But Mrs. Finch is too off-topic for me and Isaac is getting more and more anxious by the second. Finally, he stands up and pulls me against him. As guilty as I feel being here, in his arms, I can’t bring myself to walk away because it’s the only place I want to be. With him is the only place where I feel safe.

“What does it mean that Adria’s been Marked, anyway?” Hannah says in her soft voice, and like usual it’s surprising whenever she says anything at all.

Isaac is the one who answers: “It means that Adria has been claimed by one Praverian and normally another Praverian won’t feed from her.” He hesitates and then adds, “But it’s obvious this Malachi fed from her tonight or she wouldn’t have lost four and a half hours of her memory and been so disoriented when we found her.” I can feel the angry heat coming off him, the way his body tensed up when he said Malachi’s name.

“Now answer my question, Nathan,” Isaac says in a deeper, sterner voice, “How-do-we-keep-her-safe?”

“Leave that to me,” Nathan says. “I’m going to try talking to her. Despite being dangerous, they’re not all that bad; at least not all of them anyway. From what I know, they get so lonely they’re not unwilling to compromise for friendship—I just hope she allows me to see her again.”

Hannah’s face falls. She may be quiet and sweet and seemingly innocent, but that girl has a definite jealous streak in her that I don’t doubt is as dangerous as the beast in her.

“Adria’s anemia and panic attacks…,” Harry says and I jerk my head around to look at him, wondering where he’s going with this. I stare pleadingly at him and he knows what my desperate expression reads. He knows that I’m begging him to keep my secret about the Blood Bond, about this being the sole reason why Genna has been feeding on me, because the Blood Bond is taking my mind, in turn, making me weak and vulnerable to her.

Harry’s eyes don’t leave mine for a long time and when he starts to speak again, he’s still looking right at me and only me. “Is her anemia enough to be considered a weakness?” he says and I quietly let out the breath I had been holding in.

Very slowly Harry turns his eyes away from mine and he looks to Nathan for the answer.

“Yeah…,” Nathan says, but even he seems unsure, and once again I catch him and Isaac glancing at one another as if they’re both hiding something behind wary, cautious faces. In fact, they’re looking at each other the same way Harry and I were looking at each other just seconds ago. “Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s the reason,” Nathan finishes.

I hate his lacking answer because all it does is worry me further. Does Isaac know about the Blood Bond, after all, and is afraid to tell me about it? Are we both playing the same game here?

I turn around to see Isaac. He looks at me with so much devotion, though tortured by worry. Maybe that’s it. It must be why he’s looking at me the way he is, as if his heart has been broken into a million pieces, not because of the Blood Bond, but because he knows that in time he’ll lose me to it.

I push myself up to kiss him softly, feeling the sand sink between my toes and then I say to him, “Isaac, I’m really tired.”

“Oh, come on chicka!” Zia says from the blanket. “Stay and hang out with us. We should celebrate! Not every day you find out more than one freak has some sort of obsession with you.” She sticks her tongue out at Isaac, but he doesn’t give in to her playful nature this time. Zia has always been more outspoken than any of us, but her comment just seemed off.

“Sorry, girl,” Zia says frowning, realizing that her words were out of place this time. “I’m just tryin’ to lighten the mood.”

I smile across at her forgivingly.

“Go on and take Adria inside,” Nathan says. “She’ll be alright around here with all of us, and trust me if I feel even a little bit paranoid I’ll yank you both out of the bed.”

He adds, grinning widely, “No matter what you’re doing.”

Daisy and Hannah giggle simultaneously.

I know I’m cutting an important conversation a little short, but I can’t help it. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. And it’s true, about being tired. I haven’t felt well at all since Malachi. But I don’t really want to go to bed to sleep. I want to be alone with Isaac, and now more than ever, I want to let him have me. I want him before it’s too late, before I’m too far gone to understand love anymore. I can’t let the repercussions of this curse force me into death without experiencing the most intimate part of love with Isaac, first.

I don’t care about this Praverian crap, or that it should have me bewildered beyond imagination. I don’t care that I should stay longer and find out everything that I can about them. Because none of that matters. I don’t have much time and I’m going to spend every bit of what time I have left with Isaac.

“We’ll talk about this more tomorrow,” Isaac says to Nathan and Nathan nods back at him.

The only one I look back at is Harry as Isaac and I walk away from the beach, Isaac’s arm wrapped around my waist.

“It was between Dr Pepper, milk and flavored water,” Isaac says coming into the walkout basement where I sit curled up in the corner of the couch. “I knew you’d want the water.” He places the plastic bottle in my outstretched hand.

“Thanks.” Without leaning my head up the rest of the way, I untwist the loose cap and take a small sip.

“I’m going to figure this out,” he says, looking down at me, but I don’t raise my eyes to see him.

The air is rife with silence.

He moves closer and crouches in front of me, combing my hair away from my forehead. “I guess I didn’t want to tell you just yet that there are things out there worse than us. I’m sorry.”

“For what, Isaac?” I say, turning only my eyes to see him. “Sorry for sparing me?” I look away again and my voice becomes softer. “No, you did the right thing. I wasn’t ready for anything else yet. I’m still trying to find my place in your world, y’know?”

Isaac sits on the floor directly below me. This way I can’t look away from him unless I move my whole body on the couch. “Your place in my world is with me,” he says, reaching up to touch my bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “You believe that, don’t you?”

“Of course,” I say and it’s true, I do believe it, but I can’t stop thinking about how long it will last, how long I have left.

I stare off toward the large sliding glass door that opens up onto the beach, watching the lights from the fishing boats move around in the darkness. I can still hear the ocean with the door closed and I try to let the peaceful sound of waves calm my mind.

Isaac pushes himself up and kisses me on the temple.

I didn’t come inside with him expecting this to happen, that I’d start feeling strange again, but I don’t want to tell Isaac about it. Honest to God, I just want to scream at the top of my lungs about how sick I am of being sick. I can’t take it anymore; fine one minute, fainting the next. Great one day, the next day sick as a dog. I snuck into my bag minutes ago and took one extra pill beyond the normal dosage of my anxiety medication, but I don’t think it’s working. Nothing on the market was really made to help with this sort of thing.

This has got to stop.

I feel Isaac’s arm close around my bent legs, pulling me to lie against him instead of the couch arm. I nuzzle my head under his arm and let my legs fall over his lap. I hear the blood pumping through his veins with my ear pressed against him. I shut my eyes and let the calming sound of it soothe me. Blood. Why didn’t I think of this before? Oh, probably because sitting around thinking about drinking someone’s blood isn’t necessarily the normal thing to do. But maybe that’s it. It’s been seven months since Viktor bonded me to him and I know I’m going to need to drink male werewolf blood sometime. Maybe that’s what this is all about. If I had blood, maybe it would make me better, make all of this craziness stop and let me live a normal, faint-free, sick-free, hallucination-free life for a little while longer. Maybe it would make me strong enough to keep Genna off my back. And Aramei—she lived a normal life for fifty years before the Blood Bond started taking her mind. This has to be the answer!

But how would I pull something like that off?

Upon realizing this little kink in my revelation, the enthusiasm drains from my pores. And when I think more about Isaac possibly already knowing about the Blood Bond, I’m confused because if he does know, wouldn’t he want to let me drink from him as Aramei drinks from Trajan? Why hasn’t he offered his blood to me?

I can’t take this uncertainty anymore!

And I feel incredibly hot. My skin is burning….

I lift away from Isaac and toss the thin cotton blanket I had been using to cover my feet onto the floor.

“Baby, you’re burning up.” Isaac cups my forehead in his palm and then touches it to the inner side of his wrist.

I feel sweat prickling in my hairline.

I breathe in deeply and get up from the couch, moving back toward my bag. I sit on the floor and dig through my not-so-folded clothes inside until I find the shorts I usually sleep in. I’ve never stripped completely nak*d in front of Isaac before and I’m still a little shy around him when it comes to changing my clothes, so I do like I normally do and turn my back to him. I practically rip off my jeans and slip the comfortable cotton shorts on over my panties and feel some instant relief from the odd heat wave attacking my body. But it’s not enough and the little beads of sweat on my chest are causing my bra to feel itchy against my skin. I reach behind my back, unfasten the bra and pull it off through one sleeve of my top, tossing it on top of my bag with my jeans.

Isaac has been watching me the whole time from the couch, holding my bottle of strawberry-flavored water in his hand as he sits leaning forward with his forearms propped on his thighs. His eyes are soft with concern; the black of his messy hair pushed back away from his face as if he had just run his fingers through it. He hasn’t shaved in a few days and the facial hair sprouting up all around his chin and his jawline is so sexy to me that I’m starting to wish he wouldn’t shave at all.

“Do you want to take a bath?” he says. “I’ll go run some water for you now.”

“No,” I say looking toward the sliding glass door. I think about the cool nighttime air and quietly yearn for it. I got drunk once, last year when I went to a party with Alex. I didn’t want to drink—living with an alcoholic had the opposite effect on me than what alcohol did to some of my friends, but I tried it anyway. And I regretted it. All night all I wanted to do was puke my guts out and lay out in the cold air. It was the middle of winter and I remember my body being so hot that the only place I felt comfortable was outside on the porch in a pair of shorts and a tank top. It was thirty-five degrees.

What I wouldn’t give for something as simple as being drunk, as opposed to the reason I so desperately want to feel the coolness of the air.