“I can’t be blackmailed. If you have to kill him, do it.” Her heart bled for Blake. Despite all his faults, he didn’t deserve this. He deserved a full life, a long and happy one.

Keegan’s eyes narrowed into small slits as he approached. He studied her, but she knew all he would see was her determination to fight him. Then he looked back at the letter, reading it again. When he looked up, he had a self-congratulatory smirk on his face.

“My apologies, Rose. I believe I didn’t use the right means to entice you. Let’s try this again, shall we?” His casual voice turned to ice with his next words. “If you don’t give it back to me, I’ll turn him.”

Her throat seized, robbing her of the ability to breathe. “No,” she managed to choke out.

He moved closer to her, dropping his voice to the same volume as hers. “Yes.”

“Don’t do this.”

Keegan smiled, and had she not known him so well, she would have thought it was out of kindness. “You hate your own species so much, you want to save your great-great-whatever-grandson from becoming one of us. Then save him.”

She swallowed. There had to be another way. “It’s not here. I hid it.”

“We’ll go together.”

Quickly, she shook her head. “I’ve left strict instructions: if I don’t go to pick it up on my own, it will be destroyed.”

Keegan’s eyes flashed in obvious distrust. The cords in his neck strained as he fought for control. She held her ground and didn’t flinch.

“I give you two hours to retrieve it.”

Desperate to buy herself more time, she added another lie to her earlier one. “There are other . . . safety precautions I put in place. There are only certain times during which I have access.”

When Keegan narrowed his eyes, she added quickly, “Similar to a time-delay lock at a bank. I need at least twenty-four hours.”

Keegan let out an angry huff. “If you cheat me, I’ll find this Blake. And I’ll make his turning the most horrific event of his life. Do you understand me?”

Rose simply nodded.

“I’ll be watching you. You have twenty-four hours or I’m hunting down your boy.”

He ushered his two henchmen outside and disappeared into the night.

Trembling, her stance faltered. With her last ounce of strength, she reached the sofa and let herself fall onto it.

Tears freed themselves from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks like an avalanche. She couldn’t allow Blake to meet the same fate as her. She’d promised Charlotte and herself that her children and children’s children would lead normal lives. Nobody would be cursed to be a vampire. Never again.

“Where are you when I need you?” she cried out. “Quinn, you have to help me now. You owe me. He’s your flesh and blood too.”

2

Quinn slunk into the passenger seat as Oliver took the driver’s seat of the SUV and started the engine.

“Wish you could stay longer,” Oliver said as he pulled onto the unlit country lane, leaving the house behind where the inner core of Scanguards had been celebrating yet another blood-bond.

Only vampires and their mates had been invited—well, and Oliver. Not to forget a few dogs: Zane had brought Z, and Samson and Delilah had brought their baby daughter Isabelle’s little puppy too. If they weren’t careful, Scanguards would turn into a circus.

“Gotta get back to New York. Besides, what would I do here? Watch how Zane makes puppy eyes at Portia the same way his dog does?” Quinn chuckled. “Better get out of here. Whatever’s going on here might be contagious.”

The human kid next to him gave him a sideways grin—yeah, he was a kid, barely in his mid-twenties, and while Quinn too looked rather young, he carried the experience and memories of two centuries on his shoulders. Two very long and lonely centuries, despite the fact that he’d never been alone and had always surrounded himself with the hottest pieces of ass available. But being surrounded by others hadn’t chased away the emptiness in his heart. He’d felt it physically tonight. Seeing so many of his friends happily tied to their blood-bonded mates had driven reality home once more.

“Like you would ever settle down,” Oliver claimed. “Hey man, the life you’re living—that’s what I want. Women left, right, and center. You’re doing it right.”

Quinn caught his admiring look and forced his usual charming smile onto his lips. He’d perfected it over the last two hundred years, and by now, even he couldn’t tell how fake it was. If that wasn’t an accomplishment in itself!