“Cassie, I have to leave for a few minutes.”
What? They’d just gotten there.
“You’ll be safe here, and I’ll be back soon.”
The floor creaked. He was actually going to leave her. Her shoulders hunched. “Don’t.”
Tension seemed to fill the air.
“Please don’t leave me right now.” She couldn’t look at him. She had her eyes squeezed shut so she wouldn’t have to look at anything, but in her mind, she could see Jon. The dark shadow that had been blood as it spread over his chest. He’d looked so surprised.
Cassie, will you marry me?
He’d asked her that . . . what seemed like a lifetime ago, but it had been just two years ago.
And yes, once, she’d thought about walking down the aisle with him. Maybe having a child.
Tonight, she’d killed him.
Dante wasn’t speaking.
She knew what he wanted to do. Go back. Make sure that he destroyed that facility. He wanted to burn the place to the ground. If he did that, if he hurt the humans inside, wouldn’t he be a monster, too?
Weren’t they already monsters?
“I can’t stop seeing him,” she whispered.
Then it wasn’t the floor that creaked. It was the bed. The mattress dipped, and she realized that Dante had crawled into the bed with her.
Her breath stilled in her lungs.
His hand came up and lightly trailed over her arm. The warmth of his touch seemed to banish some of her chill.
“What did he do to you?”
The usual. Strapped her to a table. Took her blood. Her DNA. Samples from her bones and—“What they always do to the people that Genesis wants to experiment on.”
“You aren’t an experiment.”
Yes, she was. There was a reason her blood was poison to vampires. “I’ve been an experiment since I was eight years old.” Her father had never seen her as a child.
He’d seen her as a weapon.
“I had a brother once,” she whispered. He was dead, too . . . though she’d discovered his death only recently. Before he’d died, she’d learned that he’d become . . . twisted . . . just like their father.
Would she become that way, too? Was she already?
“My father gave him the . . . same injections that he’d given to me.” At first, anyway. Later, she’d been given separate treatments.
Because she’d died during one of those experiments, they’d had to change up her dosage levels.
“I remember . . .” Her voice came out quiet and husky.
“We were tossed into a pit with vampires once. My father wanted to see if they’d come after us, or if our poison blood would keep them away.”
Dante’s arm curled around her, and he pulled her back against the cradle of his body. His warmth surrounded her. Made her feel safe.... when she knew safety was a lie.
“Did they bite you?”
“One did, but when he died, no one else touched me. They didn’t bite my brother. The vampires . . . were different, enhanced.” How she hated that word. They’d been soldiers. Volunteers who’d been given a trip to hell.
Dante’s hold tightened around her.
“That was the first time I ever killed anyone.” The first time, not the last, despite her efforts to be careful. She’d always tried to stay away from the vampires. One sip of her poisoned blood would kill most of them. “I didn’t want to kill Jon.”
“You should have let me burn him. I wanted to kill him.”
She knew that. It was part of their problem. “There’s so much darkness in you.” Her words were hushed. “It scares me sometimes.” Maybe she shouldn’t have said those words, but she was long past the point of a filter. Too tired. Too broken. Too everything.
In the morning, she could pretend to be strong again.
“If you’re so afraid”—his words rumbled behind her—“then why are you in my arms now?”
“Because you’re the only one who’s ever made me feel whole.”
Her eyes were still closed. Hiding in the dark, that was her way.
Silence filled the small cabin.
She became aware of his steady breathing behind her. In. Out. In . . .
Her own faster breaths slowed to match his.
Dante didn’t speak again.
“Thank you,” she finally told him.
“You shouldn’t thank me.” The words seemed to be a warning.
She shook her head slightly against the pillow. “You saved me.”
“No, I just didn’t let you get away.”
Her heartbeat wasn’t racing any longer. He was behind her, around her, and nothing could hurt her while her phoenix was close.
Cassie stopped fighting the lethargy that wanted to pull her down into a deep sleep. She stopped fighting and just let go.
She wondered if she’d see Dante in her dreams . . . or if she’d see Jon’s ghost haunting her.
Cassie was asleep. He could leave her, slip away, and be back before she awoke.
She’d curled into herself, like a frightened child. Her voice had trembled with fear and pain, and she’d thanked him.
The woman should have been running from him.
He glanced toward the door. He could go back to that ranch. Burn the place with a thought.
There’s so much darkness in you. It scares me sometimes.
She had asked him to spare the humans at that ranch. He leaned closer to her, and his lips pressed lightly against her cool cheek.
She whimpered in her sleep, and the fear in that small sound tore at him.
Cassie still needed him. Someone had to keep her nightmares at bay.
Carefully, he turned her so that she faced him. He pulled her closer, lowering her head over his heart and threading his fingers through her hair.
The humans at that ranch were lucky. The battered angel in his arms had given them a reprieve. If they were smart, they’d run fast and hard, and they would never cross his path again.
As for Cassie . . . her body was a slight weight against his. His beast was quiet, as close to calm as it ever was, and he realized that he could just hold her like that, all night long.
So he did.
“How long have you been here?” Cassie’s voice was quiet as she stood behind the two-way mirror.
He knew that she’d realized—months ago—that he could see past the reinforced glass.
She stood less than a foot behind the mirror, her eyes up and clear—and on his.
“Too many years,” he said softly as he headed toward the glass and to her.
“I remember you,” she told him. “When I was a kid . . .”