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Like he hadn't eaten in a year.

Like I was the first meal he'd seen in a really long time.

I tried to scream, but by the time my body caught up to my mind, the vampire's teeth were already in the side of my neck, pulling heavy mouthfuls from the artery with little regard for avoiding damage.

I thrashed at first, but once his venom met my bloodstream, my body went loose and languid, which all but signed my death certificate.

Surely someone would come check on me when I didn’t come right back inside. Right?

“Please,” I moaned, my eyes squeezing shut.

When I opened them again, it was to the overly bright sterile vault. I blinked back a sudden wave of terrified tears, my body still catching up to that… memory?

Sometime between me closing my eyes and now, Ren had caught me by the waist to steady me, her dark eyes troubled.

“Are you okay?” she asked urgently. “I thought you were going to faint.”

“I—” I choked out, an immense wave of grief stopping my words and threatening to pull me under.

How could I explain what I’d just seen without sounding crazy?

And how could I know that voice was Cherie’s?

Mostly to give myself something else to focus on, I used the sleeve of my jacket to wipe my eyes away, looking down at the photographs with a sharp inhale.

The world tilted again, and I had to cling to Ren to avoid being pulled into another memory. It was right there—right at the corner of my vision.

Juniper, Ren, Dana, and I sat around a woman. I knew it was Cherie. I was sure of it, the memories of her fresh as if I’d spoken to her today.

How she smelled of Chanel number 5. That her favourite movie wasThe Sound of Music. That she’d dragged me and Dana to watch a stage production of it as punishment for forcing her to watchFast and the Furiouswith us and Kaylee. Mornings spent learning how to make hollandaise sauce from scratch—which, in my case, meant spending at least 25% of the time using a fork to carefully remove seeds from it after fucking up squeezing my lemon.

A hundred moments, all of them leading to knowing someone in a way that meant you loved them very much.

Vision blurry, I slammed my hand on the table with a loud rattle.

“Did you know?”

“Are you—” the teller started.

“We’re fine!” I shouted back. “Go be nosy elsewhere!”

Ren sifted through a few of the photos, eyes landing on a shot of me lying naked with Cherie wrapped around my side, Ren’s hand in frame as evidenced by her tattoos as she acted as the photographer.

Her mouth worked, no sound passing her lips.

“Did you fucking know?” I demanded, my temper spurred on by the crushing feelings of loss.

“I—” she said softly, dropping the legal file onto the table. “Vi, I… I swear, I?—”

I snatched it up and opened it, hardly able to make out the twelve-point type through my tear-filled vision.

The will.

O was, undoubtedly,mine.

Cherie had left it tome.

A sick feeling had begun to take up residence in my stomach, a nausea that bloomed until it was a real concern that I was going to throw up all over the floor.