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He was about to move toward me, but something deeper than his hunger surged up within him, driving his need back down.

His body wouldn’t obey his command to drain me dry.

He frowned at that, startled. He considered me with new eyes. How odd, that he didn’t look at me and seefood.

But I didn’t smell right, either, did I? Certainly not like prey. I smelled like… comfort. Safety. Ibelongedto him.

Danny abruptly remembered the mate bond between us. His lips curled into a wicked grin. The possibilities unfolding in his mind were enticing to him, but they turned my stomach.

This wasn’t Danny.

It couldn’t be him.

Interesting.He met my gaze directly, focusing on me and seeing me as Michael, rather than merely as a human. I felt a flash of cold, emotionless recognition.Very interesting. We could do anything we wanted, you know. No one could stop us. The two of us together would be… formidable.

His mental voice was icy and calculating. There was no emotion at all left in it.

Grief split my heart into two.

Bryan was on his knees at Danny’s feet, checking the young man’s pulse. Danny noted it. But it was unimportant, save that the other vampire was now his competition. But there was nothing left in the young man anyway. Bryan could have the last dregs if he wanted it. Already, the young man’s heart was slowing down, beating irregularly in a last desperate push to keep his body alive.

Bryan tore into his wrist with his fangs, but he hesitated for an instant. Regret split across his expression.

“Fuck,” he whispered. The sound of his voice was like a gunshot in the stillness of the cavern. He pressed his wrist against the young man’s lips. The young man’s eyes flew open, and his body went rigid, spasming. Bryan’s voice was strangled and thick with his emotion, his grief, when he added, “I’m sorry. I don’t have a choice.”

Danny ignored them both. Silly to turn the young man, but Bryan was a sentimental fool, wasn’t he?

Instead, his frown deepened as he assessed the situation. He needed to get away from everyone here, he decided. From me, especially.

For now.

After all, he knew that I would try to stop him. But he could come back for me later, perhaps. He could explore what the mate bond meant, especially once I had become just like him. Hecould turn me. I would fight him, of course, but that wouldn’t matter. Not if it got him what he wanted.

A deep part of him shifted, seeming to stir itself from a deep stupor, and I could almost sense a wordless mental voice whisper through his mind, a flicker of alarm, of fear. It was the first real emotion I’d sensed through the bond since he’d realized what he had done to the young man.Not him. Never Michael.

Danny scowled at that.

Tobias finished his spell. The redhead vampire was no longer flesh. He had turned her completely to stone with his magic. Her marble eyes were wide with disbelief. Her body was still frozen into a crouch, her fingers splayed into claws, her mouth open to reveal razor-sharp fangs.

Tobias doubled over after with a gasp, dropping to his knees. He looked far paler than before. Spent.

Bryan glanced up from the young man, giving Tobias an anguished look.

“Stay with him,” Tobias bit out. “I’m okay.”

Bryan bit his lip and nodded.

Thierry stirred on the ground, pushing himself up. How long had passed? Ten seconds? Twenty? A minute? Time didn’t quite make sense anymore.

But the movement seemed to galvanize Danny into motion. With a last look at me, he moved in a blur of speed toward the exit. And then he was gone.

Disbelief crashed through me.

This couldn’t be happening. I closed my eyes, abruptly wanting the darkness back.

We could have been so happy. But I had failed him. Just like I had failed Joshua. Useless. I had always been useless. And now the man I loved was lost to me for good.

CHAPTER NINETEEN || DANNY