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be here soon. You should get dressed. I'll get my parents."
    Ten minutes later, everyone was clothed, if sleepy, and waiting in the foyer for Tammy to arrive.
    She walked through the front door, dark circles under her eyes, as Rob and Spencer, our cousins, dragged in an unconscious man.
    Rose ran forward, and my heart nearly stopped.
    She leaned down to look at the man. "Blake." Then she stared up at Tammy. "Is he okay?"
    "What does it matter? He's working with her." Tammy's eyes blazed with hate.
    I'd never seen my sister so full of rage. "What happened tonight?" I asked.
    Tammy turned her eyes to me. "She got away with the roses, but we caught him. Shifting hurt us pretty bad, but the fight didn't last long. We're getting weaker, Derek. We may not be able to shift again."
    Rose's eyes filled with tears, though at Tammy's admission or the bruised and beaten body of Blake, I couldn't tell and wasn't sure I wanted to know.
    I'd told her it didn't matter what she'd done after I left her and broke her heart, but the truth was much harder to swallow. I knew she hadn't slept with anyone else, but there was a lot of room between nothing happening and full on fucking and it made me physically ill to contemplate where in that grey area she'd fallen, and with whom. Seeing how she looked at Blake, I had a better idea of the “whom.”
    If he wasn't already dying from the beating he'd taken tonight, I might have to kill him myself for touching Rose.
    After Rob and Spencer carried Blake to a spare room upstairs, I turned to Rose, her eyes still full of tears.
    Before I could say anything, she threw herself into my arms. "Are your powers really fading that fast?"
    Maybe she had been crying for us and not the demon. I couldn't be mad at her, not as tears for my pain soaked through my shirt. I pressed a kiss to the top of her head and held her close. "I'm okay, Rose. Don't worry about me."
    "How can I not worry? As your family loses power, Mother is closer than ever to gaining it. We need to talk to Blake and find out what he knows."
    I wished I could have kept her out of that room and away from him, but she'd never agree to sitting out on this, and I knew when to pick my battles.
    Rob and Spencer guarded the front door, but when we entered, Blake, bruised and unconscious, hardly looked a threat to anyone.
    Rose approached the bed first, sitting on the chair next to him.
    Squeezing my hands into fists, I counted to ten and resisted the urge to send him back to the demon dimension with blunt force trauma to the head.
    Rose glanced up at me, as if sensing my pent up rage. Her lips curved down in a frown, but she turned back to him. "Blake? Can you hear me? It's Rose."
    His bruised eyes peeled open like purple grapes. "Rose. I'm sorry. So sorry."
    She reached for his hand, and I growled under my breath, feeling my wolf rise to the surface for the first time since the roses were taken. I didn't resist the shifting, didn't fight the wolf as he took over. My eyes changed first, then my hands as claws extended from my nails. They retreated as fast as they'd come. My eyesight shifted back to normal, and my body shook with fatigue. I leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths to regain my composure. I couldn't shift. My magic was dying inside of me, and soon I would die with it.
    We all would.
    "What are you sorry for?" Rose asked the demon.
    Rose didn't notice my near shifting, not with all of her attention devoted to Blake. I balled my fists and glared at him.
    "I tried to stop her. Tried to change things." Blake flinched in pain, but the swelling in his eyes had already subsided and the coloring looked like a bruise a week old, not freshly made. "Is Jasmine safe?"
    Jasmine walked forward to stand next to Rose. "I'm here, Blake."
    He smiled. "The Wintersong girls. You two are the only humans I've ever cared about."
    He reached into his pocket and I jumped forward, grabbing his wrist. "Don't try to pull anything, asshole."
    He opened his hand to