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“That’s it?”

“That’s more than I got.”

Then she drove away, leaving me beside a sign that read:

WELCOME TO ARRHYTHMIA: WHERE EVERY HEART BEATS DIFFERENTLY.

“Mine doesn’t beat at all, but thanks for rubbing it in,” I’d told the sign.

The sign hadn’t cared. Signs were assholes that way.

I walked into town carrying everything I owned and hunger sharp enough to make every pulse sound like a dinner bell. A woman pushing a stroller crossed the street when she saw me.

Smart woman.

I crossed in the opposite direction, terrified some feral part of me might follow her.

Mack found me behind the closed feed store, crouched beside a dumpster and trying to bite open a blood packet with fangs I couldn’t retract.

“You look like shit,” he’d said.

“I feel worse.”

“Newly turned?”

“Was it the fangs or the complete psychological collapse that gave me away?”

He took me to his garage, heated the blood without asking whether vampires preferred it warm, and handed me a shop towel when I spilled half of it down my shirt.

I remembered hating him for being kind. Cruelty I could fight. Kindness made everything real. By morning, half the town knew a newborn vampire had arrived. By noon, Jacqueline Fortman appeared.

She swept into the garage wearing cream wool, black gloves, and a hat broad enough to require its own zip code. Mack went still beside the Mustang.

“High Priestess,” he said.

“Mr. Kingston.” Her gaze settled on me. “And you must be Logan Richards.”

“Apparently.”

I was sitting on the concrete floor because standing made the room tilt. My skin hurt. My teeth hurt. The dead silence inside my chest hurt most of all.

I hadn’t slept, couldn’t eat anything that didn’t come in a plastic bag, and had spent most of the night wondering whether my family had been told I’d died in the crash or whether they thought I had simply disappeared.

Jacqueline looked immaculate.

I hated her immediately for it.

“Your maker acted irresponsibly,” she said. “A newborn should never be abandoned before he understands his nature.”

“I figured that out around the time she abandoned me.”

“The coven can provide blood, shelter, and instruction until a vampire delegation arrives.”

She said it like a queen offering mercy to a peasant.

Maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe she had genuinely been trying to help. But fear had hollowed me out, and pride was the only thing left rattling around inside.

“I don’t need a witch managing me.”