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“You lied to me about blood-whores.” It was a non-issue, since I knew I couldn’t be one if the Pale One never made me one, but I’d trusted the lies he told.

The time frame to become a blood-whore was significantly shorter than the reality. Asher planned for me to be his blood-whore all along, and Tobias went along with it. They never saw me as a person, I was just a play thing.

Something to manipulate.

And Tobias was the one they all believed to have a ‘moral compass’. The fact remained that even if they were born human, vampires became twisted and inhuman.

Nothing but their pleasure mattered to them.

Asher practically told me his intentions. He’d had such an apt name for me: Pet.

Well, I should have fucking read the signs.

Tobias’s hand slipped off my face, his fingertips gently grazing down my cheeks before lowering to the mattress. He propped his fist on my other side, corralling me within his arms, while not touching me. I backed as flat as I could against the headboard, avoiding even his coat grazing me.

His eyebrows furrowed and if I were being fanciful, I would have said guilt flickered across his features.

“I did lie.” He cleared his throat.

He hadn’t needed to confirm it, I knew.

“I want to leave.” My voice held a huskiness, and it was difficult to swallow. But it was the taste coating my tongue that drove in what caused me to be in this state: smoke from Ren burning my rental down. I didn’t want to think about the ramifications. Now I was homeless, I didn’t know where my car was, and what would my landlord demand?

I bit the inside of my lip again to snap myself out of it.

I’d stress about that later, if I even had a later.

Tobias’s angled jawline flexed and the tips of his mussed brown hair kissed the top of his eyebrows. Enough staring at his confusing, yet perfect features.

“Just get it over with,” I croaked. I dragged my glare to Ren hovering behind him like an intimidating wall. He had no right to be that large. None of them did. They towered over me and any other person I’d ever encountered. “Kill me.”

Tobias straightened as if his spine was pulled by a string.

“What have you said to her?”

Ren’s gaze burned a hole in my forehead.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Priest. I won’t kill the human just yet.”

“You will not kill her at all. We agreed.”

Ren was suddenly in Tobias’s face.

I cringed back and stifled my whimper, clutching my arm close to my chest.

“We tied,” Ren hissed. “It was an impasse.”

“Enough.” Asher entered, carrying a tray. “She does not die.”

“You should have no say, Youngling,” Ren snapped.

“Jaxon is my age,” Asher said. “His vote would not count either, and by your logic, Tobias is the oldest, so his vote holds more weight than yours.”

Ren stilled eerily. Red flashed in his pupils briefly, but it quickly disappeared.

“The discussion isn’t over,” he intoned eerily and disappeared from where he stood. My throat closed up—I would not see him coming when he killed me.

Asher placed the tray on the bedside nightstand. Faint redness smudged beneath his eyes and was easy to see because of his pale skin. His Viking-like stature should have intimidated me, but my body remembered the way he touched me. Stupid, fucking idiotic body.