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GWYN

“Wake up, sweetheart.”

I’m not cold anymore. Instead, I’m wrapped in a warm embrace, and his breath smells of mint.

“Roman?” I ask, confused as I blink up at the man holding me in his lap. I think we’re sitting on the floor, but he doesn’t let me go. The fluorescent lights are so fucking bright that it’s hard to make out his face.

But it’s him.

“A stubborn will to live, don’t you think, cockroach?”

I laugh, but it makes me dizzy so I close my eyes. He tugs me closer, and his lips drift over my forehead. His broad chest is quite comfortable, and it would be so easy to fall asleep right here. In fact, I think I do for a moment, but he jostles me awake.

“Drink up,” he says, as warm skin presses against my lips. “You’re half dead, ma petite cafarde.”

I lick my dry lips and bite his wrist immediately. Not his wrist, I realize. The taste and angle is all wrong. I open my eyes, realizing the pale arm is attached to someone kneeling behind my head.

“Hale?” I mumble, but I don’t stop drinking. I want Roman’s blood, but this will do for now.

“We’re taking turns to get you topped off without taking too much,” Roman explains.

He caresses my face, callused hand gentle.

I drink for long enough that I feel significantly better, and I’m worried I’m taking too much from my friend.

Opening my eyes, I find Roman’s. I break away from Hale’s wrist and lick my lips, and I want to say something—anything—but I can’t come up with the right words.

Because Roman is here to rescue me even after a horrendous loss.

His eyes are glassy, and it takes me a moment to identify his expression because it’s so far from what I expect.

He’s reverent—almost happy. How, I don’t know. His brother is gone, and he’s had to play the hero. And yet he looks down at me with the same tenderness he did before I betrayed him. With the same soft smile as he did in the moments before his brother pulled the trigger.

It’s too much, and if I don’t ruin it, I’ll start to cry.

“Where’s Lord Farquad?” I ask Roman as I try to sit up.

“Who?”

“The bad guy from Shrek?” I offer. “Stupid hair?”

Roman’s eyes widen, clearly worried about brain damage. “Sorry, sweetheart. No idea what you’re talking about.”

“The witch.”

He snorts, then wipes away what I realize is blood on his lips.

“Caitriona is dead—a poor decision, if you ask me,” comes a voice that I realize is not Hale’s at all. I recoil, twisting in Roman’s grasp to see the man sitting beside us. My heart nearly beats out of my chest.

“What the fuck?” I shriek, and Roman holds me tightly as he tries to shush me.

Agnarr has both hands up where he sits, assuming a submissive position, but that doesn’t make any sense. He shouldn’t be here. He smells different, and he’s no longer wearing a fancy suit. His hair is long, when it was short only a few hours ago.

“Ketill, my brother, is the one who took you. We look alike,” Agnarr says, offering his arm once more, as if his explanation is enough to comfort me.

“He’s the one who brought me to you, Gwyn. He helped me,” Roman says, and his low voice rumbles in my chest because of how tightly I’m pressed against him.

“What if it was a trap to kill you too?” I ask. “What if they’re working together?”

“I assure you, I am not working with my brother. Although bringing another hybrid here was maybe short-sighted.”

“I don’t trust you. You almost choked me out when you woke up.”

“I’m sorry for that. I…recognized magic on you that shouldn’t have been there.”

I shake my head, realizing I’m focusing on the wrong things. “Another hybrid? Roman?” I shift to look at him.

“Did you decipher my messages? Did the dreams help you?” Agnarr asks.

I go still for a moment before I spin in Roman’s grasp once more to stare at the ancient vampire. “That was you? The freaky buried alive dreams were because of you?”

“It was his heart you were holding. You needed him. You needed the heart. And he held onto yours? Did you not understand?”

“Of course not! What do you mean ?”

“We don’t have fucking time for this,” Roman says, and then he turns me in his grasp as he shoves his wrist to my mouth. I tug at my stupid hospital gown, realizing my lacy underwear is on display. After a moment of intense glaring from the most beautiful warm, brown eyes, I cave and bite him.

“Ketill hates hybrids and wants vampire pureblood supremacy. Ansi meant for vampires and hunters to…work together.” The way he hesitates is strange, and his throat bobs. “The word isn’t even actually hunter.”

“Félagi,” Agnarr interrupts, but Roman keeps talking before he can get another word in.

“Ketill twisted the meaning to keep vampires on top. But also, uh. Agnarr was in love with your mother after she, uh, impregnated herself. He visited her through dreams, I guess.”

I blink, confused that anyone could fall in love with their rapist, but I continue drinking from Roman, feeling stronger with each gulp.

“Félagi are born of Helgi?” I ask, knowing my ancestors descend from Ansi’s own children, the first to enter her cave.

“Yes. And witches from Einar,” Agnarr says. “She was beautiful, your mother. A kind soul who was trying to do the right thing. I think she knew, before you were born, that their plan wouldn’t be good for you.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Roman says, and I snort. He seems to just know, by instinct, that I don’t want to hear this story from Agnarr, but from him.

“How are you a hybrid?” I ask, breaking away for just a moment to get to the more important part of the story.

Roman exhales, like what he’s about to say annoys him deeply. I reach up, smoothing a fingertip over the crinkle between his brows. For a brief second, he gives me a lopsided smile, and I wonder if it’s just going to be like this from now on. Sweet and easy.

I don’t know if I’m on board with that or not. I like the push and pull and the fucked up games with Roman. I enjoy submitting to him with sex and driving him crazy outside of it.

But we have time to figure it out, I guess. I bite his wrist once more, drinking as fast as I can. I need my strength, because without even saying it, I know we aren’t leaving here until Ketill is dead.

“Bjorn wasn’t my real father. A sorcerer who helped maintain the compound’s wards had an affair with my mother.

He helped orchestrate the attack with Bill and Cynthia a few years later, I assume in a bid to free my mother.

After Bill killed her, it seems he sought revenge. He wanted to get even with Bill.”

I frown, not understanding. “Who did the sorcerer kill? Cynthia? She died in childbirth.”

“I am sure he made it look that way,” Agnarr says, eyes hard and jaw tight.

“Cynthia had nightmares before you were born. She was frightened something would go awry, and she called upon Johnathon Proctor to ensure your safety. That is why his magic lingers on you still. I suspect he killed Cynthia to avenge Alice,” Agnarr says, and I’m too shocked to mind his interruption.

I sit up, dropping Roman’s arm. “Johnathon Proctor is your father?”

“Apparently,” he says.

After a moment’s hesitation, afraid to bring him up, I ask, “And Remy?”

Roman looks to Agnarr for an answer.

“Probably,” the ancient vampire says.

“You’re Sasha’s half-brother,” I say, and it’s so preposterous that I burst out in laughter. “You’re my sister’s brother—what the fuck?”

“What?” Roman is confused, and I can’t stop laughing. Maybe it’s the lightheadedness. He gently cups my cheek, searching my face for an answer.

“Johnathon Proctor, headmaster of the Institute that trains sorcerers, is Sasha’s dad. And yours too, I guess.”

A loud banging from a far off hallway interrupts us, and I jump in his arms. Agnarr stands, and Roman follows quickly after, moving to position himself between the door and me.

When I stand, I’m irritated all over again about my choice of underwear, both ass cheeks exposed and cold because of my cute lacy thong.

I’m finally able to see past the blinding light, and I shiver when I take in our surroundings.

The refrigerated drawers line one wall, half flung open, and I can only imagine how Roman felt trying to find me.

Opposite that wall, there’s a long counter with a deep sink on one side and a large scale on the other.

Between, there are various tools lined up precisely.

A bone saw, some sort of giant eye dropper looking thing that’s pointed on the end, a sharp pair of long tweezers? Any of those could work as weapons.

Two metal autopsy tables stand in the middle of the room—one empty, the other holding a sheet-draped body. I have half a mind to make sure whoever lies there is actually dead, but I decide against it.

I look around, searching for the tray of instruments the ginger witch used on me, but find her body instead.

Her neck is certainly broken, and her body is shoved between the wall and a filing cabinet.

I feel a bit shitty about it since she said she was trying to help me, and it seems her message did go through to my rescuers.

But Roman knew that and killed her anyway.

I glance down at my leg, and spot a long scar that should have healed by now.

From just above my ankle, all the way to below my knee, I have a perfectly straight line—cut by one of her scalpels—that hasn’t healed thanks to the powdered silver.

But, despite the scar on my flesh and silver still trapped in my body, I’d been able to heal nearly immediately.

Perhaps that’s why Ketill hates hybrids.

Because I healed what an ordinary vampire could not.

She’d stalled, convincing him to use my blood to try and create hybrids like me, and I have to be grateful for that, I suppose. But she still brought me here and tortured me. She still left a permanent scar on my body—even if she did try to help me in the end.

I’m glad Roman didn’t hesitate to break her fucking neck.

If my biological father wasn’t standing right next to him and my weirdo pureblood freak uncle wasn’t stomping down the hall to make sure I’m dead, I’d want to jump Roman’s bones over it.

“You guys think you might want to grab a weapon?” I whisper as I grab the vial of powdered silver off of the instrument tray. A scalpel stained with dried blood sits beside it, and I take that too. Quickly, I run to the corner of the room to hide behind the door.

“I have been waiting centuries for this, dóttir. I will taste his blood before he can draw his own weapon. Those who betray their family do not deserve Valh?ll.”

When the door bursts open a second later, all hell breaks loose.