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She hasn’t run away. Of course she hasn’t. She’s clinging to the banister with one hand, her black sweater coated in gray sludge and sewer grit, her sneakers braced wide on the carpeted steps. In her right hand, she’s clutching one of the dwarf-forged daggers—holding it completely wrong, backward like an icepick, looking like a cornered raccoon ready to scrap with a coyote.

Beside her, the wooden cat is causing absolute mayhem. Kirk charges off the fifth step, his solid teak skull slamming directly into a thrall’s kneecap with a brutal thwack. The thrall shrieks, pitching forward, and from the shadows of the ceiling, the carved wooden owl swoops down in a dead drop, sinking its sharp beak straight into the vampire's eye socket.

"Eat wood, you moldy freak," Vivienne screams.

With both hands, she heaves a massive, twenty-pound, leather-bound volume over the railing.

Encyclopædia Britannica, the foiled spine catches the light.

The book drops ten feet through the air and smashes squarely onto the blinded thrall's crown with a heavy, concussive thud, dropping him flat onto the runner.

"Yes," she yells, pumping a frantic, shaking fist. "Knowledge is power, you pale bitch."

Even in the middle of a slaughter, my beast gives a low, rumbling huff.

Our mate.

Then, the air in the foyer drops forty degrees in a split second.

The front double doors blow inward off their iron latches with an explosive bang, cold rain and dead autumn leaves whipping across the marble tiled floor.

Standing in the doorway, completely dry, is Julian St. George.

His crimson tailcoat is spotless. His pale face is carved into a sneer, his fangs glinting in the chandelier light. In his right hand he holds a five-foot spear forged of silver and bone, dripping with a fluid that smells of rot.

Necrotic silver, made to put down immortals.

"Such a loud little stray," Julian purrs, his Southern drawl cutting through the sound of the storm.

His red eyes flick past me, locking onto Vivienne on the stairs.

He doesn't pause. He doesn't monologue. He drops his weight, his arm whipping back with supernatural speed, and launches the silver spear straight at Vivienne’s chest.

The beast launches. Not a single thought in his mind but to save our mate.

I wouldn’t have stopped him if I could.

I throw myself across the foyer, clawing through the air to put my body between the spear and my mate.

The silver strikes.

It punches through my front shoulder, tearing through hide, muscle, and cartilage, the barbed point driving straight into my ribcage. The poison hits my bloodstream like pure acid. Sizzling against my bones, burning through five centuries of magic.

A sound tears out of my throat—a wet gasp.

The world tilts. My bones snap backward, collapsing, the shift torn away from me by the silver's rot. Fur dissolves, muscle shrinks, and the sheer shock drags me back into fragile mortal flesh.

I’m sorry, the bear tells me, his rumble weak.

I hit the marble floor hard. Poisoned sludge oozes from the wound at my ribs.

I have to protect her. Not yet. Not yet.

Above me, through the black spots swimming in my vision, Vivienne screams.

Thirty-Six

Vivienne