“You lied to me,” Cassie said, her voice hardening. “Dante, I trusted you.”

“You caged me!” he threw back at her.

“Because you’re dangerous. I was told that, so many times, but I was so sure you were good inside.” She sounded sad and lost—and that just pissed him off.

“I’ve never been a threat to you,” he told her. He’d saved her from that jerk at the ranch. Had the woman already forgotten that? He’d been the one to rescue her from the lieutenant colonel jackass.

“No, you’re just a threat to what matters to me.”

Her words stopped him. He frowned at her.

“I want to help Vaughn. I want to help Trace. I want to cure all the primals out there—I want to undo what my family has done! How many times do I have to tell you this?” Her voice was rising. “But you . . . you nearly destroyed everything I wanted. Everything that I’ve been working toward. You shoved me in a closet and walked away.”

“I wanted you safe!” Was that so wrong? He hadn’t wanted her caught in the crossfire.

“You wanted to fight a battle that didn’t exist. This bullshit about phoenixes going after their own . . . there’s no need for that. Whatever war you think is happening, is over.”

“I don’t think,” Dane told her, suddenly desperate for her to understand. “I know. I was there. You weren’t. I watched them all die as they turned on each other. I saw the fire, I saw the death. I saw it all.”

She stared back at him, only that glass separating them. He wanted to punch through it and touch her, but knew it wasn’t normal glass. It wouldn’t break.

The glass at Genesis had never broken. No matter how many times he’d punched it, and he’d punched until his knuckles were bloody and broken.

“When?” Cassie asked him as her hands fell to her sides. “When was this battle?”

“When I became immortal.” That’s what he was. There was a reason he’d been given that name at Genesis. “You ever wonder where the phoenixes came from? They came from my village. My blood. We were powerful—unstoppable. We burned and we rose and our enemies fell beneath us.”

Until her.

“What happened?”

“All creatures of myth start somewhere. We started in the mountains near Greece. Rumors and whispers about us spread. No one wanted to face an unstoppable army.”

She wasn’t speaking.

“Back then, the paranormals didn’t have to stay in the shadows. And there were more paranormals than you can imagine. So many different monsters, even monsters that hid under a beautiful woman’s smile.”

She crept closer to the glass. “You’re talking about a siren.”

He nodded.

“Someone . . . like me.”

Dante frowned at that. She was nothing like Zura had been.

“Zura fell in love with my brother, and he . . . Wren would do anything that she asked.” Dante’s voice was bitter. “When a siren sings her song and asks you to do her bidding, you cannot refuse.”

Cassie took another step toward the glass.

“She learned of our weaknesses. She knew that another phoenix could reach through the fire and kill at the time of the rising.” Memories were as bitter as ash on his tongue. “She didn’t want any threat to my brother. Zura wanted to live with him forever, and never be threatened again.”

“What did she do?”

“She called all of the phoenixes. She sang her song . . . and she commanded us to kill each other.” All but his brother. Wren hadn’t been there for the summoning.

He’d been far away, locked up by Zura for his protection. At first, Dante hadn’t thought that his brother even knew the wickedness that she had unleashed.

He’d thought wrong.

“How did you survive?”

“I drove spikes into my ears, so I wouldn’t hear her voice.”

Through the glass, he saw Cassie flinch.

“I tried to stop the others, tried to get them to do the same. We just had to turn off her voice, but they were beyond listening. Once the bloodlust hit them, there was no stopping the phoenixes they carried.”

He lifted his hand and touched the glass.

She did not lift her hand.

“The phoenix is always with us, but in those moments, when it felt the blood of its own kind . . . a new hunger hit me. Hit us all. And the fight for dominance began.” Dante swallowed the ash. “When the fire died away, I was left standing. I thought it was over, but then my brother came for me. Wren cut my head from my body.”