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“Aerin? What is it?” he asks, bouncing his gaze between me and the door.

I swallow. “There was someone last night.” I lower my voice. “He tried to creep into my room.”

His hold on me tightens a little, though his expression remains perfectly calm. “Ah, the lamp. Give me a second.”

He places me on the bed, and before I can tell him not to open the door, he’s across the room and swinging the door open.

I brace myself for a violent confrontation.

Mack stands in the open doorway, peering one way, then the next. “No one is there.”

But there was.

“He probably heard you in here,” I say.

Mack backs into the room and returns to me, lifting me again into his arms. “Then it’s a good thing I came back when I did.”

“Yeah.” I smile at him, never so relieved to see a person as I am to see him.

Then my brain wakes up.

I grip the front of his shirt as I simultaneously try to get up and push him toward the door. “You can’t be here. They want you. You have to?—”

He gently pries my fingers from his shirt and frowns at me. “It’s okay. I walked in through the front door. You have blood on your face. What happened?”

Shane’s blood. After what happened with that guy, I didn’t even think to wash my face.

“Aerin?” Mack prompts when I struggle to summon a response.

I stopped feeling anything for Shane a long time ago. Probably back when I first left him and Minnesota. The last time I saw him then, the reason I had run from him, had been when I saw him having sex with Bree.

And the bite on her throat. The bite that he must have given her when he shouldn’t have. Only mates bite each other.

But he died in front of me.

Diedbecauseof me, and I can’t close my mind to that.

Even if the only reason I’m in this mess is because he kidnapped me.

He was still my fated mate, and it still hurt knowing he died, even though I know it shouldn’t.

Mack frames my face with both hands, his frown deepening. “Aerin?”

“I tried to escape,” I whisper, in case anyone is near my room. “Last night, I tried to escape, but Franklin—he’s in charge here—caught me. Then Shane stepped in front of me. And… and Franklin killed him to warn me so I wouldn’t try to run away again. It was my fault. I don’t love him. But I—” A tear drips from my eye and slides down my cheek.

Mack draws me closer, kissing the top of my head. “It’s okay, Aerin. I understand.”

We hold each other for a long time.

“Let me get up, love, and I can clean the blood off your face.”

I tighten my hold on him. “Not yet.”

He just got here and I’m not nearly ready to let him go yet.

“Okay,” he whispers.

Outside, it’s night again.

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