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As for how Quentin would feel about her right now, Elise was loath to imagine.

His disappointment would be enormous. He might even hate her a little. Or a lot, if he knew that it was she who drove their son out into the night. If not for the argument she’d had with Camden, the ridiculous attempt to control him, maybe he wouldn’t have gone. She was to blame for that, and how she wished she could call back those terrible few hours and erase them forever.

Regret was bitter in her throat as she gazed out to the world beyond her own. She felt so helpless, so useless in her warm, dry home.

Beneath her spacious living quarters in the Back Bay Darkhaven were Sterling’s private apartments and underground shelter. He was Breed, so while there was even a hint of sun overhead, he was forced to remain indoors and out of the light, like all of his kind. That included Camden as well, for even though he was half hers—half human—he had his late father’s vampire blood in him. His father’s otherworldly strengths, and his weaknesses.

There would be no searching for Cam until dark, and to Elise, the waiting seemed an eternity.

She took up pacing in front of the window, wishing there was something she could do to help Sterling look for him and the other Darkhaven youths who’d gone missing along with Cam.

Even as a Breedmate, one of the rare females of the human species who were able to produce offspring with vampires—who were solely male—Elise was still fully Homo sapiens. Her skin could bear sunlight. She could walk among other humans without detection, although it had been many long years—more than a century, in fact—since she had done so.

She’d been a ward of the Darkhavens since she was a little girl, brought there for her own safety and well-being when poverty destituted her parents in one of Boston’s nineteenth-century slums. When she was of age, she’d become the Breedmate of Quentin Chase, her beloved. How she missed him, gone just five short years.

Now she might have lost Camden too.

No. She refused to think it. The pain was too great to consider that for even a second.

And maybe there was something she could do. Elise drew to a halt at the rain-spattered window. Her breath steamed the glass as she peered out, desperate to know where her son might be.

With a burst of resolve, she pivoted around and went to the closet to retrieve her coat from where it had been since several winters past. The long navy wool covered her widow’s whites, falling down around her ankles. Elise put on a pair of pale leather boots and left her quarters before fear could call her back.

She dashed down the stairwell to the door at street level. It took her a couple of attempts to punch in the correct security code needed to unlock the door, for she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out of the Darkhaven property. The outside world had long represented pain to her, but maybe now she could bear it.

For Camden, she could bear anything. Couldn’t she?

As she pushed the door open, chilly sleet stung her cheeks, carried toward her on a rush of cool fresh air. Elise braced herself, then walked out, down the brick steps with their wrought-iron railing. On the sidewalk below, thin clusters of people passed, some huddled together, others walking alone, dark umbrellas bobbing with their hurried gaits.

For a moment—the smallest suspension of time—there was silence. But then the ability that had forever been her bane, the extraordinary skill that came in unique form to every Breedmate, pressed down upon her like a hammer.

—I should have told him about the baby—

—not like they’re going to miss twenty measly bucks, after all—

—told that old woman I’d kill her fucking dog if it shit in my yard again—

—he’ll never even know I was gone if I just go home and act like nothing’s wrong—

Elise brought her hands up to her ears as all the ugly thoughts of the human passersby bombarded her. She couldn’t blot them out. They flew at her like so many