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“Not as much, now that I met you.” And wasn’t that the nicest thing to say? “I can be that person for you, Jay. Someone just for you. Let me be that person.”

Jay covered Alexei’s broad hands with his own.

He wanted that. More than anything.

“I won’t let him take me away from you,” Jay vowed. And he was doing it again. Making promises he didn’t know how to keep.

He listened carefully to the sounds of Alexei’s breath slowing and deepening.

Jay hadn’t felt such conflicting emotions since…

well, since Vee had died. He was on the one hand almost delirious with happiness at the thought that Alexei wanted him to stay, to be his person.

But then on the other hand, there was the dread.

The horrible dread. Because if Alexei got in Wolfe’s way—if he tried to fight for Jay—he’d lose in a heartbeat.

And Jay wanted to fight for himself, he really did, but he’d never been a fighter. Not once in his unnaturally long life.

And more than that, Jay owed Wolfe. He didn’t want to hurt his friend, even if his friend was being a massive jerk face at the moment.

So what was a vampire to do?

Jay clenched his teeth to stop the chattering as his body became racked once again with shivers.

It felt like his bones might shake out of his body with the force of it. Was that something that could happen? Probably not, he figured, knowing what he did of basic anatomy.

But he’d never gone this long without feeding before. Who could really say?

He figured eventually the shivers must stop; maybe his blood would freeze in his veins, and he’d become some sort of little vampire popsicle.

Jay had never had a popsicle before. They always looked so refreshing on TV. But weren’t they really just big flavored ice cubes?

He was vaguely aware—underneath the fuzzy thoughts of popsicles—of a loud banging coming from somewhere, then some crashing noises, and finally a presence in the room with him. Jay should maybe be feeling alarmed right about now? The den members had probably come for him at last.

But his head felt too much like mush to really muster up the proper emotions. Maybe that was better. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of his fear. Just his shivers.

“Johann.”

Oh. Jay knew that voice. Wolfgang was here. Was he the appointed executioner?

Jay debated turning his head to the side to take a look—he was currently sprawled on the incredibly uncomfortable love seat Vee had always said was “more for aesthetic purposes than practical ones”—but he didn’t quite feel up to it.

“I thought I bolted the front door,” he managed to say, his voice coming out quite hoarse, vibrating with his tremors.

“You did. I broke it.”

That made Jay laugh a little, but with another bout of shivers going, it came out strange. Like a death rattle.

“You’re aware you can’t actually die by starvation, aren’t you, little one?” Wolfe asked, sounding calm and cool as ever.

“’M aware,” Jay mumbled.

“Then what exactly is your goal here? No one’s seen you leave this house for more than a month. Have you really not fed for that long?” The sound of Jay’s teeth chattering was apparently answer enough, and Wolfe let out a long-suffering sigh. “Look at me, Johann.”

As tired as Jay was, disobeying a direct order went against his very nature (or at least, the nature Vee had cultivated so carefully). He painfully turned his head with a series of stuttered, jerky movements.

Yep. That was Wolfe all right. Jay’s…sort of friend? He was definitely frightening, in his own way, but he wasn’t overtly cruel in the fashion of so many of their den members. That was because he knew the importance of restraint, he’d once told Jay.

Also, he didn’t mind when Jay asked him questions about his psychopathy, so that gave him points in Jay’s book.

Wolfe clucked his tongue at whatever he found in Jay’s face. “You’re still wearing your suit, I see. I confess I’m surprised. You always seemed most uncomfortable in the clothes Vee made you wear.”

Jay didn’t have a response to that. In truth, he’d been wearing this same suit since Vee had died (he didn’t want to think about that; about her head ripped off, rolling on the ground), he was pretty sure.

He’d lost his grasp on time for a long while, after he’d made it home, and when he’d eventually come back to awareness, he was already so cold, and so hungry .

“Your life is your own now, Johann. You can wear what you like.”

“You’re wearing a suit,” Jay pointed out, narrowing his eyes to try to focus through the shivers. A tweed number, to be exact. Wolfe’s outfits often had the effect of making the other vampire look mild and unassuming. A master of disguise, Wolfe was.

Wolfe gave a nod of acknowledgment. “I am. But I like suits. You don’t.”

“For how long?” Jay asked, his brain turning over Wolfe’s earlier words. “For how long is my life my own?”

Wolfe gazed at him for a long time then. Jay wasn’t a master of social cues by any means, but Wolfe was harder to read than most.

Especially when Jay’s eyes kept closing without his permission.

“I think you and I can help each other,” Wolfe finally said. “But first, you need to eat something. I’ve brought you a meal. He’s in the foyer.” Wolfe walked back to the doorway of the sitting room. “Enter,” he ordered to whoever was out there.

A tall, heavy-set man came into the room, his clothes just this side of threadbare.

He looked like he had a lot of blood in his body was all Jay could think.

He could hear it rushing through the man’s vasculature, in fact.

Jay’s beastie—who’d curled up inside him long ago, utterly exhausted from the lack of blood—perked up immediately.

Hungry.

Wolfe made eye contact with the obviously compelled human. “Stay calm, if you please. We’re all friends here.” He waved a hand at Jay, beckoning him over. “Come, Johann. Starvation will only make you weaker in their eyes.”

In the eyes of the den, he meant. In the eyes of those who were probably already weighing Jay’s value with or without his head.

Jay had always been weak. Easy prey. He knew that. What was the point of pretending otherwise?

But with this human in the room, his beastie awakened to a renewed hunger, Jay’s body moved without his permission. He was off the love seat and crawling onto the floor in seconds, his teeth sinking into the man’s wrist as soon as he was within reach, not quite having the strength to stand.

The man gasped, then moaned. Jay drank. And drank. And drank.

It was Wolfe who finally pulled him off, clucking his tongue again like Jay had done something naughty.

“Let’s not drain him dry, hm?” Wolfe pressed his open mouth against the man’s wrist just long enough to stop the bleeding, then made eye contact with the human again.

“Stay quiet and still until we return you home.”

Jay panted from his spot on the floor. His shivers had finally stopped, the cold chill leaving his bones for the first time in weeks. “I could have killed him.”

“You could have,” Wolfe conceded. “I stopped you.”

“I don’t like compelling humans.” Jay wasn’t sure if Wolfe would understand the connection between Jay’s hang-ups and his lack of feeding, but Wolfe nodded in understanding.

“I know.”

Jay cocked his head. “You do?”

“I’m an observant man, Johann.” Wolfe always did that: referred to himself as a man, as if vampirism was a condition he lived with rather than an identity.

He was strange that way.

Really, Wolfe was strange in general. He was also cold and unfeeling, no matter how well he pretended at concern.

But he wasn’t weak . He was strong, especially for a younger vampire. And Jay knew for a fact the other den members feared him. Jay had overheard quite a bit in his time with Vee.

And Wolfe thought they could help each other?

If Jay needed a companion to survive—and who was he really kidding? Of course he did—why not pick the fiercest one there was?

Wolfe held out his hand. Jay, kneeling on the floor, an ungodly amount of blood smeared all over his face, took it.

He let himself be pulled up.

He let himself try again.