Page 21 of Siege of Blood and Betrayal

Zane follows me in, his eyes scanning the interior of the house. “How did you know about this place?”

I drop my backpack on the couch and turn to face him, crossing my arms over my chest. “I stayed here during the weeks I was deciding what I wanted to do with my life.”

The words hang between us, heavy with the weight of the past. I see the flicker of understanding in his green gaze, and then the regret that follows.

I’m too exhausted to delve into it. I need to focus on the present, on surviving, and avenging our fathers. I hold up my hand to stop whatever he might be about to say. “You don’t need a lot of sleep, but I’m running on fumes. I figure you can go over the security feeds from the compound in the office while I sack out for a few hours.”

“This place is wired into the security at the compound?”

“No. But Da has a private server and sends all data to a cloud file backup. We can access it from here, with no one realizing we have access.”

“That will be handy for when we take things back, too.” He purses his lips and lets out a long-suffering sigh. “They had no idea who they were dealing with when they came after our family.”

I nod, unable to muster a response.Our family.

The pain of the day is too raw, the memories of the past too vivid. I glance around the small living space, my eyes landing on the cupboards. “I’ll grab bread, milk, and supplies from the corner store in the morning. For tonight, we’ll have to make do with cookies and bottled water.”

“That’s fine. I’m not hungry.”

No. He wouldn’t be. The puncture marks on those two men hustling out of his bedroom were fresh, and by the flush in his cheeks and the brightness in his eyes, he fed well.

Not that I care… because Idon’t.

Over the past seven years, he’s likely fed hundreds of times—maybe thousands.

My gaze falls to his mouth, and I wonder about those men—both of them men. Is Zane gay? Is that why he pushed me away when I offered myself to him?

If that was all it was, why wouldn’t he have told me?

We shared everything…

Shoving that line of thinking out of my mind, I move into the kitchenette and open the doors of the cabinets to find a bag of chocolate chip cookies, a bag of sour cream and bacon chips, and a bag of peanut M&M’s.

I grab them all.

Eating my feelings seems perfectly acceptable tonight.

Pulling the top off the cookies, I take three from the first row and shove one into my mouth whole.

“I’m going to take a shower. Make yourself at home.”

Without waiting for his response, I storm into the bathroom and shut myself in. Standing with my back to the door, I devour the next two cookies and wait for the endorphin rush from the chocolate to kick in.

With my eyes closed, I focus on the cool tiles under my feet. I won’t pick at old wounds. There’s enough tearing me apart right now that I don’t need to relive the devastation of his rejection.

You know I love you, Scottie, but I’m a true-blood vampire and one day I’ll be a Fondatori King. Sadly, you’ll never belong in my world.

His words that night had cut me to the core of my soul.

They hadn’t only destroyed me, they destroyed everything I’d believed in as his childhood playmate, his partner in crime as a teenager, and as a young woman in love at twenty-one.

I press a hand to my chest and forced myself to breathe. Despite my battered heart attempting to break all over again, I morph the hurt into anger so my devastation won’t weigh in.

Anger, betrayal, and hate got me through the worst days and nights since. And after the attack at the compound, anger and hate are boiling in my blood.

I turn on the water, letting it heat as I carefully peel off my blood-stained clothes.

The gash in my side is gnarly and gross.

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