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“I wouldn’t rely on me much but in emergencies,” I warned her, pointing to Joel. “That is supposed to be unnoticeable from what I know. He lost a chunk of his brain and memories. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing and it’s always just survival.”

“We all do the best we can, pup,” she comforted.

“Well, I feel better about her calling me pup if she does it to you too,” Ha-joon drawled. “Who’s driving?”

I wasn’t the only one who chuckled.

We enlisted a bit more help, so a few other department heads caught the other former board members.

It turned out that of the five bogus agreements, only four were used.

The other one chickened out at the last minute.

I wanted to know how they used them, but it turned out the deal included being glamoured to be at the meeting.

So we had four employees to fire? They let someone else go in their place? How did that all work out?

More fun to uncover later.

Luckily, two others didn’t tell anyone like Joel, too paranoid that even their own spouse or family would blab and people would trace it back to them.

They hadn’t made a move yet because they were deciding what to do.

Both were furious that Joel was such a hothead and made such a rash move in anger that got them all caught.

I honestly didn’t blame them. I doubted snakes and assholes picked the best people to be their mates. They were untrustworthy money-grubbing fuckers, so… Who would mate them besides other untrustworthy money-grubbing fuckers?

Shocking, right?

“Well, he was a moron to start, so at least the world isn’t losing a genius or anyone useful,” Dr. Sean James chuckled as he dropped the man like disgusting garbage, wiping his hands on his pants even.

“Oh please, he’s the harshest of us most days,” Carla drawled when I gave Sean a look like I’d never seen him before.

“He was always voting for most of the board to have accidents and that would be how the board fell apart without you having to be stressed. People would think it was cursed and we’d only get pushovers or no one to join. ”

“Glad you like me now after I know you weren’t kidding with your threats,” Ha-joon muttered, scrolling through the guy’s phone to make sure we weren’t missing something.

“You threatened him?” I hissed at Sean.

He simply snorted. “I’m pretty sure we all did, Ellie. We let things go with Fitz because it seemed what you wanted. None of us knew he was abusing you on top of being a cad. I regret not being a better uncle and stepping in, and I wasn’t going to let it happen again.”

“Oh geez, you’re all…” I sighed. Heavily. I looked at Ha-joon who simply shrugged but then studied Sean.

“He’s not shocked at what you could do. At all.”

Yeah, that was a good point, and I was glad he was there to back me up and catch things when I was missing too much.

Sean didn’t make me ask. “I knew you were different, Ellie. When—you didn’t have the control you do now. When this all started, you used to look around me all of the time like magics do. You were checking my aura. Vampires can’t do that.” He shrugged as if that said it all.

So he’d known for over a hundred years and never said anything to make me feel uncomfortable or be nosy.

“Thanks, Sean.”

He simply leaned in and kissed my cheek.

“Got the answer,” Ha-joon interrupted. “The warlock had the list of employees from HR. They found five people who couldn’t come to the early meeting or were off that day and didn’t care.

I’m looking over the solid reasons employees weren’t there.

Resident doctor on vacation. Nurse who volunteered to chaperone a field trip. ”

“So it included a glamour as employees, forge their names, and no one was wiser,” I surmised, sighing when he nodded. “Okay, so we need to check every employee who attended was really the one who attended.”

“Or former employee now that some left,” Carla grumbled. “Fucking snakes.”

Amen to that.

Nothing could be easy, but it wasn’t remotely as bad as it could have been.

Only one of the four told someone and his son wasn’t on board with his dad’s evil.

He hadn’t told anyone else and understood why we showed up.

Luckily for him, we believed him and had one of the witches helping us gently take the information.

I also confessed to the president what had happened and we’d made a mess.

He cleaned it up with the federal police, and a story was released that some of the former board had stolen proprietary information from ASH that included an early version of our blood additives.

They tried to recreate it and basically made themselves brain-dead.

Wow, that was one way to scare people into not trying to do what we did. That was insanely helpful because someone was always promising they had the formula or had the same blood on the black market.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Ha-joon asked me quietly later when the report came out on the news. “You’re the additive. Your blood is.”

I blinked at the TV before slowly looking at him. “Your intelligence is so fucking sexy that I cannot put it into words.”

“The clues were all there,” he sighed. “You need more blood than a normal vampire and you take from me more than a normal vampire your age. You guys normally need less after two hundred. You need more. Fine, you can do magic too but… If you have fae blood in you—it just fits.”

“Yes, it’s my blood diluted in a huge batch of donated blood. It’s some sort of reaction—it has to be a mix. It can’t just be added to vamp, shifter, or magic blood solo. It has to be all three.”

“I didn’t see that coming,” he muttered.

I nodded and swallowed loudly. “I think that was what fae did—brought everyone together as best as they could. When they failed at that, they left, or maybe the ones here just died out because we’re all monsters—no matter the species.

But if vamps drink directly from me, they go insane. Absolutely fucking feral.”

“But you survived,” he hedged, really asking the question of how I survived and we both knew it.

“Amanda Hope saved my life,” I rasped, focusing back on the TV.

“She—someone…” I took in a shaky breath, always having a hard time talking about that night no matter how many years— centuries had passed.

“A group of male vampires found me alone and thought I was easy prey. I’ve had advanced fight training, so I wasn’t.

“They wanted—I couldn’t hide that I was from a wealthy family.

They wanted to rape a noble, not really knowing anything about me.

It’s how I carried myself. Back then it screamed—I fought back.

I killed two, and when I disarmed a third, he defaulted to survival instincts and his fangs came out. He bit me and tried to drain me.”

“And went nuts.”

“And went nuts,” I rasped. “Amanda had helped me a few times and kept several of us safe. When she received word there was a problem at the hostel a few of us rented rooms from, she ran right over. She arrived to find him trying to drain me, others cheering to rape me now. She didn’t hesitate. She stabbed the one on me and…”

“She was no match.”

“She was no match,” I sobbed, flashes of that night hitting me harder than normal because of everything else that had happened.

I cried as Ha-joon pulled me onto his lap and hugged me tightly.

“I survived because they got distracted with her and others came to help because she was involved. She was a great woman who helped me, and she died for me.”

“She died because she cared and helping you was the right thing do to,” he whispered. “She died because she was a good person and she was right to save you, Ellie. Look at how many you have saved. Look at all you have done in her name and to honor her.”

“It’s not enough. It will never be enough,” I mumbled once I was done crying. “She deserved so much better.”

“So did you, Ellie. So did you ,” he whispered as he held me tightly and kissed my hair. “It’s not your fault. Even if you knew what you were and your blood did that to—none of it was your fault. You didn’t kill her. Those horrible men did. You didn’t do it.”

I think maybe I finally started to hear someone and believe that as Ha-joon whispered it over and over again. Hundreds of years and I still acted as if I’d killed Amanda myself.

The guilt as if I’d done it ate me.

Funny how logic didn’t work much when pain and emotions distorted our perception of things?

But that night, Ha-joon was my logic and the key to helping me process my pain, even rework my emotions maybe. He gave me a priceless gift that I wouldn’t ever forget.

Ever.