“I want to know,” she said.
Tarian inclined his head. “I was only a few decades old when I fought in the wars with my father.”
She exhaled out of habit. “Well, hell. I always did have a thing for older men.”
The waitress arrived with Tarian’s burger, and Melissa welcomed the respite. Her father had battled the necromancers. The idea that the two men currently most important in her life could have met years before she was even born made her head hurt.
“You must have hated us,” she said.
Tarian’s eyes flicked to her before he turned his attention back to his meal. “Yes,” he agreed. “For many years.”
And now? But she couldn’t voice the question fearing what the answer would be.
“Before I came into your life, had you ever met a necromancer?”
She ran her nail along the chrome lining of the table as she contemplated owing him her own answers about the past. “No,” she breathed.
Lucian had been very careful to keep her protected when she was younger, and by the time she’d grown, the modern world had exploded. Necromancers had been pushed further and further back into the less populated areas of the country.
“But you feared us.”
“Given the history it’s only natural that—”
“Yes or no, Melissa.”
“Yes,” she said, lifting her eyes to his.
“Because you were taught we were evil, without ever having the chance to form your own opinion. Can you imagine what it’s like growing up as a necromancer child?” He took a bite of his burger.
“You can’t blame us for fearing creatures who can command us like puppet masters.”
“Perhaps not,” he replied. “But I can blame you for turning the rest of the supernatural world against us. Our powers only work on the death races, and yet even living, flesh and blood immortals fear us. Against a werewolf I’d be almost as useless as a human.” Tarian pointed a french fry at her. “The fact of the matter is, vampires rule our world, and your prejudice became everyone’s prejudice. We never had a chance.”
“The necromancers haven’t exactly been a peaceful race,” she said. “That I’m sitting in this diner is proof of that.”
“Where did being peaceful ever get us?” he asked. “Whether we behaved or not, we were condemned.”
Melissa turned away from him, not liking the uncomfortable doubt worming its way into her mind. She remembered the child at Dominic’s ranch and the sad resignation in her eyes. Had the vampires been too zealous in their effort to protect themselves?
“Preaching world peace, are you?” she asked.
A sardonic smile twisted his lips. “We’ve spent days together without any mortal injury. Surely that proves our two kinds can coexist.”
“You’re quite the idealist to have been caught up fighting wars.”
A bleak hopelessness shuttered his eyes. “It took me many centuries to come to my beliefs,” he said. “When the wars were fought, I thought the only way we could survive was to eradicate your people.”
A beat of silence passed as she pondered his words. Giving in to the urge to ask her most pressing question, Melissa leaned forward, crossing her arms on the table. “Why did you pursue me?”
Tarian blinked. “What?”
“You wouldn’t tell me before. Tell me now.”
No expression passed over his face as he regarded her in silence.
“I bullied Abbey into setting up our date, but for it to work, you had to agree,” she continued. “You knew who I was. Hell, even if you hadn’t recognized me, you’re as old as the hills. You’d have been able to sense me the second you walked through the doors. So why did we ever end up at Celeste’s?”
He polished off the last of his burger as she wondered whether he’d yield this time. When they’d first started this trip he’d been right—she wouldn’t have believed a word he said. But now… She didn’t know when things had changed, but they had. Whatever answer he gave, good or bad, she’d believe it.
“I knew there’d be complications,” he said.
“But you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Pushing his plate away, he met her steady gaze. “Because I was serious when I said I wanted to find my mate, and I have never, not once in nearly seven hundred years, reacted to a woman the way I did to you.”
Her jaw dropped. Her heart clenched. He hadn’t meant his words the way they’d sounded. Couldn’t possibly.
But hadn’t she felt the exact same way when they’d first locked eyes across the pink-and-white waiting room?