Page 208 of Collared by the Vampire Prince

“Help her, Arken. Please.”

He presses two fingers beneath her jaw, then lifts one eyelid and studies her pupil. His expression reveals nothing, which frightens me more than horror would.

As I lean closer, I catch movement in the small mirror on the far wall.

My heart jolts. For one disorienting instant, I think I am looking at my father. Then I realise the reflection is mine. Blood stains my mouth and chin. My face is deathly pale. And my eyes are red.

Not merely bloodshot. The whites of my eyes are drowned out by a vivid, unnatural red that seems to glow from within, my pupils reduced to eerie black pinpricks at the centre.

I suck in a breath and wrench my gaze away, back to Arken, still searching for her pulse.

“Well?” I demand.

He ignores me.

“Arken,” I press.

“Be quiet.”

I obey. For Kira.

He pulls the edge of my coat aside and exposes her throat. The bite marks are ugly and red, surrounded by bruising where my mouth had sealed against her skin.

Susie appears in the doorway. Her hair is loose, her face pale with alarm. “Kira?” She rushes towards us. “What happened? Who did this—?”

Arken holds up one hand without looking away from his examination. “Stay back.”

Susie stops. Her eyes find the blood on my mouth. Then the blood on Kira. “What did you do?”

I cannot answer. There are too many answers.

I claimed her. Fucked her. Fed from her.

Time will tell if I’ve killed her.

Arken reaches into the cabinet beside the settee and removes a small dark vial. “How much blood did you take?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Susie cries behind me, her voice strangled.

“I was distracted,” I snap. The excuse disgusts me before it has fully left my mouth. As though I had not felt every swallow pass down my throat like wine. “We were…together.”

“Desire and hunger are a dangerous combination,” Arken murmurs. “That is when control is most easily lost.”

“Unless he did this on purpose.” Susie rounds on me. “How could you do this to her?”

“Not now,” I hiss, watching as Arken tips several drops from the vial between Kira’s lips. “Is that it?”

“Yes. Bloodroot, ironleaf, and…several other things,” he mutters, his attention fixed upon her. “It will slow her heart and stop her body consuming what little blood remains. It will not replace what she has lost.”

“And the curse?” I demand.

The counteragent is the whole bloody point of bringing Kira here. If my blood carries my father’s curse into her now, it could finish what I started.

Arken surveys me over his spectacles. “It should counteract that too.”

“Should?” I spit the word, fear sharpening into something ugly. “I thought you would be more certain, given the way you carry on with Susie.”