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“Is that—is that something you want? To see each other tomorrow?”

He nodded again, but his expression crumpled.

It took everything I had not to sweep him back into my arms and hold him until it passed. But he’d told me what he needed—some physical space, until he regained control over himself—and my desires didn’t trump his needs.

“Tomorrow then,” I told him. “And Quinn, it was the best date I’ve ever had. Because I was with you.”

Tears spilled over onto his cheeks and he looked away sharply again, trying not to let me witness it. “Good night, Derek. And thanks,” he said, his voice thick. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I nodded, forcing myself to turn around and climb the stairs, even though every selfish instinct was telling me to go back to him.

He needed space now. And Quinn was my fated mate, my destined person. And there was nothing—almost nothing—that I wouldn’t give him.

CHAPTER TWO || QUINN

Iwent to bed pretty much immediately. That is, if you could call the uncomfortable cot in the corner of the cavernous space a “bed.”

Though, to the vampire king’s credit, he’d tried to get his people to bring down a mattress, so I’d at least be comfortable. He’d tried to make it clear that I wasn’t a prisoner here. Nathaniel Bailey wasn’t such a bad guy. In fact, from what I’d gathered, he seemed like a pretty decent one. Especially for a vampire king.

I had been the one to insist that a simple cot, the fold-up kind used for camping, was what I wanted instead. Setting up a mattress on the floor—or even with a bed frame, which they’d suggested—complete with blankets and pillows, made it seem like I was staying for a while. That I was making their dungeon into my home.

And that wasn’t true at all. This wasn’t where I belonged.

I just… wasn’t ready to leave yet.

I barely even noticed the cages dotted around the massive room anymore, each of them lined with silver. They were for holding very bad vampires, the impulsive ones, the killers with no remorse. Like how I’d been before I met Derek. Silver, our biggest weakness, saps a vampire’s strength and speed, making us approximately as strong and fast as regular humans.

Apart from the cages, the dungeon otherwise mostly looked like a regular basement. Except that there were also several racks of wickedly sharp and dangerous-looking weapons. There was a single metal chair at the far end of the room that looked like it might have been lined with silver as well, but I’d never asked about it. I didn’t really want to think about what all that was used for and why. The vampires in Seattle were nicer than average, but they weren’t pushovers either. You didn’t hurt innocent people in the city and get away with it. It was Nathaniel Bailey’s biggest rule.

Still halfway to tears, with shaking hands, I unfolded the cot and lay down in it, trying to keep my thoughts at bay by focusing on the small details around me. But of course that didn’t work. Derek’s face was etched into my mind’s eye. He’d looked wrecked about having to leave me tonight.

But I had been about to bite him!

Or, my body had wanted to.

I’d felt an urge to taste him—and to let him taste me.

Given that I’d been a vampire for less than a year and had no idea what I was doing or how to feed safely, and that I’d already gone way too far plenty of times before, that was a dangerous proposition.

Because Sadie—and Thierry and everyone else, too—had already explained to me exactly what would happen if Derek and I exchanged blood. Because he was my fated mate and I was his, a powerful and permanent psychic bond would form—a blood bond—allowing us to read each other’s minds for as long as we both lived. We’d have no secrets anymore.

And then he’d see firsthand exactly what I had done.

I wasn’t ready for that. It was one thing—still awful—for him to know what kind of terrible sins I’d committed, in theory. Seeing my memories and reliving all of that with me was another thing entirely. Derek, though I loved him, scared the shit out of me.

What if he saw me—really saw me—and couldn’t handle it?

Hell, I could barely handle it. Or, no, actually, I couldn’t.

Sadie had tried to get me to march in the vampire pride parade—figuratively, since vampires were still a secret from the general populace—but I wasn’t on board and she’d needed to give up, eventually.

The truth was, I would’ve traded everything I had to have met Derek when I was still human.

I would’ve done anything to still be human. I hadn’t been an exceptional mortal or anything—an overnight cashier at a little hole-in-the-wall gas station at the far edge of Rookwood. It hadn’t exactly been glamorous, but I’d had an apartment and friends. Or, a single friend, actually—Adam. But still. It hadn’t been much of a life, but it had been mine.

And I’d been proud of making it on my own, even if I hadn’t gone far from my dad at all. My mom had been gone for years. She’d passed in my freshman year of high school after battling cancer valiantly. My dad had never remarried.

And then, when I’d been walking home from work in the early morning hours—because Rookwood was tiny enough of a town to get from one side to the other in less than a half hour—I’d met him.