Once Bitten, Twice Burned

They were in the stairwell. “Don’t worry, love, I won’t let you.”

She wanted to believe him.

But she couldn’t.

CHAPTER NINE

Fuck, f**k, f**k!

Ryder kicked open the heavy, gleaming silver door, figuring that the room inside would be a lab. A narrow bed waited in the middle of the room under bright lights. Not so much a bed as an exam table. Trays of instruments were scattered around the room.

Handcuffs?

I hate this place.

But he had to take care of Sabine and he had to do it now.

Carefully, he put her on the bed. His teeth clenched as a pain-filled gasp slipped from her lips. The werewolf—yeah, that guy who’d attacked her had been a freaking werewolf, just one not quite like any shifter that Ryder had ever seen before—had done a number on her. She was bleeding out right before his eyes.

“I want you to drink my blood,” he told her. Ryder caught her chin. Forced her gaze up to his. That gaze was so weak. No flames. Just darkness. “Sabine,” he snapped out her name, trying to force her focus back to him.

Only she didn’t focus on him.

She didn’t focus on anything. Her eyes began to roll back into her head. No! He used his teeth to tear open his wrist, then he shoved his hand toward her mouth.

“Vampire . . .” A woman’s voice sighed out the title. “This didn’t work before. Why would you think it would save her now?”

His head whipped to the left. A redhead stood in the doorway. A female with cold, perfect features wearing a white lab coat. Correction, a bloodstained white coat.

The woman sagged against the wall. Then she tried to push forward as she took a step toward him.

“Who are you?” Ryder demanded even as he kept his wrist at Sabine’s mouth. He wasn’t giving up. He’d never give up on her.

“I’m Vivian . . . Dr. Vivian Sutton . . . and I can save your phoenix. You . . . help me . . .” Vivian offered, breath heaving and her face tightening with a flash of pain, “I’ll help you.”

Ryder’s gaze fell back at Sabine’s still face.

“The tears . . . are they still on her cheeks?” The doctor tried to keep her voice flat, but Ryder heard the crack of emotion. Desperate hope. “I saw . . . the footage from the security camera. She cried for you.” Her footsteps shuffled closer. “Are the tear tracks . . . still there?”

He didn’t answer. He knew what the woman wanted.

The tears were the cure. Wyatt’s words.

And Sabine’s tears—they healed me. When he’d been in that hallway, it hadn’t been her blood that had brought him back. It had been her tears. So that part of the phoenix story was true, too. The tears of a phoenix could heal.

He glanced over at Vivian. “You’re dying,” he said to the doctor. There was so much blood pouring off her. She probably only had minutes left.

Her chin lifted. “So, is . . . she . . .”

Sabine’s lips feathered over Ryder’s palm. Maybe she isn’t.

“The tears . . . they can’t, won’t heal a phoenix’s own injuries, but they can heal me.” The woman came closer, leaving drops of blood in her wake. “They can heal me . . . then I can heal her.”

The fingers of his left hand slid over Sabine’s cheek. So soft. Sweet silk. He’d missed her so much. A constant ache had filled his chest.

It wasn’t about Sabine being some kind of second chance at redemption for him. It was about Sabine being—

Mine.

“The male . . . he would never cry—”

“No matter how many times you killed him, huh?” Ryder threw at her.

Sabine’s lips moved against him again. Then her teeth—sharper than he remembered, bit into his wrist.

Yes!

But he didn’t let the doctor see his relief.

“She was different . . .” Those footsteps kept shuffling closer. “Sabine cried each time she died.”

The f**king bitch dared to tell him that?

“She begged for us to save her . . . Sometimes, she’d even beg for you.”

His teeth snapped together. The woman was digging her own grave with her clinical, sadistic words.

“Then she’d cry when she rose.” Her breath heaved out. The scent of blood deepened. “Maybe it’s because she was so young. The first phoenix we captured, hell, we can’t . . . even tell how old he is. The Immortal,” Vivian whispered.

The Immortal? Was she talking about Cain?

“He didn’t break. Subject Thirteen . . . didn’t break, either . . .”