It had been nearly two hours.
She didn't know how much more waiting she could take. While Luna slept calmly, blissfully oblivious, across her toes under the table, Alex's mind had been spinning. Churning over questions she hardly dared to ask, and worrying for a man who had left her wondering just who--or what--he truly was. But the small voice inside her that so often urged her to run from the things that scared her was silent when she thought of Kade. Yes, she was uncertain after what she witnessed today. Frightened that the path ahead of her might be even more unsteady than the past she'd left behind her. But running was the last thing she intended to do--not now. Not ever again.
Idly, she wondered how Jenna was holding up. It couldn't be easy on her, hearing about the deaths in town when she was nearing the anniversary of her own personal grief. Alex reached for her cell phone, wanting to hear her friend's voice. She was just about to punch in Jenna's number when there was a soft rap on the back door.
Kade.
Alex put down the phone and stood up, dislodging her canine foot warmer, who groaned in protest before dropping her head back down to sleep some more. Alex drifted toward the door where Kade waited. Now that he was there, looking so dark and immense and dangerous through the glass window, some of her courage faltered.
He didn't demand or force his way inside, even though she knew without the slightest doubt that there was little she could do to bar him from entering if that's what he intended to do. But he merely stood there, leaving the decision entirely up to her. And because he didn't force her, because she could see a shadowed torment in the piercing depths of his silver eyes that hadn't been there before, Alex opened the door and let him in.
He took one step inside her little kitchen and pulled her into a hard, long embrace. His strong arms circled her, held her close, as though he never wanted to let her go.
"Are you okay?" he asked, pressing his mouth into her hair. "I hated to leave you alone."
"I'm all right," she said, drawing back to look at him when he finally released her from his hold. "I was more worried about you."
"Don't," he said. Scowling, he stroked her cheek, swallowed hard. "Ah, Jesus. Don't worry for me."
"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?"