Alice’s lips twitched. “I’m sure it must feel as if you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.”

  Lizzy shook her head. “No. I’ve tripped on acid before.” She held up her hand. “Mind you, not by choice. So, I know what it feels like to fall down a rabbit hole. This is a whole new level of Wonderland. Like instead of the queen of hearts being all ‘off with their heads,’ she’s like ‘chomp, chomp on their necks.’”

  Alice smirked and slipped her hands into her lab coat pockets. “It’s not quite that dramatic.”

  Lizzy’s brow rose. “Really? So, Cain doesn’t want to stick a straw in me and slurp on me like I’m the best frozen smoothie he’s ever tasted?”

  Something flashed in the woman’s eyes. Did Lizzy see guilt there?

  Alice shook her head. “No, Cain doesn’t want to drink you like a smoothie. He wants to put vampire blood into your system, along with my blood.”

  “One of the first things you learn on the streets, Alice, is that you don’t exchange bodily fluids unless you want to end up with a killer STD. I don’t think vampire blood is an exception. Hard pass.”

  Alice coughed, seemingly unsure as to what to do with the prisoner’s frankness. Lizzy shrugged. Why should she be polite to her captors?

  After a few moments, the woman said. “I genuinely don’t want this to be difficult, Lizzy. The process will not hurt. And believe it or not, the transfusion will be very beneficial to you. Consider it a step up in the evolution cycle, but on a much quicker schedule.”

  Lizzy shifted into a cross-legged position. “Well, I’m not entirely sure I believe in evolution, Little Alice. In fact, I don’t know what I believe, exactly. But I’ve been finding out some really interesting things lately. Things sound a whole lot more like the truth than the BS Cain has been trying to sell me. So, no, I think I’m perfectly fine with the blood God gave me. Thank you very much. Find some other sucker to inject your blood into. Ha, see what I did there? Sucker? That pun was not intended.”

  The woman grunted. “So, you want to go back to the streets?” Alice’s voice was incredulous. “You want to go back to trying to hide from pimps, drug dealers, and the other street people who were constantly trying to steal your cardboard sleeping box?”

  Lizzy rolled her eyes. “I didn’t sleep in a box. I’m not a freaking animal. It was a large plastic bin I found in a dumpster. That’s like comparing a trailer to a mansion. Believe it or not, sometimes, I had furniture. That’s more than I can say for this place.”

  The scientist didn’t look impressed. “Seriously, Lizzy. Think about this carefully before you make up your mind. You’re being given the opportunity to live a longer, healthier life—”

  “Oh, so I get many more years to live on the street and fight off the other street people for my plastic bin. Jackpot!” She lifted her hands in mock excitement. “How could I turn down such an offer?”

  “I assure you, that you will no longer have to live on the street. I know Cain has already explained that to you. You will be set for life.”

  “But there’s a catch.” Lizzy dropped her hands to the floor and tilted her head back with a dramatic sigh. “There’s always a catch. I’m going to be in debt to Cain in some way, shape, or form. You might as well give it to me straight, Alice, or you better believe I’m going to be more than a little difficult to deal with. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not quite as easily subdued as I was before.”

  “Hmm.” Alice nodded. “Yes, the mate bond. Cain told me about that. It’s fascinating.”

  “No.” Lizzy shook her head. “You’re not studying me and Finn like we’re a couple of mated rats. You can just forget that right now.”

  “I’m a scientist. You can’t blame me for being curious.”

  Lizzy laughed. “Chick, I can blame you for all sorts of things because you’re a scientist. And at the top of that list? I blame you mostly for working with vampires. I mean, seriously, in what movie, book, or TV show have they ever been the good guys?”

  Alice opened her mouth, but Lizzy held up a finger. “I know they’re portrayed as sexy, elegant, rich yumminess. But even those kinds killed people.”

  “Angel in that Buffy show. He only tried to kill bad people,” Alice pointed out.

  “Lame. And how often did the ‘tortured hero, anti-hero’ thing work out? He succumbed to his true nature more than once. Next?”

  “Stef—”

  “Became the Ripper more than once in his long life,” she said dryly. “I can at least respect Damon because he didn’t pretend to be good. He admitted he was a crap kind of creature who liked to suck the life out of people. He didn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t. Any more?”

  Alice sighed. “Okay, so they don’t have the best track record.”

  “And yet, you want me to willingly become one of these things?”

  “Those are just stories. This is real life. And when it comes right down to it, what other option do you have?”

  “Uh, go back to the streets and get myself murdered at a young age, just like the rest of the young, female, homeless population. It’s the natural order of things. Circle of life, blah blah, blah. That makes for a much shorter term of torture. Not to mention, I won’t be sucking the life force out of innocent people. I like my meat to be a little less bloody. Oh, and a little less human.” Lizzy folded her arms across her chest and waited to see what the chick would do. Finally, Alice sighed and stepped aside.

  “The hard way it is.”

  Lizzy thought the woman sounded genuinely upset, which was odd since Alice clearly had no problems working with the freaking vampire king who was willing to hurt innocent people.

  Four men walked in, two large and two average. Lizzy jumped to her feet and made sure again that the walls in her mind were locked down. Finn would lose his ever-loving, wolfy brain if he saw men attacking her. She crouched and gritted her teeth, determined not to be taken without one hell of a fight. If nothing else, she would take a chunk out of one of them before they got her.

  Unfortunately, Lizzy’s glorious last stand was nothing more than a fantasy. The men moved so quickly she barely saw them coming. In the blink of an eye, she was lying face down with a knee in her back. She heard a zipping sound and felt her wrists lock together. Dammit! Lizzy resolved that if she ever made it out of this place, she was going to take some sort of defense training. Fighting off pimps and drug dealers had made her tough, or so she thought. Now she realized how wrong she’d been. These guys were legitimate badasses, the kind of loudmouths you saw in movies smart-off to just before the punks realized what a terrible mistake they had just made. Lizzy hated being so helpless against them.

  Two of the men yanked her to her feet and began pulling her out the door. She dragged her feet, determined to make them bear her full body weight, which was apparently like carrying a doll to them. Neither of her escorts so much as breathed hard. Their grips around her arms were like manacles, only more painful.

  She tried to pay attention to her surroundings. For what purpose? Lizzy wasn’t sure. Perhaps she thought if she could memorize the layout of the place, she might find a way to escape it one day. But eventually, the turns became too many to keep straight. The place was a freaking labyrinth. She’d never figure out how to find an exit, even if she somehow managed to break out of her room. Lizzy was starting to resign herself to the fact that she was going to be transformed into some sort of wolf-vamp hybrid—a monster. What would it feel like? Would she keep her faculties? Or would she simply become a killing machine?

  And what if something went wrong? Lizzy was far from convinced these fools even knew what they were doing. What if the transformation killed her?

  She gulped. “You’re a good scientist, right?” Lizzy asked Alice as the men carried her along, her toes occasionally bumping the tile floor. “I mean, you didn’t graduate at the bottom of your class and skate by simply because your professors wanted to get you out of their program?”

  Alice laughed. “I’m one of the top geneticists in the country, if not the world. You’re in good hands.”

  “Hmm, and humble, too.”

  Alice shrugged. “You asked. I’ve worked hard to make it where I am.”

  “You worked hard to get here?” Lizzy scoffed. “Is this what you dreamed about when you were a little girl? Growing up to become the woman who could turn humans into something… unnatural?”

  “To be fair,”—Alice glanced over her shoulder at Lizzy—“you were already something unnatural, and I had nothing to do with that.” She sighed. “And no, I never imagined myself doing something like this.” Alice spoke so softly that Lizzy barely heard her next words. “I honestly don’t want to have anything to do with this shit.”

  “LIZZY!” Finn’s voice broke through her mind, causing her to wince.

  “I already told you, Linc, you’ve got to tone that macho stuff down.” Lizzy wished her hands weren’t tied behind her back so she could rub her temples.

  “Have they hurt you?”

  “Not really. They’re just taking me to some lab to pump me full of vamp blood and this chick scientist’s blood. No biggie. I totally got this.”

  Chapter

  One

  “She’s not from my world. I don’t know if she will ever fully understand what it means to be true mates and how it affects me. Can she feel for me what I feel for her? Will she want me the way I want her? I don’t know. And the possible answers terrify me. Nothing in this life has ever truly scared me, but the idea that she could walk away evokes a fear I can’t even describe.” ~Finn

  Cain looked at the two figures standing before him: a fae and a vampire that both appeared as if they had barely escaped a war. Their clothes were torn, and abrasions and deep gashes covered their skin. Half of the fae’s head was bald and blackened, and some of his scalp appeared to have been burned off. The vampire had managed to keep his scalp, though his hair was caked in blood. Cain wondered why the fae’s injuries hadn’t healed by now and why the vampire hadn’t stopped to drain a human simply to obtain the blood to heal himself. “Were there any other survivors?”

  “None as far as we know,” the vampire answered.

  Cain narrowed his eyes at the male. “What’s your name?”

  “Sam.”

  Cain frowned. “Sam? Really?” The vampire king fought the urge to roll his eyes. He looked at the fae. “And yours?”

  “Raylion.”

  The vampire king chuckled. “Of course it is. I get vamps like Sam and Ralph. The high fae gets Raylion.”

  The vamp snorted. “His name rhymes with alien. How is that better than Sam?”

  Raylion’s eyes snapped to the vampire’s. “Your name rhymes with ham. Would you rather your name rhyme with a food or a potentially badass species from outer space?”

  “Damn it all.” Cain ran a hand down his face, then looked at the two supernaturals currently glaring at one another. “Sam, you have obviously been here before or you wouldn’t have known where to have Raylion bring you. Correct?”

  Sam met Cain’s gaze. “I was one of the firstborn in your new army.” The fledgling vampire’s voice was thick with disdain. Apparently, he didn’t appreciate the gift the vampire king had bestowed upon him. “And I was brought to this compound a little over a month ago.” He also sounded offended that Cain didn’t remember him. “You sent a hundred vamps from here to that mountain that just got blown to hell. So, yes. I’ve been here before.”

  Cain took a step toward Sam. “I have a thousand vampires under my rule, if not more, just in the United States—”

  “More like eight hundred or so,” Sam interrupted. “Unless two hundred other vamps had the wherewithal to grab a fae’s arm at just the right moment and flash the hell out of Dodge.”

  Cain waved his hand. “Neither here nor there. The point is, it is impossible for me to keep up with every single one of them, especially when they have names like Sam. Be a Thadrick, Perizada, or even an Alston, if you want me to remember your name.”

  Cain pulled his shoulders back and lifted his chin. “Speaking of the high fae, was Alston at the mountain when this happened?” The vampire king knew Alston wasn’t supposed to be at the mountain. Cain had laid the bait for the high fae to be elsewhere—meeting with Thadrick at the veil of the fae. If Cain was lucky, Alston would have already been killed by the goody, goody, gumdrop djinn.

  But Cain had yet to receive confirmation of the high fae’s demise. Cain’s contact, the fae Zeek, had yet to report in. Cain had promised Zeek he would send some of his more unhinged vamps— the vamps that weren’t good as humans and even worse as bloodsuckers—to rip the fae apart if he didn’t report promptly. The new king personally didn’t like turning those types because they were unpredictable, but his predecessor had been a tad insane, and he thought having insane vamps was an asset. Perhaps that was why the fool was dead.

  “Two days have passed since the mountain’s destruction.” Raylion shifted from foot to foot. His left hand tapped against his thigh. Cain raised an eyebrow at the fae’s odd behavior. Their kind didn’t typically fidget. “We barely made it out alive. That’s why it has taken us so long to get here. I flashed Sam and myself about twenty miles from the mountain when I realized we didn’t have a chance in hell.” Raylion side-eyed the vampire. “I didn’t bring him along by choice. I want that noted. But he seems to have an acute sense of self-preservation.”

  Sam glared at the fae. “It doesn’t take a genius to know you should make for higher ground when that amount of power starts gathering. I haven’t been a supernatural long, and even I recognized that something bad was about to happen. Anyone who died there must have been dumb enough to think they could take on an army consisting of multiple types of supernaturals. All we had were vamps and fae.”

  Raylion shrugged. “He’s not wrong. When I tried to flash again, I couldn’t. Whatever magic was used, it drained my own like a siphon. I’ve never felt magic that powerful before.” His brow dipped low, and his lips drew taunt across his face. “I’ve never not been able to flash. That must be what being a human is like… I don’t know how they stand it.”

  Cain looked out over the desert. The sun had long since set, and silver stars dotted the dark sky. They stood just outside the gates of the Area 51 compound where Raylion and Sam had appeared. “So, you don’t know if Alston was at the mountain when you were attacked?”

  “I doubt it,” Raylion clenched his jaw. “If he had been there, I would have felt his power. I know his signature. And though there was magical residue left over from spells he had cast, I didn’t feel any of his active power.”

  The vampire king clenched his jaw and forced himself to relax his fisted hands. He didn’t see how Alston could survive Thadrick, and if Perizada was alive, she surely would have taken the opportunity to destroy her nemesis. Cain looked at Raylion. “I want you to go to the fae veil and see if you detect any recent magic use there.”

  The fae frowned. “There have already been reports of fae armies coming through the veil. The forest all around the mountain has spoken of it.”

  Sam scrunched his brow and looked at Raylion. “The forest spoke of it? What, is this a J.R.R. Tolkien novel now?”

  Raylion’s voice dripped with disdain. “I know you are a newbie, but surely you aren’t stupid enough to believe you understand how our world works. Do you refuse to believe there are creatures in the forest that wouldn’t speak to my kind? Creatures you wouldn’t even be able to fathom with that tiny, newly turned brain of yours? You are still barely more than a human.”

  Sam seemed unable to answer the disgusted fae. Cain watched as the baby vampire appeared to come to some sort of internal conclusion. He turned to look at Cain and shook his head. “I didn’t ask for this. One of your damn vampires attacked me, and the next thing I know, I’m craving blood and doing whatever I’m told.” He glanced at Raylion. “And I don’t know what to believe. I’m living in a nightmare. You speak of humans as if they’re disgusting and beneath you”—then he looked back at Cain—"and you use them as if they’re little more than cattle or stupid sheep. Is that just a supernatural thing, or is it because of your longevity? Those who know their time is short do not treat their lives so carelessly.”

  Raylion didn’t bother to respond. He simply shrugged and then turned to Cain. “So, I’m to go to the fae veil and then report back to you?”

  Cain appreciated the fae’s lack of emotion. That was what he needed. Not bleeding-heart fledglings like Sam. “Yes.”

  Raylion vanished without another word.

  Cain looked at Sam and narrowed his eyes at the male. “Who turned you?”

  Sam attempted to brush off his unsalvageable clothes. “Some pompous ass named Claude.”

  Cain chuckled. Sam’s description of the French vampire was spot on. Claude was pompous. But he was also efficient, cunning, and loyal. Speaking of Claude, I haven’t heard from the pompous ass in some time. That wasn’t a good sign. Cain had been so focused on the hybrid testing that he hadn’t even realized it had been days, if not more, since Claude had checked in. Cain tried to focus on his sire bond with Claude but felt nothing. He pushed the thought aside and turned his attention back to Sam. “Do you want to continue this existence, or would you like me to end it for you?”

  The male’s eyes widened, and he took a step back from Cain. His jaw ticked from side to side. His gaze seemed to become unfocused, as if deep in thought.

  “You haven’t considered that you didn’t have to remain a vampire?” Cain slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks, and his shoulders relaxed as he watched Sam. “What if I told you I will help you control those urges? I could make you walk in the day again. I can make you more than a vampire. I can even make the putrid smell that happens to our kind in-between feedings go away.”

  The other male’s head slanted to the side, and he crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I don’t want to kill people. I wasn’t a bad person as a human, and I won’t be a murderer as a vampire… or more than a vampire, whatever that means.”