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Asher clicked his tongue like a disapproving parent. I didn’t have the energy to glare at him like I wanted.

“Don’t move too much, Pet. Here’s some more of my blood.” Soft skin pressed against my lips. I shook my head, smearing the blood across my cheek.

My mouth watered, but I pressed my lips together to not let any slip through. My head felt fuzzy, like I’d woken from a long nap instead of essentially being boa constricted into unconsciousness.

Asher cradled me in his arms, enveloping me completely. My cheek pressed into his pec and I drooped against him.

My ankle pinched from the position of my foot with my heel wedged between Asher and Jax’s thigh. I wiggled my leg and it sent shockwaves to my knee. I sank my teeth into my lip to hold back my whimper.

Jax, angry looking like always, gripped my calf and jerked my foot out from between them. My heel settled on his jean clad thigh. Tingles spread through my foot.

“You could be gentle,” I whimpered.

Jax looked at me like I was talking crazy. Must be such a foreign concept to him.

My attention lifted to the driver’s seat where an unrecognizable person sat there with an old fashioned driver’s suit on him. He didn’t even turn. As for the passenger, all I could see was her long hair. The bright red hair gave it away as the girl from the club. Asher’s Progeny.

“Pull up here,” Asher ordered.

The car slowed in front of their gate. The ornamental wrought iron fence rounded at the top. Roses intertwined with the black bars and both sides had a wall of red bricks stretching to surround the place with the black of the gate adorned around the top. Like spears embedded into the top.

Asher moved and the door popped open with a click. If he didn’t brace me I would have fallen.

“Hop off.” I gingerly slid off his lap and wobbled on my numb, still tingling feet. “Up to the manor, Pet.” Asher patted my ass.

I shot him a glare and he only smiled unrepentantly.

The flippant vampire was asking for a stake to the heart.

He slammed the door shut, cutting off Jax’s words and leaving me alone outside the car.

The cold breeze ruffled my loose waist length hair around my arms, and I hugged myself. Such silence. I should have been used to it considering I’d spent much of my time alone. The car detached from the sidewalk, moving forward at a crawling pace.

The long street was quiet except for the caw of a bird perched on the sill of the window. It almost blended in with the dark backdrop of the home.

Asher thought I was a mole, but he didn’t hold it against me. He’d offered me a semblance of a leash. I wouldn’t be fooled into taking all of it, though. They became obsessive and compulsive with what they considered theirs. That was where Asher was. He didn’t have to explain to me or take my feelings into account, but he did. Since they couldn’t be tempted into killing me. I’d remain at their side until I could escape, which meant settling into their home.

I unlatched the gate and swung it wide open, setting off a swarm of bats. The fluttering sound of their wings no longer sent my heart pounding. Once I reached halfway up the cement stairs, I could see the wide doors yards up. And the large metal upside down bat knocker.

Their home rested on the slightest incline, and rose bushes bloomed on both sides of the steps. The beautiful blooms coated the breeze with their scent. Growing them in this colder environment took skill.

Crows cawed from their perch on the iron welded into the brick. My foot slipped to the side of the shoe and bent my ankle again. With a huff, I crouched and jerked the little latch off out of the strap, shoving the skirt out of my way. I wiggled the heel off and hooked my finger in the strap and went to the other one.

A crow flapped its wings to my left. I followed the movement and to the . . . hair? It’d settled on the head of a dead woman. I gasped, falling backwards onto my ass.

Her heel rested on the edge of the stair, her body on its back within the tangle of rose bushes as if she’d fallen backwards. Her eyes were open, unseeing, and the raw open gash across her neck explained the ‘how’ of the dead girl. A pool of blood bloomed beneath her neck, painting the thorny vines.

A scream ripped out of my throat. I scrambled back, scraping my palms and ankles against cement. Crows and bats exploded from wherever they hid on the property, filling the night withtheir fluttering wings and blocking out the pale moonlight. My heart thundered in my ears. A hand yanked me back and I screamed, fighting to get away.

“It’s me!” Asher shouted.

In a blink, my face was buried in his chest, and I clung to him like a monkey.

“She’s still warm. This happened recently,” Jax said.

“No one knows where we live. How did this happen?Jag måste ringa, Jax.” They continued volleying words back and forth in their language. I breathed in deep and let out a steadying breath. The girl looked like me. I breathed in and out again. Nausea swirled in my stomach, but I needed the confirmation.

I lifted my head from its burrow against Asher’s chest. His arms that were banding around my back squeezed around me, but I still had room to turn my head to the side. She did look like me, eerily like me. Hispanic, with long black hair plastered to her bloody skin. Even her body type. Her shirt had been ripped and it hung off her shoulders in tattered strips. Across her belly were the ragged openings of skin peeled back. I could see the layers from where someone or something carved into her. “Whore” was written out in curving letters.