Alexander entered the mahogany-paneled, twenty-thousand-volume library with a newly acquired speed that he reviled. In the coming weeks, he would see more evidence of the powers morpho provided, along with the many shackles that accompanied it, and the thought darkened his mood.
For a century now, he and his brothers had lived unfettered among humans; the only thing separating the two species was the brothers' need for blood. But everything had changed. He could no longer walk in daylight, and though he had escaped the bonds of a Breeding Male's debauched and violent future, he would soon be hit with the irresistible need to find his true mate--the one he was destined for, the one who bore his mark.
"Drained the woman yet?" Lucian asked, descending the spiral staircase from the second level, several ancient tomes in his arms.
"Fuck you, Luca."
"How is she, Alexander?" Nicholas asked. The tall, black-eyed middle Roman brother was sitting at a long metal desk, his head partially obscured by his computer screen as he furiously typed.
"Disoriented, tough as steel." The bright light from the chandeliers burned Alexander's retinas and he dimmed all three with a quick suggestion from his mind. "She doesn't want to be here."
"Can you blame her?"
Alexander stalked across the room, dropped down on the couch. "She has nothing to fear from me."
"Not the point," Lucian said tightly.
"I just want to help her."
"Even if it's against her will?"
"If I must."
"This isn't 1875, Alexander," Nicholas said. "Females don't take kindly to males who tell them what they want or what they must do. And New York women--" He broke off, laughing. "Forget it."
"She may be tough," Alexander said, grabbing his laptop off the coffee table. "But she's also a physician and thoughtful, and she must know she has to give herself time to heal."
Nicholas glanced up. "Yes, but clearly she doesn't want to do it here."
"Well, unfortunately, she must." Alexander stabbed at the power button on his computer. It was a weak argument for keeping a human in the house and they all knew it.
Sara should be with her own kind, under the care of a human physician. And yet he couldn't let her go. She had saved him. The first female in his long life to do so . . . and he owed her.
A low growl from Lucian's direction had Alexander looking up. "What?"
"You told her what we are," Lucian said.
"Yes."
"Goddammit!" Lucian dropped his books on the desk. The impact sent a cloud of dust into the air.
"She knew," Alexander told him.
"Bullshit," Lucian retorted. "You told her so you could keep her. Now her mind will be deeply imprinted."
Alexander's eyes narrowed, but he didn't move from the couch. "She saw me with that skinny human. She saw me go through morpho. She knew."
"She may have suspected something, but she could never have known--"
"Enough," Nicholas said calmly, still focused on his computer screen. "What's done is done. The woman must stay here now. But once she's well, Alexander, you're going to have to clean--"
Alexander interrupted. "I'm not going to damage her mind, Nicholas."
"You won't. Things are different now." Nicholas turned his screen so he could see his brother.
"What do you mean?"
"You're a morphed male, Duro. You can clean a human's mind with no fear of permanent injury."
Lucian brightened. "Good. Problem solved."
"Yes, lucky me," Alexander said dryly, his mind pushing aside one issue to deal with another. "So, speaking of my newly acquired morphed status, what have you found out?"
"Not much," Nicholas admitted. He shook his head, frustrated. "I've contacted a few of our remaining peers in the Eternal Breed who are outside the credenti--first with a location request for the human I let get away this afternoon, and second, for information about males morphing before their time. I kept it casual. No reason for either request to get back to our . . . families." He said the last word as though it were poison on his tongue. Even after a hundred years of separation, of freedom from their kind, the three of them still flinched whenever they were reminded of the nightmare that was their abusive adolescence.
Nicholas shook off the momentary gloom and nodded at Lucian. "What about you? Find anything in those old books?"
"I focused on the history of the breed, thinking this could be genetics." Lucian shrugged. "Our father, who he was-- what he was--maybe we're all destined to reach maturity before our time." He snorted. "Not like dear old Dad stayed around long enough to tell us if we should expect anything out of the ordinary in this department."
It was a despised and avoided subject for the three of them, having the Breeding Male as their father, their common link. But now the questions were there. Their father had been a paven of purest blood whose genetic code and structure had been altered hundreds of years ago by the Eternal Order. He and two others had been given the ability to impregnate at will and decide the sex of the balas, in order to repopulate one sex or the other in times of dire necessity. Alexander sniffed with derision. It had been hailed as a genius move by the Eternal Breed, but had soon become a nightmare as the Breeding Males grew more like uncontrolled animals, desperate to rut and feed. The Order had been forced to cage them, and brought them out only to service the veanas, the Pureblood females, who were forced by their families to lie with them.
A necessity for progress, for breed survival, Alexander recalled with a sneer. And yet the stigma of being their father's sons had only made him and his brothers outcasts to their peers, watched specimens to observe and test by the Order, and reviled by their own mothers.
For Alexander, escaping his credenti that hot morning in August had been a truly blessed event.
Forcing his focus back on the present, Alexander continued to grill Lucian on the texts. "Have you found any evidence of genetic predisposition?"
"No past cases," Lucian admitted. "Not as it relates to morphing, anyway."
"That doesn't mean it isn't possible," Alexander said.
Leaning back in his chair, Nicholas asked, "What if it was something in the blood you consumed over the past week? The human woman you fed from."
"Possible," Alexander said thoughtfully.
"Any injuries in the past month?" Lucian asked.
"Nothing. Could it be environmental?"
Nicholas looked skeptical. "We'd all be affected."
Evans walked in then, and the servant looked rattled, sheepish. He cleared his throat.
"What is it, Evans?" Lucian said.
"I apologize for the interruption, sir, but it's the young woman ..."
A growl, guttural and fierce, erupted from Alexander and he shot across the room, nearly setting the floor on fire in his haste. "What is it?" he demanded, towering over the servant.
"Easy, Alex," Nicholas warned, abandoning his post at the computer and heading toward his brother.
"Christ," uttered Lucian. "Did you see that speed ..."
Alexander's attention zeroed in on the servant. He fought to keep from shaking the answer out of the wide-eyed Impure. His fangs quivered, each word out of his mouth a terrifying warning, "What. Is. Wrong. With. Her."
"She's gone, sir," Evans said breathlessly.
"Gone?" Alexander repeated. His gut flexed with worry and disbelief. "Gone where?"
The old Impure shook his head. "I don't know. The window in the blue bedroom was open. I believe she used the fire escape."
Shit! Alexander turned and sprinted toward the door with his new hyperspeed.
She was in danger. They all were.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Nicholas called out.
Pausing at the threshold, Alexander shot back, "After her."
"It's nearly dawn."
"I don't care!" Alexander roared.
"You'll care when that little prick finds and kills her because you've turned to dust!" Lucian barked after him.
It took supreme effort for Alexander to stay where he was and listen to reason.
His head dropped forward and he uttered a pained "I need her."
"One of us will go," Lucian said begrudgingly. "After all, we can't have her running around with an uncleaned mind, now, can we?"
"I'll go," Nicholas offered. "I lost the man. I won't lose the woman."
Still shaking, Evans swallowed tightly. "Pardon me, sir."
"Not now, Evans," Nicholas said, a little less contained, his gaze trained on his morphed, and very impassioned, brother.
"But, sir, the wall ..."
The man's words petered out as he stared slack-jawed at something behind them.
All three brothers turned to see what the problem was.
"Holy shit," Lucian uttered. "They've found us." Nostrils flared and breathing heavy, Alexander stared at the blank white wall beyond the stairs. It was moving, like easy waves on the sea, and before their eyes, a message was being carved into the plaster.The Eternal Order requests the presence of the first precipitately morphed male, Alexander Roman. At the third hour past midnight, in the Hollow of Shadows.As one brother must shun the light, the other two will shortly follow. Do not disregard our request.