Page 28 of Bite of Sin

“Call it a test,” I muttered. “If she gets out, then it means the watchers aren’t doing their job.”

“And if they fail, that means we’re going to be chasing her ass all over the damn woods,” he complained. “You should have just sent her to the center.”

“No.”

“Never thought I’d see the day where Zan Kane had a crush.”

“Fuck off,” I snarled. “I don’t have a crush.”

“But you want to fuck her,” Viggo taunted, his eyes lighting in amusement at getting under my skin. “I don’t blame you. She’s fucking hot.”

“She’smine,” I snapped before I could think about it.

His eyes widened in surprise before he chuckled. “You have it bad.”

“I don’t,” I retorted through clenched teeth. “She’s a way to keep me busy while we sit here and wait for Dad’s orders.”

“Whatever you say.”

Pax interrupted our conversation when he stalked past me and dropped into his chair. Viggo raised an eyebrow at his twin as I stared at him, waiting to hear why he was back so soon.

“I lost her,” Pax admitted with a scowl. “She slipped into one of the buildings.”

Viggo let out a loud laugh. “She’s going to be trouble.”

He wasn’t wrong. The thing was—I wanted her kind of trouble.

Pax focused on me. “You don’t need distractions. Dad is counting on us. You should just let her be.”

“We can’t do much until next month anyway,” I said, trying to keep the annoyance to myself. The twins were older than me. We made all decisions together, and they never left me out because I was the youngest, but sometimes they acted like they knew better.

“Want to make a bet on if she shows up tomorrow night?” Viggo asked, crossing his arms. “I bet she doesn’t.”

It all depended on whether she got out of the city tonight. With how new she was, she could still handle the sun too. But leaving here was much more difficult than it looked from the outside. In the time we’d been here, we’d built this place up into a fortress.

From the outside, it still looked like a crumbling city. That wasn’t the case. There were only a few ways to enter or exit, and two of those were secret tunnels. We left two roads unblocked but always had vampires watching. The rest of the roads were covered with debris and crushed cars. The buildings that were on the outskirts of the city were boarded up, and the first levels of them were stacked floor to ceiling with anything we could use to make them impassable.

Which made me wonder how the hell she’d gotten into the city. Vampires could leave as they pleased, but most didn’t venture out. Not with Project Hope only ten miles away. There were always soldiers in the forest, and they killed vampires on sight. Plus, we had the watchers do a head count for everyone that left and came back to make sure we didn’t lose anyone. Everyone who had left in the last three weeks had come back before the sun rose. There was no odd number. Which meant no one counted her when she came in.

Either she’d found a crack somewhere or my workers weren’t doing their jobs on the perimeters of the city. And both of those were a problem that would need to be fixed. We couldn’t let our guard down so close to a human city.

I would have asked her how she got here, but I doubted she would tell me. Her eyes had screamed hate ever since I approached her in the street. I’d ask her at some point when she’d calmed down from being forced to stay here. I could be patient when I needed to be. Although I wasn’t sure it would last long in her presence. I had a feeling she was going to try and push me to my limits.

“One of our scouts told me that there were more men in the woods than usual,” Viggo said, growing serious as he brought up business. “Looks like they’re searching for something.”

“Or someone,” I added. “They were doing that the night we saw them at the river.”

“Maybe one of them got away before they could kill them,” Pax murmured, looking troubled as he stared past us.

“We should be looking too, if that’s the case.” Viggo snatched Pax’s drink. “I’ll give the order to have more eyes in the forest this week.”

I nodded in agreement, subtly studying Pax. He seemed more upset than usual. Though he was like this every month when the humans killed at the river. I couldn’t blame him. When we were still human, he had fallen in love with a girl who was with a group that lived free. They’d set up their own camp not far from our dad’s property, and Pax used to sneak out all the time to see her.

Until PARA found them. And Pax’s girl had just turned twenty-five. They’d cut her, and she bled black. They killed her right there. I didn’t know if Pax would ever get over it. Ever since, his sympathy for civilian humans had grown and his absolute hate for PARA had increased to a point that he couldn’t think logically without emotions getting in the way.

We wanted to save the Shadows, but it was for an entirely different reason than Pax. His need to save was purely emotional, while ours was calculated.

My mind should be focused on the job Dad had given us, especially with him coming to visit next month.

---