He nearly grinned. I could see his lips twitching. “Don’t push it, Lucky.”

I let go of his shirt and filled my hands with my last two eggs. “Ready?”

“Not quite.”

He whirled me around and bent me backward over his arm, kissing me until I felt too hot to be inside my skin. “I’ll see you after the Blood Moon.”

And then he was gone.

I had to remind myself that it was only for a few weeks and it was stupid to feel like crying.

Better to kick some ass.

I waited until I was sure Nicholas was well away before I shouted, “Vampire!”

When the first bounty hunter charged out of the bushes, a pepper egg hit him square on the forehead. He sneezed and cursed, blindly throwing a stake in my direction. I had to dive out of the way. I landed hard, spitting dandelions and mud out of my mouth.

The next one was smarter, not leaving the cover of leaves and darkness. The moonlight showed barely a glimpse of a tooth necklace and then nothing at all. I crawled through the brush, being poked by dried grass, tickled by dried Queen Anne’s lace, and pinched by burrs. “Just once I’d like to go out without someone flinging stakes about,” I muttered, crawling faster. “I’m going to get a complex at this rate.” I stopped behind a half-naked dogwood, using it for as much cover as I could.

“He went south!” I called out, knowing Nicholas had gone north.

“No,” Jody shouted. “He went west!”

Since she was wrong and actually helping to add to the confusion that would protect Nicholas, I didn’t throw my last pepper egg at her.

Even though I really wanted to.

“We’re Helios-Ra,” I shouted, not wanting them to start hunting us too.

There was a loud sigh from the bounty hunter still in the bushes. “Then go home, children.”

I might have bristled at that if I didn’t want to get out of here as much as they wanted us to. I peeked out slowly. “Don’t shoot!”

The bounty hunter I’d attacked was still rubbing his eyes. “Get out of here before you really piss me off.”

I ran. So did the others.

“This isn’t over,” Jody hissed as we burst out of the woods and back onto the campus lawns.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, shut up.”

Chapter 8

Solange

No matter how well I hid, Constantine always seemed to find me.

He was leaning against a huge boulder that had fallen off the mountain over a century ago. It was soft with moss and lichen. His eyes were violet, even in the darkness. “There you are, princess.”

“Hi.” He made me feel like I was ten years old and a thousand years old at the same time. It was confusing.

“What’s the matter here?” He pushed away from the rock and approached me slowly, languidly, as if the air were honey. “You’ve been crying.”

I didn’t say anything.

“That bad?” he pressed.

“My cousin nearly died. I had a fight with my best friend. I … almost attacked her.”

“And did she deserve it?”

“She used a stun gun on me.”

“She deserved it, then,” he said dismissively. He was close enough that I could see the flecks of gray in his irises and my own face reflected in his pupils. I looked pale and pathetic.

I lifted my chin. “And I broke up with my boyfriend.”

He looked almost satisfied. I must have imagined that. All he said in a husky voice was, “The human boy?”

For some reason I didn’t like hearing Kieran referred to as a boy. “He’s a hunter.”

“Worse and worse.”

I frowned. “Could you not gloat?”

His smile was quick and unapologetic. “Why mourn the inevitable? A vampire princess and a vampire hunter. The basic mathematics of it was flawed, pet.”

I thought of Lucy and Nicholas and Quinn and Hunter. “I don’t believe that.”

But he’s right, you know. You have to be careful. You have to be strong.

He shrugged one shoulder. “And yet you’ve broken up with him.”

“Not because he’s a hunter.” Because he was human. I didn’t want Constantine to be right. And I didn’t want to feel this way. I didn’t want to think or wonder or worry. I just wanted it to stop. But it wasn’t.

It was getting worse.

I couldn’t pretend otherwise, not anymore. Not to myself, anyway. I’d go on pretending to my family for as long as I possibly could. They spent enough time worrying about me as it was. And I certainly couldn’t admit to them that it gave me a kind of rush to use my pheromones, to know I was powerful all by myself, without the sword of the Drake name.

But the truth was, it made me feel like more than the overprotected, prophesied daughter born to a royal family. More than the girl other vampires only wanted for politics or greed or delusions of rare vampire babies. I liked that feeling. I liked knowing I could keep people away without lifting a hand, without a weapon of any kind, without even the help of my infamous brothers.

Only Constantine understood. I didn’t scare him. And lately, I scared everyone, even Lucy.

Because she’s human. They don’t understand you, not like I do.

“What is it?” Constantine asked.

I realized I was rubbing my ear. My hand dropped. “Nothing.” This voice seemed different, like it was not my own anymore.

“Are there other side effects if you drink from the vein?” I asked. “Ones that I don’t know about?”