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erase the evidence before my sister saw. I was not the crying
type.
    Hannah said something, but I couldn’t make her words out
over the pounding in my head. My focus was somewhere else entirely. Micah hadn’t
denied cheating on me. He’d deflected.
    Julian—my sire and ex-lover—the person who was once my
entire world, used to deflect all the time and I’d been too naive to realize
it. Hormones made you reckless. Love made you stupid. Trust made you
vulnerable.
    I’d been burned once and the price of my stupidity had cost
me my soul. Was I doomed to make the same mistakes all over again? Either Micah
didn’t trust me—hence him withholding vital information—or he didn’t respect
me.
    The random blonde I envisioned in my head, the one I
conjured the moment Micah carelessly threw out his remark about infidelity,
curled her ruby-red lips up in a smirk. She straddled Micah’s lap and started
an enthusiastic rhythm that had her gigantic tits bouncing up and down.
    Vomit curled in my belly and inched up the back of my
throat. I pressed a hand against the worst of the stomach cramps and tried to
breathe through the pain. In my mind, the images got worse.
    The bimbo threw her head back and screamed Micah’s name
while he grabbed her bountiful ass and leaned forward to sink his teeth into
her neck. The bite at my throat pulsed, a reminder of a different time when I’d
been the one he’d wanted to nibble.
    Fuck Micah. Fuck how he made me feel. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
    Hannah touched my shoulder, drawing my attention. Even when
she wasn’t wearing heels, my twenty-year-old sister towered over me. Next to
her, more giant than man, Dante—a lion shifter—had a large hand wrapped
possessively around her petite waist.
    They were golden, perfect, happy and reeked of sex. Their
cute new coupleness made me want to hurl. Or punch something. Any of those
things was better than the whiny emotions rioting through me. Since when had I
gone all emo? What was next? Poetry written in blood while I lamented my crappy
love life?
    Hannah had gotten all dolled up in a short red dress for
dinner tonight. She’d curled her hair, and even though it was mussed—from Dante’s
hands, I was going to assume—it looked really nice. Her makeup was without a
single flaw, well except for her worn-off lip gloss, also probably Dante’s
fault. Hannah, who’d fallen in a pit of depression after being tortured by Lizbeth,
was back. This was also because of Dante. I should have thanked him, but it was
hard to do when he was stealing her away from me.
    I added up my losses. Micah didn’t trust me. Hannah didn’t
need me. The agency I’d given my life to wanted me dead.
    The blonde in my head blew me a kiss. I was going to stab
that bitch in her crotch if she didn’t vacate my thoughts.
    My sister’s expressive green eyes met mine. “Ella?”
    I shook my head so violently the end of my hair whipped me
in the face. “I’m fine,” I lied.
    I was going to break into hysterics any second and that sure
as shit wasn’t happening in front of Dante. On the rare occasion it happened, I
was an ugly crier. Splotches. Snot. Sniveling. No thanks, I looked bad enough
as it was.
    “You are so not fine,” Hannah said softly. “What just
happened between you two? And what’s with the car-sized hole in the training
room?”
    I backed up against the wall until my butt and shoulders
made contact. I slid against the hard surface and sat on the floor with my bent
legs tucked to my chest. Hannah sat on one side, Dante took position on the
other. God they smelled. The scents translated to images I didn’t want.
Sandwiched between them, I felt like a voyeur in their bedroom…or wherever it
was he’d banged my sister.
    I dropped my forehead to my knees and concentrated on
drawing breaths in through my mouth. “Micah threw a fireball at my head, it hit
the wall instead.”
    “No shit?” Dante said as Hannah asked, “That’s why you’re
mad?”
    Their words