“Cassie!” Dante’s roar. The alarm had drawn him to their little party.

She didn’t look back at Dante. She couldn’t take her eyes off Vaughn. One taste of her blood, and he’d be dead.

She wasn’t ready to give up on him yet.

When he came at her, she yanked up her left hand—the hand that had been in the front pocket of her lab coat. Her fingers were curled around a syringe—one full of enough tranqs to knock the guy out for a week.

She drove that syringe into his heart.

But he didn’t stop. His hands locked around her shoulders and he yanked her up against him.

No, no. He should have been on the floor. He should have . . .

“Bad mistake, vampire.” Dante’s voice was lethal and cold, so at odds with the sudden heat in the room.

Vaughn’s mouth was inches from Cassie’s throat.

But . . . he wasn’t biting her.

Cassie lifted her lashes. She stared into Vaughn’s eyes. Bloodlust stared back at her.

But he wasn’t biting her.

In the next instant, he couldn’t bite her. Dante had yanked her away from the vampire then turned, putting his body between her and Vaughn. Dante’s hand was suddenly lit by fire as he reached for the primal.

Vaughn fell to the floor before Dante could touch him. “He dies,” Dante said. “He dies.”

Cassie couldn’t let that happen. “No! Don’t touch him!” She pulled Dante back. “He’s not a threat now.”

“He wanted to bite you.” Dante stared at her as if she were crazy.

Only a little.

“He could have killed you!” Dante charged.

“You know that’s not true.” Her words were quiet. “My blood would have killed him in an instant.”

Dante’s eyes blazed at her. “And what about the kid?” He jabbed a finger toward the cowering Jamie. “Do you want him to become like his brother? Like this bastard here?”

She flinched. “You know I don’t! I’m trying to help—”

“Some beings are too dangerous to help! Some only need to be put down.”

She’d heard those same words before. They’d come from her father. “My father said the same thing about you once.”

Dante’s hands fell to his sides. “He was right.”

She shook her head.

“Why is he here?” Dante’s gaze was on Vaughn’s prone form.

“I need a test subject if I’m going to find a cure.” She hated those cold words, but they were true. “I have to see if I can reverse the primal state with the vampires, and Vaughn—Vaughn’s father begged me to try and help him.”

“Helping . . . him?” Jamie’s voice was shaky as he rose to his feet. “You didn’t help my brother.”

“He took my blood,” she whispered. “There wasn’t a chance for me to help—”

“You let my brother die, when there could be some kind of—of cure?” Jamie’s face darkened. “There’s a cure?”

They needed to get out of that room. She wanted to make sure Jamie was safe, and if she was wrong about the drug’s effects on Vaughn, she didn’t want the boy getting attacked again.

She reached for Jamie’s hand.

He jerked away from her. “I saw him die”—his voice thickened with pain and fury—“when there was a cure?”

Dante grabbed the boy and hauled him from the room.

“Wait, jerk! Let me go! You need to let—”

Dante dropped Jamie in the hallway.

Cassie secured the door shut once more. How had it even opened? How had Jamie gotten in there?

“There’s no cure yet,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “I’m working on it, hoping—”

“Tim didn’t have to die!”

He had. The instant he took her blood his fate had been sealed. “There’s something different about me,” she confessed to Jamie. “Vampires—all vampires—have a terrible reaction to my blood.”

Jamie had stomped toward the right wall. “Reaction?”

“It kills them,” Dante said bluntly. “Your brother was dead the instant he put his mouth on her.”

The bright color leached from Jamie’s face.

“What were you doing in there?” Cassie asked, shaking her head. “How did you get in there?”

Jamie opened his fist. She saw Charles’s access card in his hand. One swipe of that card, and Jamie would have been able to get inside any room in the place.