the counter. "Are you Zagan’s mate?"
The question was so unexpected that Nedra couldn’t control the shock that spread over her features. It may have been interpreted as an involuntary admission to the question, for why would she know about mates otherwise? The intruder smiled contentedly, happy to have uncovered something.
"No, I am not his mate," she denied, but the urgency with which she spoke it added to how guilty she seemed.
"You are not?" he repeated, stepping closer to her, his hands folded behind his back. "Then why have you marked a page that mentions mates in its margin?"
"Are you... are you here because he has a mate?" She asked, her mouth hanging open in surprise. And how did he know she marked that page when he had not yet arrived at the page to read it?
"Perhaps," he replied, a crooked, distorted smile settling on his face.
She wished he would just not smile. The smile was creepier. Zagan rarely smiled, and she was suddenly struck with the realization of how perfectly acceptable Zagan was in comparison to this creature. If they lived through this, she was going to make sure he knew.
"You are smart," the intruder said again—the majority of him remaining perfectly still while only his lips moved to form the words. "Were you aware that vampires do not typically breed?"
Nedra’s eyebrows pinched together as she tried to recall a specific reference to breeding in all of her reading, but as far as she could recall it was never mentioned. The alleged facts about vampires that she had read always referred to victims who were bitten and turned to become one of them. But it made sense that they would not breed naturally, as they were not living.
"True breeding in vampires is rare. They copulate, but they do not typically breed. And as you might imagine," he told her, smacking his lips in a dramatic pause before continuing, "that is quite acceptable for population control when the population is eternal. The details of how rare breeding works and with whom it works are well-guarded secrets—secrets that certain interested parties feel may be threatened by the fact that your mate, well," he shrugged, his grin spreading wider, "has a mate."
"First of all," Nedra growled, "I am not that monster’s mate."
He chuckled in response, her futile denial comical.
"Second of all, why are mates threatening?" In most creature communities, mates were considered sacred. They were revered and honored. For lycans, there was even a unified rule that, within a pack, mates could not be harmed or killed as punishment.
"As I stated, breeding is rare. Those remarkable few who are capable of it hold a tremendous amount of power. They hold within themselves the future of the race," he explained. "The royals do not like that. There is a rumor where I come from that the royals have imprisoned and tortured—and continue to torture—any true mates they come across."
"What?" Nedra’s mouth dropped open before her face twisted in disgust. "Is it true?"
"I do not typically like to brag," he lied, "but I am one of few who is privy to these secrets. And I can tell you that it is in fact true. I can even tell you how many mated vampires are currently being tortured. Would you like to know?"
"No," Nedra shook her head. She most definitely did not want to know.
The intruder frowned. "Then do you want to know how I know?"
Nedra licked her lips. She didn’t want to know or imagine any of these horrifying things he was telling her.
"Because I am the one who tortures them," his grin spread as widely as it could go, its width then extending impossibly further, twisting his face into a grotesque mask that made Nedra gasp.
"I plan on doing the same to your mate," he said, his smile frozen on his face. "Do you want to know how I torture them?"
"No, I do not," she shook her head. "And he is not my mate."
