Page 2 of Marked By Him

And no matter what, never,everscream.

My mother grabbed my arm, stopping me from going inside the building first. “Check the back. See if anyone got left behind.”

I glanced over at my father.

He gave me a small smile. “Do as your mother says.”

My parents never tried to outrule one another. What Mom said was law and what Dad said was law. They always had each other’s backs.

Weallhad each other’s backs, meaning we didn’t separate. We were a team.

Something was off. I felt it.

I nodded in agreement, even though my mind screamed in protest.

My eyes darted down the road, around every corner, to make sure it was clear before I left them. My palms were sweaty. My senses were sharp.

I pulled my long hair into a ponytail and made sure my tennis shoes were tied tightly in case we needed to run.

My heart pumped fast as I watched my parents disappear inside.

I took a deep breath.

Gravel crunched under my feet as I took a step forward.

Then another.

Apprehension churned in the pit of my stomach.I don’t want to leave them.There was no hydropower here anymore, leaving all the buildings dark inside. The only light came through the broken windows, and those were only in the outer rooms. The deeper you went, the darker it got. Even if there was anything left inside that building, there was no way for my parents to find it. It was a fruitless mission.

I knew it.

Surely, they knew it, too.

We’d seen camps that had been abandoned before. We’d abandoned our own camps before. I was twenty-six years old and had lived in seven different camps. Things happened. People left. This wasn’t new.

But it wasdifferent.

I turned the corner. The road faded into patches of Cassie White on the side of the building. The red-tipped petals looked like trails of blood across a stark-white canvas.Another omen.Tall grass brushed against my bare legs, tickling the skin as I kept walking. A gust of wind blew through the grove of trees behind the large concrete building.The fields were empty. The silence was absolute.

No one else was here.

The sound of a low growl immediately iced my spine, proving me wrong.

No one human, anyway.

I knew that sound. I’d been bred to recognize it my whole life.

I ran back to the corner of the building to find my worst nightmare standing in the middle of the gravel road. He was tall and muscular with amber eyes and auburn hair, typical of the Letos vampire clan.A daywalker.

Their territory was a sea away from where we were. Why was he so far from home?

He looked up at the sky as he wiped the front of his hand across his blood-soaked lips. Like he was thanking a higher power for his latest meal.

It would have been reverent except, there were no higher powers. The vampires were at the top of the food chain.

Panic surrounded me, cloaking me in darkness. Nothingness.

No.

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