Lust rolled through me. I stood against a sink in the men’s room where Erin—that’s what the other guy had called her—had pushed me, and I glanced in the mirror.

My jaw dropped. I looked like a wild man, my hair in disarray, several days’ growth of dark beard on my jawline, blood drying on my cheeks and chin. But that in itself wasn’t what astounded me. The last time I’d seen my reflection, an eighteen-year-old high school student had stared back at me. Now I was looking at a man’s jaw, a man’s profile, a man’s beard. The skin around my eyes showed slight signs of age, a few wrinkles here and there. My front teeth no longer had a gap between them. They’d moved together somehow. Maybe when my wisdom teeth had erupted. I remembered the pain when they broke through my gums, pain that had seemed like nothing after what I’d been through.

So long ago now…as if they were only fuzzy memories from a dream. Or a nightmare.

Still, I was a mess. I was lucky she hadn’t run screaming.

Instead, she was trying to help me. Help I didn’t deserve after desecrating her blood bank. Who was she? And why hadn’t she responded to my attempt to glamour her?

Her scent had intoxicated me. She was one of them—the humans with dark hair and fair skin, whose blood tasted better than the most exotic nectar. Her eyes were a light green, almost as light as a peridot, and they sparkled with fire and ice simultaneously.

My gums began to tingle once more. Just the thought of Erin’s blood awakened my urge to feed.

I’d gorged on the bagged blood, enough that I should have been sated. I couldn’t go back for more. Someone would have been notified to clean up by now.

More bagged blood wouldn’t help anyway. I wanted her blood.

I tried to push the hunger from my mind and concentrate on something more important.

I was free.

Unchained from the shackles that had bound me for so many years.

So why did I still feel like I was imprisoned?

I was still in New Orleans. Was my family still here? Dad? Em? River? Uncle Braedon? Grandpa Bill? Bill might be over a hundred years old by now. He could very well be gone.

Even if they were still here, I had no idea how to get in touch with them.

Erin. Erin was my only chance.

What if she forgot? Didn’t come back for me?

I resisted the urge to lick the dried blood from my face and hands—it wouldn’t satisfy me anyway—and furiously scrubbed at them.

Erin.

I needed her blood. I needed her.

I’d felt it. She needed something from me as well. I wasn’t sure what, but I’d felt the tug. She wanted to touch me. Couldn’t stop herself from putting her hand on my skin, even though I must have looked like an animal after a kill with blood streaming from my lips.

I’d brushed her away, for fear I’d lose the last thread of self-control keeping me from lunging toward her, sinking my teeth into her soft flesh, and taking from her the sustenance I craved.

Hunger still clawed at me. Not just for Erin’s blood, but for Erin herself. My groin tightened.

Not again.

I willed the erection down. Couldn’t go there. Not now. I’d had erections during captivity and no way to release, with my hands always bound. I certainly had no way to release now. How long had I been gone? I had no idea. Only that it had been years. Many, many years.

Erin had told me to stay put, that she’d come back for me. Could I trust her? Why would she want to help me?

I had to get out of here. If I stayed in one place for too long, I risked being tracked by her. Vampires had no scent to each other, but we had other ways of keeping tabs. I had no doubt she had the ability to find me.

I grasped the edge of the sink, steadying myself.

I pulled against the leather restraints. “Who the hell are you? Why am I here?”

The woman was dazzling…in a terrifying way. She was masked, except for her icy blue eyes. When she smiled, her fangs were already long and sharp.

“Don’t you recognize your queen, Dante?”

She was delusional. We recognized the government of the places we lived. In this case, the United States of America, which didn’t have a queen.

My clothes were gone. I lay naked, my wrists and ankles shackled to a table. Or was it a bed?

“So young and beautiful. I can smell the testosterone flowing through you, turning your boy’s body into a man’s. How old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?”

I was eighteen. A late bloomer, something I found pretty embarrassing. My cousin, River, who was a month younger than I, had matured before I had. My voice had finally changed two years ago, which was the signal that a male vampire had become fertile.

“You are no queen,” I said through clenched teeth. “Let me go.”

She laughed. “You will recognize me as your queen soon enough.”

“Let me go!” I demanded once more. “My father will come for me. My uncle. My grandfather. They are more powerful than you could ever hope to be.”

She snarled, her fangs bared. “They’re already on their way, sweet one. Something I was counting on.”

A thud pulled me out of the nightmare.

I’d fallen to the hard tile floor.

That horrible night, so long ago, when I’d awakened in her dungeon.

Escape. I needed to flee now. Erin had promised to help, but I couldn’t wait. Not when she could already be on my trail. I left the men’s room with my face and hands now clean, but my clothes were a different matter. They were tattered—they’d come from a homeless man, after all—and covered in blood. I sneaked down a hallway until I found a locker room. I traded what I was wearing for a pair of jeans that were slightly small on me and a black hoodie. I didn’t like stealing, but I had no choice.

I raced around, looking for the back door where I’d entered.

No! A pull. Erin was mentally tugging me toward something. Something I’d seen before.

I ambled into the emergency room, trying to look inconspicuous, when something tight wrapped around my wrist, and I flinched. I rubbed at it, but found only the calluses from the leather bindings I had finally left behind.

Then I saw it.

A man on a gurney had grabbed Erin’s wrist. The need to protect her hurled into me like a cyclone. I inhaled, yet I smelled only Erin’s scent. But I recognized the man.

“Why won’t he let go?” Erin asked, pleading.

“I don’t know.” A woman in a white coat was looking into the man’s eyes with a flashlight or something. “Pupils are dilated. We need to take some blood for a drug panel.”

I knew what to do. I quickly walked toward the gurney and gazed into the homeless man’s eyes, letting go of the glamour that had been holding the homeless man since I’d run from the cop earlier. In my hurry to get away, I hadn’t released him.

The doctor was too involved in her work to notice me, but when the man closed his eyes and let go of Erin’s hand, she looked up.

“You!” she said.

I turned and walked swiftly toward the first door I could find.