Painful Reminders

Chapter Twenty: Coming Clean

"She's waking up!"

Andrea's voice was the first thing I heard as I felt myself floating back into consciousness. With an uncomfortable groan, I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by a group of people. Andrea, Zeke, and Cassian stood at the forefront, the first two watching me with worry like I could die at any moment. Cassian, looked more angry than anything; glaring down at me as if the only reason he'd saved me was so that he could kill me himself. An IV was hooked up to my arm, pumping me full of someone else's blood and I felt weaker than a newborn.

Remembering the last time I'd seen him, I looked Cassian over, allowing myself the reassurance of seeing him whole and unharmed. Satisfied that he was okay, my gaze slid past the three that I knew to the crowd behind them. Godfrey was the only other one that I recognized. "Seems a bit crowded in here, doesn't it?"

"Everyone out."

My attention snapped back toward Cassian at the barely controlled anger in his voice and I furrowed my brows in irritated confusion. Was he seriously about to lay into me while I was hooked up to an IV? Shooting me a sympathetic look, Andrea squeezed my hand before dropping it and following her brother and the rest of them out the door.

"We're glad you're okay, Mya," Zeke told me before he left with the others.

With everyone gone and the two of us finally alone, I turned expectant eyes on Cassian, lifting my chin and glaring, ready to give back as good as I got. To my surprise, he leaned forward, one hand coming up to grip the back of my neck and pull me in to rest his forehead against mine. His eyes fluttered closed and he breathed in as if reassuring himself that I was, in fact, still here. "Don't ever do that again."

My insides felt as if they were being twisted into knots, and I struggled to find a response, not ready for the relief in his voice. When had we gone from enemies to...to what? We weren't friends, and despite the momentary lapses in judgment I'd suffered, I wasn't willing to consider him as anything more. I closed my eyes as well, allowing myself the temporary feeling of relieved contentment to wash over me. "They were going to kill you. All of you. I didn't have a choice."

We stayed like that for a while longer before he straightened up, looking me over with his usual indifferent expression. "Who bit you?"

My hand moved up to my neck and I bit my lip as I recalled the old woman's words. "I need to find Lucius."

Cassian scowled down at me, something that almost looked like jealousy flittering across his face. "Who is Lucius? Did he do this to you? Is he with Nathaniel, Diana, or Beatrice?"

I frowned back at him, feeling the beginning tendrils of frustration creep over me. "How would I know? He's the original."

"The original what?"

"Vampire," I snapped at him. "Don't you know your own origin story?"

Cassian narrowed his eyes at me, "No one knows how we came to be."

No one? I stared at him in disbelief. "You've been cursed to an immortal existence; damned to the shadows, and you never wondered?"

"Our origin has always been shrouded in mystery," he answered, looking at me as if he'd discovered an entirely new species. "We've been around for over two thousand years and the wolves had been hunting us down for just as long. Not knowing isn't for a lack of effort.

"What do you know about it? How do you know anything about it?"

I shifted uncomfortably under his searching gaze. How crazy would it be to admit that I was having visions? That since the first day I'd woken up here, with them, I'd been having dreams about their origin and chatting with a dead woman who had been sacrificed and my dead grandpa? It's no crazier than anything else that's been happening lately if I were being honest. I sucked in a breath, "I saw it. In my dreams."