“What do you mean? What do you want?” My mind spun, questions and pain and blistering doubt.
“I want you to wake up!” he screamed, charging toward me with the speed of a shooting star.
A surge of lightning struck me, my body going rigid with the pain. My knees cracked against the floor, and I convulsed against the onslaught of the white-hot blaze.
I reached for Alek’s lifeless hand, wanting to touch him even in death.
The man’s laughter, dark and cold, filled the room, swallowed my agonized screams—
The floor disappeared.
I free fell, swinging my arms to try and stop my fall.
But the pit of black was endless, the room disappearing. The man, the bodies. All of it. Gone.
Empty.
Like my soul.
Nothing but the black.
Nothing but the fall.
The pain coursed through my blood like acid.
I gnashed my teeth as I toppled over and over, the pain ratcheting, searing my skull. The very marrow in my bones groaned in protest, screaming, gnawing, threatening to crack against the pressure.
I fell for so long I begged for the end.
A quick snap of my neck on whatever bottom laid at the end of this pit.
Anything to stop the pain. Stop the splintering of my heart, my soul.
“Alek,” I sobbed, spinning head over feet as I fell and fell and fell—
“Lyric,” Alek’s voice called to me from the dark.
A cool, soothing tingle washed over my body like the first rain after a fire.
My mind pulsed behind the darkness of my closed lids, but I felt something soft beneath me.
Not a hard marble floor covered in blood and ash.
No taunting echoes of a man I’d never seen before.
Nothing but the sweet, comforting silence, and the smell of—
Acid licked up my throat, and I hissed as I bolted straight up, my eyes snapping open.
“Lyric,” Alek breathed my name, and instantly I was on my feet.
In our room.
I tilted my head, feeling like I’d missed something. Lost something. But what?
I swallowed hard. My throat was raw, aching like I’d screamed all night.
The nightmare? Had I truly screamed in my sleep?
“How are you feeling?” Alek asked, his eyes wide as he stepped toward me, hands raised as if I were pointing one of his glocks at him.
“I had a bad dream,” I said, nearly in tears as the images of his lifeless body rose up in my mind.
That quickly, I had my arms around his neck. Barely a thought, and I’d crushed my body to his. “You were dead,” I gasped into his shoulder. His arms snaked around me, holding me to him, gently, carefully.
“I’m here. I’m fine,” he said, smoothing the back of my hair.
I turned my head, nuzzling his neck. “God, you smell good,” I moaned against his skin. His intoxicating scent of dark chocolate and cayenne and earthiness had magnified to the point that I wanted to devour him—
A muscle twitched in my mouth, and I jolted out of his embrace. My fingers flew up to inspect the new pulsing, aching sensation—
Fangs.
Omigod, I had fangs.
“You were dying,” Alek explained, eyes pleading as he watched me. “I couldn’t lose you.”
“My love, you’ve lost too much blood, and the only way you have a shot of making it is if I turn you.”
“Then turn me.”
Broken memories flashed in my mind—the whisper of a gunshot, Lachlan’s roar, Alek’s hand in mine explaining everything, giving me a choice, a doctor…
“Lachlan,” I gasped, my mind whirling. “Is he all right?”
The smallest of smiles shaped Alek’s lips. “You realize you’ve been made vampire, and you ask if my second is all right?”
“He’s your best friend,” I said. “He was shot—”
“So were you,” Alek cut me off. “But yes, after a few…complications…Lachlan is fully healed. He’s torturing himself for not getting to you fast enough.”
“That wasn’t his fault, Alek. It happened so quickly. He was by the car.” I shook my head. “Please don’t blame him.”
“I don’t,” he assured me. “I told him as much. I blame the bastards that keep trying…” His jaw clenched, the muscles in his body rippling as anger churned in his eyes. Power radiated off of every inch of him, but this time I could feel it in a whole new way. More potent, almost as if I could taste the depth of it—as endless as that pit I’d fallen through in my nightmare.
“You turned me,” I said, swallowing hard. A fiery thirst licked my throat, begging to be quenched. “It burns,” I rasped, fingering my neck.
Alek took one step toward me, then two. He sank to his knees and tilted his neck to the side.
That quickly, I wanted him. My thighs clenched, my core filling with a need so much I ached.
“Feed,” he said, the demand in his voice primal as his hands gripped my waist.
The fire in my throat intensified, his scent swirling around me in a crescendo of pulsing hunger. Instinct, ancient and steady, roared in my very soul. The new fangs throbbed in my mouth.