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Of course, of all the people in this world, the one person who would have the ability to track me down and pull me out of my duties to the Syndicate was the one I’d tried to stop thinking about the most.

Without speaking to each other, I’d grabbed him by the wrist. He didn’t struggle and into a van where he even buckled himself into the passenger seat. I drove us further from New Eden to one of the dilapidated warehouses we often used as a pitstop.

“After all of this, you’ll have to drive me back for my car,” Soren Quillen said in a huff. “We could’ve talked back there.”

I took him by the wrist again and pulled him willingly into the crumbling warehouse. It was empty and we could talk without prying ears of eyes on us.

“I assumed you’d gotten yourself killed,” he continued. “You know, you just fucking left one day. You didn’t say you were going, you didn’t even leave me a way to keep in contact with you. And before you get a big head, I didn’t come here looking for you.”

“Shut up,” I snapped, taking us into a room with worn down sofas were most of the stuffing was flattened and pulled out of the cushions in chunks. I pushed him slightly onto the sofa, and he barely even moved, but sat himself regardless of the push. “You shouldn’t be here. I know, I know, I know what you’ve done with your life, Soren. You graduated as a nurse, you saved lives, and then you got your PI license and started investigating whatever it is you decided was the thing to investigate.”

“Looks like I’m doing the two things you hate the most,” Soren said, folding his arms over each other and showcasing some of the muscle he’d built in his forearms and chest. Since we’d last met, he’d massed more muscle. I was impressed. “You know, saving people who you’re putting in hospitals, and investigating missing omegas who you’re probably responsible for taking.”

I sat beside him and placed an arm across his torso as if I was the mechanical arm of a rollercoaster, keeping him on the sofa. “You don’t know what happened when I left. You don’t know my duties. All you know is that omegas are going missing. But they’re not. These omegas are being paid for the medical trial they’re going through. So, whoever is telling you different, you’re going to need to go back to them and let them know.”

“Medical trials?” he asked, hooking his hands under my arm. “What type of medical trials? Does this have something to do with Rotmor, whatever that is.”

I smirked. It shouldn’t be known, but whoever had been at that bar definitely let it slip. “Rotmor is a blood-born disease. It’s carried in my bloodline. I infect people with it.”

“So?”

“So, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “These omegas you’re out here trying to find. They’re not here because we’ve kidnapped them. They’re here because they want to make money for their families.”

His chest deflated as my arm rested against it. “No,” he said. “That’s not right. If they knew, they’d have told their families that’s what they were doing, instead of some job.”

I didn’t like lying to Soren. He’d quite literally saved my life, but it was the answer we gave to anyone who asked questions. “It’s all part of the documentation they signed. They’re under strict control. They can’t talk to anyone outside their program they’re undergoing. But trust me, they are being paid for it.” That was true, and in some ways, this was a medical trial, but not to find a cure or antidote. This was a trial to develop the most lethal strain of Rotmor, and kill of the vampires in the north, or wherever they were collecting now.

“You’re going to take me to them,” he snapped. “You’re going to take me to them where I can see what they’re going through, and I can report back to their families that they’re actually fine. I’m not doing it for a check, you know that. I’m doing this because I have a genuine care for these omegas, which is more than I can say for the reputation of your gang .”

Something about seeing Soren took me back ten years. It was both a happy place, and a painful one.

***

Ten Years Ago

Soren had stitched me up. He continued to prod me with questions at every turn. Feeding me soup and pausing before I could actually sip it to ask me yet another question.

In the beige bedroom full of natural light, I’d been here a few days and nights already. My family must’ve thought I was dead, or I’d gotten away and was laying low. It could’ve been the former, but I was glad it was the latter.

“Who were you running from?” Soren asked, nearly spilling soup on my in the bed. “And why are you struggling to self-heal?”

“I don’t remember.” My stock excuse for him. “Is it that big of a deal?”

“Yes, because the tattoo says this might be gang related,” he said. “And I just want you to tell me the truth. Are you still in trouble?”

“I might be,” I said and attempted to shrug, but my collar throbbed with so much pain my limbs nearly lashed out and knocked the bowl of soup. “Just let me stay here and heal. Please. Does it matter who I was running from?”

Soren sucked the soup from the spoon himself. “Mhmm, it’s good,” he said. “But I’m worried about you. And I don’t mind helping you. Assuming you’re not some killer, but you don’t look or—smell like a killer.”

“And how do I smell?”

He leaned in close, his head to my neck. “Sweet,” he whispered, tingling in my ear. “Very sweet.”

I turned my head and we kissed.

***

On the sofa, I couldn’t keep combating each of his questions the way I had been. When he wanted answers, he would do anything to get them. I could only assume since we’d last met, he’d gotten even better at asking, or demanding answers.

“Do I smell different?” I asked, throwing a curve ball in his questions.

“Yes,” he said, plainly. “I should have let the gardeners find you and my parents would’ve called the police.”

Dropping my arms, I looked at Soren in his big eyes. “You think that’s what you’d do, but you got a lot of practice in.” I tilted my head and took his hand. “I healed up nicely, don’t you think?” With his forefinger, I controlled the tip of it to feel out the scars his stitching had crafted on my face, and then down to my collar behind my shirt. Soren pulled his hand away. “I never actually properly thanked you for all the help you did.”

He shook his head and screwed his eyes. “No,” he snapped. “You did. I know you did. You—you—you sent all those injured omegas to the hospital I worked at. I know it was you. I know.”

My heart might’ve frozen in my chest with the moment all time could’ve stopped. He’d caught me, somehow. “How did you—”

“I could smell you on them,” he said and grabbed me by the shirt collar. “You’re fucking evil. You were never this evil. You weren’t.” He shook his head. “When I met you, when I saved you, you were—”

“I was always going to end up like this,” I told him, giving in to the way he pulled on my clothes in his direction. “It’s one of the reasons I could never answer your questions. I didn’t want to implicate you in it all.”

He scoffed. “Implicate me in what?”

“My life. My family. You think I wanted to leave? You think I wanted to do what I’m doing now? Because I’m going to tell you now. All I’ve ever wanted was my own life. I’ve never had that same luxury you’ve had. And if that makes me a bad person from doing what I have to, then sure, I’m a bad person, but I’m not going to let you come to New Eden, just to end up like—” My teeth clenched to keep me from saying anything else. I didn’t want to see Soren strapped to a bed, going through all that hell.

“End up like what?” he asked, pulling me nearly on top of him. “Come on. You’re actually close to telling me the truth. I can feel it.”

My brow eased as I smiled at him. “Nothing,” I said. Even if he did make it to New Eden. He wouldn’t have found the base. I still didn’t want to take that chance, but he was going to do whatever he wanted, and I’d have to protect him from the hell that would rain down on him from anyone who tried him. He’d saved my life. I had to save his.

“I’m stronger now,” he said, as if he hadn’t been proving his strength with his hold on me and my shirt. “I can handle it. Just let me see the omegas so I can tell their families they’re ok.”

“No.”

In a swift motion, he swung a leg around and straddled my lap, pinning me against the hard frame of the sofa. Just when I thought he was going to start beating down on my chest and face, he paused to stare at me. “How come your mouth isn’t like those people from the bar?”

“That’s one variant of Rotmor,” I told him. “It’s in my blood, my venom. It’s not something I want to expose you to.”

“I’m sure I already have been.” He placed both hands on my shoulders, digging his fingers into m collarbones. “Take me. Take me to them.”

I flickered my forked tongue at him. “I don’t want to have to do this,” I said. “But you’re going to leave me with no choice.”

“What do you mean?”

My fanged teeth and mouth opened wide as I shifted form completely into a blue lipped pit viper, right before him, I slithered off the sofa and up his leg, coiled myself around his thigh. He tried to grab at me and hit me, but I was targeting the artery in his upper thigh, cutting off the supply of blood flow and for him to fall unconscious. I didn’t want to hurt him, and he left me with no choice now.

After a couple of minutes, he was unconscious. I slithered out of his trouser leg and shifted back into my human form. Soren was positioned oddly, falling forward onto the sofa. His ass, a lot thicker than I remembered in the air.

I couldn’t leave him like this. I couldn’t see him left here for the hungry serpents that used this place in passing. But I also couldn’t take him back to New Eden, where I was expected soon. I hauled him into my arms before flinging him over a shoulder.

“You’re going to thank me for this when you wake up,” I told him as I carried him out to the truck. I placed him in the passenger seat and fastened him in safely. “In doing this for you, I think that makes us even. I’m saving you.”

I knew I’d have to tell him the same thing again when he woke up, but I was going to take him back to safety. I drove down the road, further from New Eden and found the motel he must’ve stayed at on his way here. I stopped and called the bar for them to bring his car to the motel.

“He’s not going to be an issue,” I said over the phone as I looked to his peaceful sleeping body in the passenger seat. “Just bring the car and I’ll give you something for the trouble.”

All those Rotmor intoxicated serpents were the same. Since it couldn’t kill them, they were addicted to it. It was better than paying them in money when they would only ever ask for a vial of venom which they’d share amongst their group and get high from.

“Soren,” I mumbled to myself as I turned my head in his direction. “I’m really sorry this is how it has to be. But you’ve got to understand. My family would kill you if they knew what you did for me, and that would—” A sudden choked breath caught in my throat. “That would—break me.”

I heard his heart thump an extra beat. And I knew he’d heard me.