richellemead-vampireacademy01-vampireacademy-110824015328-phpapp02

"Sure," he said. "Why else go? For the good of your soul?”
"Whatever," said Lissa, who clearly had a different opinion. "I'll leave you alone then.”
"Wait," he said again. He didn't seem to want her to go. "I'll make you a deal. You can hang out
here too if you tell me one thing.”
"What?" She glanced back at him.
He leaned forward. "Of all the rumors I heard about you today—and believe me, I heard plenty,
even if no one actually told them to me—there was one that didn't come up very much. They
dissected everything else: why you left, what you did out there, why you came back, the
specialization, what Rose said to Mia, blah, blah, blah. And in all of that, no one, no one ever
questioned that stupid story that Rose told about there being all sorts of fringe humans who let
you take blood.”
She looked away, and I could feel her cheeks starting to burn. "It's not stupid. Or a story.”
He laughed softly. "I've lived with humans. My aunt and I stayed away after my parents…died.
It's not that easy to find blood." When she didn't answer, he laughed again. "It was Rose, wasn't
it? She fed you.”
A renewed fear shot through both her and me. No one at school could know about that. Kirova
and the guardians on the scene knew, but they'd kept that knowledge to themselves.
"Well. If that's not friendship, I don't know what it is," he said.
"You can't tell anyone," she blurted out.
This was all we needed. As I'd just been reminded, feeders were vampire-bite addicts. We
accepted that as part of life but still looked down on them for it. For anyone else—especially a
dhampir—letting a Moroi take blood from you was almost, well, dirty. In fact, one of the
kinkiest, practically pornographic things a dhampir could do was let a Moroi drink blood during
sex.
Lissa and I hadn't had sex, of course, but we'd both known what others would think of me
feeding her.