Shaking his head, Christofer forced himself to move his hand away from Cloe’s face, afraid that he’d tear the bastard’s hands off for touching her. “I don’t know.”

“Were you trying to change her?” Seth asked, applying some clear gel to the tube before he slowly and carefully began feeding the tube down Cloe’s throat.

“No,” he said, forcing his attention away from what Seth was doing to her.

“Then how did she get your blood?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, frustrated that he still didn’t know how he’d f**ked up so badly.

More than that, he was furious with himself for not figuring it out sooner. If he’d known that it was possible to turn someone, to save them from dying, from suffering unnecessary agonizing pain that wouldn’t go away no matter how many surgeries or pills doctors suggested, then he would have changed Marta as soon as she’d turned eighteen. He could have saved her, made up for all the time that she’d been trapped in that lab with him, forced to undergo experiments even though the doctors had figured out early on that she was nothing like him.

He could have saved her.

His gaze shot back to Cloe as a thought occurred to him. Maybe he still could. If Cloe pulled through this, he could ask her what happened and then he could-

“It’s too late,” Seth said quietly.

“You don’t know that,” Christofer bit out, refusing to look at the vampire and see the pity that matched his tone.

“There’s a reason why we don’t turn children or the elderly,” Seth began to explain while Christofer watched the clear tube turn red as blood flowed down the tube until it reached Cloe’s lips and he had to once again force himself to look away, his stomach turning at the reminder of what he’d done to her.

“When they’re changed,” Seth continued, “they’re trapped the way the world saw them as they were when they were mortal. That means that a child will forever remain a child even while his mind continues to develop into adulthood. The world will always see him as a child, weak and dependent and no amount of time will ever change that. He’ll never grow up.”

“Marta’s not a child,” he needlessly reminded the vampire through clenched teeth, trying to pretend that he didn’t know where Seth was going with this.

“I know that she’s not a child,” Seth explained softly as he double-checked Cloe’s line. “She’s an old woman whose body is struggling to make it through each day. Her body is broken down, her bones weak, her skin thin, her organs slowly failing and her mind is tired, unconsciously accepting the fate that awaits her. It’s the natural process and her body’s preparing itself for what’s coming.”

“I can stop it,” Christofer bit out, looking down at the proof that anything was possible.

“If your blood doesn’t kill her, there’s always a chance that she won’t survive the change. With her age and health problems it’s doubtful that she’d survive it and if she did you’d be condemning her to an existence of dying from old age.”

“You said it yourself, I’m not a vampire. My blood might affect her differently. She might-”

Seth chuckled without humor. “Might? Are you really willing to take that chance? You could end up killing her immediately or dooming her to a life of hell, living each day like she was dying, too weak to protect herself in our world and leaving her helpless to protect herself against humans if they discovered what she was.”

“I’d protect her,” he bit out through clenched teeth. He’d always protected her, that would never change, but if he could do this, if he could change her into what he was then he would never have to lose her.

“Do you really think that she wants to continue living like this? She’ll always be weak, always tired, making her more dependent on blood just to get through the day. Is that really what you want for your sister?”

No, it wasn’t.

He wanted Marta to have the chance at the life that she’d been robbed of. He wanted to go back in time and fix everything. He’d leave long before that night when the SS stormed their home and dragged them off, because they’d heard a rumor about a teenage boy who wouldn’t grow. He’d lead them away from his family and if they still caught him, then so be it as long as his family was spared the hell that Hitler’s men had unleashed on them.

His father never would have been shot in the back of the head while trying to protect him. His pregnant stepmother never would have been shipped off to a concentration camp, suffering unimaginable horrors before she’d finally perished. Marta would never have been forced to live with a lifetime of reminders from her time in that lab. All he wanted to do was fix this…

But it seemed that he couldn’t.

His sister had suffered her entire life and now that there might be a way to save her, he couldn’t use it because it was too late. There would be no saving Marta no matter how badly he wanted to and God, did he want to.

“Don’t waste what precious time you have left with your sister living with regrets,” Seth said after a slight pause, drawing his attention to the man that was looking down at Cloe with a haunted expression.

Christofer didn’t respond and Seth didn’t seem to expect him to. For a long time they watched over Cloe, quietly switching out the empty bags with fresh blood when the time came while Seth explained a few more things about their world to him. Within a few hours, Cloe’s color improved and her skin warmed while his mind reeled from everything he’d learned.

“Were you born this way or were you changed?” Seth asked while Christofer watched the vampire change out another bag, memorizing everything he did so that he wasn’t forced to feed Cloe by pouring blood down her throat later.

“Born,” he guessed, still not sure after all these years what went wrong.

Seth nodded, appearing to file that information away. “That definitely rules out vampire.”

“I thought we’d already established that,” Christofer said dryly, biting back a yawn when his gaze flickered to the clock and he noted the time.

“I’m going to have to leave soon,” Seth said, noting the time as well.

Christofer absently nodded as he picked up Cloe’s hand and brought it to his lips so that he could press a kiss against her palm.

“She might not be happy if she wakes up,” Seth said, pointing out the obvious.

“She’s going to be furious,” he murmured, already knowing that she was going to hate him and was damn well going to wake up from this.

“The shifter that you stole her from will-”

“She doesn’t belong to anyone,” he snapped, cutting the vampire off.

“Whether you like it or not, she was a shifter’s property. Someone marked this woman, claiming her as his property and that same someone is going to be pissed when he finds out that you stole her,” Seth snapped right back.

“I don’t f**king care,” he said, not giving a damn whether some f**king werewolf, and he’d been shocked when Seth had explained that they really existed, was mad that he’d changed Cloe.

The bastard could go f**k himself, because he’d be damned if he allowed anyone to treat Cloe like shit, especially since Seth had explained exactly what shifters did to their property. When he’d discovered what those marks on her back meant he’d barely been able to contain the rage inside him. The only thing that had helped was the promise he’d made to himself that one day he would find the shifter that had ripped her back to shreds so that he could tear the piece of shit apart with his bare hands.