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“On it,” Brock said.

Kade joined the rest of the warriors as they worked to clear the yard before the self-destruct clock wound down to zero. It was getting hard for him to breathe now, his blood throbbing with alarm sirens of its own, awareness seeping through the wash of adrenaline and battle focus that had swamped his senses for much of the combat at the mine.

As he and his brethren dragged the last of the Minion dead into place, and the first rumblings of the coming explosion began to shake the ground, the cause of his internal distress hit him broadside.

Alex.

Holy hell.

Something had happened. She was upset, shaken. Something had terrified her … horrified her. And he felt her trauma like his own now, because he had taken her blood into his body, and it was that blood bond that had been clamoring in his own veins.

Her name was a plea—a prayer—as the ground beneath him gave a mighty shudder, and the mining company blew sky high behind him.

CHAPTER

Twenty-five

Okay, Alex. Now, hold on here. Slow down, all right?” Zach Tucker carefully closed the door of the shed in back of his house and looked at Alex in stunned disbelief. She couldn’t really blame him. No one in their right mind would believe what she’d just told him—not unless they’d seen it with their own eyes. “You’re telling me you just found another dead body in the bush, and you think it was … a vampire attack?”

“I know it was, Zach.” Her heart ached to say the words, but the image of Kade, and the image of the hunter’s savaged body he’d left behind, tore at her with icy talons. “Oh, God, Zach. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”

He frowned, staring at her for a long moment. “Why don’t you come inside? It’s freezing out here, and you’re shaking like a leaf.”

Not from the cold of the outdoors, but from the confusion and horror of discovering that Kade had betrayed her. He’d sworn he was different from the monsters of her nightmares, and she had believed him. She would have believed everything he’d told her, if she hadn’t seen the blood-soaked proof of his deception for herself just a short while ago.

“Come on,” Zach said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and guiding her away from the shed, toward his house. Luna got up to follow, keeping pace at Alex’s heels, but before the wolf dog could make it into the house, Zach closed the door in her face. “Sit down, Alex. Let’s take this slowly now, all right? Help me make sense of what you think you saw.”

Numbly complying, she sank down onto the sofa in his living room. He took a seat beside her. “I don’t think I saw anything, Zach. I did see it. It’s real, everything I told you. Vampires do exist.”

“Listen to yourself. This isn’t like you, Alex. You’ve been acting strangely ever since the attack on the Tomses. Ever since that guy—Kade—showed up in Harmony.” Zach’s eyes narrowed on her. “Has he been giving you drugs? Is that what his business is in Harmony? Because if some asshole thinks he can come into my town and start dealing—”

“No!” Alex shook her head. “God, is that what you think? That I’m telling you all of this because I’m high or something?”

“I had to ask,” he said, still watching her with an intensity that unsettled her. “I’m sorry, Alex, but all of this sounds a little … well, crazy.”

She exhaled a sharp breath. “I know what it sounds like. I don’t want to believe it any more than you do. But it’s the truth. I’ve known it was the truth since I was nine years old.”

“What do you mean?”

“Vampires, Zach. They’re real. Years ago, they killed my mom and my little brother.”

“You always said it was a drunk driver.”

She slowly shook her head. “It wasn’t. I saw the attack with my own eyes. It was the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed. And I didn’t need to see the attack on Pop Toms and his family to know that the same evil killed them, too. I should have said something then. Maybe I could have stopped what happened to them, or to Lanny Ham and Big Dave.”

Zach’s frown deepened to a questioning scowl. “You’re saying it was vampires