Until the Sun Falls from the Sky (The Three #1)(44)
Author: Kristen Ashley

The tears in my eyes clogged my throat and I forced them down in a painful swallow.

Lucien continued, “It has served for centuries as a powerful lesson to any vampire who might wish to cross that line.”

As it would!

“I don’t like this lesson,” I whispered.

“It isn’t a nice lesson, pet,” he agreed.

“I don’t understand why they did that!” I returned hotly. “Why would they do that?”

“Survival of the species, both mine and yours. We can’t survive without you. And a vampire and mortal cannot procreate. Further, at the time, vampires hunted for their food. Mortals were prey, literally, and vampires were feared greatly. For millennia, vampires lived underground, not out in the open, many mortals didn’t even believe in us. We were considered unreal monsters, too vile to allow the fragile mortal mind to believe existed. It was in a time where many fed without stopping, leaving their victims dead, so there was a great deal to fear. We were largely nocturnal. We were entirely predators and most were highly content with this life.”

Okay, it was safe to say he was freaking me out.

He either didn’t notice or didn’t care because he continued.

“Then there was a shift of sensibilities that led to The Revolution. There were vampires who were growing tired of living in the shadows, saw the advantages of eternal life and wished to exploit them. Those vampires over the centuries acquired great wealth, sophistication and started to move within the mortal world. They became vastly more civilized than the predatory vampire, even going so far as having what are now concubines, without contracts of course and without the limit of one at a time. Many of those vampires had several concubines, sometimes dozens.”

“Is this covered in class?” I interrupted and Lucien shook his head in answer to my question and kept telling his story.

“Other vampires preferred their life as hunters and felt this growing section of our culture who wished for something more was threatening their way of life. And they were correct. This was the reason for The Revolution. The vampires who wished more from life allied themselves with mortals and fought the predatory vampires. The Union of Vampires and Mortals, the one that orchestrated the Agreement after The Revolution, felt there needed to be strictures governing the interaction between our cultures. Their intentions were sound, even just. The priority was to protect our prey and protect our species by facilitating Vampire Claimings or, in mortal terms, marriage. Even vampires don’t often procreate, it’s difficult but it’s impossible with a mortal. For our species to thrive, they thrust these edicts on us.”

I had a million questions. Maybe even a million and two.

As was necessary, I started with one.

“Why do you need to procreate when you don’t die?”

“We die. Sometimes accidentally, a house fire, for example. But usually, it’s suicide. Eternal life isn’t for everyone.” I sucked in a shocked breath and Lucien continued softly, “It’s an honorable death, Leah. Not frowned upon in any way. Eternal life can get trying.” I nodded because that, too, made a weird kind of sense. “Then there are the executions for those who break the rules, mostly if they hunt. This doesn’t happen often. And lastly, there are the rights vampires have against their own. For instance, if a concubine is misused by another vampire, her vampire can exact retribution which can come in the form of assassination.”

I knew that last already. Stephanie told me, including the fact that Lucien had conducted two such assassinations himself.

Something occurred to me then. Something I knew but hadn’t thought about. Something that made me feel like my blood had turned to hot lava, an intensely uncomfortable sensation.

I didn’t want to ask, I really didn’t, but I found myself doing it anyway.

“Do you and your, er…” I tried not to choke on the word and luckily succeeded, “mate have any children?”

For some reason I hated thinking about him having a mate. Essentially a wife somewhere out there staking claim to him on a level I would never have. Why I felt this way, I had no clue and it scared me most of all.

He shook his head but I didn’t feel relief. His next words, spoken so casually they were careless, cemented this feeling further.

“Not with Katrina, no. From two separate unions long ago, I created a son, Julian, and a daughter, Isobel, both live in England.”

Oh my God!

Lucien was a father.

I couldn’t wrap my head around that concept at all.

My eyes shifted away from him when I queried, “Do you talk to them?”

“Frequently.”

I kept my eyes averted. “Are you close?”

“Very.”

“Do you, um… keep in touch with their mothers?”

Why was I asking these questions?

He didn’t hesitate with his reply. “Isobel’s mother took her life thirty years ago.”

My eyes snapped back to his face but there was no expression there, no sadness or remorse.

He continued, “I still speak with, and sometimes see, Cressida, Julian’s mother.”

I didn’t want to be talking about this anymore. And in hopes of ending the discussion and my lesson which had started out great but took a turn for the worse, I asked no further questions and simply said, “Okay.”

For a moment, Lucien examined my face.

Then he asked quietly, “Have you had enough, pet?”

I’d had enough.

Boy, had I had enough.

I nodded.

“Do you have any questions?” he offered and I shook my head.

This was a lie. I still had a million questions none of which I wanted answers to at that moment. The top of the list was the existence of Katrina. Who she was. Where she was. What she thought about me. How long they’d been together and why Lucien was in my bed at night, his clothes in my dressing room, his body lying with me at this very moment on the couch he provided for me.

Though I knew I definitely didn’t want the answer to any of that.

As I was sorting through this new mess in my brain, his head lifted and his face disappeared in my neck. “All right, sweetheart. Lesson over.”

I shivered mainly because his deep voice sounded against the sensitive skin of my neck and that felt nice. Also because, after he stopped speaking, his tongue tasted me there and that felt nicer. Finally because he called me “sweetheart” and I liked it when he did that.

In an effort at self-preservation, to end my body’s betraying response and in an attempt to take some control of the situation, I asked, “Can I get dressed?”