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Screamed, ran my ass off. Played dead. Been dead. My insides torn out and used as hibernation fuel. “I get what you’re saying, but a bear is a wild animal. It can’t be reasoned with.”

“I lied to you. It wasn’t a bear.”

“I know.”

He stops.

“Grizzly claws are as thick as my thumb. Those marks were thin. I didn’t know what it was but I knew it wasn’t a bear.” My heart is going, and I let him hear it. “You all decided I’d swallow it. I let you think I had.”

He plants a hand behind my headrest.

“The marks on the door were the first real confirmation I had that there was an intruder in Ravenslight. It broke into the cool room because it was hungry. For blood.” He hangs on those two words. “We are wild animals, Ellery. Hungry enough, a vampire will put down anything it can catch. Bored enough, some of them don’t wait for hungry.”

I was freaked out about the bear.

“The Renards, and a few others, think feeding from the blood bank is beneath us, that we’re predators, meant to hunt.”

My stomach turns to lead. There’s one very old vampire out there who prefers free-range, and he wants me gone.

“Animals only, supposedly, but I don’t believe that. Constantin wouldn’t think twice about hurting you if he caught you nosing around his business. He wouldn’t stop to ask questions.”

“I know. He’s already been in my head once.” I turn in my seat to face him. “I’m sorry.”

“If anything happened to you because I dragged you into my world, I…don’t know what I’d do.”

“Something terrible and stupid?”

He confirms with a nod.

“Then for the sake of preventing an act of stupidity, I won’t go anywhere near a Renard on my own. I’m not agreeing to stop, but I won’t keep it from you.”

“That’s all I ask.” He starts the engine. “Now tell me what you’ve discovered.”

I tell him about the two college students that mysteriously left. “I’m certain the guy who attacked me was the UAF hockey player. Has Anna confirmed his identity?”

“I’ve asked several times, but she won’t share what she knows. Keeps telling me she’s still investigating.”

“She could be covering for Dominic or Constantin, and we’d have no idea.”

I give him a rundown of the other missing people and how Dominic was at a nightclub with the Australian tourist a few nights before she disappeared.

“He’s always done dumb shit. Nobody ever got hurt.” Nick pulls the truck into the garage. “Where does he hang out? We should go.”

“We? You’re not forbidding me from coming, like some Regency duke?”

“I can if you’re into that sort of thing?” He smirks.

I smack him on the arm.

The next day Luca’s network of gossips comes through with Dominic’s evening plans, and we find ourselves tailing him through the streets of Fairbanks until he parks in a lot and continues on foot. We drive slowly past the Aurora Room as Dominic disappears inside. Nick stops the truck at the end of the block, and I pull the handle to get out.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“Inside.”

“No. It’s too dangerous. What if he sees you?”

“How are we going to know what he’s up to from out here? Unless X-ray vision is a vampire power you haven’t told me about.”