Once Bitten, Twice Burned

“Let me go, Ryder,” she gritted as she tried to twist her hand out of his grasp.

When he didn’t let her go, Sabine’s skin began to warm beneath his touch.

Impossible.

Her eyes were still dark brown. Showing no flames. Only fear and fury.

“Where will you go?” he asked her, and Ryder damn well didn’t let her go. “To your parents? Will you rush to them and place them in danger, too?”

“Aren’t they already in danger?” Sabine whispered, voice tight with pain. “Because of me?”

They were. Humans were always too vulnerable. Too easily hurt. Too easily killed.

“I have to warn them,” she said as her shoulders straightened.

Fine. She could warn them. Then he’d get them out of the country until his battles were done.

Ryder nodded slowly. “I’m coming with you.” Because she could be walking straight into another trap.

He knew Grayson watched them far too closely. He turned toward his friend. “Find her brother.” Tracks were always left behind. When it came to following a blood trail, Grayson was second only to Ryder.

Grayson nodded. His gaze swept over Sabine once more. Friend or no friend, if his stare lingered much longer, he was going to get clawed.

But, wisely, Grayson turned and headed back down the stairs.

Sabine hesitated. “Will he find Rhett?”

“Yes.” But find him alive . . . maybe not.

“Don’t tell my parents what I am,” she said, swallowing.

Rage hummed beneath his skin. “Ashamed?” The public knew about vampires. They weren’t just a myth any longer. Some humans loved the idea of becoming immortal. Some were all too eager to offer up their blood to a vamp.

But some thought vamps were abominations. That they needed to be sent straight to hell.

She didn’t speak. Just stared up at him.

His lips twisted. “There’s no point in hating what you are.” What he’d made her. A sliver of what could have been guilt pierced his gut. She didn’t want to burn again. She begged for my help.

Only he was starting to wonder . . . was she fully a vampire? Or by giving her his blood, by forcing all of those exchanges between them, had he made her into something else entirely?

Transformation, not birth.

He had to find out for certain.

“Why not?” she whispered back even as she pulled away from him and headed down the stairs. “Don’t you hate what you are?”

Her words surprised him. “No, love, I don’t hate what I am.” Why would she believe that?

Frowning, Sabine glanced back at him.

He smiled, knowing his fangs would look sharp and deadly. “I love being the monster in the room.” He’d never been one of those fools who railed against the gift of immortality. He had power. Strength that humans could only wish to possess.

Why bitch and moan about that? Why consider vampirism a curse when it could be a blessing?

As her frown deepened, a faint furrow appeared between her brows.

“Soon you’ll love the power just as much as I do,” he promised her. She just had to stop thinking like a human.

She wasn’t prey any longer. She was the predator. At the top of the food chain.

And now it was time for anyone hunting her to realize just how powerful Sabine had become.

He was tied to a chair. Bound hand and foot with thick, rough ropes. Rhett jerked against his bonds, twisting and trying to break free. “What the hell is going on?”

Dim light spilled across the room. An old, dust-filled room that looked like it had to be in some abandoned building. The small bit of light came from a lantern, the kind you used when you went camping.

The kind Vaughn usually took when they went out into the swamp.

And Vaughn—that crazy jerk Rhett had mistakenly thought was his friend—was standing against the right wall, holding a gun in his hand.

Vaughn’s jaw tightened as he stared back at Rhett. “Your sister . . . she’s not the same anymore.”

Turns out I’m not exactly human. Sabine’s soft words drifted through Rhett’s mind. The fire had erupted before he’d been able to question her more, but she’d been wrong. She was the same.

She was his sister. He’d been by her side when she learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. He’d been there the day she broke her arm because she’d tried to follow him up Old Man Lawson’s oak tree. He’d been there when that handsy jerk Johnny had tried to get past first base with—

“Did you ever wonder about Sabine’s birth parents?” Vaughn asked him. The gun’s barrel was pointed at the ground, not at Rhett. At least, it wasn’t pointed at him yet.