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“I will make it my mission to help you find her.”

Dominic’s jaw was set in determination. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The shifter spent years, if not decades, extracting revenge on the Syndicate because they killed his family. Now he was telling me he would push that aside so he could help me search for my dead mother?She’s alive, Brooklyn. Stop being stupid.I shoved the dumb voice in the deepest recesses of my mind, puffing short breaths through my nose.

“We will find her.” The strength of the conviction in that last statement almost made me faint.

“This doesn’t make sense, Dominic.” I finally managed to find my voice.

“What doesn’t make sense?” the shifter snarled. “When it comes to the Syndicate, if he said that crocodiles were dancing on two legs for the Council giving blowjobs to everyone, I’d believe it.”

A loud snort burst from Alice, and she slapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she mumbled through her fingers.

“What is it?” I hated that he could read me so easily when I spent years training myself not to give anything away.

I did want to ask more questions, but all the bombs Johnathan dropped on my head already made me doubt the wisdom of going further down the rabbit hole. I needn’t have worried because the ass kisser was listening to everything, and apparently, he decided to become a chatty Cathy all of a sudden.

“You made sure they would kill you, you know.” The Atua sounded like he was five-thousand-years old. “Frederic has been feeding me his blood for years now. He senses everything I feel, and he already knows what transpired here.”

“None of the Council can track by blood.” Gaze narrowed on him, I had to tense up so I didn’t gauge his traitorous eyes out.

“No Atua can compel or control the mind either.” He shut me up.

“Ah, crap,” Alice whimpered. “They can track us because we carried this idiot along? I knew I should’ve listened to Dominic and left him in the basement.” All of a sudden, she brightened. “Hold one second ….”

Scrambling on her feet, she hitched her ripped-at-the-thigh pants higher and rushed behind the crates where I told her to hide before waking Johnathan up. Dominic was staring at her like she’d grown a second head, probably for the comment that she should’ve listened to him. I, on the other hand, was having an out of body experience, going through the motion and speech while being numb all over. Until Alice darted out from behind the stacked wooden boxes.

“I know what to do now,” my human friend piped in excitedly, wielding the damn breadknife again in front of her like a sword.

All my instincts fired up and came online when I rolled away from her and jumped on my feet. Dominic did the same, both of us hunched and ready to tackle her if she turned the spelled blade our way.

“Alice put that down right now,” I hissed at her, but she ignored me.

“Nuh-uh. I have to kill the jerk so no one can hurt the two of you.” She lifted the knife over her head, and Dominic pounced first.

A shriek lodged in my throat when they tumbled, ending with Alice pinned on the ground like a bug. Dominic held her down with one plate-sized hand pressed firmly in the middle of her back, the knife in the other, while she flailed wildly, flopping around like a fish. Johnathan didn’t bat an eye at the commotion, gazing blindly into something only he could see. It curdled what blood I had left in my veins.

“Let me go, you stupid cat.” Alice gave a good attempt at a growl, but it sounded more like a mewl. “We have to kill him so they can’t track us anymore.”

“For all I know, they’ve fed me their blood too.” Three sets of eyes focused on me. “I’ve been at the brink of death many times only to be brought back.” Avoiding Dominic’s face, I locked on Johnathan while struggling with phantom pains along with the present ones. “Who’s blood did they give me?”

For a moment, the Atua’s distant eyes cleared, and terror raked me from what I saw in them. It was like he was already dead, peering at me from the pits of hell. My knees threatened to buckle, so I locked them in place and waited. I didn’t use my curse on him because he would answer or not. It made no difference anymore. As soon as night fell, we would be fighting our way out of here.

“Frederic’s.” The answer came nonetheless.

“Did they take my blood in the cages because of what my mother is?” I couldn’t stop the words spilling from my mouth.

Johnathan lifted his gaze from where he was staring at the ground. The pity there was crippling. “You have no idea what fresh hell you unleashed, you dumb cunt. I’d start running now if I were you, not that it would do you any good.”

There was nothing I hated more than the word cunt.

Rage bubbled like a volcano, exploding in my chest, and I bared my fangs in his face, forcing him to flinch. “No, you and those old fools don’t know what hell you unleashed when you decided to fuck with me. You should’ve left me alone. You should’ve left Veronica alone. Now there will be a reckoning. I’m going to level the Syndicate to the ground. Every single one of them, starting with you.”

Arms wrapped around my torso like shackles, lifting me off the ground and away from Johnathan. I thrashed around, wiggling to get out of the grip, but I was too weak to overpower Dominic. The fight drained out of me when he curled his large body around me and tucked his face in my neck. Sagging in his hold, I forced the tears down, unwilling to let them spill in front of Johnathan.

“I still think we should kill him,” Alice chirped and stared at me when I glanced at her over Dominic’s shoulder. “What? Between the kennel collapsing over our heads and you bleeding all over the hallway at the safe house, you barely have any blood of your own left in you, little less some other vamp’s.”

Dominic slowly lifted his head to turn to her, too.

“Don’t look at me like that. You both know I’m right.” I had to wonder when my human friend became so bloodthirsty, and if the spell used on the knife had something to do with it. “Why are we letting this sniffling idiot freak us out?”