A scream ripped from her throat at the sight of him. Of his neck ripped open and pouring blood.
“Help! Help! Aiden! Evan!” she screamed, reaching Troy’s side, and knowing this was a wound that even a vampire couldn’t survive without blood. Lots and lots of blood, so much blood, more than she could give him.
“You aren’t dying. You aren’t dying.” She grabbed the ground by his side.
He blinked up at her and tried to speak but couldn’t. She cupped his face. “Don’t try to talk. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.” She sliced her wrist. “You aren’t dying. You’re a damn vampire, Troy, and a stubborn one at that. You can’t die.” She dripped the blood from her wound over his mouth. He couldn’t suction her arm and his lashes fluttered shut. Terror clenched her heart. She wasn’t getting enough blood in him fast enough. “Help, damn it!” she screamed. “Help! Help! Help!” Over and over, she repeated the one word, knowing the risk of wolves finding them, but also knowing that Troy didn’t have long to live.
Suddenly Aiden, Troy’s brother and so very like him in looks, was on his knees in front of her, on the other side of Troy, and dialing his phone. “I need you here now, Marcus.”
Marcus. The name registered on some level to Cassie, but all she could really process was that Troy wasn’t moving, and blood was building up in his mouth. He wasn’t swallowing. Suddenly, Marcus was there, appearing out of nowhere, like so few of his kind could, a striking vampire with long blonde hair. Power radiated off of him. He was ancient, powerful. And his blood was potent.
“I assume the property is secure and Evan is dealing with any consequences?” Marcus asked, already bending down beside Troy.
“He’s bleeding to death,” Cassie growled. “The consequence is he dies if you don’t hurry up and help him.” She didn’t care about bodies and humans with memories to be wiped. She just cared about Troy.
“Just tell me you can help him.” Desperation rose inside her, and she repeated the command with more force, “Tell me you can help him.”
“I can help him,” Marcus reassured her, biting his wrist.
“Thank God,” Cassie breathed out.
“I do every day,” Marcus assured her, pushing her hand out of the way, to allow his blood to trickle into Troy’s mouth. Cassie let her hand drop to her leg, the blood still pouring out, her gaze locked on Troy’s face. He still wasn’t actively drinking. Why wasn’t he drinking?
Marcus glanced at her, answering the question she hadn’t spoken out loud. “He will.”
“He isn’t.”
“He will.”
“Cass,” Nico said from behind her, wrapping a jacket around her. “Give him some room to work.” He pulled her to her feet, tearing off his shirt and wrapping it around her wrist. “I’d tell you to shift to heal but I don’t think that’s a good idea right now considering you’re naked, with blood all over your face, and Troy’s neck is ripped out.”
Nothing he said registered, “I need to see Troy,” she insisted, trying to step around him. “I need to be with him.”
“Cassie,” he said, blocking her way, his long brown hair tied at the neck.
Cassie’s brows dipped. Where was Nico’s shirt? She couldn’t process anything. Her head spun and she grabbed his arm.
Nico caught her. “You’ve lost too much blood.”
She didn’t care. “I need to be with Troy.”
“Cassie,” he ground out, holding onto her. “Try to focus while I repeat myself. You’re naked, and you have blood on your mouth. You shifted and his neck is ripped out. I need to know what happened before his brothers decide to find out themselves. Our alliance with the vampires is too fragile to bank on.”
“What?” she asked, finally understanding his meaning. “You think I did this? You think I would hurt Troy?”
“No,” he said. “But they might. After Sarah -”
“I’m not Sarah,” she growled. “A wolf came out of nowhere. He attacked Troy and I attacked him. He ran. I don’t know why. I know it makes no sense but he ran. And thank God on that one too, because if he hadn’t, I doubt me or Troy would be alive right now.”
A moan of pain filled the air, Troy’s pain. Cassie shoved past Nico and brought Marcus into view, a moment before he flashed out of sight. Marcus was gone and so was Troy.
“Where is he taking him?” Cassie demanded of Evan and Aiden, now standing together, facing her. “What just happened?”
“That’s what you need to tell us,” Evan said.
CHAPTER THREE
Present Day
The wolf that attacked him had been a woman. It was something he’d told no one, because he knew who they’d believe it had been, who he didn’t want to believe it had been. But it was time to find out.
Troy leaned against the parking garage’s concrete pillar, hidden from view. It was just past two in the morning when Cassie exited the elevator of the deserted employee parking garage of the Vegas ‘Casino Italy’, one of the many Society-owned properties in their headquarter city, and the one used for their Royal Guard training center. It was the same time she’d departed the hotel every night for a week. He wasn’t sure if to thank her for her predictability, or curse her for it. She was too smart for such foolish mistakes, mistakes that could get her killed, no matter how well they served him now. That he didn’t want to see her dead spoke volumes on why he shouldn’t be here, why he had stayed away.
Troy listened to Cassie’s high heels click on the pavement, aware that there were cameras everywhere, aware of the exact angles they shot. Waiting for the right moment to snatch Cassie so that he wouldn’t be seen. Cassie might be a member of the Royal Guard, as she’d so often reminded him, both with words, and her skill in battle, but Troy was about to prove that he could still get to her.
He counted her steps, knowing exactly when she’d be off the camera’s viewing grid, and unlike a wolf, he possessed no scent to warn Cassie that he was near, to warn her of the danger that he represented. But he could smell her, the familiar feminine spice of her natural scent, without the flowers and fruity fragrance a human might favor. She smelled good too; too damn good, too womanly and perfect for his own good, for hers, for the animal he had become. The same animal who’d denied himself any true satisfaction since the wolf that had almost killed him had done more than change his black eyes to blue, and his black hair to blonde. Since he’d finally, after months of denial, been forced to face the facts, to accept that he was something far more lethal than vampire or wolf alone. That he was some sort of hybrid monster.
Troy stiffened as the hair on the nape of his neck suddenly prickled, his nostrils flaring automatically, seeking the source of his awareness. Cassie stopped walking and he knew she felt what he did. Anger. Malice. Danger. Wolf.
Fuck.
A snarl filled the air, and he was aware of what Cassie was not—that the Rebels were plotting to capture and kill the members of the Royal Guard, and they had insiders in the Society helping make that possible. Troy forgot the cameras and acted. He tugged up the leg of his faded jeans, bypassing the copper blade shoved in his biker boot that he used to kill rogue vamps. He snatched the silver instead, rounding the corner, ready to fight.