“Show me your throat.” Damn him. It wasn’t enough that Con had willingly lost the fight; Bran was going to make him endure complete surrender. Grinding his molars so hard they hurt, Con cranked his head to the side, leaving his jugular exposed. For a long moment, Bran did nothing. Con’s pulse ticked off the seconds, and the longer Bran kept Con in the submissive, humiliating position, the more Con began to sweat.

“You’ve made your point,” Con growled.

“No,” Bran said, with a sadistic laugh. “I don’t think I have.” He dropped his mouth to Con’s throat, and Con’s heart leaped up there to join the party. “Don’t. The virus is in my blood.”

Bran’s hot breath whispered across Con’s skin. “How convenient.”

Very. Being fed on in a show of dominance was never pleasant.

The scrape of teeth along Con’s jugular made him tense because, like Con, Bran had never been cautious with his own life, and Con wouldn’t put it past the crazy bastard to bite despite the viral infection swimming in Con’s veins.

Finally, Bran leaped fluidly to his feet. “You have until the epidemic is contained or the breeding season starts. Whichever comes first.” He stepped into the Harrowgate, and the shimmering curtain solidified, leaving Con alone in the courtyard.

Alone with the knowledge that his days of freedom were numbered, and with the words “Be careful what you wish for” running through his head.

Five

“Let the bodies hit the floor.” “Bodies,” by Drowning Pool, blared from Sin’s iPod Shuffle, and she sang at the top of her lungs as she walked with Wraith to the ER. After Con had taken off—without so much as a “Thanks for the meal”—Wraith had made her stop by the cafeteria for a quick snack to replenish her blood sugar or some crap. Apparently, Eidolon the Great had insisted. Something about passing out again.

Now, Wraith was stone silent, though a cocky smirk turned up one corner of his mouth. “So,” he said, tugging her earbuds from her ears, “you banging the paramedic?” So much for the stone silence. She’d love to make his body hit the floor. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no.” Not recently, anyway.

“But you want to.” When she opened her mouth to deny it, he cut her off. “You can’t lie to an incubus about sex. You should know that.”

“Whatever,” she muttered, and stuck the earbuds back in place. Wraith’s boots sounded like mini-bombs striking the obsidian floor even through the blaring sound of the music, and with each step, her nerves twitched. No doubt the effect was calculated, because she knew he could move like a damned phantom when he wanted to. Once again, he yanked on the headset’s cord. “He wants you, too.”

“Well, gee, aren’t you just smarter than you look.” Knowing the battle was lost, she turned off the tiny MP3 player. “Hello, he’s a guy. And a vampire. He was responding to the feeding.” And to her succubus pheromones, which had a tendency to attract the attention of all nonincubi males, even if only subliminally. “What’s your point, anyway?”

He shrugged. “Just making conversation.” Bullshit. He was trying to get as much information about her as he could. Her new brothers all responded differently to her existence—Eidolon accepted it like she’d been around for years, Shade made extra efforts to build a relationship, and Wraith… he kept her at arm’s length, and she had a feeling he would until he learned to trust her. She got that; she was the same way. Just because someone was biologically related didn’t make them family. Definitely didn’t make them likable.

Worse, family had the potential to hurt a person much more than a stranger ever could. “You don’t like me, do you?” she asked.

“I don’t know you.”

She stopped in the middle of the hall. “Cut the shit.”

He grinned. “You’re a straight shooter. I do like that.”

“But?”

Wraith’s blue eyes glazed over as he stared down the hall, going someplace she couldn’t follow. “But we have a history of some real f**kwads in the family, starting with our father and ending with Roag. Lore has proven himself, but you… you’re a wild card.” His gaze shifted to her, and it was as cold as the arctic tundra. “I won’t let you screw with my brothers.”

“Screw with them? Maybe you could keep in mind that I saved the lives of two of Shade’s kids. And I never wanted to meet you guys at all. The only reason I’m spending as much time with you as I am is because Eidolon and Shade won’t leave me alone.”

Eidolon called her to come in for stuff related to the epidemic, and Shade was always inviting her to dinner with his family to thank her for what she’d done for his sons. And sure, the triplets, Rade, Stryke, and Blade, were cute and all, but dealing with drooly little rugrats was way out of her comfort zone.

“But you’re here now, and you’re in our lives. So what happens when the plague is over and you don’t need to come to the hospital anymore?” Wraith stepped closer, using his size in an attempt to intimidate her. “Will you disappear?”

She wrenched her neck to look up at him, but no way was she backing down. “That’s the plan.” A low growl rumbled in his chest. “I couldn’t give a hellrat’s ass, but my brothers? Different story. Lore worries about you. E has accepted you into the family, and he’s not going to let you go. Shade… he lost a sister he loved, and now he needs you to help him heal. He probably doesn’t see that, but even as dense as I am sometimes, I see it. So guess what, little sister? Get used to having me around because I’m going to be your shadow until I’m sure you won’t hurt our family.” Sin practically shook with rage. “You don’t get to tell me what to do,” she spat. “And I’m not your ‘little’ sister. I’m older than you are, dickhead.”

“Duh, the years you spent as a clueless human don’t count. Everyone knows that.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Just remember what I said. Don’t try to run away, because there is no place on Earth or in Sheoul where I can’t find you.” His voice was a rumbling, deadly murmur. “And trust me, you don’t want me on your heels.” He did a crisp about-face on the ball of his foot and took off down the hall, leaving her spitting mad and tempted to go after him, though she had no idea what she’d do if she caught up to him.

“Sin!” Eidolon gestured to her from the double swinging doors to the ER. “I need you. Now.” Sin mentally flipped off Wraith and hurried after Eidolon, who didn’t even wait to see if she was following. He crossed to a room near the parking lot doors and flung back the heavy curtain. There, lying in a bed, was a tawny-haired male, a teenager, maybe, his skin ashen in the few places where it wasn’t mottled by black bruises, blood leaking from his nose, eyes, and ears. Machines breathed for him, pumped fluids into his veins, monitored his vital signs. A young, humanoid nurse —a shifter of some sort, according to the star-shaped mark behind her ear—checked his status, her face pinched with concern.

Sin wanted to throw up. “Was he in an accident?” “That’s what this disease does.” Eidolon lifted the patient’s chart from a hook at the end of the bed. “It’s a VHF, a viral hemorrhagic fever. It causes multisystem failure, including the vascular system. Organs break down, and veins basically dissolve. The patient bleeds from all orifices—”

“Stop.” Horrified, Sin stumbled back a step, bumping into a cabinet behind her. God, what had she done? Eidolon gestured to the nurse. “Vladlena, can we get a minute?”

“Of course, Doctor.”

Once she was gone, Eidolon gripped Sin’s shoulders. “Sin,” Eidolon said, his tone much kinder than she deserved. “I need your help. I need you to channel your gift into him and see if you can force the virus into compliance.”

“I’ve already tried with that other warg a few days ago. It didn’t work, and he wasn’t nearly as bad off as this guy.”

“I know. And this might not work either. But you’ve had a chance to see how the virus in Con’s blood was killed. If you can cause a similar reaction inside this warg, he might have a chance.” “Dammit,” she breathed. “Okay. Yeah.” She curled her hands into fists in an effort to keep from trembling. It had been decades since anything had affected her so strongly, and she wasn’t sure how to deal with it other than by burying her emotions down deep, the way she’d always done.

Bucking up, she gently gripped the warg’s blackened, swollen hand. “Why so bruised?” “He’s bleeding subdermally as his capillaries rupture.”

Dear God. She closed her eyes, digging for every ounce of stone-cold detachment she had. She’d been a killer for years, had been to hell and back—literally—and she’d seen much, much worse than this.

She just hadn’t caused it. “Why can’t he drink my blood like Con did?” She opened her eyes and shifted her gaze to Eidolon, the walls, the floor, because anything was better than staring at the dying kid. “I mean, I know wargs normally don’t drink blood, but wouldn’t that provide some sort of defense?”

“It worked on Con because he’s part vampire, and the blood he took from you went nearly immediately into his bloodstream. For anyone else, the blood goes into their stomach and is digested or regurgitated.”

Ick. “Can you inject my blood into them?”

“Even if your human blood type were the same as the victim’s, you’re part demon. Injecting your blood directly into a werewolf would kill him.” Numbly, she nodded. Forced herself to look down at the boy, because he deserved that, at least. Slowly, so slowly, her mental walls finally slammed into place, blocking off the horror, the sorrow, the guilt. Oh, it would all come out again, painfully so, but right now, she needed to put up the shields that would allow her to handle this.