My insides contract.
I open my eyes and look down. The bar doesn’t smell. I do.
My clothes are soaked and stained with the dried rust-brown of blood, and beneath that is something else. I slowly lift my shirt and gag.
There’s a hole in me. A bullet hole. Right in the center of my chest.
I stick my finger inside. It’s squidgy, sticky, wet.
Is how I died going to be with me forever?
Another surge of hunger hits, and I finally make myself go to the protein bars. I devour three without tasting them, then I gobble down four more, my mind balancing out and the ravenous beast within subsiding.
When I finally settle, I slowly eat the last one. I’m full but I eat it anyway, and then I lower myself to the floor, my back against the wall.
I can’t help it. I raise my top again, frowning.
The wound doesn’t smell so bad now and it seems smaller somehow.
I don’t get how my body can repair itself like this when I’m essentially dead. Lucian certainly doesn’t come across as dead. He doesn’t fall apart like a zombie. And when he turns into a fanged beast, he looks like himself, just…
Scarier.
Darker.
Like a predator.
But still himself.
If ever there was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it’s him.
I lean my head back against the wall.
Kayla…
My friend’s name drifts through my head, and it anchors me.
I came here to find her, or at least find out what happened, and now… I sit up straight.
Now I can.
There’s a part that still holds out hope she’s alive, and I wish with all I am that it’s true. Because if she is, I’ll save her, send her far away where they can never find her, before I burn this place to the ground.
And if she’s dead…
I shake the thought out of my head. It brings another wave ofunshakeable anger and lust for blood, and I don’t want that right now.
Just the possibility of finding her is enough to give me strength.
It’s enough to tame the beast.
The door opens, and a dark shape appears, which is both a relief and foreboding in this room of white.
Lucian’s dressed in black trousers, black shirt, and black vest, the manifestation of a living shadow. His hair’s swept back like a worried hand has passed through it, but that face of his still makes me crazy within.
My entire body sings. His very presence shoots pure electricity through me. And everywhere his ropes touched me at the club buzzes in my memory.
“Tell me,” I ask, barely able to stop myself from spitting the words. “Is this one of your control games?”
