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Magnus. My maker. The vampire who had ruined my life.

He hadn’t said a single word to me. He’d simply appeared, moving so fast that he seemed to materialize right in front of me out of thin air. He grabbed me and sank his fangs into my neck, greedily draining my blood away right there on the sidewalk, in front of the darkened windows of the Henderson house.

And it had hurt like hell—I’d found out later that he could’ve made the bite pleasant. Or even made it feel like nothing—no sensation at all. He’d chosen to make it as painful and terrifying as possible.

Then, as I was losing consciousness, my vision going gray and fuzzy and my body feeling faraway, he’d shoved his bleeding wrist to my lips and forced me to drink.

I tried to resist, but my muscles had felt approximately as useful as gelatin that had been stuck in a blender. And he’d been so impossibly strong. I hadn’t been able to stop any of it.

I’d woken up hours later, in the manager’s office of the gas station. Magnus, with his angelic face and his golden blond hair catching the light like a halo, was watching me. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes were gleaming with savage joy.

Jimmy, my manager, was sitting perfectly still in the corner of the room, staring at me with a mixture of horror and disbelief. He smelled good. Really good. And his heartbeat was deafening.

After Magnus told me to bite him, I tried to run. To get away. I was afraid of what I might do.

But the ancient vampire appeared before me, blocking the door, his movement literally a blur of speed. I jerked backward in surprise. Before I could even move to get away from him again, he grabbed me by the chin and forced me to look into his eyes.

“Please,” I said, blinded by tears. Nothing made sense anymore. What was happening to me? I didn’t understand any of this. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Ah, but you’re wrong,” he said, his gaze drawing me in. Relaxation and languid calm spread through me. As if everything was warm and soft and perfect. Nothing could ever possibly be wrong, so there was no reason to fight or protest. It was pure bliss and comfort. His smile returned. “You do want to hurt him. You want to sink your fangs into Jimmy’s neck and drink him until nothing is left. You want it more than you’ve wanted anything else in your whole life.”

Suddenly, it was true. All of my resistance melted away, just like that. And the only thing I wanted was to do exactly as Magnus had commanded.

I turned back to Jimmy and—

On my cot in the dungeon, I gritted my teeth through the rest of the memory. I knew from experience that I wouldn’t be able to stop it now. The only thing to do was to survive it.

And when I was finished…

There was a moment of pure, unrelenting horror as I looked down at what I’d done.

Everything I was—everything I’d ever thought myself to be—was swept away by the sight of what I was now capable of.

And then… there was just nothing.

Like flipping a light switch, there was suddenly nothing at all. No emotions, no feelings about what I’d just done. Only a vast emptiness. I felt blank. I might as well have been looking down at a piece of broken furniture. Jimmy no longer mattered.

“Ah, there he is,” Magnus said, joining my side when I stood up and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Not that you care anymore, of course, but he’ll wake back up. I gave him some of my blood while you were unconscious. You didn’t really kill him.”

“Okay.”

He was right. I didn’t care one way or the other. The hunger was gone—Jimmy’s blood had banished it. That was the only thing that mattered.

Now, lying there in the vampire king’s dungeon, I tried to focus on something else. Anything else.

On Derek.

On the ceiling above me.

On the walls around me.

On everything but the only thing I could think about next.

Why hadn’t I been strong enough to resist? It was something I hadn’t managed to say aloud yet, to anyone, but it was the singular thought that was plaguing me, playing on a loop in my head over and over again. And nothing could silence it.

Why hadn’t I stopped myself?

Had Magnus chosen me because he knew I’d be weak?