Chapter 244: What are You? III
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He almost answered. Then stopped. His mouth closed again.
Lily saw that and this time there was frustration in her face alongside concern.
"Sekhmet."
He looked at her.
She folded her arms, not defensively, but because she was bracing herself now.
"At the auction, the blood in the room did not just move because you pushed energy through it. It reacted to you. It wanted you. The twins moved like extensions of your intent. The men from Iron House looked terrified in a way trained fighters do not look terrified unless they are seeing something they recognize as wrong." Her breath caught slightly, but she kept going. "And now you are telling me their blood carries your authority."
She shook her head.
"No more half-answers...
WHAT ARE YOU?"
The words were not cruel. They were final.
Sekhmet felt his pulse in his throat now. Not from battle. From exposure. From the old animal fear of being seen too closely.
He took one step back toward the window again without meaning to. Lily noticed that too. Her face softened at once, but she did not retreat from the demand.
"Why do you think I would run? If you tell me the truth?" she asked quietly.
He closed his eyes for one breath. Because there it was. Too close to the center. Too honest.
When he answered, the words came low.
"Because I do not know what I am to you after this."
The line hung there.
Lily went very still.
Sekhmet did not look away now. If she was going to reject the shape of him, then he would at least watch it happen.
"I know what people think when blood starts moving wrong," he said. "I know what old stories sound like. I know what monsters are supposed to be. I know what it looked like at the auction."
Lily’s lips parted slightly.
"I know what it looked like in that hall two nights ago," he went on. "I know what it meant when I bit through my enemy’s throat and did not stop until he was empty."
His voice roughened.
"And I know that after hearing all of that, some people would not look at me the same again."
Silence.
Long enough to hurt.
Then Lily said, very carefully, "You are afraid to lose me?"
Sekhmet frowned faintly. "No."
"Yes," she said. "Not in the simple way. But yes. You are afraid I will look at you and see only the worst shape of your truth."
He said nothing. Which was enough for the answer.
Lily took another slow step forward.
"You should have said that first."
Sekhmet laughed once without humor. "That would have been humiliating."
"It still is."
He almost smiled, but did not.
Lily’s face softened even more.
"I am not saying your answer will not matter," she said. "I am saying I would rather know the frightening truth from you than be protected by a lie. You know the feeling."
Something in his chest tightened painfully at that. Because she meant it.
Because she was giving him a chance not just to confess, but to be trusted while confessing.
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded once.
"Fine."
Lily waited.
Sekhmet moved back toward the table and placed both hands on it, grounding himself against the wood. The room felt warmer now. Or perhaps that was only his body preparing for something dangerous.
His voice, when it came next, was steadier than before.
"What I used against all my enemies and Iron House was not just power," he said. "It was blood authority."
Lily repeated it carefully. "Blood authority."
"Yes."
"Explain."
He almost told her that she was becoming Elena. Somehow that seemed unwise.
"It means blood within a certain range responds to me," he said. "My own blood most strongly. Spilled blood second. Blood inside those I am bound to more deeply. Blood inside strangers..." He paused. "That is harder. Limited. But not impossible under the right conditions."
Lily listened without blinking.
"So the blood in their bodies..."
"I can influence it."
Her face paled slightly.
Sekhmet saw that and every instinct in him recoiled.
There it is, he thought. There it is.
But Lily did not step back. She looked pale because the truth was pale-making. Not because she had decided to flee.
"How much influence?" she asked.
Sekhmet swallowed once. "Enough to wound. Enough to bind. Enough to push weakness into motion. Enough to use fear."
Lily’s voice went softer. "Enough to kill?"
He did not answer fast enough. That answered for him.
Lily closed her eyes for one brief second, then opened them again.
"And the twins?"
"They are more deeply tied. Their blood hears me more clearly than ordinary blood."
"Why?"
He looked at her. Then decided there was no gentler version left.
"Because they are mine. To be exact my creation."
Lily stared at him.
He continued before the silence twisted the sentence into something uglier than he meant.
"Not possessions in the simple sense. Not furniture. Not beasts. But yes, there is ownership in the bond. Blood ownership. Protective, controlling, mutual in some ways, unequal in others."
Lily’s expression moved through several things too fast to name neatly.
Understanding.
Alarm.
Thought.
Then another question.
"So when they moved with you..."
"They were feeling my will through the bond."
"And when they fought beside you—"
"They were answering it."
"And they trust you with that?"
Sekhmet’s eyes lowered. "They do now."
That answer carried history inside it. Lily heard the shape of that history and chose not to cut into it yet. She understood what Sekhmet had become.
Rather than saying it she asked again,
"What are you, Sekhmet?"
The question came again. No more side roads for him. No more polite language.
Not what happened to you.
Not what power is this.
Not what ability did you awaken.
The room seemed to hold its breath.
Sekhmet’s hands stayed on the table. He could feel the grain of the wood under his palms. Could hear the tiny shift in Lily’s breathing. Could feel his own heart hitting harder now, though his face was calm again. Too calm perhaps. The kind of calm that only arrived when one finally reached the point of no return.
He thought of the first awakening. The blood. The hunger. The system.
The way every step since then had moved him farther from ordinary mortal explanations.
He thought of Alex’s throat collapsing under his bite. Of the blood god’s will. Of the ancient taste that had changed his hunger.
Of the system windows and awakening percentages and the things he had not yet fully become.
He thought of Lily standing there asking not for safety, but for truth.
And he gave it.
When he spoke, his voice was low enough that the sentence felt less like conversation and more like something being taken out of a locked room.
"I am blood itself."
Lily did not move. The world did not move.
Even the soft daylight at the curtains seemed to pause around the words.
Sekhmet lifted his gaze fully to hers.
No smile.
No defense.
No attempt to soften it after the fact.
Just the truth standing between them now in its cold, impossible shape.
"I do not just use blood," he said. "I do not just manipulate it. I am becoming something that belongs to it and makes it belong in return."
Lily’s lips parted, but no sound came yet.
Sekhmet went on, because once begun, stopping would be cowardice.
"That is why the twins answered me. That is why the blood moved at the auction. That is why Iron House men looked at me the way they did. That is why Alex died the way he died."
His eyes held hers.
"And the reason why I was afraid to tell you...."
Lily stood there in silence, staring at him as the last of the old uncertainty in the room died away.
"I AM... A VAMPIRE.
I became strong by DRINKING BLOOD."