Page 77 of Hot Vampire Next Door: Season Three

No. No.

I can’t lose Bran.

I can’t lose this battle.

It’s too much.

It’s all too much.

“STOP!” I shout.

And the room goes eerily still.

I’m gasping for air. I’m hot all over. My skin is crawling.

What is happening?

No one is moving. Everyone is frozen mid-stride.

They’re all breathing, though, blinking through the disbelief.

“Mouse,” Bran says. He can’t seem to turn his head my way, but he can speak. He’s caught in place in front of Julian, the Locke vampire at his back, the stake inches from piercing Bran’s flesh. “Mouse.”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” I say, voiced edged in panic.

Julian blinks, his teeth gritted, his hand half-raised. “You undid the binding?”

“No,” Bran answers, not moving a muscle.

“Wait—” I take a step and Julian’s eyes narrow as if he wishes he could dart away. “You’re not surprised by this? What is it?”

Julian doesn’t answer.

“Tell me right now or I swear to god—”

“You’ll what?” Julian challenges. “You don’t know the first thing about your power. Not what it is or how to use it.”

“Mouse,” Bran says again.

“What?”

“Use your voice.”

It’s an echo of what he’s said to me before. Use my voice. Speak my mind. Quit hiding what I want and who I am.

But he means it differently now. Julian was wrong—Bran is always the most powerful and the smartest person in the room.

He’s put it together much quicker than I have.

I used my voice. I told the room to stop and they did. All of them. Caught like a bug in a drip of amber.

Use my voice.

The things you did, Jessie…you were only a year old and it terrified me.

A year old, when a child, especially a fae child, might learn to speak.

A tingling chill runs through my entire body.