Wow, it has been a lonely couple of weeks.

But despite what I felt for my sire, I didn’t want Nathan to leave without some sort of resolution between us. Perhaps what I’d dismissed as lust-at-first-sight had been a deeper connection than I’d been willing to admit. That terrified me more than the prospect of looming death.

Finally, Nathan spoke. “I’ve kind of been a jerk.”

“Kind of. But maybe I should have trusted you. I mean, if I had said, ‘I made this deal with Cyrus, now I’ve gotta go live with him,’ you’d respect that, right? You wouldn’t just come charging in to save me.”

He arched an eyebrow sardonically in answer.

“Which is exactly why I didn’t tell you.” With every passing second, I became more aware of how much I’d missed Nathan, and more afraid that I’d made a mistake in coming to live with Cyrus. There was no blood tie between Nathan and me to inspire my feelings for him. Did that mean they were stronger than what I felt for Cyrus?

As if in slow motion, Nathan reached through the gate, and I lifted my arm toward him. When our hands touched, a current leapt through me, different from any I’d felt from the bond I shared with Cyrus. There was no darkness in these feelings. Nathan’s thumb stroked the back of my hand as our fingers entwined, and we stared at each other for some time before he spoke.

“Carrie, do you want to leave?”

My head snapped up. “For real?”

“For real.” He laughed softly. “I can get you out the same time I get Ziggy.”

I looked back at the house. The light in Cyrus’s room was on. “I want to go, but—”

“But the tie is holding you back.” Nathan gave my hand a squeeze.

A tear fell from my eye and landed on the back of his hand, freezing almost instantly on his cold skin. Why was I crying? I wanted to escape this place, didn’t I? “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to walk away from him, Nathan.” I couldn’t meet his gaze. “When I’m not near him, I don’t miss him, but when I’m with him…I feel like he needs me. It probably doesn’t make sense to you, but I like to be needed.”

“It makes perfect sense. Why else would you have become a doctor?”

Nathan’s words brought back the memory of sitting beside Dr. Fuller in the cold, impersonal staff locker room. My mentor’s voice resounded like a requiem bell in my head.

“Why did you want to be a doctor?”

I’d thought I’d wanted power. Now I had that power and I didn’t want to use it. Was Nathan right? Had I become a doctor not out of some heartless quest for control, but from a desire to be indispensable and valued by complete strangers? Did I only feel complete when other people needed me?

The most annoying part of this revelation was that someone else had made it before I had. I must have been the most naive twenty-eight-year-old on the planet.