I couldn’t tell whether Dragomir was as surprised as I was, since that damn mask hid him from me as well as the sun, but the quiver in the pit of my stomach signaled an adrenaline rush. Caught in the act, scheming with a vampire. I was pretty sure Archer would say they had laws against that sort of thing.
Dragomir didn’t budge. “So here we are.”
Like he’d been surprised by a rude guest at high tea.
I didn’t move, and not just because my knees locked. Giselle had her crossbow out, and all the others were armed with medieval-looking weapons that looked absolutely perfect for killing a vampire and anyone who colluded with it. Where was Jamie? Would he come to protect me again, or would he avoid the team who wanted to kill him?
Archer kept his eyes on Dragomir. “Here we are.”
All that was missing was a tumbleweed blowing through and some whistling. I kept an eye on Giselle and the three guys, most of them still looking worse for wear after yesterday’s fight. Only Archer wasn’t obviously armed, although I figured he had something tricky up his sleeve.
“Okay, now.” I cleared my throat. I adjusted my grip on the backpack full of random weapons I didn’t know actually worked. Their arsenal looked far more impressive. “I don’t know what you’re doing here —”
“Using you as bait,” Giselle chimed in. “Good job being so efficient, genius. We figured it would take at least a day to catch you with the vampire.”
Archer didn’t blink as he eased farther into the clearing, maneuvering closer to Dragomir, as the rest of the team spread out. The vampire tensed and anger crackled in the air. A stake slid down from Archer’s sleeve. “How do you survive the light, blood-sucker?”
I studied them all with a strange sense of detachment. They might as well have been actors on a stage. I watched them and remained separate from their little drama. Something clicked over in my brain, like an optometrist flipping little lenses in front of my eyes, and I knew whatever I’d planned for myself had ended.
Dragomir displayed as much interest in them as the boulder next to the cabin. “We evolve to overcome our weaknesses.”
Ryan made a rude noise and snapped something back at him as they continued circling, searching for advantage and weakness, and my attention drifted to the trees. Maybe Jamie stood by and waited until I actively needed his help. He’d lingered in the shadows for long already. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.
I wouldn’t get the future I wanted with Jamie. I wouldn’t get even the third- or fourth-rate happiness I’d kept in the back of my mind in case Jamie ended up dead and gone. Even if I could find a cure for whatever made people werewolves... Jamie wasn’t the same, either. He wasn’t the 16-year-old kid who’d teased me and gone monster hunting with me. We’d never be the same again.
My heart broke and the breath caught in my throat. Even if we started over that day, that moment... we were both too different. We’d led separate lives. Lived through separate traumas. Those ten years had not been kind to either of us.
I stared at nothing and hardly acknowledged the rising argument and standoff between the vampire and the ones who hunted him.
Until, of course, Dragomir moved with that serpentine fluidity and wrapped his hand around my throat. He hauled me up and slammed me back into a tree trunk, holding me two feet off the ground as I clawed at his wrist and looked down at him. I coughed. “What the fuck?”
The vampire snarled as he faced the monster hunters and shoved me against the tree until my ears rang and my teeth rattled in my skull. His nails dug into my skin and ignited flares of pain all down my throat. I kicked at him but he kept choking me, and adrenaline surged once more as the panic of staring death in the face took over and shorted out the rest of my mental faculties.
His mental voice came through loud and clear. Let us see how they value you, little mouse. Do you think they will save you, or let you die?
I stared at him and watched all the color drain out of the world. So much for my theory on the vampire needing me too much to kill me.