Narrative P. O. V.
“You can’t stay down here forever.”
Jai was standing in the doorway to the small office where Cain had been for the past few days. Cain brought his work with him in the mornings to the small office before Ella would wake up and he would only return late in the night when he knew she had left.
Sometimes he would return to his office and her scent still lingered in the air, torturing him. When Cain said nothing in response to Jai’s comment, Jai
ventured further into the small office and sat down in front of Cain.
“I don’t understand why you can’t just be a man and deal with it.” he said.
Cain looked up from his paper to glare at Jai.
“So you’re equating my desire to protect and care for the well being of the love of my life with being a coward?” Cain asked him.
When Jai said nothing, Cain’s glance returned to the folder in his hands.
“I don’t need to put her in harm’s way just to prove my masculinity,” Cain said.
Jai crossed his arms against his chest. “Explain to me exactly why you think that being around her puts
her in harm’s way,” he said.
Cain closed the folder and threw it on the makeshift desk in front of him.
“The urges aren’t as frequent when I’m not around her.”
“Urges?” Jai asked.
Cain nodded.
“You can’t mean that you want to kill her,” Jai said incredulously.
“Not kill,” Cain said quickly.
Jai leaned forward and put his fingers to his lips in thought.
“You want to turn her…”
Cain nodded slowly.
“Jesus,” Jai said under his breath, shaking his head.
“Do you think it’s because you’re mates?” Jai asked him.
“I’m not sure,” Cain answered honestly. “Obviously the Lycan aspect is there; I want to mate and mark her. But, it’s the other side that bothers me.”
“You don’t want to kill her accidentally,” Jai guessed.
Turning someone from human to Vampire wasn’t easy from what Jai had heard. It was a long process and a painful one at that.
“Do you think that there’s a chance she could have some Lycan in her?” Jai asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” Cain answered.
“I would assume so, but there can’t be much if there is any. She doesn’t carry it in her scent.”
“If she’s a Lycan, turning her would be easier and a lot less risky,”Jai said.
While turning someone from human to Vampire was a difficult and dangerous task, turning someone who was a Lycanthrope into a Vampire wasn’t as hard. Lycanthropes were stronger and healed much more quickly than humans. There was also a higher chance that a human body would reject the disease whereas Lycanthropes adapted to it.
While there were plenty of Lycanthropes out there in the world who had been bitten and had turned, there was only one being who was a perfect, genealogical mix of both Vampire and Lycanthrope. That was Cain.
“How do you expect to mark her if you can’t get close to her?” Jai asked him bluntly.
Cain didn’t answer him.
“I still think you should tell her,” Jai said.
“Maybe if you explained all of this to her she would be understanding.”
Cain raised an eyebrow at this.
“And if she’s not?” He asked.
“If she finds out and leaves and never comes back, what do I do then?”
Jai could admit that it was a compromising situation for Cain to be in.
“I think if Ella didn’t feel threatened by you, she would be less inclined to leave when you tell her.” Jai said.
Cain stared at him like he was an idiot.
“It’s hard not to make someone feel threatened when our body’s natural response to close physical proximity with them is to grow fangs!”
Jai shrugged Touché.
Jai stood from his chair and walked back to the door.
“Your parents are returning from Australia tomorrow,” Jai reminded him.
“I think it would be good if you introduced her to them.”
Cain watched as Jai left before he shook his head.
He hated how Jai and Daniel made him feel as though he was the one making the decision to stay away from Ella.
He had no choice.
It was either stay away from her, or chase her away. And now that they had met, Cain had no intentions of letting her go. Suddenly, a headache hit him and he knew only two things:
He needed to feed, and he needed to see Ella.