Her challenge stayed with me as we sat through the council meeting at the Great Dome. She left me with a choice – continue to find turmoil in deciding Ashley’s plight or completely abandon the man I became when Sofia was around and just give in to my predatory nature. Somehow, though the latter seemed inviting, a part of me was still fighting against it. The part that was aware I had a choice, and therefore, a responsibility for the consequences of my decisions.

“Derek!” Vivienne snapped me out of my self-introspective bout. “Everyone’s here. We’re all waiting for you to begin.”

As usual, Eli was at the stand, presiding over the session. Apparently, he was already done with the introductions and all eyes were on me to begin speaking.

I straightened in my seat, attempting to focus my mind on the meeting that I had called. “The human population of The Shade is far too great. How did it get this way?”

“With all due respect,” Xavier spoke up from his seat “I don’t see why this is a problem. They are not trained to fight. They don’t have any weapons or any means to procure them. We can easily quell any attempt they make to defy us. The last human uprising was over four hundred years ago and that was a massacre.”

“And you would willingly have another massacre? Do we not have enough blood on our hands?” It was Liana, Cameron’s wife, who spoke up.

“We’re vampires, Liana.” Xavier smirked. “Human blood is shed on this island every single day. It is how our kind survives. Let’s not pretend to have righteous indignation over such things, simply because we can’t afford to have it.”

“We cannot have another uprising.” My voice was enough to silence everyone. “We are already threatened by external forces – other vampire covens wanting what we have here at The Shade, the hunters still in relentless pursuit of us. Considering how many human abductions we’ve been doing, it won’t take long until the hunters find us out. We cannot risk a rebellion from inside our own walls.”

“What does the prince suggest we do then?” Eli leaned over the metal banisters lining the stand.

“For now, the abductions must stop. All scouts are going to be recalled and trained as guards. All human blood we require will come from the humans already on the island. We cannot risk the hunters finding us out.” Even as the words came out, I was reminded of the risk I took when I let Sofia and her friend escape. Has she blinded me so much that I’d forgotten my duty to protect The Shade at all cost?

The noise that erupted across the round hall drowned out my thoughts as objections and defenses were thrown by practically every member of the Elite present at the dome.

“How do we survive then?!” A voice cried out. “We must feed.”

An image of Ashley flashed through my mind and my gut clenched. Yes. We must, mustn’t we? I shook the thought away. “Where do the glasses of blood come from?”

Ever since I woke up, I’d been given a daily ration of blood. It wasn’t as succulent as fresh blood pumped straight from a beating heart, but it served well to satisfy a vampire’s wanton cravings. I never thought to ask where they came from until then.

Again, like clockwork, they closed their mouths to hear me speak. It was something that’d always baffled me before – how I, younger than most of them in both natural and vampire years, was able to command such respect from the Elite.

This time, however, it was different. It wasn’t just me who caused their silence. It was my question. “Well? How do we have such a supply of blood?”

I noticed how Eli’s knuckles grew paler from the way he was clutching the metal banister. The way Vivienne’s fingers more tightly gripped the armrests of her recliner caught my attention too.

“Vivienne?”

She twisted the recliner my way, the round platform her seat stood on allowing her to look upon my face. “The human population now is a lot less than it was about half a century ago. There were rumors of rebellion and the humans were growing restless and dissatisfied by their living conditions.”

I waved a hand at her, a motion for her to continue speaking.

“Father called for a culling.”

It was easy to see from the expression on Vivienne’s face that the incident didn’t bring forth any pleasant memories. I wondered what was going through her mind. My twin sister… forever an enigma…

“A culling?”

Eli came to her rescue when he, in his usual expressionless manner, laid down the rest of the facts for me. “All humans who proved to be of no worth – the weak ones, the sick ones, the ones who could not serve – were slaughtered, their blood drained and preserved in chilling chambers for future consumption.”

“Were so many killed that the blood lasts even to this day?”

“A great number were lost, yes,” Xavier chuckled. “But we never had much use for the preserved blood when we were always brought a fresh supply from the abductions.”

“Well, we have use of it now, don’t we?” I challenged him. “My decision stands. There shall be no more abductions. If you must feed, feed on the blood of the dead.”

“And when that runs out?” Xavier was never intimidated by me and was not afraid to show it. He was making it clear through the expression on his face and the tone of his voice that he wasn’t pleased with what I was doing.

Vivienne’s jaw twitched when my eyes met hers. She looked at me like she would a dying man, like she was about to lose me. I hardened myself under her disapproving glare.