The limo followed the drive to a covered portico at the side of the house, with more white columns and molding. One of Ronan’s vampires hopped out first, opened the door. Connor and I climbed out, and then Ronan negotiated Carlie out of the vehicle and toward the house.

Quiet as ghosts, we followed him inside.

The house was clad in dark wood—floors, ceiling, paneling—and the front room was home to an enormous stairway in the same wood. Light filtered through an opaque ivory dome at the top of the first landing, and dark red velvet swagged in generous loops above the windows.

A vampire came down the stairs. She was slender, with pale skin and long raven dark hair that swirled around her shoulder in a loose braid. She wore a fitted red dress and black heels. She reached us, cast a quick glance at us before looking at Ronan. “I’ve prepared a room.”

Ronan nodded, carried Carlie upstairs. When he passed her, the woman looked back at us. “I’m Piper,” she said, and didn’t ask for our names. “Bathroom’s just there, if you want to clean up.”

I nodded, feeling physically jumpy and emotionally numb. I looked back at Connor, found his gaze on me, concern clear in his eyes. “I’ll be right back.”

He nodded, crossed his arms in a way that showed off his muscles. Legs braced, he looked like a man prepared for another battle. But since two vampires followed me down the hall, I didn’t think he’d be the one who’d need to fight.

I found the bathroom, closed the door, and shut my eyes for a moment in the darkness. The monster was quiet, exhausted, satiated by violence and blood.

When my heartbeat began to slow to a more normal rhythm, I turned on the light, then stared at myself in the mirror. I barely recognized what I saw. My cheeks were flushed, my lips swollen, my skin pale but for the already healing scratches of battle. My eyes were still silver, and there were twigs and leaves and probably worse in my hair.

I washed my hands and face, finger-combed my hair. And felt nearly normal when I opened the door again—if I didn’t think too much about the vampires waiting to throttle me outside it, and the human somewhere above us who might not survive the evening.

By the time I made it back to the central room, Ronan stood with Piper, quietly conversing. Connor stood exactly where I’d left him, arms still crossed. The alpha being alpha, I thought, and joined him.

His expression was still carefully blank, but anger shimmered in his eyes. He was a man riding very close to the edge of fury. I just wasn’t sure at whom he was going to direct it.

Ronan turned to us, moved closer, hands clasped behind his back. “Take me through it again,” he said.

So I did, step by step. From firepit to screaming, from the clan’s territory to the Stone farm, from the hell of battle to the agony of finding Carlie, alone and broken. And then I told him of the decision I’d made and what I’d done.

“What attacked the humans?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Connor said. “They’re clan members affected by some kind of magic, turned into wolflike creatures that attack on two legs. They aren’t similar to any wild animals or Sups we know about.”

“Why did they attack?” Ronan asked.

“We don’t know that, either,” Connor said. “The Stone farm is at the edge of the clan’s territory. Maybe they believed the humans were getting too close. Maybe the magic has affected them. Or maybe they’re just homicidal assholes.”

“Are they dead?”

“Not that we’re aware of,” Connor said. “We hurt them, but they survived. They ran away from the resort, deeper inland and into the woods.”

No one spoke for a long time.

Finally, Ronan broke the silence. “This will put pressure on the communities. Ours and theirs. Yours potentially. She was changed without her consent. She was changed within earshot of humans. And she was changed without my consent.”

“It wasn’t your territory,” I said. “It was the clan’s territory.”

“And as Cash will certainly point out, you didn’t have his consent, either.”

Heat began to rise again, to speed my heart and call the monster who’d already had its fun tonight. Who was getting harder and harder to push down. “I was not going to leave her on the ground, bleeding out.”

“It wasn’t your choice to make.”

“Wrong,” I said. “It was the only choice to make.”

“You’re a vampire. You had obligations.”

“To who? I don’t have any obligations to the clan, and even if I did, I kept the clan from killing a human tonight. I don’t owe you anything.”

“You are in my territory.” Ronan’s voice was low and dangerous. His eyes silvered, and his fangs descended, and magic rose in the air, peppery and hot. I braced myself against the coming blow—and prepared to meet it.

I liked and appreciated rules. I liked order. But even I knew that rules sometimes had to be bent or even broken. Exceptions had to be made, or else the rules would swallow their purpose, their intention.

“I’d have thought better of your parents,” he said, “that they hadn’t raised you to break the faith with other vampires.”

“How did I break the faith?”

“She is a friend of the clan, and you didn’t have their consent. Once again, you’re in my territory and didn’t have my consent. Maybe your parents’ wealth, their status, has poisoned you. Spoiled you. But you aren’t in Chicago, and things work differently in the real world.”

Now I was pissed on behalf of myself and my parents. “I was raised to do the right thing, and that’s what I did. Politics is second—will always be second—to saving lives.”

“She is one life. You’ve potentially put all of us in danger. Which is more important?”

I just stared at him. “You can’t be serious. You can’t tell me you’d have left her there, refused to help her, let her die.”

Ronan just looked back at me. “I don’t have the luxury of worrying about one human. I have a coven to consider.”

“Fine,” I said. “You can feel free to squander your immortality if you’d like—to not use the gifts you’ve been given. I don’t plan to.” And that included making sure she was safe from his single-mindedness. “Are you going to take care of Carlie, or do I need to find other arrangements?”

“I care for my vampires,” he said. “That’s precisely my point.” He stepped closer. “You will not endanger my people further. You will not touch another human.”

There was glamour in the words, magic in the push. And insult in both. Maybe he thought I’d changed her as a lark, as an opportunity to set up my own kingdom in northern Minnesota.

“I saved her,” I said again, and it took effort to say those three words, to swim through the glamour that demanded I concede. “And I’m not going to waste any more time arguing with you. We have bigger problems to deal with.”

“You will not endanger my people further,” he said again, a demand for obedience that was growing stronger, more insistent. But while it may have affected me, it didn’t affect the monster. It rose through my weakness, through the magical subjugation of my will, and stepped forward through me, and turned my eyes crimson.

“Get the fuck out of my way,” I said to him, my voice low and hoarse and as full of anger as his had been of command. The monster was eager to back up the words with action, and moved forward.

Connor put a hand on my arm, searched my face. And the monster looked back at him.

“Shit,” he said, and held my arm tight so I couldn’t lunge after him. “Drop the magic,” he told Ronan. “You’re not helping her or yourself.”

“She will—”

“Drop the fucking magic,” Connor ordered again. And this time, Ronan didn’t argue.

The glamour slipped away like the outgoing tide, and I breathed again, gained control again . . . and found Ronan staring at me, eyes wide, with absolute horror.

Even the monster was shamed.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ronan asked.

Connor turned on him so quickly, I barely saw him move. He had Ronan by the shirt, shoved him back against the wall. “There is nothing wrong with her. And if you ever use glamour on us again, you won’t live long enough to regret it.”

“I suggest,” Ronan said, his eyes like quicksilver, “that you take your hands off me.”

Connor’s chest was heaving, his eyes cold as ice, but he lifted his hands, stepped back. “How long until we know if she survives?”

“Not until the transformation is complete. Or it isn’t.”

“I’ll need to see her,” I said.

Ronan turned his eyes on me. “I believe you’ve done enough. If she desires to see you when she wakes, we’ll contact you. You’ll find the limo waiting outside.”

And with that, we’d been dismissed.

* * *

* * *

The limo took us back to the resort, but didn’t deign to drive into the compound. It pulled up to the entrance, came to a stop, and waited for our exit. We climbed out and had barely shut the door behind us before it accelerated, tires squealing in its rush to return to the coven.

“Let’s get inside,” Connor said quietly, scanning the road, and we walked toward our corner of the resort.

He didn’t touch me, didn’t hold my hand. And the distance knotted something in my chest.

“Get a shower,” he said when we reached the cabin. “It will help.”

I took his words to heart and dived into the hottest shower I could stand, letting the water pummel me until I’d knocked away some of the adrenaline and anger and grief. It did help, a little. But feeling like Connor was still on my side, that we were still united against the enemies we were facing, would have felt better.

I toweled my hair, came out in leggings and a T-shirt, and found him locking the doors as dawn threatened outside.