Chapter 131: For a Bloodborn

Chapter 131: Chapter 131: For a Bloodborn

Chapter 131: For a Bloodborn

The dismissal bell had barely finished ringing when Cyrus Calder suddenly yawned.

It was not especially dramatic, but Faye Larkin had just finished packing her bag and noticed anyway.

Cyrus shook his head lightly before she could ask whether something was wrong. He expected her to leave with the rest of the class, but Faye remained beside her desk instead.

When he looked over again, she gathered enough courage to speak.

"Lena wanted me to ask whether you are free to visit this weekend."

"This weekend?" Cyrus considered it briefly. "I should be free."

He did not need much time to decide.

Faye’s shoulders relaxed.

"Then remember to text me before you come over."

"I will."

Even though Cyrus had accepted the invitation without hesitation, Faye still seemed quietly relieved. She raised one hand in farewell before heading for the door.

"I will see you later, Cyrus."

"See you Monday."

Within a few minutes, the classroom had emptied.

Cyrus stayed behind for a while longer, using the quiet to finish part of his homework and avoid the crowd leaving St. Alder all at once. By the time he finally packed his things and left, the hallways had become much calmer.

On the walk toward The Full Moon Lounge, his thoughts wandered.

The last several days had passed strangely fast. One routine had followed another until time seemed to slip through his hands without announcing itself.

His memory problem remained the largest concern.

Ten entire years were gone.

Everything after that missing stretch still seemed intact, which was almost worse. The clean break made it impossible to pretend the problem was ordinary forgetfulness.

Cyrus was not certain what Vera Sable knew, but the school nurse definitely knew something.

If her question about memory loss had been random, he might have dismissed it. If her attention toward the ring had been ordinary curiosity, he could have ignored that too.

The problem was the way she behaved.

Vera always seemed half a step ahead of him, dropping one sentence, watching what it did, then retreating before giving him enough information to respond. The sensation of being led around by the nose had been too obvious to ignore.

Unfortunately, her personality made the situation difficult.

She treated almost everything with the same lazy amusement. Cyrus could not tell when she was teasing because she was bored and when she was deliberately testing him.

Maybe it was revenge.

The thought made him pause.

Surely she was not tormenting him because he had refused to let her put his injured finger in her mouth.

That reason was so stupid that it barely qualified as a possibility.

Cyrus sighed.

He could laugh at the idea privately, but Vera remained too mysterious to dismiss. He knew almost nothing about her beyond the fact that she was medically competent, behaved strangely around his blood, knew something about his medication, and had asked a question she should not have known to ask.

That was already too much.

He stopped at a public restroom along the route to work.

When he emerged several minutes later, the student Cyrus Calder had disappeared.

His hair had been fixed back into the style he wore at the lounge, opening his face instead of hiding it. The subtle changes in posture and grooming were enough to turn an easily overlooked student into someone customers would remember after one drink.

Cyrus felt more comfortable like this.

It was inconvenient that his safest school appearance was also the one that felt least like himself.

When he reached The Full Moon Lounge, Malcolm Baird had already finished most of the opening preparation.

The glasses were arranged. The citrus had been cut. The bar was stocked, surfaces wiped down, and the room already carried its usual warm, low-lit calm.

Cyrus glanced around with mild surprise.

Malcolm usually left at least a few small tasks for him before opening.

The older man noticed him and paused.

"Helena said she needed you for something today, didn’t she?"

Cyrus stopped.

"What?"

He took out his phone automatically.

No missed calls.

No unread messages from Helena.

"She did not tell me anything."

Malcolm looked equally puzzled.

"Is that right? Then we can ask when she gets here."

"All right."

Cyrus accepted the answer and started toward the changing room.

Before he reached it, Malcolm called him back.

"You can leave the uniform alone for now. Wait until Helena gets here."

Cyrus looked down at his St. Alder uniform, then back at Malcolm.

That was unusual.

Still, there was no point changing twice if Helena planned to take him somewhere.

He chose a seat on the customer side of the bar, a place he almost never occupied.

Sitting there felt unexpectedly strange.

The lounge looked different from this angle. Instead of standing behind the counter and reading customers, he was looking toward the bottles, glasses, soft amber lighting, and Malcolm moving through the space with practiced ease.

Quiet music played from the corner speakers.

For the moment, Cyrus was the only person seated inside.

The heating had not fully warmed the room yet, which made the atmosphere nearly perfect.

If human businesses could stop insisting on turning every indoor space into summer during winter, Cyrus might have praised the lounge without reservation.

The bell above the entrance rang.

Helena Baird stepped inside.

She had arrived later than Malcolm apparently expected, though not late enough to seem rushed. Her gaze found Cyrus almost immediately and traveled over him from head to toe in that unreadable way he still did not understand.

"You are not working tonight," Helena said. "You are coming somewhere with me."

Cyrus did not answer at once.

He turned toward Malcolm.

Malcolm gave him a faintly helpless look.

"He already agreed," Helena said.

"I agreed," Malcolm confirmed.

His expression carried the resigned patience of an uncle who had long ago accepted that his niece would make her own decisions whether he approved or not.

Cyrus nodded.

"Then that is fine."

The conversation had barely ended when the entrance bell rang again.

Cyrus looked over instinctively.

This time, genuine surprise flickered through him.

Vera Sable had walked into The Full Moon Lounge.

Why was the school nurse here?

Vera stopped just inside and looked around the room. Her eyes passed over the warm lights, the polished bar, and the quiet seating area. She seemed satisfied with what she saw.

Cyrus looked away.

There was no reason to panic.

His lounge appearance and school appearance were different enough that most people never connected them. Vera had only interacted with him at school. Even if she noticed some resemblance, recognizing him immediately should not be easy.

Then Vera saw the St. Alder uniform he was still wearing.

Her eyes widened with exaggerated surprise.

"You are a student at my school?"

Cyrus looked at her.

"Yes."

"What a coincidence." Her smile deepened. "What is your name? Which advisory are you in?"

Something about the performance felt wrong.

Cyrus’s brows drew together.

Why did her surprise look rehearsed?

Was that his imagination?

Or had Vera already recognized him?

That should not have been possible.

If his disguise were that easy to see through, he would never have managed such a quiet school life in the first place.

Vera approached the bar.

Her attention shifted toward his ear.

"That earring looks familiar. Where did you get it?"

She raised one hand as if she meant to inspect it more closely.

Her fingers never reached him.

Helena intercepted her wrist halfway.

Cyrus leaned back instinctively.

Helena’s expression had cooled.

"Do you need something?"

Vera looked at the hand stopping her and smiled without embarrassment.

"Nothing important."

"Then we have somewhere to be."

Helena released her and immediately took hold of Cyrus’s wrist instead.

"Come on."

Cyrus barely had time to pick up his bag before Helena led him toward the door.

He glanced back once.

Vera remained near the bar.

She did not try to stop them.

She only watched him leave with smiling eyes.

Cyrus disliked that expression.

Vera always looked as if the next thing she did might be completely harmless or something horrifying enough to permanently complicate his life.

Not being able to read her was becoming irritating.

Once Helena and Cyrus disappeared outside, Malcolm and Vera were left in the lounge.

The room immediately felt quieter.

Only the music from the corner speakers kept the silence from becoming awkward.

Vera lost interest almost instantly.

Her attention drifted toward Malcolm.

The older man was handsome in a mature way, marked by enough years to give his face character without making him look tired.

Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps Vera would have found him worth studying.

Then she remembered how his blood would probably taste.

The thought killed most of her curiosity.

After Cyrus, ordinary blood had become difficult to respect.

Vera ordered a drink whose deep crimson color vaguely resembled blood and took a seat at the bar.

Malcolm prepared it without unnecessary conversation.

She lifted the glass and watched the red liquid move beneath the warm light.

The taste from earlier that day returned to her memory far too easily.

Cyrus’s blood had ruined every comparison.

Before tasting it, the blood Vera had consumed throughout her life had seemed perfectly acceptable. Some was better than others. Some carried stronger memories. Some had more interesting emotional traces.

Now all of it seemed cheap.

The difference was offensive.

Unfortunately, Cyrus’s blood was not something she could simply consume whenever she wanted.

There were complications.

His species was one of them.

The things hidden around him were another.

Vera rested her cheek against one hand.

She could imagine how much stronger the taste would be if it came directly from him rather than sitting inside a medical tube first. Fresh blood, untouched by storage, with every trace still vivid.

That thought stirred an old hunger she usually had little trouble controlling.

Vera suppressed it.

Wanting a taste was one thing.

Being stupid enough to bite a Frostborn boy surrounded by suspicious rings, possessive women, and unknown history was another.

More frustrating was the damage already done to his memories.

The fragments she had read from his blood were incomplete.

Ten entire years were missing.

For Vera, that loss created an unexpected sense of disappointment.

Now she understood one of the old Bloodborn customs much better.

Older Bloodborn had often refused to share a favored blood source with others. Vera had once assumed it was ordinary possessiveness, the same kind of territorial instinct rare-blood families liked to dress up in elaborate tradition.

After tasting Cyrus, she understood another reason.

Blood was only part of the experience.

Memory mattered too.

A life carried inside blood gave flavor context. Fear, happiness, pain, desire, ordinary mornings, childhood, mistakes, people loved, places hated, years survived. For a Bloodborn capable of reading those traces, tasting blood alongside the life attached to it made the experience complete.

Cyrus’s blood was extraordinary.

Yet part of the story had been torn out.

That made the missing years feel almost wasteful.

Vera slowly turned her crimson drink in the glass and looked through the liquid toward the space behind the bar.

In the memories she had managed to read, Cyrus stood there often.

So this was where he displayed himself for customers.

More people began entering the lounge as evening settled over Grayhaven. Regulars chose familiar seats. Malcolm greeted them with quiet ease. The room filled gradually with conversation and the soft sound of glass against wood.

Vera barely noticed.

She was reviewing the fragments again.

Cyrus behind the bar.

Customers staring.

Tips appearing.

His careful distance.

The way he used beauty without allowing people to get close enough to own it.

Another image surfaced.

Vera’s lips curved.

So he knew exactly how to use the advantages he had been given.

That was clever.

Much cleverer than the gloomy schoolboy image suggested.

Vera lifted the glass and took another slow drink.

A beautiful smile spread across her face, bright with anticipation rather than warmth.

The more she learned about Cyrus Calder, the less ordinary the story became.

This was getting very interesting.