As soon as the last few words left my mouth, the witch’s face paled. “Vampire blood?”“Yes.”“But you don’t do magic. You’re a human.”“Give her the fucking blood,” Tyler growled.Once the witch placed down the herbs, she disappeared into a back room. I shifted back and forth on my feet, glancing over at the others, who all waited impatiently for her return.“If you guys want to be strong against the potions that my father creates, then you need to be willing to drink vampire blood. Your wolf powers won’t heal you alone.”My gaze landed on Lucas, who looked to be doing better after I gave him the healing potion this morning, but his cheeks were still a bit pale. When we got home, I would have to give him some more medicine.“Are you sure about this?” the witch said, clutching a vial of vampire black blood.“Yes.”She took a deep breath and handed the vile to me. “Please be careful. This stuff is very dangerous. If you need help or directions on how to use it, please come back to my sh

Instead of answering me, this ho of a man walked up the stairs to his bedroom. Not wanting to deal with it anymore, I followed him and grabbed his wrist to stop him halfway up the stairs. He froze as our skin touched, then yanked himself away from me.“What is wrong with you?”“Don’t fucking touch me, Anna. I’m not in the mood.”“You sure were in the mood ten minutes ago.”He hardened his glare at me, and then, suddenly, it softened. He stared at me with so much hurt, so much love I didn’t know exactly what it was. All I could seem to do was stare back at him and wonder what his damn problem was.One moment, he hated me. The next, he was looking at me like this …“I’m fine,” I said, answering the question he was giving me with his eyes. “Don’t worry about me. You’re the one who left while I was supposedly inheat.” And then I strolled back down the stairs, ignoring the stares from the other guys, and walked to the kitchen to make myself some breakfast or lunch or whatever the hell meal

“If I’m your mate, then why haven’t you mated with me yet? Why haven’t you bitten me?”Well, that was Asher’s fucking idea.So, I released her jaw and crossed my arms. “Asher, you wanna take that one?”Asher bared his canines at me. “No.”“You’re an annoying fucking ass,” I said to him, gritting my teeth and glaring at him. Later on, I was going to kick his fucking ass for all this shit he had been forcing us to do. “He doesn’t want any of us to mark you until after your father”“If you wanted to mark her, you could’ve,” Asher growled. “Yes, I said what I fucking said, but I was protecting you. I’m not going to let us go through what we did again. I can’t fucking carry that on my back for four more years.”Anna shook her head, as if she didn’t understand where this was going or what we were even talking about. Hell, I didn’t blame her. Sometimes, with Asher, I didn’t fucking know either. He was even more of a closed fucking book than I was.But in his sick, fucked up mind, he thought

We all knew how much she had been hurting. But while I wanted to understand her pain, Asher wanted to eliminate it. He thought that keeping shit from her was the best way. And while he might’ve been wrong about that, I could tell right now that he couldn’t stand to see Anna this way, so torn up.When she had cried in my arms last night, he’d looked devastated. Absolutely fucking devastated. And when she’d sobbed about how she couldn’t remember some things that had happened in the past … maybe he’d feared that she’d forgotten how much he loved her too.“Maybe she’ll tell Jake,” I chimed in for the first time tonight.“Or maybe she’ll fuck him,” Tyler said, trying to get under Asher’s skin.“Jake isn’t going to do shit with her,” Asher growled. “Not alone.”I sipped my drink and let Asher live in whatever damn fantasy that went on in his head. Sometimes scratch that, most times I didn’t fucking understand him. He thought that Jake, who was one of Anna’s mates, wouldn’t try to get with h

While my nightmares used to be about Anna’s father tearing her away from me, all I had been dreaming of lately was Anna hating me for the rest of my shitty life. She’d always turn in the other direction, smile, and laugh with the others, leaving me the fuck out.Someone pierced their claws into my neck, dangerously close to my artery. I growled in response, kicking the guy off me and killing him instantly. The other four came at me harder and faster. My vision blurred with the blood loss, so I had to make this quick.From either side of me, two jumped toward me. I stepped out of the way, letting them smash into each other, and then I slashed their throats and killed them too. Stars filled my vision, and I knew that if I didn’t heal soon, I’d pass the fuck out for real.After tearing into the fourth’s underbelly until his guts spilled out, I turned toward their leader and sank my teeth into his neck, ripping out his pathetic throat. And when I had killed the last rogue, I shifted into