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We arrived at the elevator and I jabbed at the up button.

“Jackson said the elevators are out,” I told Declan.

He gave me a look of bemusement. “Then why are you doing that?”

“Hoping for a miracle?” I confessed. That hope faded after only a handful of moments when nothing happened. “Okay, apparently this is not the day for miracles. Stairs, it is.”

Leaving the elevator behind, I followed Declan further down the hall toward the stairwell. It was so quiet now. All I heard was our breathing, the sound of our feet against the floor, and my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

Fear was useless to me at the moment. It was an emotion that only worked to freeze someone in their tracks, like the cliché of a deer in the headlights.

Paranoia, on the other hand, was far more helpful—a survival instinct that kept me moving, kept me holding tightly onto Declan’s arm as we headed toward our only escape route from twenty stories deep in the earth.

“So this is your life,” I said. “Death and danger around every corner.”

He gave me a sidelong glance. “Enjoying yourself, are you?”

“I can barely contain my glee.”

“And you thought I got these scars from having a comfortable desk job?” he asked.

“You might want to consider a change in careers,” I suggested.

He snorted. “That’s doubtful.”

“No interest in settling down?”

“Only when they shove me in my coffin. That is, if there’s anything left of me by then.”

I grimaced. “What a charming thought.”

“This is a regular day’s work for me, Jill. Maybe a bit more screwed up and unexpected than normal, but fairly regular.” His jaw tightened. “You deserve a safe and happy life where your neck isn’t constantly on the line.”

I searched for his gaze. “So do you.”

He shrugged. “This is my life, Jill”

“Says who?”

“Says me. I know where I belong.”

“Two hundred feet underground with a dozen starving vampires running amuck.”

His humorless grin returned. “The pay’s good. Usually, anyway.”

Declan could laugh it off—that gallows humor he shared with Jackson—but my heart still ached for him. He’d never been given the chance to have a normal life. Being a dhampyr left him with very few options.

“I had a dream about you last night,” I told him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We were at a restaurant, on a date. You...well, you weren’t the same as you are now. It was as if you’d never lived this life.” I raised a brow. “You were wearing a tailored suit.”

“Definitely a dream,” he replied. “Any scars?”

“None.”

“How many eyes?”