He didn’t, though. Polite or not, he wasn’t stupid enough to trust the creatures. Not when they had such easy access to prey.

Mouse apparently didn’t trust them, either. Though Cyrus had thought her asleep, her voice surprised him. “It’s still night?”

“You haven’t been asleep long.” A nagging protectiveness in his head reminded him she should get her rest. But a selfish part of him was relieved she stayed awake. He liked talking with another person, something he hadn’t done enough of during his former life, and he feared the changes that were about to come.

Oh, he’d probably be turned into a vampire. As much as he wanted to stay human, if his father demanded otherwise he could do little but object. The deed would still be done. But he would make certain that Mouse never met the fate his past wives had. She would never be a vampire, and therefore would never be food for his father’s insatiable craving for souls. That, he would not abide.

“What were you like, when you were one of them?” The question was startlingly familiar.

The memory brought hot shame to his face. “I told you.”

“You didn’t answer. You tried to scare me. I’m not scared of you now.” As if to prove her words, she reached up to brush the hair from his eyes.

He didn’t want to admit the truth, but he wouldn’t taint their new bond with lies. “I was trying to scare you. But I told you the truth. I’ve done…horrible things.”

Her eyes, clear and honest, searched his face in the darkness. “Why would you do those things?”

It wasn’t a question he’d bothered to ask himself. The first answer that came to mind, the one most likely to be true, was monstrous, but he had no other reason to give her. “Boredom?”

The fear and disgust he expected never registered on her face. “You killed and tortured people because you were bored?”

He made an affirmative noise in his throat. “And lonely.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Her frown evolved into a quirked smile. “Of course you’d be lonely, if you killed everyone around you.”

“Not everyone. There were some I tried to keep.” He tightened his arms around her. “Now that I have you, I don’t remember why I wanted to keep them.”

“I like that.” She laughed quietly and nestled her head against his chest. “You have me. It’s nice to belong to someone.”

After a long silence, she looked up. “What were they like?”