“Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Black,” Nicholas said politely. “We’re friends of Kieran’s.”

She smiled, her hands fluttering at her throat. I tried not to stare at the blue veins pulsing there. “Oh, are you from the school as well?”

“Um, no.”

She peered over his shoulder and saw me. “You must be Solange,” she said softly. “You’re just as pretty as Kieran said.” Her eyes were moist, as if she might start weeping. I shifted nervously from foot to foot and tried to smile without showing even a hint of teeth.

“Mom, who’s at—” Kieran cut himself off as he came around the corner and saw us on the porch. “Solange.” I pursed my lips. I couldn’t even say hi or ask how he was. There was a bandage around his neck and shadows under his eyes. I could see the mark on the back of his hand from where the IV drip had been attached. “Mom, I got this,” he said gently. “Why don’t you go back inside.”

She fussed shyly. “You should invite your friends in.”

“I will.”

She smiled at me again and went to the kitchen, where a kettle was soon whistling.

“We should stay out here,” Kieran said when he was sure she was out of earshot. “She doesn’t know you’re a vampire.”

“How is that even possible?” I asked.

“She was never part of the Helios-Ra, even when Dad was alive. And now she rarely leaves the house.” He shrugged and then winced when the movement pulled at his wound. “Hunter’s the only one from the League she’ll even talk to, and I asked her not to say anything.”

Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “Dude, what happened to you?”

“Vampire,” he answered, not looking away from me. “They kept me at the school infirmary for the day but I’m okay now. Lucy brought me in.”

Nicholas stilled. “Lucy found you?”

Kieran nodded, not catching the sinister edge to Nicholas’s too-calm and too-polite voice. “Yeah, in the woods.”

“Alone?” Nicholas prodded. “She was alone and she found you during a vampire attack?”

Kieran glanced at him when the grinding of Nicholas’s teeth alerted him. He tried an easy smile. “Afterward,” he assured Nicholas. “When it was all perfectly safe.”

He was lying to protect me.

Again.

Because I hadn’t been perfectly safe.

Not even close.

“It’s like she does it on purpose.” Nicholas reached for his cell phone, muttering under his breath as he dialed Lucy’s number. He stalked to the maple tree and hauled himself up onto the lowest branch so we could all have a little privacy.

Kieran leaned in the doorway as if he was still too weak to hold himself up. Guilt tore through me like fire in a dry field.

“I’m sorry.” I stuck my hands in my pockets because I didn’t know what else to do with them. “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Yes. Do you need to sit down?”

“I’m fine.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “What happened, Solange?”

“I don’t know,” I said miserably. I couldn’t stop seeing the way he’d slumped against the tree, his blood on my clothes, the taste of it in my mouth. “I didn’t mean to. I just … it’s animal.” I didn’t know how else to describe it. I didn’t mention the voice whispering to me. He’d really think I was crazy then. “I thought I was stronger. I’m sorry,” I said again. He’d saved me from the rogue Helios-Ra unit who’d tried to abduct me, and he’d been the one to give me his own blood so I could survive the bloodchange. I’d be dead right now if it weren’t for him. Maybe that’s why he was so hard to resist. His blood had brought me back from death.

“Does anyone else know?” he asked.

“I made it back to the camp and went straight to sleep.” I didn’t tell him about Constantine. Why make things worse? My eyes burned. “It’s all such a mess.”

Kieran reached out to touch my hair, brushing it off my cheek. I could smell the warmth of his skin, the blood just under his wrist. “It’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that.” I turned my head away.

He didn’t say anything. He knew I was right.

“We’re going on lockdown soon at the camp,” I added. “No Internet, no cell phone reception, no humans past the guards.” Well, no humans who weren’t bloodslaves, anyway. I didn’t need to explain that; he already knew. I could tell by the clenching of his jaw. “So I probably won’t see you for a while.”

He stepped up close to me, tipping my chin up with his hand. He lowered his head until his mouth brushed mine, softly, tenderly. I tasted his lips, trying to memorize his smell of mint and cedar. I kissed him until we forgot where we were, forgot that he was injured, that I was sorry, that anyone could walk by and see us there. He kissed me back until my veins burned under my skin. I wanted more. He wanted more. His lips brushed my ear and all I could hear was his breath, like the ocean. It made me dizzy, hungry, wild. I would have swallowed him whole if I could have.

When my arms slid around his waist, my fingers brushed the unmistakable shape of a wooden stake tucked into his belt at his lower back.

You can’t protect him. And you can’t trust him.