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“It didn’t have to be like this,” Sullivan was saying now. The human leaned in close—close enough that Dante saw the vacant gaze of a Minion staring back at him. “Just know that you brought this on yourself. Be grateful I didn’t turn you over to my Master instead.”

With that, Ben Sullivan released him, letting Dante’s head fall back down. As the Minion strode out of the room and locked the door, Dante opened his eyes and saw his reflection in the polished steel surface of the table on which he lay.

No, not his reflection.

Tess’s.

Not his body bound on the examination table while the clinic was being consumed in smoke and flames, but hers.

Oh, mother of Christ.

It wasn’t his horrific death he’d been experiencing in his nightmares all these years. It was the death of his Breedmate, the woman he loved.

CHAPTER Thirty-four

Tess made her way into the city from the compound’s property in a state of emotional numbness. Without her purse, coat, or cell phone, she had few options—not even a key to get into her apartment. Breathless, confused, utterly exhausted from everything that was happening to her, she headed for a corner pay phone, praying it wasn’t out of order. She got a dial tone, hit 0, and waited for the operator to come on.

“Collect call, please,” she panted into the receiver, then gave the operator the number of the animal clinic. The phone rang and rang. No answer.

As it went into voice mail, the operator disconnected, saying, “I’m sorry. There’s no one there to accept charges.”

“Wait,” Tess said, worry niggling at her. “Will you try it again?”

“One moment.”

Tess waited anxiously as the phone began ringing again at the clinic. No answer.

“I’m sorry,” the operator said again, disconnecting the call.

“I don’t understand,” Tess murmured, more to herself. “Can you tell me what time it is?”

“It’s ten-thirteen A.M.”

Nora wouldn’t break for lunch until noon, and she never called in sick, so why wasn’t she picking up the call? Something must be wrong.

“Would you like to try another number?”

“Yes, I would.”

Tess gave the operator Nora’s land line, then, when that call came up empty, she gave her Nora’s cell. As each call rang unanswered, Tess’s heart sank deeper in her chest. Everything felt wrong to her. Very wrong.

With dread pounding through her, Tess hung up the pay phone and began walking for the nearest subway station. She didn’t have the dollar-twenty-five fare it would cost to ride to the North End, but a grandmotherly woman on the street took pity on her and gave her a handful of loose change.

The trip home seemed to take forever, each stranger’s face on the train seeming to stare at her as if they knew she didn’t belong there among them. As if they could sense that she had been changed somehow, no longer a part of the normal world. No longer a part of their human world.

And maybe she wasn’t, Tess thought, reflecting on all that Dante had told her—everything she had seen and been a part of in the past several hours. The past several days, she corrected herself, thinking back on Halloween night, when she’d truly first seen Dante.

When he’d sunk his fangs into her neck and turned her normal world upside down.

But maybe she wasn’t being totally fair. Tess couldn’t remember a time when she’d really felt a part of anything normal. She had always been…different. Her unusual ability, even more than her troubled past, had always kept her separate from other people. She’d always felt like a misfit, an outsider, unable to trust anyone with her secrets.

Until Dante.

He had opened her eyes to so much. He’d made her feel, made her desire in ways she never had before. He’d made her hope for things she’d only dreamed of. He’d made her feel safe and understood. Worse than that, he had made her feel loved.

But that had all been based on lies. Now she had the truth—incredible as it was—and she would give just about anything to pretend it wasn’t real.

Vampires and blood bonds. A mounting war between creatures who shouldn’t exist outside the realm of the