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The blood that remained on Alena’s arm slowly absorbs into her skin.

Asher shakes his head in disbelief.

Pointing at the bloody tracks still on her flesh, I say, “Look, it’s disappearing.”

I’ve never in my life seen this happen before. Blood doesn’t get absorbed by someone’s skin. Not even vampires.

Asher bites his own wrist and drips his blood on her hand. But we’re torn away from our discovery when Andrei and Chloe reappear out of thin air.

“What are you two doing?” Andrei asks, watching as Asher drips blood onto Alena.

“She’s absorbing blood,” Asher explains, and points at the blood on her hand.

“Impossible,” Andrei says, moving closer to observe.

We watch Asher’s blood do absolutely nothing. It only pools on Alena’s hand and drips down her fingers.

“What the fuck?” I growl in annoyance. “Watch.”

I bite down hard on my palm. Squeezing my hand into a fist, my blood streams onto her arm. My blood doesn’t instantly disappear, but it absorbs faster.

“Gods below,” Andrei murmurs quietly, and bends so close to Alena’s arm, he almost gets blood on his nose. “She’s absorbing it.”

“Does this fit with what you said upstairs?” Chloe asks.

“What is she talking about?” I ask Andrei.

Still hunched over Alena, he answers, “Alena wouldn’t let me take her blood to analyze, so I got what little I could from the chunk of wood.”

“And?” I press as I fight down another burst of nausea.

Pulling away from Alena, Andrei scratches the back of his head. “It’s not possible.”

“What’s not possible?” Asher and I ask at the same time.

Sighing, Andrei turns to us. “I triple-checked it, and if I want an absolute confirmation, I need to take her blood. But from what I’ve analyzed so far, she has two types of blood warring inside of her. Hers and another vampire’s.”

“I haven’t given…” my words trail off.

I haven’t given any blood to her. I know it for a fact.

None of my brothers have, either.

“This so-called prophet,” Asher says, and then his face is furious. “Are you saying the Order has a vampire working for them?”

Andrei paces away from the bed. His agitation showing as he roughly rubs his eyes.

“I don’t want to believe it, either,” Andrei says. “But given what we know, it looks like it.”

“This is all fucking conjecture at this point!” I grit out between my teeth. The pain is coming again in another powerful blast. “We need to wake her, and she needs to be turned right away. Whatever’s inside her is killing her.”

“How do we wake her?” Asher asks.

“She absorbed your blood, Raphael,” Chloe says. “Why not Asher’s?”

The realization smacks me in the head.

Because she’s my soulmarked.