"You can just stick to slave," her pet growled just as Sairen and his blood bag slipped into the kitchen. Annalette glanced at her slave, caught between raising an eyebrow or rolling her eyes. She settled for both.
"Names are for people who respect each other. Titles are for hierarchies like this one.""I respect no one," she said dismissively. It was true. She didn't even respect herself. Never had, never will. If she had, she would've been broken by the 19 years she spent a slave to the brothel. Which was, well, all of her human life. There they sold virgin ten year olds for little more than a sack of potatoes. "Respect will have you killed," she said absently, almost as if to herself as she rummaged through the drawers, not bothering to meet her human's eyes or not wanting to.
"All men are animals."
The cutting board was chopped in half as Annalette attempted to cut a tomato. "At least Vampires have an excuse." She lifted the granite cutting board and flicked her wrist, sending the two halves soaring over Sairen's slave's head and into the bin behind her. "We are monsters."
"You rape because you are bored," she muttered, turning around to grab another cutting board from the drawer above Mason's head. She stood on the tips of her toes, flicking at the edge of the wooden board until it tipped over and dropped from above. She caught the board. "You steal, lie and cheat because it is convenient." She grabbed the carrot and attempted to slice it again, but succeeded only in breaking the board. "You kill because you can."
"We kill to survive," she said, gesturing in the general direction of Sairen. "You are fed and you are not chained to a wall with my hand in your pants and a whip in the other." She paused, her gaze drifting below Mason's waist. She pressed the tip of her tongue to her fangs and lifted her gaze to stare into Mason's forest green eyes. "Yet."
A smile suddenly and unexpectedly burst through her lovely features, making her seem oddly young. Human. She wouldn't let anyone ruin the high she was in from gaining Xander's powers. She wasn't being knocked unconscious by visions of the death of random strangers and past tragedies weren't weighing her down for some wonderful reason. She was happier than she ever remembered being and she wasn't about to let anything ruin her euphoria. If giving her blood to others was all it took to keep her curse at bay, she would gladly allow anyone to drain her dry.
"Would you like to see the roof?" she asked her slave, a grin brightening her features and a gleam in her eyes.
The medieval mansion was higher than a contemporary twenty-four storey building.
"I didn't keep it together the first month. After my father died, I was locked in the basement. Mother thought I was going to runaway again." She felt and heard his breath as he exhaled, a deeply saddening sound. Emerald gasped slightly, shocked to hear than his own mother would lock him in a basement. Would her father do that if she became what Chase was? She didn't know but she knew now that she would never do something as cruel as leaving Chase to suffer on his own.
"It wasn't pleasant. I scarcely had anything to eat, it was almost like torture." Emerald held her breath, oddly pained by his pain.
"The only way to be free was to accept what I was and I did. All I wanted was the freedom." He laid down on the bed.
"I could be happy if I didn't think about my family too often.""I'm sorry I reminded you of them," she said softly, twisting around and resting her palm on one side of him so she was leaning over Chase, her soft hair brushing his skin. "Is this new family of yours any better?" Her gaze drifted over his face, his long eyelashes that any girl would've been jealous of, his perfectly straight nose and his lips...
Those lips.
