Page 4 of A Bloom in Winter

Wolves had surrounded them . . . except they hadn’t been wolves. They’d been wolven, a mystical subspecies in the vampire world, two entities existing in one body.

Shifters.

He’d seen Callum for the first time that night, both in that lupine form . . . and in his humanlike one, the male’s hair white and flowing over his torso, his eyes a gleaming light blue, his body powerfully built as predators always were. The meeting had been unforgettable for so many reasons, not in the least because the guy had been buck-ass-naked after he’d shifted—because, hello, it wasn’t like Levi’s could spontaneously manifest themselves.

The wolven had been utterly unapologetic for the nudity. As any animal would be.

And he had been . . . heartbreakingly beautiful in the moonlight.

Coming back to the present, Apex became aware of a sting on his hand. Inspecting the sensation, he found a drop of blood on his forefinger.

Guess there had been one errant thorn on that rose. Go fucking figure.

Sucking the wound closed, he walked over to the rear entrance, put in the code, and went up a short stack of stairs. He paused at the second reinforced door. He knew what he was going to find on the other side, and hesitated. But come on, like anything was going to change if he waited out here? Came back another night? Never went inside again?

The male who mattered the most to him would still be gone. He needed to get used to it.

Opening the heavy steel door and stepping over the threshold, he regarded what had been the prison camp warden’s private quarters as if he had never seen them before. The open space was kitted out like the war room it had been, with munitions mounted at the ready on the blank walls, uniforms and supplies organized neatly, and the table with a map of the facility’s layout unfurled and kept flat by a couple of Coke cans at the corners.

These private accommodations were the crown jewel of whoever’d been running the place, and now that the liberation had occurred? Guess that hadn’t really changed.

And fuck him, he couldn’t help himself. Even though it made him feel like he’d been stabbed in the chest, he took a long, slow, deep breath in through his nose.

Callum’s scent lingered in the air, the heady spice bobbing under the fragrance of the other blooms that Apex had brought to the wolven. The cedar-ish cologne-that-wasn’t-cologne wasn’t fresh, though.

It was already fading.

“You’re pathetic,” he said. “Fucking insane andpathetic.”

In the center of the room, the empty bedding platform was surrounded by all the white flowers he’d brought in offering to a male who’d been so badly traumatized, he hadn’t even known Apex was there. The roses and peonies and carnations stood up in the little glass beakers he’d stolen from the prison camp’s drugprocessing rooms, and there was no reason to keep adding water now.

He pictured the wolven lying there, that white hair flowing over the pillows, that pale blue stare trained up at the ceiling like Callum had been waiting for some kind of rescue from above.

Like a zombie, Apex went across until the steel toes of his boots touched the mattress edge. As he looked down at the imprint of the body that had lain there for the last week, the contours in the memory foam were like the outline of the victim at a homicide scene.

More memories, now. Of the siege to overthrow the head of the guards and her crew of for-hire guns. The Black Dagger Brotherhood had come at just the right time, and they were in control now. It was a good thing. The prisoners who had survived were getting proper medical care and attention, and the drug shit had been shut down.

But not everyone had been okay.

“You were only here to help us,” he whispered. “It’s not fair.”

Sitting down on the edge of the platform, he splayed his hand out on the sheet, pushing his palm toward the depression. He stopped just short of touching the indent.

“I tried to save you,” he whispered. “But I was too late.”

Casualties were to be expected in any fight . . . gunshot wounds, soft tissue injuries of all kinds, broken bones. Deaths.

That last one wasn’t always the worst outcome. Sometimes living through what happened to you was harder.

Or rather . . . what was done to you.

That was the brutal lesson Apex had had to relive—and watching Callum lie in a comatose stupor had carved the truism into the soul: Though that wolven had breathed and had a heartbeat, what had made him who he was, that snark, that sass, that sexy taunt, was gone. All that had been left was the husk.

It made Apex want to kill that bitch all over again. She’d taken something that had been beautiful, used and abused it, ordered her own guards to rape the male—and had intended to keep Callum tied down, like some kind of toy to play with when she was bored.

And feed from at her leisure.

God, if he could just make her know the pain she had caused.

---