Maverick stood in front of the doors, his hands up next to his head as if in surrender. There was fur on his arms and cheeks, the button on his jeans strained against the swell of his growing body, and his eyes were glowing so brightly that I knew he was only a heartbeat away from shifting.
“Step back, or she dies,” Carter said in a low voice,
I didn’t recognize it.
He had always been fun. Polite. Decent, at the very least.
Whatever vampirism had done to him, the version of him I’d known was gone.
“I’m sorry,”I whispered mentally to Maverick.“What should I do?”
“Just trust me.”
That shouldn’t have settled my mind, but somehow, it did.
Maverick didn’t step back, but he lifted his hands a little higher, emphasizing the lack of weapon in them.
As if he needed a weapon to be dangerous.
“You have something I want,” Maverick said. “I have something you want, too. Let’s make a trade.”
Carter went still behind me, clearly caught off guard.
He was listening, even if he didn’t say as much.
“You need me to tell you how to keep a turned vampire from losing their mind. I need you to let her go and tell me who was behind this.”
Carter took a sharp breath in.
“They turned your sister too, right?” Maverick studied Carter. “That’s how they said they would save her, and it worked at first. That’s why you killed Arthur, and Celeste, and even poisoned Bloom. But it backfired. She’s getting sick again, and it’s worse now.”
“There’s a way to stop it?”Carter’s voice was desperate.
“There is.” Maverick made it sound much more certain than it was—not that I blamed him for exaggerating.
He was trying to keep me alive, which I appreciatedverymuch.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Carter asked.
“You know Bloom. She might have been able to hide what she was, but can’t lie worth a damn. Ask her,” Maverick said.
He knew that wasn’t true.
I could keep secrets just fine, and I could stretch the truth like nobody’s business. I just didn’t like to.
Carter manhandled me, forcibly spinning around. Maverick’s chest rumbled light, a clear warning. “Is he lying?”
“He’s not. There’s a way to stabilize a turned vampire. The werewolves are really careful with the secret, though,” I said.
And there wasn’t a chance in hell that Maverick would let anyone save Carter, even if by some miracle, someone offered. When he poisoned me, he sealed his fate.
Carter stared at me for a long moment before he finally shook his head. “If I let you go, he has no reason not to just kill me.”
“He does, actually. He needs to know who turned you, and who sent you.”
“You could be lying,” Carter said.
“I could. But what other option do you have here? There are probably dozens of werewolves waiting outside this building right now. He’s the Alpha of Alphas, and I’m his mate. He’s not just going to let you walk away, even if you kill me.
