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unlit fireplace, with his feet propped up on the coffee table and a white fleece blanket tucked snuggly around him.  “I’m okay, love,” he choked out through a round of hacking coughs, and tried, unsuccessfully, to bat her away.
    Amelia ignored his attempts to push her aside and finished fluffing up the pillows.  Once she was done, she stepped back and rolled her eyes at him dramatically.  He wasn’t okay.  Far from okay, but she was going to fix him.  She was sure of it.  Mitchell was the one thing she knew she could take care of, and she would.  No matter what.  Hopefully.
    Certain he was comfortable, Amelia focused back on Eric.  “So the vamps are trying to take back their soulmates?” she asked.  She felt a slow smile spread on her lips as she tried to stifle her bubbling laugh.  “And the soulmates are what?  Rebelling?  Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
    Amelia knew that she should be upset about this.  She shouldn’t be smiling.  She knew that.  She’d always hated the pain of the bond, and the way the vamps in the community had used it to force their soulmates into submission.  And in all honesty, she had been the one who had told the human soulmates to stand up for themselves.
    But now it was … different.  She was on the other side, and although she wouldn’t say it out loud, she’d been tempted more than once over the last two weeks to bite Mitchell and force him to listen to her.  Even as a human, he was still the same Mitchell—sort of.  Possessive, overly protective, and he always thought he knew what was best.  And as a vampire, Amelia found it even more annoying.  If the soulmates were in fact pushing back, was it really so wrong for the vamps to try and gain control again?
    Yes! a voice in her mind shouted, but her fangs began to poke through and her gums throbbed anyway.
    For about the millionth time, Amelia was kind of glad that she hadn’t done it yet, and that Mitchell couldn’t hear her thoughts.  She felt disgusted and thrilled and wrong.  She knew none of this was okay.  She knew the pain of the bond was not okay and that using it was horrible.  Part of her was even proud that the humans were sticking up for themselves, but a small, teeny tiny part of her understood what the vamps were doing, and that part of her craved having that kind of control over Mitchell.  And she was really, really glad that he couldn’t see that thought.  She could already picture the disapproval, and the lecture, and the stern look he’d give her if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
    “Millie, you need to take this seriously,” Eric said, cutting her another stern glare, which looked extremely wrong on him.  “This morning we found Greg dead, with a stake through his heart.  His soulmate told us that she was standing up for herself like you told her to.”
    Amelia’s jaw dropped—literally.  She felt it sagging, and she couldn’t make her lips close.  So much for Willowberg returning to normal, she thought to herself. Mitchell clasped her hand, and squeezed it tightly.  She knew he was trying to give her support, but it didn’t help.  Her brain raced as she attempted to imagine how Greg could be killed by his soulmate, or how his soulmate could actually do it.  Amelia had almost killed Mitchell before, but she knew without a doubt, that she would have never been able to actually do it.  The bond wouldn’t have let her.  She was tied to him, mind, body, and soul.  If he died, part of her—the best part of her—would die right along with him.  And if she couldn’t do it, then how the hell had one of the others managed to?
    “How?” Amelia blurted.  “How in the hell did one of the humans kill their soulmate?”  Anger sparked through her, and her magic flared in response, licking at her fingertips.  Her eyes tingled as a crimson haze washed over them, and her gums throbbed from the pressure of her fangs as they tried to snap