Cyrus crossed to me, stroking the side of my face gently with the back of his hand. With the blood tie between us dead, I felt nothing but revulsion.

His eyes, one gold-flecked green, the other his own, icy blue, turned cold and hollow. “It really is over, then.”

Howling in outrage, like a child whose mischief had been thwarted, he pounded his thighs with his fists. He rounded on Nathan. “Why? Why did you take her from me?”

“I’d like to know that myself,” Max said through clenched teeth.

Oh, God, don’t let him turn on us. I didn’t know Max well enough to tell if he’d report Nathan’s indiscretion to the Movement, or if he’d just be disgusted enough to abandon this mission.

Nathan sent me a comforting thought. Don’t worry, sweetheart. He’s not going anywhere. We’re going to get out of this.

“You’ve got no one to blame but yourself, Cyrus.” Nathan nodded in my direction. “You killed her in that alley. My blood restored her. Finders keepers.”

Just as he finished his sentence, Cyrus struck him. Nathan’s head snapped back and blood seeped from his nose. For a moment, I feared he would lose consciousness.

Cyrus shook his wrist, a pained look on his face. For hands so accustomed to violence, they were awfully delicate. “Finders keepers? Like the way I found your cast-off child and made him my own?”

Nathan struggled to break free, and would have managed, if four other guards hadn’t rushed in to hold him. Vampires are strong, but not that strong.

One of the sentries brought his knee up hard between Nathan’s legs. He doubled over with a grunt of pain.

“Cyrus, please, tell them to stop!” I cried.

My former sire snapped his fingers to the guard restraining me, and the stake at my chest pierced my skin.

Nathan stopped struggling immediately. Rather than panicking, he laughed. “Cyrus, you know staking her isn’t going to do anything.”

“Won’t it?”

The wood pressed deeper, digging into my flesh. While it wouldn’t cause me to ash-out and burst into flame, a wound to my remaining heart probably wasn’t something to sneeze at. “Stop, please!”

Don’t beg him, Carrie. I can’t stand to hear you beg. Nathan’s eyes were distraught. I looked away.

“Cyrus, knock it off,” he growled. “Look, I’m playing nice.”

“That’s noble of you.” Cyrus waved away the sentry that held me. “It’s so nice that you’d defend her after what she did to your son.”

Nathan shook his head. “Not going to work, Cyrus. I’m her sire now. I can see—”

I tried to hold back my memories from the night I’d fed from Ziggy, but in my panic, they overwhelmed me. They were powerfully vivid and painfully erotic. And I couldn’t hide them from Nathan.

His anger swelled, but no more than I’d expected. I wanted to tell you, I thought firmly, but he didn’t answer. Nathan purposely ignored the blood tie, and after decades of shutting out the Soul Eater, he’d perfected his technique. My thoughts bounced off him like tennis balls against a brick wall.