Wanting very much to change the subject, I cleared my throat. “Well, thanks for the advice. But if I couldn’t heal the damage myself, why am I better now?”

He squinted at me. “You really don’t remember that night?”

“No. I know exactly what happened. I just want to hear it from your point of view. You know, just to waste time.” I leaned back against the pillows. “If there’s something you need to tell me, I think you should just say it.”

“You’d lost too much blood. Even if you had been conscious enough to feed, it would have just run straight through you. And you did die, Carrie.” He sighed in frustration. “If I had known what would happen….”

My pulse throbbed in my ears. But more disturbingly, I could hear his, as if I had a stethoscope against his chest. “Nathan, what did you do?”

He looked me straight in the eye, and heat flashed through my body.

“I revived you the only way I knew how. I gave you my blood.”

“What does that mean?”

“At first, nothing. I was desperate, Carrie. I thought my blood might speed your healing, that’s all. Then, when I’d touch you to change your bandages, I started to see things, your memories. That’s how I knew.” He took a deep breath. “When you first became a vampire, you ingested some of Cyrus’s blood. Your heart must have stopped at some point—”

“After one of my surgeries.”

“That’s when you became a vampire. When I gave you my blood, your heart—” He looked away and cleared his throat. “You were already gone, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. The process repeated, as if you’d never been a vampire in the first place. I think I’m your sire now.”

My mouth went dry, and for the first time in my life, I was rendered speechless. But not for lack of trying. I had plenty to say, but too many thoughts whirled through my head. One was relief that Cyrus’s blood no longer pumped through my veins. But that wasn’t much of a comfort when, a second later, I remembered I knew just as little about Nathan as ever. And even he didn’t have a very high opinion of himself.

Of course, I knew it wasn’t in Nathan’s character to play the manipulative games Cyrus seemed to live for. But there had been attraction between us since the night we’d met.

That time seemed far away, and Nathan had almost become a complete stranger. He’d been guarded then, but I’d been able to glimpse the real Nathan at times.

But now he was my sire.

“I don’t understand.” My throat felt as if I’d just crossed a desert without a single drop of water. “Cyrus flatlined in the E.R. How did he survive without being re-sired?”

Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger and closed his eyes. “Depending on our age and power, we can be dead for several hours while we heal, as long as our heart stays intact.” He stumbled over the words, then cleared his throat. “If you were as old as he is, you’d have been able to survive on your own without a problem.”