He'd thought her beautiful asleep, but awake, she was a goddess. Tall, with long ink black hair, an athlete's body, and a face that exuded strength, she commanded his gaze. Not to her curves, which were pretty bloody fantastic, but to her eyes. They were the palest of blue and sharp as shite.
He tracked her as she went over to the dining table, lit a match, and touched the flame to each of the four candles huddled in the center. The combination of her scent growing ever closer and the hit of sulfur made his gut scream with hunger. He wanted more of that rich blood on his tongue, in his veins.
"Who are you?" she asked softly.
Her voice had an affect on him, reminding him of his days in the medical facility and how she'd fought for him. "My name or my species?"
She pulled out a chair at the table and sat down. "Let's start with the name."
"Synjon Wise." He saw no reason to lie.
"And what species do you belong to, Mr. Wise?"
"Same one as you, Petra."
He saw the vein at the base of her throat pulse. Yes, I know your name.
"You're not a Shifter," she said, doing her very best to act impassive.
"Bloody hell." He chuckled softly. "No. I belong to an ancient, respected, deadly species. As do you."
Her nostrils flared. "What I am hasn't been determined yet."
"I've determined it. The moment I scented you."
"What am I then, Mr. Wise?" Her pale blue eyes flashed with fire-fueled curiosity. "And where is your proof?"
Synjon brought a hand up and cupped his ear, pretended to listen. "I hear nothing."
"It's night," she said dismissively. "The Avians don't wake until-"
"No," he interrupted almost caustically. He was growing tired of playing games. There was work to be done outside this strange oasis, but he needed the veana's blood first. "What I am listening for is a heart that doesn't beat." He raised an eyebrow. "Your heart is dead, Veana, just like mine. It's the first and best way to identify our species."
Her mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide.
Irritated, Synjon pushed away from the wall and strode toward the table. "Is this an act, or do you truly not know what you are?"
She closed her mouth then, not answering him.
He stopped inches away and coiled over her. "Why are you here? In this land, in this place?" His head cocked to one side, and he knew he must look hideous, his burns beside her beauty, but he didn't give a shite. "Our kind doesn't belong here. You don't belong here."
"My family is here," she retorted. "My family whom you attacked."
"Bullocks," he mumbled, yanking back a chair and sitting down beside the raven-haired veana. "I didn't mean to get into it with your family, or whatever you believe them to be. I was looking for you."
"For my blood," she corrected, her wary gaze searching his. "Right?"
He shrugged. "They're a package deal, really."
"Well, you already have my blood-taken without asking, I might add." One black eyebrow lifted. "You won't be doing that again."
His lips thinned. He didn't envy the male who took on this steely firecracker of a package. He liked his females like he liked his blood; warm, soft, and uncomplicatingly sweet. Like Juliet.
His gut clenched with pain. With hunger. With grief . . .
He had to get out of here. Find the murderer Cruen and let him feel the unrelenting pain of the sun's justice.
"Does my face look different to you, Petra?" he asked, moving closer to the candlelight.
"You've healed some," she acknowledged.
He nodded. "That's right. But there is more work to be done."
"Then why are you here? Why are you wasting time seeking me out? Not just because you're still thirsty. Or is it hungry?"
"You tell me. It's different for every one of us."
She jerked back in response, but continued as if he hadn't said a word. "Why don't you go back to the medical facility, let Brodan continue the treatment-"
Synjon's laughter brought her suggestion to a halt. "This wasn't in reaction to anything your lover gave me or did to me, Veana."
Her jaw tightened. "Brodan is not my lover."
"He's working his way there. Give him another couple of weeks, and those capable hands will be looking to heal the most intimate parts of you, Veana."
She looked horrified. "All right, that's it." She stood and pointed toward the door. "You need to leave. Go back to the medical facility or return to whatever rock you crawled out from under."
Synjon's nostrils flared as he leaned back in his chair. Her blood grew hot with her anger. "I want to leave, Veana. I do. But I have the revenge job of a lifetime waiting for me outside your strange little paradise, and I can't go looking like this. It'll blow my cover."
"Not my problem."
"It's more than your problem. You owe me."
She sniffed. "How do you figure that?"
"The cave," he said, his hands lifted. "You dragged me in there, out of the sun."
Hovering above him, she narrowed her eyes. "I saved your life."
"Precisely."
Her derision turned to quick laughter. "Wouldn't that be you owing me?" she said.
"I didn't ask to be saved," he said. "In fact, I believe I requested several times that you back the fuck off and let me bloody die."
The room fell silent. She blinked several times as she stared down at him. Then she said in a quiet voice, "If you truly want to die, do it. I won't stop you this time. Sun's up in a few hours."
Synjon's chest squeezed with the pain of loss. "It's too late," he uttered.
"It's never too late," she returned.
He turned away. "Not in the way I wished it."
"Going with her," Petra finished.
Intense anger surged through him and he slammed his fist on the table. But when he spoke his tone was soft and deadly. "You took that from me, Veana."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Wise."
His gaze cut to her face. Her expression was anything but remorseful. "No, you're not."
"Right." She pushed away from the table and went to the small wood island in the kitchen, lighting more candles. "How dare I try and save someone's life? How dare I give a shit about someone I've never met, whose skin in burning in the fucking sun? I should have walked away, right? Let you die, let you scream and writhe in agony? What kind of creature helps one who's in pain!" She looked up, pinning him with her pale eyes. "I'm a monster!"
"No, Female," he said softly. "I'm the monster." He watched as her gaze moved over his fire-ravaged face. He sighed, some of his ire falling away. "Look, you were caught up in something that had nothing to do with you, I get that. But you interfered, you changed the plan."
"Was that really your plan, Mr. Wise?" Her brows lifted and she shook her head. "Didn't look like it."
His hands fisted around the wood chair. He didn't answer her. Not right away, at any rate. Maybe because the question was one he never wanted to answer. Juliet was gone, she was dead, he'd done what he came to do-give her a proper burial, say goodbye when he'd never had the chance before.
Now, his focus had to be on one thing and one thing only.
Hunting and killing Cruen.
"You want me to go, and I want to leave," he began with as much control as he could wrangle. "But I can't, not until I am healed. And you, tall drink of throat lashing whiskey, are the only one who can heal me."
Her hands went to her hips. "And how do you figure that?"
"Because you already have."
The surprise he expected to see was right there. "What?"
"The small amount of healing you see on my neck and face is because of you."
She shook her head, grinning like she wasn't about to play along with his joke. "I'm not a magician, Mr. Wise."
"No. But you are a vampire. A Pureblooded female vampire. And as such, you have the power to heal me."
Petra stared at him, this powerful, terrifying wreck of a male for a second or two, then turned back to the counter, picked up her paring knife, and began slicing fruit. Apple, pear, another apple.
"Did you hear me, Veana?"
He needed to stop calling her that. "I heard you."
"And yet you are not responding."
"This is how I respond to insanity."
"Cutting up fruit."
"That's right."
He released a weighty breath and came over to stand on the opposite side of the counter.
"Brave male, getting this close to my blade," she remarked, glancing up, a nervous energy crackling in her blood.
He didn't respond. Instead he glared at the cutting board. "Do you eat that?" he asked with distaste in his tone. "Food that drops from a tree? Food an animal would eat?"
"If I want to stay alive, yes."
He lifted his gaze. Dark as the night, and deeply intense. "But you aren't alive, Petra. Well, not in the way you think or believe."
His words cut through her well-constructed protective exterior. The one she'd built over her twenty-four years. It wasn't as though she didn't know she was different or that she didn't desire answers about who and what she was. She did. More than anything. But this male didn't seem to genuinely care about offering her that information. He seemed to be baiting her, tossing out little blasts of non-specific information he knew would shock her. Even if he claimed he was telling her the truth-that he absolutely knew what she was-how could she trust him?
She would find out what she was, but not this way.
She tore her gaze from his intimidating face with its painful burn scars and haunting eyes and pointed her knife at the door. "You can leave now."
He sniffed with derision. "That's the last thing you want me to do, Love."
To make her point, she turned the blade on him.
His brows lifted. "Hotheaded, emotional, brave; your doctor is one fortunate bloke."
She couldn't tell if he was serious or not, but she refused to bite. "I have work to do. If you still want to chat about what you believe my true species to be, come back later. Say, in three to four hours."
"The sun will be up, Petra."
"Exactly."
"You saw how that worked out the last time."
"I did," she answered, lowering her blade, her gaze and returning to her fruit. "And I promise not to interfere again."
But the male was not about to give up. He leaned over the counter. All the way until she felt his breath on her forehead. Her hand stilled, the blade of the knife halfway through a pear.
"You want to know who you are," he whispered. "Who you really are."
"I know who I am," she lied.
"Really? What is that? Not human unless you have a heartbeat I'm not picking up on. Not a Shifter-as I understand it from Dr. Feelgood, transitions to their animal state happen by twenty-one and you're . . ."
Twenty-four.
As if he knew what worked inside her head, he continued, "I have more than a name, a species title. I have the truth, the story, the history, the rules-all of it. And I can give it to you."
"How generous." Her eyes lifted.
"And in return-"
"Of course."
His mouth curved, but the smile that formed was not a pleasant one. "In return you will grant me your healing breath, and as much blood as I require to build my strength."
Her knife slipped from her hand and clattered onto the counter.
He chuckled softly. "Don't look so shocked, Love. You barely felt my bite earlier, and when you did, the pain was a right good one, eh?"
Words seemed to abandon Petra in that moment, both in her mind and on her lips. For the first time that night she felt true fear. Not for Synjon Wise's presence in her office, though she probably should have, but for what he'd just said. The bite, his bite to her skin. It was healed now, too swiftly to be logical, but the pain had been anything but unwelcome.
Her eyes locked with his and her insides began to defrost.
He shook his head, his voice dropping to a mere whisper. "You can't deny to me, Veana. You can't deny yourself."
Petra held her breath, caught in some dreamlike state with him so close, his breath against her face. She didn't trust him, not by a mile. But she couldn't seem to push back this sudden, frantic need trembling inside her. Truth or lies, manipulations or a bargain to agree to, she had to hear what he had to say.
She licked her dry lips, found her voice. "They're looking for you," she told him. "My family."
"Let them look." He couldn't have appeared less concerned.
"They'll come to my office door again. My brothers, Brodan . . ."
His chin dropped, making his eyes so dark and fearsome, she gasped. "I can be a ghost when I need to be."
"I won't allow you to hurt them," she warned.
"The doctor is not my target. And your brothers can take care of themselves."
"Did they give you a pounding?" She gave a nervous laugh, knowing that Sasha and Valentin must've held their own with this male.
"Let's just say it was a mutual blood sport. I have much respect for your brothers' skill." He cocked an eyebrow. "But I won't be held back if anyone takes a swing at me."
She sobered. She knew he wasn't playing around with that threat.
"So, we have a bargain, Veana? The history of our species for a pint or two of your blood?"
She couldn't believe she was agreeing to this. It was impetuous behavior, madness, and yet her curiosity-a lifetime of questions without answers-nudged her forward.
She nodded. "It's a bargain. But I want to hear your information first."
He leaned in another inch, his dark eyes electrifying. "You're going to make me remain this way, hideous and in pain?"
She swallowed thickly, tried to force her insides to calm. He was so damn close. "You attacked me and my brother. You broke into my house."
His eyes glittered. "Then think of it as a gift for yourself. Do you really want to look at this face any longer than you have to?"
She wasn't sure what made her do it, but the impulsive move couldn't be stopped. She reached out and touched his face, his cheek. The skin was warm and rough under her fingers. She knew she should pull away, but she didn't.
She lifted her gaze to his and whispered, "I don't think it's so bad."
Synjon Wise's brows drew together, and his eyes darkened with wariness. "You are a strange veana, Petra," he said as he eased back away from her, and away from her touch.
