Once Bitten, Twice Burned

“Too late.” Her stark whisper. “Because Genesis made me burn, over and over again.”

He paled and seemed to age ten years before her eyes. He jerked a shaking hand through his hair. “N-no. They were . . . supposed to help you.”

A scream echoed in her mind. Her scream. The cry she’d made each time they’d killed her.

Her eyes couldn’t look away from her father.

You did this to me.

The truth was right there on his face.

She’d never expected this betrayal. Not from him. He was her dad. Her hero. The man who had protected her all her life.

He was the man who gave me to them.

“Go outside, Sabine,” Ryder said, his voice a lethal rumble of sound.

Her father shook his head. “Let me explain . . .”

“You didn’t tell Mom what you’d done.” She had a heart attack. No, her mother hadn’t known. If she’d known, she wouldn’t have been so shaken that she wound up in the hospital. “You didn’t tell Rhett.” He wouldn’t have been so frantic to find her.

“I wanted to help you!”

Ryder was in front of her, blocking her view of her father. He stared down at her, his face implacable. “Go onto the porch. Wait for me there.”

Her heart was breaking. “Why?” The question was stark. “So you can kill my father?”

“Yes.” No lies. No denial.

“Sabine!” Her father’s desperate cry. She’d never heard him sound desperate before. Happy. Loving. Even angry a time or ten when she and Rhett pushed him too far. But never desperate. Until now.

She didn’t look at him. Just stared up at Ryder. She’d trusted her father, always. “But . . . he’s my father.” The words she left unspoken were . . . He wouldn’t do this to me. There’s a mistake. My father wouldn’t have let them hurt me. He protects me. Keeps me safe. Always.

That was a father’s job, right?

Not to . . . not to let his daughter get killed. Tortured. Over and over again.

“Sometimes your family members are the ones you need to fear the most.” There was a whisper of something dark in Ryder’s voice. A stir of memory in his eyes. But, right then, Sabine couldn’t see well enough past her own pain to unlock his secrets.

He gave her a little push. “Outside.”

“I can’t . . .” She couldn’t let her father die. Wouldn’t kill him. Even if. . . Sabine rushed around Ryder and grabbed her father’s arms. She shook him and was aware that his bones felt so fragile to her, brittle. “Why? Why did you do this to me?”

There were tears in his eyes. His hands twisted and grabbed onto hers. “Genesis . . . they were supposed to help people like you.”

People like you. “They hurt me, Dad. They killed me.”

His eyes seemed to sink into his face. “I saw the stories on the news. Until then I-I didn’t know—”

“You’re the one who told them where to find me.” He’d sent the men who came for her in the night. The men who’d drugged her. Kidnapped her. Tossed her in a cell with a starving vampire and watched as she screamed.

That vampire was right behind her now. She could feel his fury. He wanted to rip out her father’s throat.

Part of her wanted the same thing.

“You sent me to die,” she told him.

But her father shook his head, his desperation plain to see. “I sent you to live. I knew what was—I knew what you were, yes, dammit, I knew. And I knew you couldn’t stay that way. The fire would take you over. Drive you insane until all you wanted to do was kill and burn. But Genesis, I-I thought they could help you, baby! That was all I wanted—for someone to help you.”

“No one can help me,” she said, voice breaking. “They never could.”

Her shoulders hunched. The home she’d loved for so long suddenly felt foreign to her. “I was . . . I was coming to tell you that you needed to leave town. The people at Genesis . . . not all of them are gone. I was told”—she stopped to lick lips gone bone-dry—“I was told that Rhett might be targeted for death.”

Her father’s jaw had gone slack with shock. “But Rhett’s human . . .”

And you’re not.

The words hung in the air. They didn’t need to be spoken.

“Genesis never cared about collateral damage,” Ryder said, voice rumbling.

No, they hadn’t. “I was supposed to do a job for them. I didn’t.” She’d let Wyatt die. She hoped he was in hell. “So they sent someone to kill Rhett.”