She was dying.

I’d seen the spark of life leave more humans than I cared to remember, and I knew what it looked like. What it smelled like.

The shade had cut deep. There was so much blood on the ground the woman looked like she was floating in a dark pool. Her fair skin was painted red, rivulets pulsing from the bizarre patterns carved into her flesh.

My fangs dropped as I leaned over her, the tangy aroma of her blood invading my senses. She smelled delicious, like cherry and almond. If I were less disciplined, I would latch onto her wounds and drink until there wasn’t a drop of her sweet blood left.

But I was not that man.

I inhaled sharply, wrestling with my self-control. This was the closest I’d come to breaking my vows since I had made them all those years ago.

I had made two promises to myself. The first was never again to drink blood from a human. There had been enough pain and suffering caused by our kind over the years. I wasn’t going to add to it anymore.

Draining an innocent human just to satisfy my hunger for a time was too high a price to pay. The guilt that lingered was worse than the cravings for blood ever could be. And there were other ways to survive—less pleasant, but less barbaric.

“She’s dying.” Sol’s sightless eyes were wide as his fingers ran lightly over her slick skin, feeling her pulse. “She’s lost too much blood. Her heart is failing. She has five minutes, maybe less.”

“Fuck.” Jerrett stood over us, his feet shifting restlessly as he stared down at her. “Fuck!”

She smelled so intoxicating. Was it because I’d gone so long without drinking fresh human blood, or was hers particularly seductive?

I suppose it’s only right that the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen has the most tempting blood.

My mind buzzed. My brothers were looking to me for an answer, but my brain felt sluggish, as if I were drugged. All I could focus on was the girl.

The second vow I’d made had been to never turn another human. No one deserved the life the three of us had been cursed to live. I refused to spread our disease like it was a gift as some vampires did.

“Mal!”

Jerrett dropped to one knee beside me. The piercings in his lip and eyebrow glinted in the dim light as he locked eyes with me. His usual smirk was gone, replaced by a grim, desperate expression I’d never seen before.

“I know.” My nostrils flared, and I clenched my jaw. A war raged in my heart. “I know, Goddamnit.”

“She’s almost out of time,” Sol said softly. He didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve like Jerrett did, but I could hear the intensity in his voice.

The unspoken meaning of his words made my stomach churn. They were waiting for me to decide. I could sense my brothers’ bodies vibrating with tension. They were desperate to save this girl, but out of respect for me, they held back. They knew how I felt about spreading our cursed condition. I’d taken an oath never to do it again, and I had meant to keep that vow forever.

This is a fucking mistake.

The cool, rational part of my brain made one last attempt to warn me, but its voice was soft and feeble.

I couldn’t just let this girl die. A woman as vibrant and full of life as this must be loved by many people. They would be heartbroken to lose her.

They’ll lose her anyway if you turn her. You know that.

Gritting my teeth, I silenced the voice whispering in my head. In truth, I wanted to be selfish. Though I didn’t know her, I felt strangely attached to her. Every glimpse of her over the past week was etched into my memory. The way she’d absently brushed her long, dark hair over her shoulder. The long line of her neck as she looked up into the night sky and sighed.

I wanted to know what she’d been thinking to make her sigh like that. It broke my heart to think I might never find out.

“We save her.”

The words dropped like lead weights from my tongue, but my heart lightened immediately. The torment of indecision was over. I had made my choice.

My brothers nodded, relief clear on their faces. Sol’s green eyes that saw nothing and everything burned into me, and I could almost feel him reading my thoughts.

“There’s no other way, Malcolm,” he murmured.

I knew he was right. There was only one thing that could save her now. Even if we could get her to a hospital in time, no doctor could save her when she was this close to death; the time for human intervention was long past. The shade had done too much damage, carving patterns deep into her skin.

My jaw clenched at the sight of her cruel wounds. I promised myself we would catch the undead monster and make it suffer.

But that was a task for another night.

Right now, I would be the one to suffer. It was the only way.

I pulled up my sleeve and bit down hard on my wrist, barely flinching at the piercing pain of the puncture wounds. It hurt, but I was used to the sting. All vampires grew accustomed to it. And in the right context, the pain could easily edge over into pleasure.

Shoving those thoughts away, I kept my eyes focused on the woman.

I gently lifted up her head. Though she still showed some signs of life, her light was fading away. Her face slackened. Her chest rose and fell quickly as her breathing became more erratic. She was struggling now, her body giving up on itself. Sol’s estimate of five minutes had been generous. She was slipping over, hovering in the space between life and death.

My blood was her last hope.

I held my wrist to her mouth. For a moment, she didn’t respond.

“Come on. Come on, damn it.” Jerrett stared at her face as though he could bring her back to life by force of will alone.

I adjusted my grip on her neck, pressing my bleeding wrist harder to her lips. Would it fail? Had I hesitated too long? It’d been a long time since I’d witnessed a transformation. I’d seen ones performed on dying humans before, but never ones this close to death. Perhaps I was too late.

Sol hummed low in his throat, and I heard him mutter a prayer to Fate.

At last, the girl’s eyelids fluttered open. Her pupils were blown out, making her hazel eyes appear almost black. She looked up wildly. I wasn’t sure she even registered our faces, but she latched onto my wrist, an instinctual reaction.

Her lips closed around my skin, and her throat moved as she drank greedily. Color began to return to her cheeks, the ashen palor fading from her bloodstained skin. She really was exquisite.

“It’s working,” I said quietly, trying to hide the naked relief in my voice.

I supported her neck as she drank her fill. It’d been over four hundred years since I was turned, but I still remembered how it felt. Immortality and power had flooded my system—a high like nothing else a human could experience.

The pain would come later, as the body completed the change. But the moment of transformation was pure ecstasy.

I also hadn’t fed a human in hundreds of years, so perhaps my memory was fuzzy. But this felt different. More intense, somehow. As she drew the blood from my body in deep pulls, something shifted between us. It was a connection formed of pure, shared pleasure.

Slowly, the cuts the shade had gouged into her body began to close. She sat up, cupping my wrist in her hands as she continued to lap at me. I let out a low grunt and tightened my grip around the back of her neck, trying to keep myself grounded as desire flooded me.

God, I hope she won’t hold it against me that I saved her life. That I gave her this curse.

The girl was coming back to herself now. Her eyes cleared, the mesmerizing hazel returning. The sight was so beautiful it called a smile to my face. I let out a huff of relieved laughter, and she tilted her head, looking up at me in surprise. We were both high from the change, lost in each other.

In that moment, I lost control.

Without thinking, I leaned down to kiss her.

If I can’t taste her blood, I’ll taste those pretty lips.

Her mouth was warm and pliant, wet with my blood, and she let out a slight moan as I flicked my tongue out to lick away a drop. She kissed like she was discovering the world through our connection, like she’d been waiting for this kiss her whole life.

I pulled back slowly, breathing deeply as I regained my senses.

Then she moaned again, but not in pleasure.

“What the fuck?” Jerrett leaned forward, tensing.

The girl’s body jerked as the color drained from her face once more. She fell back, and I only barely managed to stop her head from hitting the ground. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and to my horror, her wounds reopened.

“What’s happening?” Jerrett’s voice cut through the dark night. “She’s getting worse!”

“The wounds are reopening. Why?” Sol asked.

I didn’t respond, because I had no answer.

Goddamnit. This had never happened before. It wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Never in four hundred years had I heard of a failed transformation. It just didn’t happen—unless the person was already dead.

“What do we do?” Jerrett paced to her other side, dropping to his knees.

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Let me try,” Sol said grimly.

He pushed me out of the way and bit his own wrist until it bled. He let the blood drip onto her full lips like candle wax. Her body stopped seizing, and she sat up, gripping his arm like she had mine. A look of intense pleasure swept over both their faces.

Did I look so enraptured when she fed on me?

More than likely.

I clenched my jaw, unease prickling in my stomach. This was insane. I’d never come across a human who’d needed more than one vampire to turn her. Was it because of the injuries she’d received? The strange patterns carved in her skin? Or was it something about the girl herself?

But it was working. Her wounds were healing again, the skin knitting slowly back together. Blood still seeped from them, but by the time Sol pulled away, the cuts had almost closed up. Not completely, like they should have, but she was no longer on the brink of death.

As the girl’s breathing deepened and evened out, Sol and I both turned to Jerrett.

He cracked a smile despite the worry in his eyes. “Best for last, huh?”

“If it makes you feel better to think so. Yes. She needs more.” Sol sat back.

Fortunately, Jerrett didn’t hesitate or debate like I had. We all had our faults, but no one would ever accuse my oldest brother of overthinking things. The sleeve of his dark shirt was already rolled up to his elbow, and he pulled the girl into his lap as Sol stood.

Jerrett cradled the girl’s body to him as she drank, murmuring softly in her ear. Finally, the multitude of cuts arrayed across her skin healed—though still not as perfectly as they should have. Faint white scars remained, as if she’d received the wounds years ago.

When Jerrett moved to pull his wrist from her mouth, she mewled in protest, her tongue darting out to catch the last few drops as she lifted her head to chase the source.

“No more, sweetheart. Not tonight.” He smoothed her hair back, his intense gaze locked on her face.

She blinked up at him slowly, her hazel irises glinting in the dim light. Red sparks flared within the flecks of brown and green as our vampire blood worked its way through her system.

Then her eyelids slid shut, and she fell limply back into Jerrett’s arms. She was still covered in blood, but the color had returned to her cheeks. Her expression was peaceful.

I stood and rested a hand on Sol’s shoulder.

Jerrett looked up at us. “What the hell just happened?”

My nostrils flared as I gritted my teeth. I had no answer for him. When we’d set out tonight to hunt a rogue shade, I couldn’t have predicted how far off course the evening would go. If I had, would I still have come?

The girl would live, thanks to us.

But at what cost?