Returning to the Fleur territory smothered the churning emotions Tara rose within him, and the looks of disdain and hatred as he passed calmed him back to his normal emotionless demeanor. No one liked him here and they didn't even bother to fake it. The Fleur vampires were all human sympathizers and the Zehirs had been the exact opposite. Tanya, his house head, had liked humans silent and in cages or not breathing, and it wasn't as if he could have changed any of that. Still, the human servants skittered away and hid at the side of a Fleur at any chance they got.

Jesse hadn't been entirely forthcoming about his situation to Tara, but he hadn't seen a reason to burden her with his issues. The poor woman had enough of her own. He had been hungry, but he hadn't wanted to tell her that. Feeding here was miserable, so he abstained more often than not, most times near to starving himself. If he were not an experienced warrior used to going without and pushing himself to the limits of his sanity, he'd have lost it a few times already.

The blood slaves in the Zehir territory had by no means been willing, but he'd treated them kindly where his compatriots hadn't cared. No one had ever wanted to give him their blood, but the Zehir blood slaves had accepted him as the lesser of evils and treated him with at least a modicum of respect.

The pampered Fleur blood donors looked on him with scorn and disgust. Jesse was the embodiment of everything they hated, but their house head had instructed them to care for him as they were required by their alliance with the Arcs. That meant tolerating him in such a fragile manner that all they did was not kill him. It was better than being dead, but not by much here.

There were approximately two humans alive who didn't want him dead, and zero vampires who wouldn't crush his skull for nothing more than their own amusement. Silvia cared for him but loved Neil Arc more, so when her mate had told her he couldn't stand him, she hadn't fought to keep him around.

Tara was practically the only person in centuries who had said they wanted him around, but she didn't know him. Not really. He had no right to chase her and no business putting his death and pain-filled life anywhere near hers. Tara's struggles, as he'd seen, were nothing more that fitting in with her human occupation. If the woman knew how he'd bloodied his hands with so many innocent lives, she'd regret giving him her blood.

Even now, he could feel the pulse in her neck, sense where she was in human society, and he wanted nothing more than spend his evening with her. Jesse had no right to sleep with her though, just as much as Lorenzo had requested he stay inside as much as possible. Leaving on the days he wasn't supposed to always ended in pointed questions that he was forced to answer lest being cast out.

Today, Lorenzo had yet to bother him, and Jesse flicked his eyes around the halls as he progressed to the greeting chambers. The main Castle of the Fleurs was vast, nearly three times the size of Neil Arc's, but it was silent. Not even whispers lingered as he'd past the normal gossiping human servants, and by the time he was outside the greeting hall, the corridors were barren of anyone.

Not the greeting hall though.

Power coursed through the air and filled the hall Jesse stood in, the unmistakable aura of Councilman Fiorello de Fleur. Jesse knew each and every councilman by name, previous rank, and abilities. That had been his responsibility as Tanya's first general, and no one had told him of Lorenzo's sire's arrival. That meant it was unannounced. As much as Lorenzo didn't like Jesse, he'd have asked him to be out of sight when his sire came if he'd known.

Lorenzo and Fior were closer than any vampire and sire Jesse knew of, a far cry from Jesse's relationship with his own. Tanya had forced him to bend and break to her, whereas Fior was a legend among vampires. Fiorello de Fleur had been one of the best commanders the vampire realm had ever seen, intelligent and powerful but mild in temperament even in the thick of things. Such level-headedness and objectivity when dealing with all races was what had set the Fleurs apart from the rest even if their ideals had never been lauded.

People; vampires, mages, and humans alike, flocked to the Fleurs, and their numbers were rivaled by only the Sols, who were primarily isolated. Greater than that was how Fior had always valued quality over quantity, and he'd accepted only the best minds and strengths to change into vampire kind. The man had collected every honed mind and intellectually savvy person he could find.

"There has to be another way," Lorenzo said, his soft voice hushed though not far enough from Jesse's hearing to obscure it. "I know they will listen to reason, Fior. Let me try."

"We can't risk that, Lorenzo," Fior's commanding tone could be mistaken for no one else, and Jesse wished he could sink into the wall as he realized he'd walked into a private conversation. "We have one chance, and if we tell them we're coming, it will guarantee our failure. If you want to talk to them, do so after we have the children."

A wave of cold ran down Jesse's spine as he realized they were talking about taking the dhampirs from their parents. They meant to steal Isis and Phoenix from the Arcs, and likely Selena as well. "The Children" never referred to anyone else of late. Their existence, threat, and mystery was the topic of nearly every conversation.

"At least allow me to acquire the boy under subterfuge," Lorenzo insisted, speaking of Phoenix. "He of the three has manifested as primarily human, and I don't want him hurt."

"I will need you to help, so if you would prefer the boy, that is fine," Fior said with no emotion when he spoke of stealing children from their parents. The Arc dhampirs were barely a year and Selena Aurion six months. It was like ripping babes from their mother's arms.

They wouldn't allow him to leave or live once they knew he'd heard their plans, and he turned to see if he could get away without notice. A wall of dark magic blocked his path where there had been nothing but an empty hall a moment ago, and his skin dipped to a sickly greyish sand as he met the crimson eyes of his grandsire.

"Progeny," Dev Zehir said, loud enough that Lorenzo and Fior's conversation ended.

They were in the hall behind him in an instant, but Jesse couldn't tear his eyes from his grandsire. After Tanya's demise, he'd felt empty of a home but also free of a sire's influence. Dev's aura and blood were too strong for him, and Dev crushed him where he stood, forcing him to his knees where he gasped for air even though he didn't breathe. It felt as if Dev had his magic wrapped around his chest and was crushing his ribs out through his back, and tears flooded his eyes as he crumpled on the ground.

Silvia and Neil needed to know what was coming for them, but his vision was blackening in front of him and he would be no help. As he succumbed, the last thing he sensed was Dev's aura leaning over him as Fior said something he couldn't make out.

Jesse woke in a cell, much as he expected. The Fleurs would have killed him, avoided the risk of him giving their plans away, but Dev had use for him. Powerful sires could bend their blood to their will, move their limbs and warp their minds like puppets. That however applied to vampires who had been born to a house and protected, commanded by their sire, but grown in relative peace aside from fighting for their own.

Dev tried, Jesse would give him that.

"Progeny, you're effort to protect a house that cares nothing for you is wasted," Dev said, wiping the blood off his claws.

The remnants of Jesse's right eye dripped down his face, but it would heal in a few days. They had been at this for near a week now, if one could trust his count of time. There was nothing else to do but count the passing of seconds as his mind had slipped away. Broken bones were nothing but small cracks in the back of his mind, and every blow more like shifting on the bed during a sleepless night.

"We know the layout of the castle prior to the children's births," Dev spoke again, like his words mattered. "We just want to know where they linger. You knew prior to being ousted, just as well as you know how much they bolstered their defenses. It's just information, why are you so resistant?"

Information? Dev had wanted to control him, walk him into the Arc's castle and use him to scout, but he'd found out quite quickly that Jesse would buckle and break before giving in. After all, what was this? Superficial pain, torture? Laughable. Dev was nothing compared to Tanya. All Zehirs were immune to torture after what Tanya had subjected them to.

Dev had nothing to leverage. His life? Jesse's was worthless to himself as much as them. They couldn't touch Tara without raising red flags, and they didn't know how he cared for her anyway. No matter what he did here, he'd never see her again, and even if giving up Silvia's children would save him, he'd rather die.

Torture was supposed to wear a prisoner down, but it had been the opposite for Jesse. The initial blows and slices of his flesh had affected him the most, but as they continued, they'd dragged him back into the past, into a darker time where cell walls and darkness had been all he'd known. Dev's words came out in Tanya's voice, and he knew the words were a manifestation of his past.

"Beg me to be one of my kind," A cruel female voice whispered to him, but he couldn't move, shackled in restraints. A slice across his flesh had a younger human him screaming, and he begged to go home, being foolish enough to say that he had a wife and daughter that needed him.

So much blood spilled out of the ground before him, all from an image he wasn't sure he could recall on his own–a woman with frizzy black hair and bright eyes like all his people. It had been a unique trait their clan had shared, ice eyes surrounded by dark rich skin of mocha to chocolate. The sky eyes of the woman he'd loved were clouded in death, and blood trickled out of her lips.

"What family?" the cruel bitch asked.

Jesse tore at his skin as he tried to get out of the shackles, but all he did was bleed himself into unconsciousness as the panic attack dragged him under. Opening his eyes was no better. More blue eyes, sobs as a girl sat at his feet on her knees. The room smelled of iron blood, the substance matting her hair to the side of her head, and Jesse couldn't tear his attention away from the innocent look of fear in his daughter's eyes.

She hadn't known what was going on, why they'd taken her, why her father had been in chains. Jesse couldn't remember her name anymore. Tanya had ripped it out of him and burned it away with his heart and soul so many hundreds of years ago. The girl had been so young, somewhere in her younger teens by his mind's recollection of what she'd looked like.

Jesse had begged and pleaded for that witch to let the girl go, said he'd do anything she wanted, but it had never been enough. If his daughter lived, Jesse had something to leave Tanya for. Tanya wanted all of him, wanted there to be nothing left of him when he crossed into the darkness of vampire kind. Jesse took the change with that witch's promise that she'd return his daughter to him, and she did. The moment he'd opened his eyes as one of vampire kind, Tanya had tossed his daughter in the cell with him.

There was no torture Dev could inflict on him worse than the way he'd looked and felt about his daughter that day. The girl had been nothing but food. The scent of her fear had excited him and her blood drawn him to pounce on her like a starving lion on a wounded gazelle. She'd done as he had in that cell with Tanya, begged and screamed for him to stop, and he'd been as Tanya had, blind to her plight and hungry for her life.

What was worse was that he didn't see anything but a corpse when he dropped her empty husk of a body on the ground. The glazed blue eyes didn't belong to his daughter but to something that could no longer sate his hunger. In the delirium of his fledgling hunger, reason didn't return to him for a turn of the seasons.

Each and every day until his mind returned, Tanya gave him humans, people of his clan, and he ate them with relish. Men, women, children. It mattered little. The feeling of bliss each time he drank them into their death outweighed their tears and the way their warm skin grew cold with each pulse into his mouth. By the time meaning applied to the happenings of his blood craze, it was too late for Jesse to do anything.

With his family gone, he wasted away in that cell. It had to have been decades that he was down in that dank dungeon, beat every day of his life and offered blood to live only when the pain got so bad that he begged for it in tears. Then Tanya tossed some poor human in with him, and she cackled as he murdered them.

Slowly, his humanity eroded away, each time he shuttered the blue eyes of one of his people below his fangs. Nearly a hundred years later, all he knew any more was pain. Jesse lost count of the lives he'd taken as he did the life he'd had.

They dragged him out one day and threw him at the witch's feet, and she asked again. "Beg to be mine." There had been no reason to return to the dungeon at that point, no one waiting for him, no hope for anything more than what he had.

"Yes." The answer hadn't even felt like defeat anymore, just an end to pain that he wasn't sure why he suffered anymore.

"What?" Dev said, waking Jesse from his deliria.

Had he said the last word aloud? Jesse took stock of the cell and wondered how many days he'd lost again. Blood trickled down his face and perhaps a finger or three were broken on his hands, but none felt like anything to him.

Jesse lifted his gaze to the impatient blood-red eyes of Dev and wondered if this man had done the same to program Tanya. The woman hadn't seemed damaged aside from lack of a moral compass, so he doubted it. Tanya and Dev were likely of the same brood, soulless shits who craved power and control.

"I said that if you want to torture me, just keep talking," Jesse rasped, spitting blood on the ground. "This child's play is nothing compared to the grating sound of your voice. It's like listening to a chipmunk demand the return of his nuts–"

Dev slapped him upside the head so hard that the world spun, and Jesse laughed as his head lolled forward. Tears dripped from his cheeks onto the ground, but they weren't in pain or sadness. Perhaps they were remnants of the man he'd been, the one who'd never had anything left to cry for the family and the people he'd lost. Once the tears started, they only multiplied and Jesse shook as they took him over.

Nothing could hurt him from Dev, nor from Tanya anymore, but knowing that he'd failed Silvia hurt more than anything. Jesse had done little right in his life, and protecting that mage and her vampire mate had been about it. How much time had he lost down here? If Dev was still torturing him, they hadn't gone after the children yet, had they? Or perhaps Dev just liked hurting him.

"Dev," a stern tone drew Jesse's ears but didn't lift his head.

"What do you want, Fior?" Dev asked, cracking his neck and knuckles in frustration as he took a step away from Jesse. The overpowering magic of his grandsire receding even that much sent a wave of relief through him that showed itself with his groan as he sank in his chains.

"You're wasting your time on that man. You know as well as I that Tanya broke every one of her men. Loyalty to his master is all he knows, and he has chosen the Arcs over his own blood. Have you been torturing him for nothing more than your enjoyment this last week?"

"It's not very enjoyable," Dev cursed as he left the cell and slammed it shut. "It's like kicking a sack of potatoes. One might roll out, but it means little. Are you finally done with your little plan? I'm itching to beat something that bleeds and screams for its life."

"Dev, we need to use prudence. Yes, you will be taking the Aurion dhampir by force, but if you harm her parents, we are likely to have another split in the dimensions. If you have to kill things, take out some mages on the way, but leave the parents. They are good as leverage if nothing else."

"Yeah yeah. Tanya never learned that if you take everything, you have no way of stopping your soldiers from ripping your skull open. Not the brightest vampire I've sired, but certainly the best in bed." Dev cackled as Fior let out a noise of disgust.

The world tilted below Jesse, and he knew he was losing consciousness again. There was nothing he could do chained, starved, and beaten in the dungeons, so he let the darkness take him. Last time it had, he'd woken with no one, and he expected much the same this time.

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