Baird remained perfectly poised in his seat within the VIP box, one leg elegantly crossed over the other, his gloved hand resting on the silver-topped cane he hadn't needed for centuries. His eyes were locked forward, watching the stage, though his mind had drifted... elsewhere.
Kael.
That name again.
The way
Scherezade deWinter
had spoken it. The way Kael always moved. Confident. Careless. But those
eyes. Not the color—though he noted the stormy gray was rare—but the
weight behind them. The way they scanned a room, like they
knew it already. As if every person was a piece on a board, and he was just deciding how to break them.
Why did those eyes look so…
familiar?
Baird narrowed his own crimson gaze, tongue dragging slowly across the inside of his fanged cheek. Something about that man hadn't sat right from the start. And now, he knew why.
A sudden thought struck like lightning across his otherwise calm expression.
Kael. Sommer.
The realization crawled over his skin like cold flame.
"…
Bloodline…" he muttered beneath his breath.
The club's sound design drowned out his whisper, but the clarity of it rang in his bones. Cousins. That had to be it. The resemblance wasn't physical—it was
intuitive. Their presence was old. Noble.
Dangerous. The kind of danger born in lineage, not experience.
His lips twitched into a subtle, serpentine grin.
Well then, he thought,
looks like I'll need to dig through more than club records. I'll need genetic logs… family histories… maybe even graveyards.
As if on cue, a figure appeared beside his table. Pax.
The slender Mirialan chef-waiter from earlier, still wearing his white half-apron, bowed slightly and placed a covered dish on Baird's private serving table. The dome was bone-white porcelain, glistening with condensation, a single crimson droplet sliding down its curve.
Pax said nothing. Just stood there—anxious, maybe. Or curious.
Baird uncrossed his legs, then lifted the dome with a graceful flick of his fingers.
The aroma hit first—rich, iron-sweet, and primal. It was a cut of
raw rancor flank, sliced thin and artfully arranged on a bed of frozen black seaweed from the planet
Khorm. The meat was marbled with blue veins, and each sliver glistened with a
crimson reduction—porcine in base, but Pax had likely spiked it with something extra. Pheromone enhancers, perhaps.
Or blood from something
living.
In the center of the dish sat a single raw
Tarsunt heart, still pulsing faintly, preserved through sub-zero alchemy. It quivered as if remembering fear.
Baird's smile widened.
"
Delightful," he murmured, eyes gleaming.
Pax swallowed. "Your... companion requested it be tailored to your
particular tastes, sir."
Baird's gaze snapped up, sharp as a blade.
"
Arq?" he asked.
Pax nodded. "He oversaw the plating himself."
Baird chuckled low in his throat, the sound unsettling and warm at once. "
Tell him I'm... touched."
Then, with impossible elegance, Baird lifted one of the rancor slices with two fingers, rolled it, and placed it gently on his tongue. He didn't chew. He let the blood speak.
And all the while, he kept thinking of Kael.
And the strange, sinking feeling that the galaxy had just whispered a secret in his ear… one he might bleed for.
