He hungered for her bite with every breath. He’d never wanted to be bitten, but the memory of her fangs the night she first woke haunted him.

A low groan came from his throat, and he tried to gently move her back. “Makeda, wake up.”

A low, hungry snarl.

Lucien clenched his eyes shut and fisted her hair, dragging her away from his neck just as her fangs pricked his skin.

“No.” He rolled her to her back and braced himself over her, controlling her legs as they kicked and she tried to twist out from under him. “Makeda, wake up.”

Her eyes flew open, but they were in no way rational. She bared her teeth and snapped at him.

Lucien banded his arms around her and pulled her up, turning her around and clamping his legs around her to hold her down as he reached for the pitcher of blood. Holding it in front of her face, he said, “Drink.”

Makeda grabbed it and shoved her face in the blood, drinking it in rapid gulps.

Halfway through the pitcher, she raised her head and let out a strangled sigh. “I hate this.”

Lucien frowned. “Is there something wrong with the blood? Gedeyon assured me—”

“No. It’s not the blood.” Her voice was tired. “I hate feeling like an animal. Controlled by my hunger.”

He brushed her hair away from her face, making sure none of it touched the blood. “We were all this way once. In fact, most of us were far worse. I was nearly uncontrollable for three months. I attacked anything that came near me, including my mother.”

“Why?”

He nudged the pitcher back to her mouth as he told the story. “When I was turned, I hadn’t eaten properly in weeks. It’s why my musculature is so defined. We were fighting the Romans, and they were very good at weakening their enemy. I was a soldier, so I was very strong, but in those weeks before my death, my body was beginning to eat itself.”

She took a break from drinking. “How did you die?”

“Not in battle.” He smiled. “Which surprised and disappointed me. I was hunting, actually. Stalking a bear that had ransacked our stores. I knew if I managed to kill it, we would also have a good amount of meat for the men. The local crops had been burned by the Romans, but there was still game in the forests.”

“Man against bear,” Makeda said. “Bear wins?”

His shoulders shook with laughter. “I got in a few strikes, but yes, I didn’t fare well in the end. The only reason the monster didn’t drag me off and eat me was that Saba was watching. I’d… amused her.”

“By fighting a bear?”

“She told me later it was the cursing.” He smiled. “My mother told me I cursed better than a Roman, and it made her laugh. She wasn’t laughing later when I woke like a bear and began mauling another of her children. She had to bury me.”

“Bury you?” Makeda asked. “How did she—”

“She actually buried me. The ground opened up and swallowed me every time I threatened to lose control. I wasn’t in command of my elemental strength at that point, and I was nowhere near as powerful. She kept me underground a good part of the first year.”

“Is that Saba’s version of a time-out?”

Lucien threw his head back and laughed. “Yes, I think so.”

“Did it make you angry?”

“Not really. In my lucid moments, I understood. I was grateful, in fact. I knew I was far from civilized. And of course, I had no idea what a vampire really was. They were folk tales in the mountains. Monsters that scared children. I wasn’t a fool to believe in them. So I had to overcome my incredulity and my bloodlust. It took far longer than a year because it took me a long time to accept what I was.”

Makeda had relaxed in the circle of his arms and legs. The pitcher of blood was gone, and her energy was even and easy. Lucien rested his chin on her shoulder and brushed his cheek against her curls. “So you see, we were all uncontrolled at the beginning. We were all monsters.”

“We still are.”

It was the first time she’d referred to herself as part of the “we.” The first time he felt her softening toward life as a vampire.

“We’re only monsters if we allow it,” Lucien said. “We can become so much more.”

She turned and pressed her cheek to his. “Will you show me?”

“Yes.”

Except he was a horrible instructor. Lucien and Makeda stood on the edge of the lake, staring at each other, each with their hands on their hips. Gedeyon and Hirut sat on the stone dock, watching them both with poorly concealed amusement.

“You’re an awful teacher,” Makeda said. “This is not going to work.”

He tugged a hand through his hair. “I have to think that some of the concepts are universal. Our elements may be different, but can’t you sense the… matter of it? The substance, if you will. When your amnis reaches out—”

“There is no matter. No substance.” She threw up her hands, and he could tell she was getting frustrated. They’d been at this for over two hours. “I’m imagining my amnis wrapping around the water like you say, but it feels a little like trying to fill a bucket with a colander.”

He crossed his arms. “Can’t you just… follow your instincts?”

“My instincts are telling me to go for your throat right now. Mind if I follow those?”

That sent Gedeyon and Hirut into peals of laughter. Both of them had immediately taken to Makeda, and she was cautiously opening up to them. Her Amharic had gone from rusty to fluent. She and Hirut joked as they worked around the island washing clothes or gathering firewood—normally both jobs the humans would be hired to do, but with no humans allowed near Makeda, Gedeyon’s daughter had offered to help.