Dressed in black and taller, wider, and far more fearsome than any of his guests, the three males entered the great room, bringing with them the winter chill and a swimming pool’s worth of testosterone. Every set of human eyes widened, every pair of human feet drew back. His fingers still sliding over the keys, Synjon tracked the males, waited for them to spot him, scent him. It took no more than a moment before they did, before a pathway was created across the polished stone floor.

Syn continued to play as the Roman brothers approached, stalking him like prey. They appeared rather tense. Syn wondered what that felt like.

The one he knew best, a nearly albino vampire male with a perpetual sneer, spoke first. “Nice party. But I think our invitation got lost in the mail, Brit Boy.”

There was a time when Syn had risen to the male’s caustic play. Reveled in it, in fact. He had no interest now. “You weren’t invited, Lucian. In fact, none of you were.”

The male turned to his skull-shaved brother, Alexander, and snorted. “Good to know the guy still has some asshole left in him.”

Alexander didn’t respond. His focus was entirely on Synjon, his tone serious as he spoke. “We have a problem.”

“We?” Synjon asked, his fingers moving into Bach’s Concerto in F Minor. He used to despise the piece, had been forced to practice it over and over as a balas, but now he felt only the smoothness of the keys against his skin.

Alexander’s voice dropped, and his eyes narrowed. “The veana who carries your child—”

“Petra,” Syn supplied, picturing the dark-haired veana and feeling . . . nothing.

“Yes,” Alexander ground out. “She hasn’t gone through her Meta. We didn’t know that before. When we brought her back home . . . We didn’t know how a veana in swell who hadn’t gone through her transition would react . . . She’s losing her mind, Syn.”

Synjon looked up, assessed the male. He couldn’t imagine why Alexander was telling him this. “Now that you’re here, would you like to stay? Join my guests?”

A growl rumbled in Alexander’s chest. “No.”

“Perhaps you’d like something to drink?”

“Christ,” Lucian muttered, leaning against the piano.

“Someone to drink, then?” Synjon caught the eye of one of the humans who enjoyed feeding his vampire guests. She grinned hopefully at him.

“We’re not here for a party,” Nicholas said tersely, moving around to the other side of the piano. “Petra is ill, Syn. She can’t control her emotions. She’s in pain. She’s going out of her mind. It happened soon after she returned to the Rain Forest. You have to—”

“Attend to my guests,” Synjon said evenly. There was so much to do—he had to select his blood donor for the evening as well as his sexual conquests. He had discriminating tastes in both. But first, a little Prelude in C-Sharp Minor. Rachmaninoff used to make him snarl.

Times changed, it seemed.

Arching an eyebrow at the three males, he said, “If you’ll excuse me.”

“‘Excuse me’?” Lucian repeated, giving Syn a disgusted look. “Whatever happened to ‘Get the fuck out of my way, you bleeding tossers’?”

Useless. Words with emotions attached.

“I don’t react to people and problems with threats and anger anymore, Lucian,” he said, his voice even. “I take care of them quietly, quickly.”

“That’s too bad,” Lucian muttered. “Merry fucking Christmas.”

“We should go, find another way to help her,” Nicholas said tightly. “This paven doesn’t give a shit about anything. And it’s our fault. We made him that way.”

“Cruen made him that way,” Alex amended.

“We forced him, held him down and allowed that ancient bastard to drink the emotions from his blood.”

“We had to.” Alex’s gaze slid away from Synjon. “He was unreasonable and dangerous. We couldn’t risk having Petra or the child harmed.”

Lucian growled, pushed away from the piano. “Well, now he feels nothing for them, and Cruen got to run free.”

Not free, Synjon mused, closing in on the seven-measure coda. “Well, gentlepaven, it was a successful plan all around. I’ve never felt better.”

“You feel nothing,” Lucian returned.

“Oh, I feel quite perfect where it matters—all things physical. I’m not burdened with tedious, irrational emotions. It’s all very civilized, really.” Rachmaninoff ceased to exist, and Synjon glanced up at Alexander. “I appreciate what was done to me.”

“What about all that is being done to Petra? All she can’t control?” Alexander returned with barely disguised menace. “She needs your blood. Now.”

“That’s unfortunate for her.” Syn jerked his chin in the direction of the great room. “As you can see, I am otherwise engaged.”

“He’s lost,” Luca muttered. “Fucking lost.”

Synjon stared at the three faces, all twisted into ravaged masks of worry. It suited them—that intensity, that feral, predatory glare. But it held no interest for him. He was rather relaxed—though he could use a pint or two, perhaps a quick, hard fuck as he continued to wait for the inevitable. The one guest he wished to see above all others. The one who would come begging.

Alexander spoke through gritted teeth, “Syn, your child and Petra . . . they could both die without your help. Your blood.”

Done with this repetitive, pointless conversation, Synjon replied smoothly, “Then I suppose they will die,” before he returned to the cool white keys and another song from his past: Nirvana’s “Drain You.”

2

Cruen despised being laid out on his back.

Even if he’d been the one to request it.

Near his ear, the one that was still intact, the one Synjon Wise hadn’t gotten around to slicing off with his razor-sharp blade, the female bloodletter’s breath came quick and sharp as she sucked. She’d been at it for over an hour. Retrieval and extraction being the primary goal. But it wasn’t going well. Bruises painted Cruen’s wrists and thighs. The vein in his neck was her final resting place.

He was starting to grow concerned.

Freedom was nothing to a vampire without power. And he was becoming weaker with every moment that passed.

The bloodletter pulled her fangs from his vein, her head from the curve of his neck, and turned toward her metal spit bowl. She deposited a mouthful of blood with a cough and a sputter, then returned to him. Framed by a cap of short black hair, her ashen face and deep-set blue eyes held an almost wry concern.

“You embedded them too deep,” she said, blood staining her teeth.

Cruen eyeballed the extractor, his skin itching, attempting to heal. “I didn’t embed anything. I removed and released only.”

“I don’t know what you released, but it wasn’t emotion.” She snatched a cloth from the table and wiped the blood from her mouth. “That cluster of bubbling intensity inside your mind remains. And it’s too far for me to reach.”

With excruciating effort, Cruen forced his weakening body to sit up on the stained pallet. Rising anger fueled his thoughts. “I’ve taken and released emotion hundreds of times. It is a simple procedure.”

The bloodletter stood, grabbed the bowl, and walked over to a nearby sink. “Not always.”

“What does that mean?” Cruen demanded to her back, his voice sounding fearfully thin.

“Most of the time, the extraction of emotions is transient,” she called over her shoulder. “In and out. There and gone. But sometimes it can stick, become a permanent fixture within the mind.”

Apprehension washed over Cruen as he watched the female dump his blood into the sink. Permanent? That couldn’t be. All he had performed was a basic emotional extraction in Erion’s dank dungeon. Taking Synjon Wise’s passion to kill in exchange for walking free.

“The one you drained,” said the bloodletter, “was he familiar with this type of grab?”

“I don’t know,” Cruen said tightly. “He used to be a very competent spy for the Order. And a military operative for the government.”

The female released a weighty breath, then turned and came to stand before him. Her gaze remained serious. “I don’t think this was an accident. Not with the depth of those implanted emotions.”

“What?” His nostrils flaring, Cruen growled, a sound that used to have anyone who heard it shaking. Now it felt as feeble and nonthreatening as that of a balas. “Are you saying the paven whose blood I extracted did this to me on purpose?”

“That is my belief, yes.”

Cruen stared at the female, his lips parted. This was madness. Why would Synjon Wise permanently implant his emotions inside Cruen? Yes, the paven wanted revenge, had ever since he’d found out that Cruen had not only taken and caged his beloved veana, Juliet, but had taken her life as well. But why wouldn’t he have just continued with his torture? The bloodletter’s assessment had to be wrong.

“Does this paven have a beef with you?” the bloodletter asked, as if reading his thoughts.

A beef? Cruen sniffed with lackluster humor. “The paven whose blood and emotion I ingested wanted me laid out in the sun—after he made sure I suffered first, of course.”

The female’s eyes narrowed, her expression tight and resolved now. “You were hoping that by taking his emotion you would be taking his desire to kill you?”

“Let’s just say it was a bargain struck. A bargain that was intended to benefit all.” Protect us all. Cruen, Petra, and the balas as well. Even that bastard Synjon Wise. If he had truly hurt Petra or the child, he would no doubt have suffered gravely for it.

The bloodletter was staring at him, her lips rolled under her teeth.

“What?” Cruen demanded, his skin now healed, his mind jumping. His body being stripped of energy with every breath. He needed to find strong, pure blood to bring back his power and his strength.