MY HEAD POUNDED AND my arms ached. I found my feet and stood, gagging on something in my mouth. Thankfully I didn’t have anything in my stomach; otherwise, I would have hurled all down the front of me from the hellish headache throbbing behind my closed eyes, from yet another tranquilizer. Standing relieved the pressure in my arms, but they were still stretched over my head.

I slowly blinked my eyes open and stared into a stoic face in front of me. His red eyes studied me, and he sighed, crinkling his nose.

“Now that you’re not in the shadows, you look exactly like your mother.”

“What the hell are you doing?” I mumbled through the mouth gag, trying to clear the fog in my head. Then the face slammed home. This was the bastard in the tattoo chair. This was my father.

He tilted his head as if I were a bug and not his flesh and blood. “And your mother’s duplicity nearly cost me everything.”

I snorted at him because I couldn’t laugh in his face with my mouth gagged. Beyond him, a large, nearly empty room stood. The walls and floors were all polished rock of some sort. I didn’t know whether it was marble or granite, but it had a sheen that screamed opulence.

“Today, your soul will finally be bound to Amara’s like it should have been hundreds of years ago when Cassius was finished with you.”

I drew my eyebrows together and cocked my head.

“Then we will take the rest of the lives you have left so your powers can transfer to Amara, and she can rule the world.”

I struggled to free myself, and he chuckled, looking up at the hook above me.

“You won’t escape. This place is warded to keep you from accessing your fire.” He smiled, but the sight of it chilled me. “And if you are thinking the agency you worked for will help you, think again. How do you think you got here?” He waved at the room. “They handed you over, as if it would save them in the end. Fools.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I wouldn’t put it past Robby’s father. He wanted me dead and out of his son’s life. He made that crystal clear.

Robby wasn’t here, so hopefully he was still locked up at the agency. I knew he’d never forgive his father for selling me out, but it was better than being turned or killed by these ancients.

“I’ll be back. Amara should be here presently.” He tapped my nose and exited through the side door, leaving me to mull over an end that I was sure would be painful.

Footsteps echoed and then the tall, alabaster-looking woman with jet-black hair who we had seen in the park stepped into the room—in a white suit, of all things. Talk about a fashion faux pas. When you couldn’t clearly tell where the clothing ended and the skin began, there was a problem.

But that wasn’t what made my heart stutter.

Every fiber inside me screamed when Amara dragged Robby into the room by hands bound in front of him with the same charmed cuffs MDA used. At least it wasn’t silver, but it was enough to keep him from shifting. His eyes blazed with the same level of anger that burned through my blood.

His father sold him to the enemy, too.

When his gaze landed on me, his eyes widened, as if he hadn’t realized I was here with him. But that surprise quickly transitioned to a feral growl.

She clucked her tongue at him and waved her finger back and forth. “I understand you were the one who murdered my child.” She waved toward me. “An eye for an eye. Your child will die when she does.”

Wait. What?

Robby’s gaze slashed to mine and then dropped to my abdomen. His cheeks paled. “What are you talking about?” he snapped.

“You cannot smell the change in your mate?” She gave him a sad look. “She carries your wolfling.” She grabbed a handful of his hair and tilted his head back. “As soon as she is dead and her soul is bound with mine, I will turn you into one of my mindless soldiers.”

I was still stuck on the fact I was pregnant, but those words struck a coldness in me that had my flame snaking through my form, trying to find a way out of the charms snuffing my fire.

Captivity didn’t sit well with either of us, especially since the MDA had handed us both over to the enemy. If she turned him, he still had the anti-compel tattoo on his thigh, so she couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to, even in a master-submissive situation. Even so, Robby would be more likely to step out into the sun of his own volition to end himself after he enacted his revenge on the MDA.

Our current situation was a billion times worse than it had been with Cassius. If Amara bound my soul to hers, she would inherit all the powers I held, and with them, she could make the human world tremble—or worse, burn.

I was bound with the same MDA cuffs that were around Robby’s wrists. I guess Amara hadn’t been apprised that these things didn’t hold me when I had access to my power, but she knew enough to have charmed the room so I couldn’t burn my way out of this. And she had to have some inkling that I had enough magic of my own to break the charms. Thus, the gag. She didn’t want me casting spells or saying the key phrase my mother gave me in the land between life and death.

God, please let Robby know the right pronunciation. Let him remember what had released him from Cassius’s hold and what burned through the charms at his house. He wasn’t gagged. He had the power to undo the hold on me this time, and then I could fry these motherfuckers.

And once we did that, we had an even more pressing settle to score. The MDA needed to be taken down for their duplicity.

My father came out of the side room, pushing a medical table with scalpels and bone saws. He smiled at me but there was no warmth in it.

I struggled against the bonds holding me, trying to say the words. But all that came out was muffled and not articulate enough to break the magic keeping my fire in check.

A crease appeared between Robby’s eyes, as if he were trying to understand me. Then, just as my father stepped in front of me, his forehead smoothed out.

My father tore my shirt and then picked up the scalpel. “You’ll have to excuse me while I deliver your heart to Amara.”

“Frange vincula,” Robby said, and the air crackled with the counter magic those words released.

The blade pierced through my skin, and I tilted my head back with a scream. I ignited like I had when I annihilated that vampire in the woods. White fire shot from every cell, sending my fire out like a tidal wave to annihilate every last vampire in the vicinity, and protect my mate.

When the smoke faded, Robby was on the ground, covering his head. The cuffs still bound his wrists and his wolf. Amara stood near him, except she was charred. Well, everything but her angry red eyes that looked at me with such hatred that I swallowed hard.

My father was gone. Just part of the many who had been in the vicinity torched by my fire. His ashes mingled with the rest like forgotten memories.

She moved her shoulders as if struggling out of a straitjacket. Blackened skin cracked and drifted off her body, shedding and leaving reddened skin exposed. Her gaze darted around the empty room and then she tilted her head back and screamed a wordless bellow of anger.

I detected loss in that scream, too.

The rest of the charred skin burst off her in an explosion.

Robby looked up at her in shock and then glanced at me with wide eyes. The vampire should not have withstood my fire. The rest of them didn’t.

Her scream faded, and her gaze landed on Robby. Fury contorted her face, and she reached for him.

I tapped my magic and willed a blade into his hand. The moment the cool handle appeared in his palm, he gripped it and plunged it into her stomach.

But it did nothing to stop her from grasping either side of his head. “An eye for an eye!” she screamed and torqued his head.

The sickening snap of bone filled the room. He crumpled to the ground, with his head looking backward.

Everything inside me shattered, and I willed a sword into my hand. Flames danced across the blade as I charged. The need to kill overrode all my senses. Robby’s mark on my shoulder cried out, demanding vengeance.

I didn’t even see her pull the blade from her abdomen. As I swung, a sharp pain filled my chest, but that didn’t stop me from completing my swing like a grand slam batter. My wrath was too big to let me die before I had my revenge.

The blade sliced neatly through her throat, forever preserving her smug smile of victory. A thin red line separated her head from her body right across the middle of her neck. Rage still ruled my blood, and with a warrior’s cry, I sent the hilt of the sword into the middle of her face, satisfied with the crunch of bones. Her head flew across the room at high velocity; when it hit the charred wall, it burst into ash.

I spun and slammed my elbow into the center of her headless chest as the last of my bellow faded. Her body followed the path of her head, but instead of turning to ash, it burst into flames.

I took a struggling breath and staggered, dropping the sword on the ground. It clattered on the hard floor. My gaze dropped to my chest, where the hilt of the knife I had conjured for Robby sat embedded in my heart. My gaze moved beyond my mortal wound to Robby’s dead body on the floor.

I fell to my knees, feeling every ounce of despair now that my adrenaline had faded away. Crawling, I made my way to him, rolled him so he was facing upward and straightened his head, grinding my teeth at the sound of scraping bone. I wailed my sorrow at his loss. Tears blurred my vision, dropping onto him.

My ugly cry echoed off the soot surrounding us because I didn’t know whether my tears would be enough to save him this time. My tears surely weren’t enough to save our baby either.

I prayed that I could walk in death with both him and our child instead of being resurrected to live out my days, bitter and alone.

I gripped the knife and yanked it from my chest. The metal clanged on the marble floor as I fell forward, collapsing on top of Robby. Tears pooled on his cool skin below me.

I took one breath, and then a second, but the third never came.

Blackness descended.