Chapter Five
INTERLUDE
Anthony Hilker was clearly not getting what he wanted today.
He thought he had made progress—he’d even opened up. With emotions. Real emotions, too, real vulnerabilities. That was supposed to work.
And it had for a moment, he supposed. Isaiah had talked to him like he was a person and not a lab prop.
That had to mean something. Perhaps the bite had meant something, too.
Even if Isaiah hadn’t yearned for it, it had happened, though the amount of finagling that had been required of Anthony to even convince the beautiful idiot that it might be an option probably wasn’t the best sign.
And immediately after pulling his fangs out of Anthony’s skin, there he was, back to telling the boss’s kid how much he cared about them and missed them and wanted them in his arms, and probably some other mushy nonsense—Anthony was trying not to listen.
At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.
No matter what happened between the walls of those cells, Anthony had an actual job to do here.
One he’d wanted—accepted with glee, even, until their current test subject had been dragged through the door, crying and shaking, and he’d realized what that job would entail doing to the poor, gorgeous vampire. The work was going well now, at least.
Since the unholy gold acquisition, Anthony had been able to acquire a far larger number of samples per session, staying later and later into the following mornings to run all the required tests, and he was fairly sure he was onto something.
He squirted that something into the culture of near-black blood delicately removed from Isaiah’s veins that day. As he watched through the microscope, the cells slowly began to refold themselves, lightening one after the other…