Free Cursed by Rebecca Trynes

its prey.
    He can eat me any day, she thought, glancing in his direction once again.
    Laughing at herself, she tried to get a grip as she ate her Chilli Jam Chicken and rice while Knox entertained them all, covering what would have been an awkward silence with the ease of someone used to single-handedly carrying a conversation.
    She couldn’t have said what he talked about, as she wasn’t really listening, her attention focused on Greyvian more than anything else. What would it feel like to have his fangs in her neck? It wasn’t the first time she’d had the thought and it certainly wouldn’t be the last—of that she was sure. Not until he appeased her curiosity by sinking them into her, his hot mouth on her skin, his warm tongue lapping at her blood...
    Christ. Why was that such a turn-on?
    “Why is a transition even necessary?” she asked, trying to distract herself from her inner daydreams. “Why aren’t you all just vampires from birth? Do you have to be human first so that you can age normally and then bam, you transition, become a vampire, and then never look a day over thirty for the rest of your lives?”
    “Hey, a day over twenty-five, if you please,” Knox replied with an offended look that he ruined by grinning. “And yes, you have it almost right. We transition to become immortal. But we’re not all born human—that’s just the half-breeds. Why that is, I won’t get into. Full-bloods, like Greyvian over here, are born vampire. And yes, they need to drink blood right from the start.”
    “Oh.” Vampire babies!
    She looked at Greyvian for a long moment, trying to picture him as a vampire child drinking blood from a human, but couldn’t. Even though she knew exactly what Jacob had looked like, the two images just wouldn’t mesh in her mind.
    “Is a full-blood transition the same as a half-breed’s?”
    Whether it was her hopeful expression or some other reason, he actually answered her this time.
    “Worse,” he said shortly, neutral expression at odds with the statement.
    “Yikes. Becoming immortal doesn’t sound like much fun,” she noted, looking from one to the other. “Does anyone know exactly how it works? How you’re able to stay the same age?”
    “Well, to understand that, you have to understand how aging works,” Lucas began when nobody else seemed inclined to explain. “As far as science can determine, the mortal body has to create new cells as others die. This is a good thing in the beginning, because it allows you to grow and mature, but it can also lead to damaged cells, mutations, and the like. Over the years, the mortal body doesn’t produce as many cells as it should to keep the body young, meaning it’s less resilient against disease, skin becomes less elastic and so on and so forth. Waste products also begin to build up in the more permanent cells, making the body work harder and, ultimately, leading to its demise. This—among other things, like free radicals and lifestyle—leads to aging.”
    She wondered idly if Lucas was a scientist or just liked to read a lot as she nodded to show that she was following. As the male paused to collect his thoughts, her gaze drifted over to Greyvian of their own volition, blue eyes locking on to black. Butterflies erupted in her stomach.
    God, he was sexy.
    “Conversely,” Lucas continued, “as far as our science can tell, once a half-breed or full-blood transitions, the only cells that die inside of our bodies are the red blood cells.”
    “Is that why you need to drink blood?” Sienna asked, beyond fascinated.
    “No, that’s just part and parcel of being a vampire. See, our bodies don’t produce their own red blood cells the way a human’s does in the bone marrow. Our bodies produce the cells by combining with foreign cells and multiplying.”
    Interesting. “What happens if you don’t drink blood? Do you wither and die?”
    Knox turned his head and looked at Greyvian, as if the black-eyed male could better