Chapter 183: You Still Want More?

Chapter 183: Chapter 183: You Still Want More?

Chapter 183: You Still Want More?

"Cyrus is like us? What do you mean?"

The moment Malcolm Baird brought Cyrus Calder into the conversation, Helena’s brows drew together slightly.

Malcolm noticed but did not comment on it.

"He’s lost a large part of his memory," Malcolm said. "There could be more behind that than we originally thought."

Helena looked at him.

"What kind of thing?"

Malcolm considered how to explain it.

"Traits connected to certain rare-blood lines, for example."

Helena’s eyes changed.

"You think Cyrus might be rare-blooded too?"

"That possibility crossed my mind."

"Why?"

"I happened to overhear part of a conversation he had with a customer tonight."

Helena fell silent.

She did not question whether Malcolm had really heard them.

Most of the time, both of them lived using appearances and habits that let them blend easily into human society. Their hearing did not need to be obviously unnatural.

That did not mean it was ordinary.

As elf-blooded rare-bloods, if they actually focused, very little inside the lounge escaped their attention.

Malcolm stepped outside again and lit a cigarette beneath the dim streetlight.

After taking a slow drag, he continued.

"That customer is apparently helping Cyrus search for information about his family."

Helena remained quiet.

Malcolm looked toward her.

"If she actually finds his relatives someday, what will you do?"

"I don’t know."

Half of Helena’s body stood in shadow, making her expression difficult to read.

"I’ll see what Cyrus wants."

Her voice carried almost no emotion.

Malcolm studied her for another moment.

"That’s all?"

"That’s all."

Helena turned slightly.

"Was there anything else?"

"No."

She started toward her car.

Her expression remained as calm as when she arrived.

What Malcolm could not see was the faint disturbance spreading beneath that calm.

For now, Helena still described what she felt toward Cyrus as appreciation.

She liked looking at him.

She liked having him nearby.

She liked preparing things for him, seeing him use them, and occasionally finding excuses to spend more time in his presence.

That was enough.

If Cyrus someday chose to leave on his own, then perhaps following him for a while would not be unreasonable.

After all, Helena had been one of the first people to meet him after his memory loss.

She had also given him more help than almost anyone else.

But if someone tried to take him away against his wishes, that would be different.

Helena already knew what she would do then.

She would simply bring him back.

The following morning, shortly after the Thursday class bell rang, Vera Sable sat alone inside the nurse’s office.

A pen spun lazily between her fingers.

In her other hand, she held a blood bag.

Her expression looked distant enough that anyone passing the doorway might have assumed she was thinking about work.

She was not.

A memory from two days earlier suddenly surfaced.

Heat climbed into her face almost instantly.

Vera stopped spinning the pen.

The events at Cyrus’s apartment had refused to leave her alone.

Part of that was probably because the whole experience had been so far outside anything she expected.

She had even called out sick yesterday.

Technically, she had told the school she was not feeling well.

That was not completely false.

The problem was that most of her exhaustion had been self-inflicted while she stayed home trying to understand what Cyrus’s blood had done to her.

Vera narrowed her eyes.

It had to be the blood.

She absolutely refused to believe she had suddenly become the kind of woman who lost all common sense over one experience.

She took another drink from the blood bag.

Ordinary blood tasted painfully bland now.

That was another problem Cyrus had caused.

Vera leaned back and thought through what happened more carefully.

When she fed from Cyrus that day, his blood seemed to affect more than her appetite.

Her body had recovered from extreme exhaustion with suspicious speed while she was still near him.

But after she returned home, that unusual recovery vanished.

The lingering restlessness did not.

That inconsistency bothered her.

Vera had tested her stamina privately the following day and found nothing especially impressive.

If anything, she tired embarrassingly quickly.

That made the earlier recovery at Cyrus’s apartment even stranger.

If she had really absorbed part of his Frostborn constitution through his blood, why had the effect disappeared so fast?

She turned the question over in her mind.

Bloodborn family stories occasionally mentioned something similar.

According to those stories, a Bloodborn who repeatedly fed from the same rare-blood individual might temporarily acquire traces of that person’s traits.

Vera had never taken the stories seriously.

The circumstances required to test them were absurd.

Rare-bloods were already uncommon.

Finding one willing to provide enough blood over a long period was even less realistic.

Most Bloodborn survived perfectly well without ever knowing whether the claim was true.

Now Vera was beginning to reconsider.

Maybe the ability existed.

Maybe it was temporary.

Maybe the effect lasted only while enough of Cyrus’s blood remained active in her body.

That would explain why she recovered so quickly at his apartment and then returned to normal later.

Vera frowned.

If repeated feeding strengthened the effect, perhaps her physical condition could improve too.

That thought immediately appealed to her.

Someday she might be the one making Cyrus regret underestimating her.

And when that happened, she fully intended to return a certain insult.

Small fry.

Vera’s mouth curved.

Then she remembered the problem she actually needed to test.

Did she currently possess any trace of Cyrus’s healing ability?

The break bell rang somewhere outside.

Vera barely noticed.

She opened a drawer and took out a small medical blade.

From Cyrus’s memories, she knew he had once cut a finger and found the injury mostly healed by the next morning.

That was easy enough to test.

Vera carefully made a tiny cut on the pad of one finger.

She studied it.

Oddly, almost no blood came out.

The skin remained normally colored, so she clearly had not somehow run herself dry.

Bloodborn physiology could be strange in ways that no longer surprised her.

What mattered was healing speed.

Nothing happened.

The cut remained exactly what it was.

Vera sighed.

So much for immediate confirmation.

She was about to find a bandage when someone entered the nurse’s office.

Vera looked up.

Cyrus stood in the doorway.

Her body reacted before her thoughts caught up.

A faint involuntary tension passed through her stomach.

Her mouth suddenly felt dry.

Vera hated that.

Whatever else had happened between them, one fact remained impossible to deny.

Cyrus’s blood was extraordinary to her.

It pulled at Bloodborn instinct in a way packaged blood never could.

As long as Cyrus took his suppressants normally and did not repeat the unstable condition from two days ago, feeding from him should be perfectly manageable.

And delicious.

Vera liked entertainment.

She also liked good food.

There was no moral contradiction between the two.

Besides, Cyrus’s blood might contain other interesting effects she had not discovered yet.

She forced her expression back under control.

"What do you need?"

Cyrus answered immediately.

"Suppressants."

There was a trace of resignation in his eyes.

The online medication he had ordered had arrived after work the previous night.

This morning, Cyrus had deliberately taken those pills instead of Vera’s supply because he wanted to test her claim.

Unfortunately, she had been telling the truth.

The online suppressants took longer to work.

He also needed a noticeably larger dose to achieve the same effect.

Cyrus had even packed extra pills before leaving home because he was not confident the first dose would last through the day.

If all commercially available suppressants worked like that, his medication costs would become painful very quickly.

Vera’s version might require slightly more than it once had, but it was still far stronger.

That left Cyrus with an irritating conclusion.

He needed access to her supply.

Looking at Vera now, he also noticed something different.

She sounded more restrained than usual.

Less playful.

Almost cautious.

The contrast made Cyrus want to laugh.

For all the trouble Vera caused him, she had still been the person providing medication that genuinely helped.

From another angle, she had assisted him more often than she harmed him.

And today she looked considerably better behaved.

That made holding a grudge difficult.

Then Vera spoke.

"I can sell you more."

Cyrus waited.

Vera’s golden-brown eyes narrowed slightly.

"But let me drink twice."

Cyrus raised an eyebrow.

"You still want more?"

His uncertainty was obvious.

Had she already forgotten what happened the last time?

It had been only two days.

Vera knew exactly what he was thinking.

Embarrassment flashed across her expression.

"If you don’t want the deal, then leave."

Cyrus studied her.

She looked almost irritated that he might deny her.

Then something clicked in his mind.

A detail he should have noticed earlier.

When Vera originally offered information about removing the ring in exchange for his blood, she had been unusually confident.

Later, she repeatedly found excuses to feed from him.

Even after the disaster at his apartment, she was already asking again.

This was no longer ordinary curiosity.

Cyrus remembered the way Vera behaved whenever blood became part of the negotiation.

The persistence.

The bargaining.

The irritation when he refused.

The way she kept returning even after things went badly.

He looked at her more carefully.

Had Vera known something from the beginning?

Something about his blood?

She was Bloodborn.

She understood blood better than anyone else Cyrus knew.

And right now, despite everything that had happened, she still looked fixated on getting another taste.

Cyrus’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Maybe Vera’s interest in his blood had never been casual at all.