Change is sweeping through the world, as humanity fights for autonomy, discord tears apart the foundations of the vampire order, and dhampirs return to the world after centuries of war between two powerful peoples. Dhampirs, creatures known to heral...
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Tara loved the feeling of returning to the office even with how miserable it had always been. Rather than ruin the surprise, she'd come in without calling ahead, and people were tacking away on laptops, running back and forth with papers, and she found her desk easily without notice. She sat in her spinny chair with a huff of euphoria, and tapped her hands on the desk top. This was nice, just her, paper, a computer, and the world news. Nothing hit like the scent of pencil shavings, freshly printed drafts, and the dust that was probably going to give half of them mold poisoning if they didn't steam clean this room soon.
"Tara?" She jumped her gaze up to emerald eyes, slicked-back dishwater hair, and a smile so wide it moved Matt's ears back as he closed the distance between the back hallways and her cubicle in an instant. "Damn. Death chew you up and spit you out just to get rid of you?"
Matt's smile showed his perfectly white teeth as he laughed, but she couldn't much hate him when she saw the glint of moisture in his eyes. They hadn't wiped his memory after all, she guessed. After he'd saved Jesse and hung around even to his detriment to make sure she was safe, she also couldn't act like everything was the same between them. Guy was still an asshole, but not as shitty as she'd thought.
Matt's hand slamming on her desk had her jumping out of her chair and dropping a stack of papers she'd been playing with. They slid around her lap, and she grumbled as Matt leaned into her from the other side. Every eye in the room was now plastered on them, and Tara wished their interactions didn't have a religious following from their peers.
"Did they keep your tongue?" Matt asked, the smirk climbing his face. "I guess it must have been good for something." The way he licked his lips lewdly had Tara suppressing the smile growing on her face. It wasn't happiness for sure, more of amusement that this piece of shit thought he was going to win anything he started.
"Better use than yours." Tara snapped with a smirk, and Matt cringed as he rubbed his throat. The bruise was gone, so the mages must have healed him.
"Nice scarf," Matt growled with that same stupid smile.
Point to him. Tara had a fluffy summer scarf fashionably wrapped around her neck and draped down the front of her blue blouse that matched her eyes. Matt didn't need directions to know that it was covering a mountain of bruises and puncture marks from Jesse.
"And your guy was being a prick." Matt slid a hand on his hip and raised an eyebrow that dared her to argue otherwise.
"Jesse was tortured for weeks to near death and was running on fumes of life, Matt. Some people get a pass for not considering others first when they speak. It's not like he was trying to make me feel like shit. He just wanted to die." Tara leaned back in her chair and propped her feet up on the desk.
"Well is he?" Matt asked with a slow sigh, all the taunt lost from his voice. "Dead I mean. Did he get what he wanted?"
"Not sure if he got what he wanted, but close enough, and no he's not dead." Tara searched her drawers for her snacks when her stomach growled, and she found her unopened chocolate straws in the bottom most drawer buried by old files. She stuck one in her mouth with a moan of pleasure, but Matt was too busy checking every corner of the room to poke fun at her. "He's not here."
