Vampire Academy 3 - Shadow Kiss by Mead Richelle

Author:Mead, Richelle
Language: eng
Format: epub

Vampire Academy 3 - Shadow Kiss

Sixteen

“SO ARE YOU,” HE TEASED.

“Yeah, but I just thought—”

“That I was hu­man? Be­cause of the bite marks?”

“Yeah,” I ad­mit­ted. No point in ly­ing.

“We all have to sur­vive,” he said. “And dham­pirs are good at fig­ur­ing out ways to.”

“Yeah, but most of us be­come guardians,” I point­ed out. “Es­pe­cial­ly men.” I still couldn't be­lieve he was a dham­pir— or that I hadn't spot­ted it right away.

Long ago, dham­pirs had been born from hu­mans and Mo­roi get­ting to­geth­er. We were half-​vam­pire, half-​hu­man. Over time, Mo­roi start­ed keep­ing them­selves sep­arate from hu­mans. Hu­mans grew too plen­ti­ful and no longer need­ed Mo­roi for mag­ic. Mo­roi now feared they'd be­come hu­man ex­per­iments if ev­er dis­cov­ered. So no more dham­pirs were be­ing made that way, and in a bizarre ge­net­ic twist, dham­pirs get­ting to­geth­er with dham­pirs couldn't make more dham­pirs.

The on­ly way my race kept re­pro­duc­ing was through Mo­roi mix­ing with dham­pirs. Nor­mal log­ic would make you think that a dham­pir and a Mo­roi would make chil­dren who were ¾ Mo­roi. Nope. We came out with per­fect dham­pir genes, half and half, mix­ing some of the best traits of both races. Most dham­pirs came from dham­pir wom­en and Mo­roi men. For cen­turies, these wom­en had sent their kids off to be raised some­where else, so that the moth­ers could go back to be­ing guardians. That's what mine had done.

Over time, though, some dham­pir wom­en had de­cid­ed they want­ed to raise their chil­dren them­selves. They re­fused to be guardians and in­stead band­ed to­geth­er in com­mu­ni­ties. That's what Dim­itri's moth­er had done. Lots of ug­ly ru­mors sur­round­ed these wom­en be­cause Mo­roi men of­ten vis­it­ed in the hopes of get­ting cheap sex. Dim­itri had told me that a lot of these sto­ries were ex­ag­ger­at­ed and that most dham­pir wom­en weren't that easy. The ru­mors came from the fact that these wom­en were al­most al­ways sin­gle moth­ers who had no con­tact with their kids' fa­thers—and be­cause some dham­pirs would let Mo­roi drink blood dur­ing sex. It was a kinky, dirty thing in our cul­ture and was where the nick­name for these non-​guardian dham­pirs had come from: blood whores.

But I'd nev­er even thought about a male blood whore.

My mind was reel­ing. “Most guys who don't want to be guardians just run off,” I said. It was rare, but it hap­pened. Guys bailed on guardian school and dis­ap­peared to hide out among hu­mans. It was an­oth­er dis­grace­ful thing.

“I didn't want to run off,” said Am­brose, seem­ing very cheer­ful about all this. “But I didn't want to fight Strigoi ei­ther. So I did this.”

Be­side me, Lis­sa was stunned. Blood whores stayed on the fringes of our world. Hav­ing one right in front of her—a guy, no less—was in­cred­ible.

“This is bet­ter than be­ing a guardian?” I asked in dis­be­lief.

“Well, let's see. Guardians spend all their time watch­ing out for oth­ers, risk­ing their lives, and wear­ing bad shoes. Me? I have great shoes, am cur­rent­ly mas­sag­ing a pret­ty girl, and sleep in an awe­some bed.”

I made a face. “Let's not talk about where you sleep, okay?”

“And giv­ing blood isn't as bad as you think.

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