A scream ripped me from sleep, and I woke tucked in the same corner as always. Sweat plastered my hair to my head, and blood wept from crescent-shaped wounds in my palms. I swallowed past a sore throat and grimaced at the sour tang in my mouth.

Pretty much business as usual.

The clatter of dishes in the kitchen perked me up better than the promise of a hot shower to wash off the salty residue on my skin, but Woolly cranked on the water before I could blow off personal hygiene in favor of carbs.

Unhappy at being thwarted, I rushed through my nightly routine then took the stairs at a gallop.

A beefy arm marked by crosshatched scars barred the landing, almost clotheslining me before I ducked and whirled toward the heartbreakingly beautiful man who had taken over my self-defense training. His eyes, a rich aquamarine, held an edge of sorrow as likely to slit his throat as yours.

“Good morning,” he rasped, his grating voice a jarring counterpoint to his sculpted features. “Do you want to eat or train first?”

Morning. Huh. For me it was. For him… The pack was still adjusting to a wholly nocturnal schedule.

“This is a trick question.” I darted a quick glance toward the kitchen and found Linus propped in the doorway, supervising. Midas touched me as little as possible, a true skill when teaching combat techniques. He was as likely to hurt me as I was to tear the wings off a butterfly, but Linus kept to the sidelines in case I required his nursing skills all the same. “What’s on the menu?”

“Smoothies.” Linus twitched his lips at my scowl. “And crepes filled with apples stewed in brown sugar and cinnamon.”

Down at my side, I pumped my fist. “Whipped cream?”

He winged an eyebrow in answer. “First, the smoothie.”

The man was sure getting his money’s worth out of that blender.

Wrinkling my nose, I contradicted him. “First, I train.”

Midas bounced on the balls of his feet. “In or out?”

Woolly gusted a sigh that fluttered her curtains at the notion of another living room sparring match.

“Out.” I shooed him toward the door but paused under the foyer chandelier. “We apologized for breaking the Wedgwood teapot.”

A pained moan rose from the floor registers, and the lights dimmed a fraction.

“I promised to buy a new one,” I reminded her, aware of how Woolly took pride in the collection.

“The seventy-third Grande Dame gifted Maud that piece when Maud was forty-five and the Grande Dame believed her son would marry her.” Linus examined the ceiling. On me, it would have been an eye-roll. On him, it was an unconscious attempt at accessing his mental vault. “Maud refused to give it back when she turned down the offer of marriage, and it sparked a twenty-five-year feud with the Arlington family.”

“How do you know these things?” I shook my head. “You missed your calling as a historian.”

“I thought I missed my calling as a chef.”

“That too.” His multitude of facets made it possible for so many masks to fit him. “Are you coming?”

A pleased flush warmed his cheeks at the invitation. “Of course.”

Midas watched our byplay with a blank expression. “I’ve got fifty-five minutes before my shift starts.”

“Your boss will let you off the hook,” I teased. “You’re covering for Hood tonight?”

“Lethe and I are each working a twelve-hour shift.” He grunted. “She gave him pain meds after our run last night to knock him out cold. That’s the only way to get him to rest while he finishes recovering.”

“The arrow.” I watched his face to see if he would tell me the truth. “What was wrong with it?”

“The archer knew you had gwyllgi enforcers.” Muscles fluttered along his jaw. “The arrowheads were bronze.”

“Bronze is bad?” I made a mental note. “You have an allergy similar to wargs with silver?”

“We do.” His lips compressed. “There aren’t many of us in the US. Few of our packs migrated here. It’s not common knowledge but…” He rolled his answer around in his mouth. “We have ties to the fae, and the fae will bargain their own children away for a song if the mood strikes them.”

A tingle I hesitated to label as anticipation jolted my imagination. “Do you think fae are involved?”

“No,” he decided. “Not directly. The pact between fae and necromancers holds strong.”

“Indirectly then,” Linus interjected. “The information was purchased.”

“That’s my guess.” A fine rage trembled through his body that made me regret my choice to spar before I ate. “Let us handle the fae.”

“Happily.” Kidnappy vampires and rival necromancers were bad enough. The pack could keep their more exotic enemies to themselves. “Ready to kick my butt?”

“This is a self-defense class,” he said, shaking his head, “not an MMA brawl.”

From the kitchen, Linus hummed with approval. He might have preferred that I end up with Mathew, a necromancer who taught self-defense classes at Strophalos twice a year, but it turned out Midas was an ideal replacement.

The gwyllgi volunteered at women’s shelters in Atlanta, teaching women and their children how to protect themselves from their abusers. His kid-glove approach appeased Linus, and while I missed the bite of exertion I got from sparring with Taz, even I had to admit it didn’t suck walking away from his sessions without a limp.

Plus, he lived in the woods at the rear of the property. Talk about convenience.

The NDA Linus forced the pack to sign before allowing them access to me and my secrets boosted the trust factor too.

Midas and I exited the house and started warm-ups in the backyard, hidden from curious eyes.

A whisper of sensation shot my gaze upward, where Cletus hovered in an undulating wave above me.

“Good night, Cletus.”

The wraith inclined his head then flowed through the air to position himself at Linus’s shoulder.

Linus watched our interaction with marked curiosity that I had to admit I shared to an extent. Cletus was evolving. What that meant for him—and us—remained to be seen.

Midas would have hit me mid-sternum if he hadn’t pulled his palm strike at the last second.

“This isn’t social hour,” he reminded me. “You’ve got to focus.”

Sinking into the fighting stance he favored, I cast aside our audience and fell into the easy rhythm of the katas he was teaching me.

After we limbered up, he shifted gears into the hands-on portion of the lesson. “I’m going to walk you through the triangle choke, the bow and arrow choke, and the Americana armlock.”

“Those all sound painful.”

“Ladies’ choice.”

“Armlock?” That made me flinch the least. “Let’s try that one.”

Gait stiff, he retrieved a set of mats from the porch and flattened them over the grass, giving us a cushioned area to practice. That done, he dusted his hands. “On your back.”

I ducked my head before he read my shock. During our first lesson, he warned me to do whatever I could to avoid the ground. I figured he would cover worst-case scenarios eventually, but as much as he avoided physical contact, I hadn’t expected him to pick this course so soon.

The plastic was squishy beneath me as I made myself comfortable, legs bent, hands linked at my navel.

Midas knelt on my right side and adjusted my left arm at an angle on the mat. He bent over me and clamped his palm over my wrist. “Note the slant of your arm. Your elbow is in line with your chest.” He nudged my arm a fraction higher. “This puts your elbow in line with your face.” He looked down at me. “Avoid both of these positions. They require too much work and leave you open to a countermove.”

“Got it.” I nodded. “Elbows bad.”

Ignoring me, he repositioned my elbow down toward my hips. “This is ideal.” He leaned over me, careful to keep a fraction of space between our bodies as he maintained his hold on my wrist with his left arm while sliding his right forearm under my biceps and locking that hand over his opposite wrist. “All I have to do is lift—”

“Yowch.” I grunted as he torqued my elbow skyward with just enough force to burn. “I feel that.”

“Apply weight to limit your opponent’s mobility.” He briefly rested his side across my hips. “This works.” He shifted, exerting even less pressure as his opposite ribs got up close and personal with my face. “This works too.”

Midas was off me, his weight resting on his ankles, before I formulated any questions. “My turn?”

Jaw tight, he nodded, exchanging places with me so that I knelt beside him while he lay supine.

“I clamp your wrist like so.” I gripped him then slid his elbow into alignment with his hips. “I hook my arm under yours then cup my own wrist to create the lock.” I settled my weight onto him, pinning his hips with my side. “From here, I twist up and voilà.” About to shift toward his face and execute the move from that position, I noticed the urgent rise and fall of his chest. “Did I apply too much pressure?”

“No,” he panted. “You did fine.”

The wild glint in his eyes prompted me to withdraw from him slowly. I had seen that same panic reflected at me in the mirror often enough to sympathize. “Better?”

“Much.” Gulping air, he shot into the upright position. “How about we save the other chokes for next time?”

“Works for me.” I backed away to give him plenty of room to stand and then helped him gather the mats and put them away for the night. “I’m a good listener if you ever need to talk.”

Midas studied me, that wounded thing in his gaze winding tighter. “Has that line ever worked on you?”

The muscles in my shoulders pulled taut. “Call me out on my hypocrisy, why don’t you?”

“I respect what you’ve been through.” He raked a hand through his damp hair. “You’re a survivor.”

“So are you.” The scars on his body were too methodical to have been made during brawls or dominance fights, assuming gwyllgi tussled the same as wargs. “Can you handle this? What we’re doing here?”

“I don’t talk about it,” he said, low and rough. “This is my therapy.”

“Can I ask a question?” I acknowledged the line I was toeing. “Just to give me perspective?”

All those slabs of lean muscle coiled tighter than a rattler preparing to strike. “Okay.”

“You teach women and children.” I fumbled to grasp the right question. “How was this different? What triggered you?”

“Necromancers are hard for me to trust.” He held out his arms, exposing his wrists and the long slices that scarred his inner forearms. “I’m hoping we can help each other.”

The sentiment made me wonder if Odette wasn’t right, if Woolly wasn’t a halfway house for broken dreamers. I’d tried helping Taz, but that didn’t end well for either of us. Maybe Midas would be different.

Until his gaze snagged on where I massaged my left wrist, I had forgotten the exact spot where I cut myself with a ceramic shard, choosing to bleed out rather than be recaptured by Volkov.

Midas had gotten further in his attempt than me, and he wore that bleak history on his skin while Linus had ensured I carried no physical reminder. “There are sigils…”

“I earned these scars,” he said, not unkindly. “Erasing them doesn’t wipe away the past.”

That sentiment I understood all too well. “I had to offer.”

“That kindness is why I’m here.” A slight grin curved his lush mouth. “Most necromancers would toss me a quote, not a freebie.”

“I’m not most necromancers.”

Recent financial straits left me with a greater appreciation for money than any attempts Maud had made to drum my good fortune into my skull, but I lacked the mercenary aptitude that defined the High Society. I must have been absent the day they handed out killer instincts in necromancy school.

Don’t get me wrong—I wanted a career that could pay my bills. I wanted fair compensation for the work I would one day do. I wanted to earn a fraction of the recognition Maud had for her skills. But what good were these gifts if friends in need couldn’t benefit from them?

Midas toned down the last portion of our lesson. Unlike Taz, who had focused on us venting our aggression on each other, he was into this whole healthy-living deal. He ran. For fun. Worse. He expected me to lace up and go with him.

Last week, he convinced me to invest in an elliptical and a set of weights for the room he was determined to convert into a home gym. So far, Woolly wasn’t on board with us converting the adjoining room into a dojoesque space for sparring, but that had been prior to the Wedgwood’s untimely death.

“Good workout.” Midas tossed me a towel then mopped his face with his own. “We’ll push harder tomorrow.”

A soft thud drew our attention to the carriage house, the swish of curtains hinting at an eavesdropper.

“Your friend smells wrong.” Nostrils flared, he drew in Amelie’s scent. “The beast is tempted by her.”

“The beast?” I looked back at him. “Your beast? You? When you shift?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “It’s in our nature to put down injured or sick prey.”

A twang in my heart had me moistening my lips, afraid of what his judgment meant for her chances of recovery.

“Amelie is a good person.” I twisted the towel in my hands. “She’s made some not-so-great choices, but she’ll get better.”

Pinpricks of red flamed to life in his eyes. “I hope you’re right, for her sake.”

I kicked up my chin. “Are you or the pack a threat to her?”

The question occupied him for a moment. “Can she leave the carriage house?”

“No.”

He shook a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. “Then no.”

“Good.” I accepted the towel from him to toss in the washer. “I’ll warn her to keep the door closed.”

And by I, I meant Linus, who was acting as our intermediary. Childish? Probably. Necessary? Definitely.

Thirty days wasn’t enough to ease the ache in my heart. The Pritchards had done too much damage for me to heal so quickly. Two legs of our tripod had been kicked out from under me, and it was tough balancing alone. Without Linus shoring me up, I would have fallen. I don’t want to think about how far.

“That’s wise.” Warmth broke through the usual conflict in his demeanor. “Lethe is pregnant. Hood and I will both be less able to control our impulses while our animalistic sides reign.”

Misery twined through me at how close Hood had come to never knowing his child. “She didn’t tell me.”

“She worried you would try to send us back to Atlanta.” He shifted his weight onto his back foot. “You were attacked at the Faraday on our watch. Protecting you is a matter of duty. Our honor, as a pack, is at stake for what happened to you.”

“Associating with me puts you all in danger.” Last night was a fresh and sobering reminder of that fact. “I can hire security. You don’t have to put yourselves at risk.” I didn’t want more blood on my hands. “At least consider Lethe and the baby.”

“We are,” he assured me. “The child will be born into a proud and healthy pack.” His stance softened. “This is what we do. This is who we are. We were bred for violence, born for vengeance. We live with the taste of blood in our mouths, and we’re always hungry for more.”

Remembering how Hood had taken down the woman outside the Faraday, it all made a bit more sense why an uncommon species with ties to the fae would choose that life. “That’s why you’re in security.”

“Among other things.” He ducked his head then squinted up at me. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.” It occurred to me that I had agreed too quickly, but we were talking about the guy’s family, who I was responsible for until they decided their debt was paid. “What do you need?”

“Act surprised when Lethe makes her announcement,” he said, sheepish. “I didn’t want to steal her thunder but…”

“You didn’t want me to burst her bubble either.” And that’s exactly what I would have done by saying Congratulations, now pack your bags. You’ve won a one-way ticket back to Atlanta. “I’ll put my acting skills to good use if you let me host the baby shower. You guys don’t have pack in the area, as far as I know, and Lethe deserves all the frills.”

Truthfully, it was a selfish offer. Without my job, I had nothing but lessons on my hands. This might help keep me sane by giving me an excuse to be social.

“I’ll ask her.” A true smile blossomed, and I might have staggered back from the wattage if I hadn’t glimpsed its potential in the dozen previous half-smiles he had awarded me. “After she breaks the news.”

“Deal.” I did an internal happy dance. Woolly would go nuts. Kids and parties were two of her favorite things. “I’m hoping she’ll co-plan with me. I have no clue what to buy a baby, let alone a baby gwyllgi.”

Linus must have gone in at some point since he appeared at my shoulder holding a pink smoothie with my name on it. He passed it over then looked to Midas. “Will you join us for breakfast?”

Midas eyed the drink with about as much enthusiasm as a toddler handed a carrot stick. “No thanks.”

Waving, he set off at a jog toward the privacy of the woods to complete his change and begin his shift.

A sniff of the drink only hinted at strawberries and maybe a banana or two. “What’s in this one?”

We took the stairs into the kitchen, and I claimed a stool at the counter while he stood by the sink.

“A different vintage,” was all he said before he started hand-washing dishes to soothe his nerves.

Thankfully, that meant he missed the face I made at his back. A different vintage meant he had sourced another donor to test his hypothesis that what the stalkerpire confessed was the truth. That the term goddess-touched put window-dressing on the fact I was a hybrid: half necromancer on my maternal side and half vampire on my paternal side.

Meaning the reason why I remained anemic despite his best efforts to fatten me up might be due to the lack of a certain something from my diet that Maud must have been slipping me for years.

A goddess-touched necromancer might be nothing more than the offspring of a vampire and a necromancer. The Marchands might not be genetically disposed to producing hybrids so much as they bred for that goal.

The Grande Dame would blow a fuse when she found out about the Marchand family secret, if Linus hadn’t already told her. Me? I planned on keeping my mouth shut until she pried the confession out of me. As much as I wanted the mysteries of my life solved, I refused to help her leash me.

Bracing for the tang of old pennies in my mouth, I sipped a little and then a bit more. A metallic ribbon underscored the fruit mixture, but I liked the bite. “This isn’t half bad.” I swished it around and decided I could live off this cocktail if it did the job. “Do I want to know?”

A burst of pink colored his cheeks when he glanced at me, highlighting the freckles dotting his fair skin.

Understanding dawned, and I choked on the smoothie. “You?”

“I can’t be certain without access to Maud’s personal library, but I suspect she used me as your donor.” He rubbed the base of his neck as he turned and braced his hip against the sink. “She taught me how to draw blood for my ink, and I kept raw samples here, in the lab, for her use. Her more sensitive work for the Society required a control sample—hers. I always assumed she was using mine to verify her findings.”

“Until you did the math on the volume you were donating times the growing half-vampire living under her roof.” The glass slid from my hand and thunked on the marble. “You fed me all those years?”

“I don’t have proof,” he said to soften the blow. “I’ve been researching the feeding preferences of vampires at the Lyceum. It’s not uncommon for a made vampire who pairs with a human to starve itself to death after their partner dies. They grow used to the flavor. Nothing else satisfies. They either retrain their palate, or they wither.”

Maud strikes again.

What had she been thinking? Using him like that? Her own nephew, reduced to a blood bag.

As much as I wanted to uncover the truth about her death and my incarceration, I found it easier and easier to put off asking the wrong questions of the right people. Each revelation shattered a bit more of the foundation of my childhood and left me feeling like I had never really known her.

“What’s the fix?” I shoved away the glass. “How do the other vamps avoid donor addiction?”

“They switch partners every six months to a year.” He lowered his gaze. “Older vampires are more prone to be connoisseurs. They alternate donors every thirty days.”

“I don’t understand.” I recoiled from the frosty glass and its contents. “Why would I still give preference to you after a five-year hiatus?” I massaged my forehead. “Atramentous should have broken the addiction.”

“You’ve been losing weight since your release.” He kept studying the floor, his shoes. “I’m not sure you could have survived five years without proper nutrition.”

The laugh that burst from my chest was cruel and ugly, sharp and hateful. “They starved me and drugged me and beat me. There was nothing proper about Atramentous.”

Dragging his gaze up to me, he gave himself a moment to compose his features. Another mask clicked in place, shielding me from the worst of his reaction. The cold rage boiling in his eyes, though. That he failed to warm in time. The endless black spilling from corner to corner identified this mask as belonging to the potentate. This mask I sometimes thought of as vengeance.

“I can’t imagine what you endured.” Frost limned his crisp words. “I can promise those responsible will wish their fate was as merciful as the one they granted you.”

“Linus.” I extended my arm toward him, and he came to me, sliding his chilly hand in mine. “Thank you.”

“It’s not enough.” He gestured toward the drink, but his meaning encompassed so much more. “None of it will ever be enough.”

“I survived.” I squeezed his fingers, amazed to find them pliant and not molded from ice. “I made it out.”

Eternity stared back at me, bleak and endless. Unforgiving. There was no reasoning with this version of him.

Though I knew the answer, I had to ask him. “Who had access to your blood and to me?”

Whatever stores were kept in the basement were lost when Maud died. Assuming he was right, and he usually was, a fresh source would have been required to meet my dietary needs. The number of people who could claim such privilege might number the fingers on one hand.

“Mother,” he admitted, the bite in his tone aimed at her. “Strophalos.” He noted my shock, and the frost melted from his words. “They require faculty to donate blood for the students’ use. The samples aren’t labeled, and they’re kept in unmarked refrigerators.” His sigh warmed him even further. “That makes it impossible to track a teacher’s individual contribution. There’s no guarantee, since the program is anonymous, that the phlebotomist checked in what I gave. They could have kept it, and no one would be the wiser.”

As much as I wanted to point the finger at the Grande Dame, I had to admit this made it more likely that a staff member at the college where he taught was to blame. “Those are our only two suspects?”

Allowing my bias to blind me was a rookie mistake that let me forget the Society was founded on two principles: lineage and wealth. Blood spent the same as currency in our circles when it came to potent magic like his.

“The Elite,” he gritted out. “I’m required to give a blood sample each time I visit a secured facility. The amount is small, only large enough to test against previous samples, but it accumulates over time.”

Just how often was he visiting Volkov? And to what end? That’s what I wanted to ask, but I worried he might protect me from the truth. Goddess knows Boaz and Amelie had adopted that philosophy. Any curiosity I harbored on that front could wait until I was ready to risk the fallout, and I wasn’t there yet. I couldn’t stomach losing another person to lies this soon.

“We don’t know how much blood you require. The amount will be trial and error after you settle on a donor.” A shrug rolled through his shoulders. “A vial stolen here and there might be enough.”

Hating to expose any vulnerability, I admitted, “I don’t think I can do this without you.”

And by you, I meant his blood.

The previous concoctions made me gag after one sip. I couldn’t imagine choking down enough to figure out how much juice was required to keep a goddess-touched necromancer running in optimal condition.

Black wisps swirled through his eyes, and he wet his lips. “I’m happy to provide for you.”

A shiver traipsed down the length of my spine that might as well have been his cool fingertip.

“Thank you.” I wrapped my hand around the glass and pulled it back to me. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

Linus watched my lips part around the straw before sliding his focus to my throat as it worked over the frosty mix. “Yes,” he rasped. “I don’t mind.”

Unable to drink while watching him, I dropped my gaze to the countertop and pretended interest in the lightning strike of veins forking through the marble. A flush heated my cheeks and left my lips buzzing, or maybe that was the effect his blood had on me.

Finished with my appetizer, I exchanged the glass for a plate of the crepes he promised me.

The can of whipped cream he set on the table with a grimace. He preferred to make his own fresh.

How a man who barely ate or drank became an epicurean boggled the mind.

“Join me?” I patted the seat Amelie used to occupy, the one beside me. “Are you sure you don’t want to share?”

“I grazed while I was taste-testing,” he assured me. “I couldn’t hold another bite.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I tucked into my meal while he pulled out his stool. “What’s on the agenda for tonight?”

“A field trip.” He wrapped his hand around mine and aimed my fork at his mouth, stealing my next bite. Expression thoughtful, he chewed then swallowed. “Needs more nutmeg.”

Shocked down to my toes, I gaped at him until he cut another bite and forked it into my mouth.

Smart move on his part. Stuffing my face might have been the only move guaranteed to shut me up.