She frowned, her hand drifting up to the precise place where the diminutive teardrop and crescent moon rested on her skin. "This? It's a birthmark. I've had it ever since I can remember."
"Every Breedmate has borne the same mark somewhere on her body. Savannah and the other females have it. My own mother as well. You all do."
She had gone very still, now. Her voice was very small. "How long have you known this about me?"
"I saw it the first night I came to your apartment."
"When you took my cell phone pictures?"
"After," he said. "When I came back later, and you were sleeping in your bed."
Understanding dawned in her expression, a mix of surprise and emotional violation. "You were there. I thought I had dreamed you."
"You've never felt a part of the world you live in because it's not your world, Gabrielle. Your photographs, the way you're drawn to places that house vampires, your confusion over your feelings about blood and the compulsion to let it - these are all parts of who you truly are."
He could see her struggling to accept what she was hearing, and he hated that he wasn't able to make things easier. Might as well get everything out on the table and be done with it.
"One day, you'll find a worthy male and take him as your mate. He will drink from you alone, and you from him. Blood will bind the two of you as one. It's a sacred vow among our kind. One that I can't give you."
He might as well have slapped her from the look of injury on her pretty face. "You can't... or you won't?"
"Does it matter? I'm telling you that it's not going to happen because I won't permit it. If we share a blood bond, I will be drawn to you for as long as I have breath in my body and you in yours. You would never be free of me because the bond will compel me to seek you out wherever you run."
"Why do you think I would run from you?"
He exhaled dryly. "Because, one day, this thing I'm fighting is going to get me, and I can't bear the idea that you might be in my path when it does."
"You're talking about Bloodlust."
"Yes," he said, the first time he had ever truly acknowledged it, even to himself. All these years, he'd been able to hide it. Not from her. "Bloodlust is the greatest weakness of my kind. It is an addiction - a damnable plague. Once it has you in its grasp, few vampires are strong enough to escape it. They go Rogue, and then they are lost for good."
"How does it happen?"
"It's different for everyone. Sometimes, the disease moves in, little by little. The hunger grows, and so you feed it. You feed it whenever it calls, and one night you realize the need is never filled. For others, one careless indulgence can tip them past breaking."
"And how is it for you?"
His smile grew tight, more a baring of his teeth and fangs. "I have the dubious honor of carrying my father's blood in my veins. If the Rogues are beasts, they are nothing compared to the scourge that started our entire race. For Gen Ones, the temptation is always there, drumming harder in us than in any others. If you want to know the truth of it, I have been staving off Bloodlust since my first taste."
"So, you have a problem, but you got through it last night."
"I was able to hold it back, thanks in no small part to you, but each time it gets worse."
"You can get through it again. We'll get through it together."
"You don't know my history. I've already lost both of my brothers to the disease."
"When?"
"A very long time ago." He scowled, thinking back on a past he didn't like to dredge up. But the words came quickly now, whether he wanted to relive them or not. "Evran, the middle born of us three, went Rogue soon after he reached adulthood. He was killed in combat, fighting for the wrong side in one of the old wars between the Breed and the Rogues. Marek was the eldest, and the most fearless. He and Tegan and I were part of the first cadre of Breed warriors to rise up against the last of the Ancients and their armies of Rogues. We formed the Order around the time of the great human plague in Europe. Less than a hundred years later, Bloodlust claimed Marek; he sought the sun to end his misery. Even Tegan had a close brush with the addiction long ago."
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "You've lost so much to it. And to this conflict with the Rogues. I can see why it terrifies you."
He had a flippant reply perched at the tip of his tongue - some line of bullshit he wouldn't hesitate to trot out for one of the other warriors if they were presumptuous enough to think him afraid of anything. But the dismissive retort stayed stuck in his throat as he looked at Gabrielle, knowing that better than anyone in all his long existence, she understood him best.
She knew him on a level no one else ever had, and part of him was going to miss that once the time came to send her away to the future that awaited her in the Darkhavens.
"I didn't realize Tegan and you went back so far," Gabrielle said.
"He and I go all the way back, to the beginning. We're both Gen One, both sworn in our duty to defend our race."
"You're not friends, though."
"Friends?" Lucan laughed, considering the centuries of animosity that simmered between the two of them. "Tegan doesn't have friends. And if he did, he sure as hell wouldn't count me among them."
"Then why do you let him stay here?"
"He's one of the best warriors I've ever known. His commitment to the Order goes deeper than any hatred he harbors for me. We share the belief that nothing is more important than protecting the future of the Breed."