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Albertson huffed, indignant. “I told you—”
“Yes, I fucking heard you,” Soren shouts over him, slamming a fist on the table. “I’ve come to find, much to my absolute fucking shock, every single male in my Mate’s life except for one has let her down over and fucking over again. Every fucking one of you has either perpetrated her abuse, taken part in it, or watched silently while it happened, like fucking cowards.”
“My children—” Albertson turns his pleading eyes on me, and I let out a sardonic laugh, baring my teeth in a smile nothing short of feral.
“Don’t look to me for fucking absolution, Doc,” I hiss. “You won’t find a knight to rescue you. Only a man ready to burn the world to ash for his Mate—And you’re standing in the kindling.”
“Give me one reason why we shouldn’t let our Mate light you on fire herself,” Soren demands. “Explain to me why we should let you continue breathing.”
Albertson gulps. “I was offered Sanctuary,” he argues weakly.
“As much as I appreciate our leader’s reasons for offering you Sanctuary, the only people who know it’s been extended officially are in this room. Strange coincidence, wouldn’t you say?” Dax hums, spinning back and forth lazily in his chair.
“I haven’t fed directly from a vein in decades,” Vae adds, lips tipping up in a terrifying smile. “He won’t offer much in the way of sustenance, but maybe presenting Idril with his drained corpse will help with groveling.”
“I—“
I chime in to keep the ball rolling. “We could give him to Shade and see how fast a wild panther can maul a Beta.”
“No, please. You don’t—”
“Ohh, that would be fun,” Dax replies, his eyes lighting up. “I wonder if panthers eat humans after they kill them. Might be an interesting exper—”
Albertson slams his hands on the table, hard enough to slosh the whiskey in our glasses. “Jonathan wants immortality from Idril’s blood, and I’ve figured out how to isolate that part of her DNA. If he discovers how to do it, we are all, and I mean all of us, seriously fucked!”
Silence falls over the room, and everyone's attention falls on the Doctor. He swallows and absently wipes sweat from his brow, cringing when he realizes he has the undivided attention of an entire room full of very pissed-off Alphas.
It takes everything in me not to scream at him to explain. What in the actual fuck does he mean by immortality?
“I told you I don’t know what Idril is, and that’s the truth,” he croaks between nervous breaths. “But whatever she is, she’s immortal. Vampires can live to see a thousand and some slightly longer. Wolven tend to live about half as long. But Idril…” He shakes his head, like he can’t believe what he’s about to say, despite having plenty of time to come to terms with it.
“If my calculations are correct, and I have no reason to believe they aren’t, then Idril could easily live three to five times longer than the oldest known vampire. That means thousands of years, easily. Her blood doesn’t decay because it doesn’t age.”
He turns to Daxen, who looks exactly how I feel—shell-shocked. Albertson tilts his head, frowning. “Surely this is something you’ve considered. It is, after all, the simplest explanation.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume Daxen hadn’t, in fact, considered that as a reason Idril’s blood hasn't decayed. Either that, or there’s another reason why he hasn’t blinked for three straight minutes.
“We don’t age, either,” Gav argues, frowning.
“That’s actually not true. You do age. Just very, very slowly. You look to be in your early thirties now, but in five hundred years you’ll look closer to forty. This is well-documented among vampires.”
Gav’s frown deepens, but he nods in acceptance. “Yes. I suppose you’re right about that.”
“Idril won’t age at all,” Albertson says, voice thick. “I don’t know at what age she quit aging, but I believe it was when she turned twenty-one. It happened within the last two years, certainly, based on my research. And somehow, Jonathan figured it out. He saw my report on Idril’s blood, but he thought it was Annalise’s, thank the Fates. Still, he now knows the gene is there. He’s convinced I’ve succeeded in discovering how to ‘wake up’ her other dormant genes, and if I can do that, then…”
Groaning, I roll my shoulders back to try and work out the tension. Soren’s expression is tight, and I’m sure we’re both thinking the same thing.
What Albertson just told us has astronomical implications. This whole time, we’ve thought that Idril would take on my lifespan, and Soren would do the same. Both of them aging at the same rate as a vampire.
But if Idril is the closest thing we’ve seen to immortal…
Soren’s expression slowly relaxes, and so do his shoulders. His eyes brighten, and he leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. The smirk he aims my way is full of mischief.
“Good damn thing I like you, leech.”
I throw my head back and bark out a laugh so loud the Doctor audibly gasps.
Well… Fuck.
