“So like I was saying, I think you should let us share a room,” Penelope found herself saying, standing in the center of Zagan’s office.

Suddenly she felt lightheaded, and the room swayed before she caught herself on his desk. The vampire was standing on the opposite side of the room looking at his map, ignoring her it seemed. She didn’t remember how she got here or how this conversation started.

“You wish to share a room with the Luna?” he asked without looking at her. “Won’t that seem odd to her when she views you as her doctor?”

“I… um,” she started to answer, though her head was fuzzy and wasn’t allowing her to concentrate. Was that what she was saying? She felt like she could pass out, but that was the last thing she wanted to happen in his presence.

“You can sit down if you must,” he told her, still studying the map.

“No, that’s okay,” she said tremulously.

“Penelope, sit down,” he commanded.

She was too lightheaded. He had drank too much from her. Inwardly, he was cursing himself. The Winter was important, and he didn’t want to ruin this opportunity to use her. When he compelled people though, it wasn’t unusual for him to drink until they simply were no more.

It was like an addiction—the way the compelled ones became supple and entranced, no terror or disgust making them flinch away. Their heart rates stayed even and calm, their blood warm and welcoming of the intrusion that often lured them peacefully to their deaths. But luckily he was able to stop with Penelope before her blood loss reached a critical amount.

He heard her stubbornness finally give way when she lowered herself into his chair, and when she rested her head on his desk, he felt an unusual pang of regret.

“Are you all right?” he found himself asking, a softness in his tone he wasn’t accustomed to hearing from himself.

It must be because he was drunk on her blood—her emotions were buoying him up into the spectrum of feeling that he was usually immune to. Since this last harvest, he had been keeping his energy up with more blood than usual, and it was making him feel too much.

“I am just tired,” she murmured. And then she fell asleep. On his desk.

He groaned and considered moving her, but he didn’t trust himself. He may end up finishing what was left of her. Instead, he went to find the lycans who helped him with castle matters to instruct them to bring both of the females food. Penelope’s blood pressure was not so low that it should have caused her to lose consciousness, which likely meant her blood sugar was low. She would need a snack once she awoke.

Each of the lycans Brandt and Emmett could be considered house or groundskeepers for Zagan, but he very rarely called on them. They would come in and clean occasionally and take care of little tasks that Zagan found to be too menial to bother with himself.

While the vampire occasionally enjoyed a fine meal, it was not common. But like most of the stray lycans Zagan had gotten to know on his island, both of the males were excellent cooks. There was something about lycans and their enjoyment of good food—it puzzled him, but then their kind was very connected to the pleasure of their physicality. They enjoyed all that could be experienced with their senses. It it what made them living, he supposed.

And maybe that is part of why they held judgment against the alyko. As genetically more similar to their fae ancestor La Loba, the alyko were able to manipulate that which could not be normally witnessed with the senses—things like the Veiled that couldn’t be scented, touched, tasted, or seen in the regular ways.

That someone like the alyko, or more powerfully so the fae, would be able to manipulate energy and interact with multiple dimensional fields was obvious to Zagan, because he was not so entrenched in the physical experience of life like lycans were. He knew of the multiple dimensions. The portal in which this island and castle and containment existed was an example of one—a kind of bubble in space and time that had been created to exist apart from others.

But even the lycans who routinely lived here with him, passing in and out of the portal as needed, had a hard time wrapping their heads around it. For example, the sun never went down on the island. Time itself tended to behave much differently—occasionally speeding up or slowing down but usually remaining rather stagnant. It may seem as if days had gone by here when in fact they hadn’t. The lycan and alyko body would need to eat and rest, the vampire would need to drink, so there was a consistent depletion of energy that would seem to indicate time passing, but it was not so—at least not in the familiar way.

He found it curious how Penelope had been experiencing these fluctuations while he had her in the castle. She referred to night and day and insisted on having a fire in her room at ‘night’—even apparently experiencing a temperature difference during this duration she identified as night—but since she had remained in the castle, she was not yet aware that there were no perceivable nights here. It was as if her body continued on with its expectations of time. It was fascinating, and he realized since he was not around alyko in containment, he had not appreciated how this strange phenomenon of the portal affected them.

“Brandt, I need you to see that the alyko upstairs are fed well,” he said upon entering the kitchen and finding the young lycan rifling through the pantry.

“Yes, sir,” the male called and then reappeared in the doorway to the pantry. “Anything special that I should make?”

“The doctor will need juice and something high in sugar. She is in my office. But make whatever you wish for their meal. I am sure your ideas for it will be better than mine,” he told him.

“Would you like the greenhouse reconverted?” Brandt asked before Zagan could disappear on him.

Zagan thought about it. Now that the Luna was in Nedra’s cage, it was unlikely he would have her returning to the infirmary.

“Yes, have Emmett move the plants back in,” he replied.. When Brandt appeared ready to ask him something else trivial, he quickly added, “That is all for now,” and swiftly disappeared from there.