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bottom. She watched him in silence for a while, unsure what to make of him.
     
“Why did you do it?” His rough voice scraped out of the shadows, but his gaze was fierce with unearthly amber light. “Why did you help me?”
     
Claire found it hard to hold that hot, scathing look. “Because you needed help.”
     
He scoffed, a coarse, mocking sound. “You were never stupid, Claire. Bad time to start.”
     
The slam stung, but she only shrugged. “And you were never someone who would think nothing of killing dozens of people in the space of a few hours.”
     
He blinked, those amber irises shuttered for a long while. Did he know what he had done last night? Had any of it registered with him when he was in that state?
     
He blew out a low curse, then turned his face away from her.
     
“Andre,” Claire murmured softly. “Whatever is wrong with you, I’m sure there are people who can help. But you don’t have to think about any of that right now. All you need to do is rest, let yourself heal. You’re safe here.”
     
“Nobody’s safe now,” he muttered under his breath. He rolled back to face her, pinning her with the twin lasers of his transformed eyes. “Especially not you, Claire.”
     
She stared at him for some long moments, unsure how to respond. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t afraid. Even battered by UV light, he was still very dangerous. Still a lethal predator, armed with a terrible power she’d had no idea he possessed.
     
It staggered her that she could have believed she’d known him so well in the four months they’d been inseparable, yet she had been oblivious to the side of him she saw last night. Then again, she’d also thought he loved her, only to be blindsided when he simply vanished from her life without a word of explanation.
     
Now he was back—finally, after three decades, she was looking at him once more—though nothing like she’d imagined it might be to reunite with him. Now she didn’t know who he was anymore…or what he was.
     
“Get some rest,” she finally managed to say.
     
Claire stood up and began the climb back up from the cellar, well aware that Andreas’s eyes followed her the whole time. She flicked the light switch, plunging the place back into darkness before she closed the cellar door and leaned her spine against it.
     
Her hands were trembling, her heart banging around in her rib cage.
     
Dear God. She hoped she hadn’t just made a terrible mistake.
     
One thing she knew for certain was that she had to find Wilhelm, and find him fast.
     
     
Wilhelm Roth was getting a blow job behind the wheel of a Jaguar XKR coupe doing 120 mph on an open stretch of highway when he noticed that his Breedmate had walked into the dream unannounced. She came up out of the median and paused on the side of the moonlit stretch of road about a quarter mile ahead of him.
     
For a second, Roth kept his foot heavy on the accelerator, thinking he would just fly past her like she wasn’t there—give her a reminder of how he detested her unique talent and had long ago forbade her to use it on him. But as the Jag roared up the fast lane and Claire’s face came into the light of his high beams, he realized she was upset about something. Visibly stricken. Not at all typical of the otherwise calm, cool, and collected female.
     
She lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the headlights, and Roth took the opportunity to vanish his dreamtime plaything. The naked blonde he’d conjured from the cheap porno film that was running as he’d dozed off disappeared with just a thought; the fierce erection he was sporting from the fly of his unzipped Armani trousers wouldn’t go away quite that easily. Not that Claire would question him about it if she noticed. She’d learned her place years ago, and after all, it wasn’t as if he could be held accountable for where his mind went when he was sleeping.
     
Precisely the reason he’d given her for barring her from dreamwalking around him.
     
That and the fact