It destroys me.
If the vampire scent was a slap, this is a gunshot. It’s rich, metallic, and undeniably powerful. It sings to the predator in me. It calls to the empty spaces in my chest that I’ve been trying to fill with violence and duty for ten years.
But it’s wrong. It’s mixed with the chemical tang of the enemy. She bleeds, and it smells like home, but her skin smells like a graveyard.
"What is she?" Beau whispers, stepping back. He smells the blood now too. "That ain't... that ain't normal human blood, Jax."
"No," I say. "It ain't."
I kneel beside her. I reach out, my hand hovering over her neck. I want to wrap my hand around her throat and squeeze until she wakes up. I want to bite her. I want to know why the universe decided to bind the Alpha of the Roux pack to a creature that reeks of the very monsters who slaughtered my father.
This is a sick joke. A cosmic error.
I brush a wet strand of hair off her cheek. Her skin flushes at my touch, a pink bloom of heat rising to the surface. Even unconscious, her body reacts to mine.
"We can't leave her," I say, the words tasting like ash.
"Jax, you can't bring her to the cabin," Beau argues, his voice rising in panic. "It’s almost the Truce. If the Duvals find out we have one of theirs..."
"She ain't one of theirs," I snarl, snapping my head up to glare at him. The gold in my eyes flares, pushing him into submission. He drops his gaze, baring his neck slightly.
"She’s mine."
The word hangs in the humid air, heavy and absolute. But I don't say it with reverence. I don't say it with the joy a male is supposed to feel when he finds his other half.
I say it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
I scoop her up into my arms, her head falling against my chest. The contact burns.
"Remy, get the boat," I command. "We’re going deep."
I look down at the woman in my arms—my Mate, my enemy, my problem.
"You better pray you're worth the war you're about to start,chérie."
5
MIRANDA
Consciousness returns in jagged, uneven fragments.
First, the smell. It’s aggressive—a thick, heavy blend of cedar, raw iron, and wet dog. It doesn't smell like the sterile, preserved air ofBelle Rêve. It smells alive. It smells like dirt and testosterone.
I blink, my eyelids feeling like they’ve been glued shut with industrial adhesive. The ceiling above me is raw timber, unvarnished and dark with age.
Calibration check.
I’m horizontal. I’m warm. Too warm. I’m buried under a mountain of heavy furs that feel coarse against my skin.
Dream sequence,my brain suggests.You’re back in the Chicago apartment, the radiator is broken, and you dreamed up a gothic nightmare about vampires to process the stress of the inheritance.
That makes sense. Vampires are a biological impossibility. Physics doesn't allow for mass to move that fast without generating a sonic boom. The laws of thermodynamics prohibit a dead body from speaking. It was a hallucination brought on by stress and bad shrimp cocktail.
I try to sit up to verify the hypothesis.
Pain—sharp, white-hot, and structural—shoots up my right leg.
I gasp, falling back against the pillow. The air hisses through my teeth.
