When at last he was clean, she removed the bonding chain from her neck and carefully placed it over Adrien’s head, working it past his thick hair that touched his shoulders, until it rested against the back of his neck and dipped down in front to his collarbone.

A vibration passed from her chain to his. Her heart beat hard in her chest, as though trying to break free. She took deep breaths. A strange tingling moved through her body, from her head, flowing in waves down to her feet then back up as the chain made the connection she’d been told would happen.

The connection solidified and she placed her hand on Adrien’s chest over the chain. She sensed so many things about him all at the same time: his rage, his physical agony, and his desire to keep his world safe.

She looked up at the guard. “Get these manacles off. Now.”

The guard set to work, using a special tool to pound out the bolts that locked the manacles in place. Once both sets were gone, she sent the guard away.

With the blood-chain in place, Adrien wouldn’t be able to move but a few feet away from her.

Oh, God, she was now bound to a vampire.

But her reasons, yes, her reasons were worth anything that happened from this point forward.

CHAPTER 2

Adrien hurt deep into his body, as though the electricity from the Tasers had taken the recent torture and driven it into his bones. He’d finally left the cavern for the first time in a year, and though he had been completely incapacitated with manacles and chains, the guards had still fired half a dozen Tasers at him repeatedly.

His fellow vampires.

The guards weren’t even humans.

As his consciousness returned, he realized he sat in a tub of warm water that felt damn good on his aching, whipped body. He couldn’t imagine what he smelled like. After that many months in a closed environment, he’d lost the ability to smell what had essentially become a cesspool.

His neck hurt. His head rested on the thin metal lip of the tub but he couldn’t seem to do anything about it, probably because of the semi-paralysis that still kept him immobile. Damn, those Tasers had hurt.

He drew in a deep breath and recognized the human scent from earlier, from the one determined to get the extinction weapon.

He shifted in her direction and stared at her from beneath hooded lids. She knelt beside the tub, watching him. He’d been without sex for a year, and without a decent draught of blood. The woman would serve his needs just fine.

His nostrils flared as he smelled her sex and her blood, both scents beating at his body, firing his appetites.

“Adrien, can you hear me?”

He nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“My name is Lily. Lily Haven. I’ve already put the bonding chain on you. Can you feel it?”

When he didn’t answer right away, she picked up his hand and pressed it against his neck, and he felt the thin loops as well as a vibration beneath his fingers. “You’ve bound me.”

“I have.”

His anger returned: Even though the wrought-iron manacles were gone he was still a prisoner, just a different kind. And bound to a human.

He glared at her, letting her feel his anger.

This time, she touched the chain at her throat. “So much rage.”

“Yes, at the very least, rage.”

“I didn’t want this.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“But you’ll be well paid for your trouble.”

At that, she released a sigh. “Yes. I will.”

He continued to hold her gaze, to let her feel that he didn’t intend to go easy on her, that she wouldn’t be enjoying her time with him, and that if it came to it, he’d destroy the weapon before he let her have it.

Her chin dipped several times in succession as though she understood his thoughts. Maybe she did, because he could feel her easily through the chains as well—he knew that she feared him but was determined to do whatever needed to be done to fulfill her mission.

And she was a locator, rare in either the vampire or the human world. But how had either Kiernan or Daniel found her? He’d heard of this kind of ability, and that it could only work if paired with a vampire of sufficient power. Through the blood-chain, she’d be able to access his power, draw it into her, and eventually gain the skill of connecting with anything she wanted to find.

In this case, a weapon to destroy his kind.

That anger toward the vampire world radiated from her didn’t surprise him. The worlds had begun to clash, and it was getting harder and harder to keep the vampire world a secret.

And somehow she had run head-on into either Kiernan or Daniel, a deal had been struck probably involving a small fortune, and now she was here.

Yet really angry, as though some injustice had been done to her. That was the surprise: that she would be using Kiernan to gain a fortune, yet be almost as angry as he was by the arrangement.

Now, there was a mystery to solve.

Because she was so physically close, however, a more urgent problem surfaced as he caught the rich scent of her blood. His hunger returned and he groaned.

He felt her emotions abruptly shift to concern for him. “How badly are you hurt?”

“Not hurt. I need blood.” He glared at her. But the woman ought to know what was headed her way, and that he’d hit her like a freight train right now if she didn’t back off.

She leaned away from him as though sensing his thoughts. Her eyes widened, and now he smelled how much he frightened her.

The scent of fear beat at him and his fangs emerged. “You’d better move as far from me as you can right now—or offer me a vein. One or the other, human.”

She rose to her feet then backed up far enough that he felt the tug of the chain at his neck, the warning that because they were bound, they were limited by distance as well.

He pressed his hand against the chain and glanced at the woman. She stood ten feet away, no more.

He closed his eyes.

Bound, again.

Chain-bound.

He’d worn a different set of chains in his youth. He’d been bound to the evil one, and couldn’t leave the house or the grounds since dear old Dad had built an electric fence to keep his sons prisoner.

“Adrien.”

He shifted his head toward her once more.

“I … this isn’t who I am.”

“What do you mean?”

She shifted her gaze away from him. “Nothing. Never mind. As soon as you’re able, there’s a shower in my tent. It’ll help.”

But a different kind of emotion vibrated through the chain at his neck, coming from her. He didn’t understand it at first; then a roll of pain went through him and he finally got it: The human was incredibly sad. In fact, she was grief-stricken.

But the part of him that had suffered snorted at her despair. Let the human feel her pain.

What was she to him?

What could she ever be to him, but the enemy?

Lily slid both arms over her stomach as she stared at the massive vampire in the huge yet too-small metal tub. He watched her with such a predatory stare that chills kept chasing over her body.

She sensed so many things from him—his confusion, his anger, but mostly his blood-hunger—and right now she felt like the fly to his spider.

She’d never been around a man like him before. The sheer size of him was enough to make her wary. Only he wasn’t just a man, but a vampire, a different race altogether, something she didn’t understand, something she didn’t trust, something much more animal than human.

And lethal.

Nor was it helping that the shared chain opened him up to her, revealing his aggressive intentions toward her—his desire for her blood for one thing, and sex for another. His level of determination became an itch on her skin.

Right then she felt the energy of who he was: a ball of fire, of rage. He had power as well. Formidable power. Kiernan had told her that Adrien had the potential to become an Ancestral, something rare in the vampire world and something laden with preternatural ability.

And for the first time, she truly doubted that she’d ever be able to see her mission through. For one thing, his loyalties lay elsewhere, with his brothers still in prison and with the vampire world generally, so he could never be a truly reliable partner. But given his size and physical strength, that he was a trained fighter and that he had tremendous potential among his kind, what on earth made Kiernan think she’d be able to control him all the way to the end?

Adrien stood beneath the shower attached to Lily’s tent. He hadn’t been clean in a year and he didn’t care how many times Lily’s crew had to refill the tank, he’d be damned before he took one more step into the future without getting every molecule of filth off him.

He scrubbed his hair until his scalp burned; his legs, arms, and chest until his skin felt raw; his crotch until he felt bruised.

Only then, stripped of the last of the cavern muck, did he step, naked as hell, from the shower into Lily’s tent. His captor sat at a small desk.

She glanced at him and grew very still as she looked him up and down. Her lips parted, her nostrils flared. And just like that, as unexpected as anything he could have imagined, he smelled her sex, a warm, sweet flow of desire that tightened his abs. She wants me.

She cleared her throat, then gestured to a stack of towels on a small table to his right. “Help yourself.”

She returned to review something on her desk, a small notepad. She rubbed her neck beneath her binding chain. Apparently, the fairly lightweight string of small black loops chafed her as it did him.

Good. If he had to be bound, then he wanted her annoyed and scratching to get free as well.

His jaw quivered at the sight of her, all woman, a reminder yet again that he’d not been between a woman’s legs in too damn long.

He let his gaze fall slowly down her body. She stretched, her hands behind her back, which pushed her chest forward. Her breasts were large and firm. A nice handful. A better mouthful. Her narrow waist flared to womanly hips.

Her hair hung in soft waves to the middle of her back in a light brown, layered flow with subtle gold streaks, hair obviously cared for in an expensive salon. Once again he noticed the beauty of her hazel eyes. She had thick dark lashes, arched brows, full lips.