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I closed the files and ran a program scrubbing any indication I’d accessed them.
It was after midnight. I grabbed a cold burger from the fridge and ate one-handed while I dug out a new phone, inserted a SIM card, and texted Gabriel, careful to attach my personal code.
Dad’s right. We have a mole. Trust no one.
Gabriel replied almost immediately.
Got it. How are things on your end?
I rubbed my eyes. I’d give anything to talk this out with my oldest brother, but until we knew who the mole was, I was afraid to tell even him too much.
Not because I didn’t trust him. He’d go to the wall for me, and vice versa.
But someone close to us was a traitor. Even communicating by text was risky. I’d have to wait until we could hash this out in person.
My return message was short and bland.
I have the situation in hand. Will be in touch.
I turned off the phone and stared into the darkness. Picturing Zaq in the photo that had been sent to Father with the message, “One down.”
Zaq’s wrists had been cuffed with silver and attached to a concrete block wall. He’d stared proudly into the camera, his T-shirt ripped, his lower face covered by a dark scruff.
The scruff couldn’t hide the feverish sheen to his eyes—or the puncture wounds on his bruised throat. A vampire had drunk from my brother without permission. The bastards hadn’t just kidnapped him, they’d made him into a fucking blood slave.
Thinking about it made me a little crazy. My fangs extended. My vampire-half wanted to rip a hole in the very fabric of the universe, if that’s what it took to get Zaq away from those monsters.
He and Gabriel weren’t just my brothers, they were my best friends. We’d been a trio from the day I’d first been able to toddle after them.
The pureblood vampire spawn had never understood what it was like for me and my brothers, because they were only children. Pick on one Kral, and you picked on all of us—and together, we could make those faster, stronger young vampires eat dirt.
As the youngest and smallest brother—at least, until my late teens when I’d shot up to my full height—I’d taken more than my share of abuse, and my pretty-boy looks hadn’t helped. High cheekbones and long lashes aren’t an asset when you’re a twelve-year-old boy.
But my big brothers had always had my back.
Which is why I’d do anything I had to do to save Zaq. Anything at all.
3
ZOE
“There.” Lainey Q, stylist to the stars, finished my makeup and spun my stool so I faced my vanity mirror. She picked up a brush and drew it through my straight, shoulder-length black hair.
“And I think some choppy edges…” She brandished a razor blade.
“No.” I held up a hand. “I like it how it is.”
“No?” The stylist’s dark brows climbed into her carefully mussed silver bob. Lainey Q was an Instagram influencer with over five million fashionistas following her every pronouncement. You didn’t tell herno.
Even if my mother was paying her double her usual fee to make me over for the Crimson Ball.
I met her eyes in the mirror. “No.”
“But it’stheCrimson Ball, and you’retheTremblay Princess.”
That’s how Lainey talked—in captions. I could almost see the hashtags:#tremblayprincess #crimsonball #styleinfluencer
“Everybody will be waiting to see what style you’re rocking this year. I won’t have them saying you look like last year’s—” she crinkled her nose—“leftovers.”
