“What?!” he yelled, eyes wide. “NO! Never. Why would you think that?”

“I… I… the pain.”

“You’re on morphine.”

“It’s…” I stumbled over my own thoughts, Alex’s voice in my head.

You could be like us…

Zac stiffened.

There was a knock on the door and Leon walked in.

“Zac,” he said, his voice too tight.

Zac’s chair screeched as it moved over the floor and crashed behind him. He disappeared from my vision and when I blinked he was at Leon’s throat, pinning him to the closed door.

“You were supposed to be keeping her safe. She was with him?” Zac growled.

Leon made no move to resist the attack; he let his body relax, like a cat turning away to avoid a fight with another. “I swear, Zac. We were on guard the whole time. But my head, I think he slipped past my barriers. I’m sorry.”

Zac loosened his grip, shaking his head. The silence around us prickled at my neck.

“You were supposed to be watching her all the time,” Zac said slowly.

“Watch me? Like, spy on me? To keep me safe or to check what I do?” I demanded, remembering more of Alex’s words. I wished I could scrub them away. “You made it clear you didn’t want me, so I moved on. Away. Can I not have a life of my own without your guards?”

Zac rubbed his fingers harder over his head. “When will you understand how dangerous he is? You’re in my world now, the one you insisted you wanted to stay in, remember? What did Alexander want?”

How dare he lord it over me like that. Irritation bubbled under my skin. “Nothing really, he just asked me to have a drink with him.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I refused and that was that.”

“That was that,” he repeated, frustrated. “Fine. Whatever you say. A little reminder though — Alexander thinks it’s our right to take whoever we want to feed on. To him it’s no different to a lion eating a wildebeest, a fox eating a rabbit, a human eating a cow. We eat humans and that’s that. I doubt you’ll be feeling so defensive about him when he decides that you are his dinner.”

* * *

After some awkward tension Zac excused Leon and the nurses came to check me over. They gave me more drugs. Then I waited for him to talk.

He knew what I needed from him. What he needed to explain. The way he’d been with that bitch, it cut so deep into my heart that the image alone made my throat close up.

“Her name is Luna. She’s a scout, an agent, for the Bael. I couldn’t let them know that you meant anything to me. It took me forever to get rid of them that night. And then, when I found you…” His beautiful face crumpled with anguish. “You were kissing Danny outside your motel. And I got thinking that maybe if you really did want to be with someone else then I should leave you alone. It would be good for you. So I hung back in the shadows… I…”

A tear trickled down my cheek. Why was I crying for him? There’s a certain deep-rooted pain that goes along with rejection. Even knowing that he wanted me, that it had been a lie, the act of rejection itself had left a gnawing pit in my stomach. I should have been crying for me, not him.

But the guilt was there eating at me. He’d been pretending, with her. It was a show. Yet I’d slept with Danny. I had betrayed him.

“I couldn’t come to you. They decided to stick around and I was terrified of them following me and… taking you. And after, there was so much fallout, so much shit I had to clear up. But I made… I tried… to make sure you were safe.” His words barely more than a guilt-ridden whisper.

I believed him. I’d always known it, really. I’d known that bitch was a vampire and I’d seen the fear on his face as he’d brushed me aside. I knew it was all done for the right reasons. That didn’t stop the cutting pain in my heart, though. Or the lead lining my stomach every time I thought he might disappear.

He stood over me and leant in. I opened my mouth to speak and he kissed me. Passionately. For a long time.

This was the kiss I’d wanted, that Danny didn’t provide. The kind that made my knees go weak and my mind go blank. No human could kiss like that. By the time he stopped I could barely fathom what I was upset about. Wisps of worry went through me in a fleeting moment, thinking that maybe he was draining my anger with his mind control.

“This,” he said, taking hold of my chin and biting my bottom lip. “This big, dirty mouth is all mine. Your lips belong to me. Understand?”

I nodded.

“Don’t put me through that again, Jess,” he spoke against my mouth so that I couldn’t breathe. “My hold over the Beast is only so strong. If another man touches you again, do you think I will falter before snapping their neck?”

* * *

A day passed, but still I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That bitch. Luna. Her hands on him. I was a hypocrite. What must he have thought about Danny’s hands doing far more to me?

“If I act weird sometimes, you just have to trust me that it’s for a reason,” Zac said, leaning back in the plastic hospital chair and stretching his neck.

“You always act weird,” I murmured. “That wasn’t weird, that was gut-wrenchingly nasty. You could have done things differently.”

“It crushed me to hurt you like that, but I had to play a convincing role to them.’

“But who are they? Why are they so important?”

He shook his head, “Emory promised to come in six weeks, but he got held up with other business. He sent her to check what was happening with the hunter situation. Alexander told her he’d killed him. He kept his mouth shut about the recent attack. As far as they knew it was over. But I fucked up…”

There was that look in his eyes again. I’d seen it briefly that night. Definitely fear.

I waited for him to continue.

“They know I never indulge in their activities or their games. Acting the way I did with Luna, it showed them I was hiding something. Then they saw you, your aura, they knew—”

“You can see my aura?” Alex had mentioned the same thing.

“All vampires can see auras. People have varying shades depending on their character, their nature, but yours… it’s pure hyper-energy, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And they knew you were different, too. They stuck around and I thought they were just messing with me, but they were gathering information. They found out that you meant something to me. I had to neutralise that threat,” he flicked his gaze to me.

“Neutralise? You killed them?” Was that satisfaction that rippled through me?

“Luna proved tougher than anticipated but she eventually got what she deserved. Then I had to fix things with the Bael, explaining that Luna had encroached on my territory and made waves. That I was within my rights to take them out after they killed people on my island. My people. Ones I’d claimed. It’s true, they did kill people, lots of them. I didn’t really care though.”

That wasn’t true. He cared a great deal about the people on South Padre not getting killed.

“Emory is still away. He might be for some time, but I don’t think for one moment that this is over. They’ll return…” He blew out a long breath before continuing.

“I was trying to keep you safe. I stayed away because it’s too dangerous to be around me. But then this happens,” he gestured to me, lying in the hospital bed. “And it’s nothing to do with me, or vampires, it’s just you… your recklessness. Maybe you’re safer with me after all.”