Page 99

A worrying downturn, actually.

“Look, we have to work together in Crossborn, so I don’t want to make this awkward or antagonize you.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Why would you think you’d antagonize me,Wraithqueen?”

“Because this can’t happen. I don’t… get involved. And I certainly don’t date. And, let’s face it, you’re only drawn to me because your vampire side feels a pull to my wraith side. I’ve dealt with it before. Vampires are always circling me because of that strange pull. It’s a pull todeath,Lazriel. You don’t want that, believe me.”

“You’re wrong and you’re oversimplifying things. And, once again, you’ve neglected to consider my wolf side, which is stronger than the vampire, for the record.”

“Yes, as you keep wanting to make clear to everyone.”

He cursed, glared at her, and then in the next second, he was rushing away with a burst of vampire speed, blowing past us and leaving the Compound.

“Are you all right?” I asked Velra across the thirty-foot distance between us.

“Fine, yeah,” she said, shaking out her hair.

No. She wasn’t fine. Something was really off with her.

She was… struggling.

I went to move to go to her, but I was pulled up short at movement entering the corridor from our right.

I looked to see Aegis Watch had returned. Well, part of the team. Per their protocol that I’d learned about since being a part of Crossborn, some would bring the liberated hybrids back to theGuardian Movement for medical attention and processing, while the rest would remain to wipe the lab from the face of the earth.

There were four of them right now, their features hidden by the overhanging hoods of their black Guardian robes. And they were escorting a single being.

Sparks of purple magic were coming from the lean guy’s fingertips, turning on and off with his clear nerves at being in an intimidating place like this. His fangs were dropped and he was vamped out, not just nerves but pain and trauma leading the way after what he’d been through in the lab he’d just been freed from.

So, he was a vampire-sorcerer hybrid then.

His bright orange hair skimmed the collar of the three-quarter length black wool coat wrapped around him.

“Only one?” I heard Kai speak.

One of the robed Aegis Watch members took him in and answered, his voice tinged with upset, “When we arrived, twelve were already dead, considered experiments gone wrong. The place had recently been abandoned.” As he turned to gesture at the hybrid, the guy’s wavy gray hair flipped across his face. “Caius, here, was the only one left alive.”

“Fuck,” Kai uttered, shaking his head in dismay.

I shuddered. The reference to one of those awful labs itself was bad enough, but hearing about a massacre like that… it was a lot.

Before I could even begin to absorb it, or do much of anything, a flare of intensity hit me.

It was coming from Caius.

I looked to see him zoning in on Velra who’d stopped down the other end of the corridor, pulling up short like Kai and me had when we’d seen Aegis Watch turning onto it.

But he wasn’t looking at her with flirty intrigue or lust like Lazriel had been doing.

No. It was… something else.

A chill shot down my spine.

That was it!

Fuck!

He was looking at her as atarget!