This is the final read through on my first edit. Yes, I added a space between every sentence for over 300 pages.

1. Chapter 1
Aiden watched the woman approach. The flirty tilt of her smile and the dark
arousal in her eyes repulsed him. She wanted him, but he needed her. She floated forward.
The sway of her hips and, the plunge of her neckline invited him to stare. Instead of the
soft curve of cleavage, his gaze lingered over the pale blue network of veins that
crisscrossed her skin.
Relaxing, Aiden stopped fighting his fierce magnetism. He let it roll off his skin
and engulf the woman’sher senses. He had gone months this time without feeding. His
hunger was a living thing, shredding the lining of his stomach and ripping away his
inhibitions. The woman was a vessel, a handy container for what his thirst demanded.
Aiden allowed her steady advance despite the cloying scent of her arousal. The too
sweet fragrance of desire perfumed her skin and threatened to staunch his hunger, but he
was ravenous. He ignored his disgust; he had to ignore it. His fangs distended, and he
struck.
The pPliant flesh beneath his lips opened with, a crisp puncture, and the sharp tang
of blood filled his mouth. Aiden nursed, drawing long draughts of liquid. His parched
throat moistened, and his cramped stomach rejoiced as he finally met the needs of his body.
A soft whimper of need passed over the woman’s lips. He clutched her seeking
hands, keeping them away from him. Still, she managed to grind her buttocks against his
crotch as he fed over her shoulder.
The infusion of blood blocked out all but the most obvious attempts of his prey to
stoke his arousal to match hers. She never realized what she wanted was a physical

2. impossibility. He hated her skin for warming beneath his fingers, her taste for filling the
hollow ache in his gut. No desire colored the act he committed. Only his desperation for
nourishment gave him the ability to follow through.
The sounds and tastes of feeding twisted his gut. Disgust welled up and tainted the
taste, which that had been so rich only moments before, with bitterness and despair. Still,
he pulled her life into his body, knowing the burning need for fuel would overcome his
senses if he waited any longer or drank too little.
A soft gasp punctuated the climax of the woman writhing against him. His
presence alone pushed her to sexual peak. He could taste the rich tenor of her blood, the
way it pulsed and sang with her fulfillment.
Aiden retracted his fangs and smoothed a finger across the pinpricks. They closed
as he wiped the beading droplets and licked the excess from his fingers. The woman hung
limply forward, her contribution given.
“I’ll take care of her Aiden.” Jonah stood a few feet away, his face remote.
Aiden practically dropped her in his eagerness to escape. “Thank you,” he said,
past caring that Jonah had followed him again and witnessed the symbiotic curse that
chained them both to their humanity.
“Aiden.”
Jonah placed a hand behind the woman’s shoulders and scooped under her knees,
lifting her to his chest. His lips parted to ask a question neither wanted to hear answered
truthfully. Aiden saved him the trouble.
“I’m going home, Jonah. I’ll be fine.” He turned. “I have to be fine.”
****

3. Elaine Masters rolled over and took a deep breath. Her eyes were sore and dry, but
her cheeks and pillow were damp with tears. Because of one man’s careless indulgence,
her parents were gone. A drunk driver had smashed into their car, killing himself along
with her mother and father on impact. Now she was alone, and there was no communion
between this world and the next no matter how hard she wished for it.
The funeral had been surreal. Black suits and dresses swathed the mass of business
associates and friends that arrived to offer their condolences. The disinterested expressions
and monotonous recitations had blended each person into the next. When it was over, she
left the cemetery on autopilot and found herself on her parent’s doorstep, both eager for the
familiar comfort of home and dreading the knowledge that, once she stepped inside the
empty house, it would all become real. They were never coming back.
Lainie curled onto her side and swiped her hands across her cheeks. She couldn’t
stay. This was her childhood home, but she couldn’t bear it another minute. The memories
of her parents were too strong. The whole town became a scrapbook filled with snap shots
from their lives together.
Swinging her legs from the bed, she willed her body upright and made her way
slowly down the hall. Her stomach rebelled against the thought of breakfast, so she
bypassed the kitchen and wandered to her father’s study instead. She leaned into the
doorframe and remembered all the times she’d walked to this room in her youth.
She had loved to watch her father work at the battered antique desk that filled the
center of the space. When she entered his study, her father would put down his paperwork
and gesture to the chair opposite his. Lainie would sit down and fold her hands primly in
her lap and wait for him to address her.

4. “Is there something I can help you with, Princess?” he would ask.
“No, Daddy,” she would say. “I just wanted to see what you were up to.”
Then he would pat his lap and issue the invitation that she was waiting for all along.
“Well then, why don’t you come over here, and I’ll give you a peek?”
Lainie always jumped out of the stiff chair and threw herself into her father’s lap.
His arms would wrap around her and hold her close. HThen he would drop a kiss on top of
her head as he shuffled the papers on his desk.
Her father had owned a prestigious property management company. His desk was
always scattered with beautiful pictures of houses and gardens. Often, they were properties
in his care;, other times, they were ideas he had gathered from his travels and planned to
incorporate into future proposals for his clients.
His job had fascinated her, even as a child. Some of the homes underwent
extensive renovations to peel back the layers of time and expose their original splendor.
Others attempted to recreate the lush rolling lawns and secret gardens of a bygone era.
Tears pricked her eyes and pulled her from her reminiscence.
This was her fourth year of working for her father’s company, her company now.
She braved her father’s office for the first time since her parents’ accident and sat down in
his chair. The old leather creaked and the casters squealed as she pulled herself to the edge
of the desk.
She liberated an old dog-eared map from the bottom drawer and dipped into the
neatly organized supplies to pull out a location pin. With one palm, she smoothed the
opened map as she clutched the pin tightly between the finger and thumb of her opposite
hand. Squeezing her eyes closed, she whispered a little prayer as she let fate guide her

5. outstretched hand across the paper. A tingle danced up her arm, and she stabbed the pin
down into the desktop.
Lainie peered cautiously at the pin protruding from the map. It looked like home
was now a seaside community in Rhode Island. The area held numerous historical homes,
some of which she now managed. This was good news. She could get a change of scenery
and personally conduct the semiannual inspections on a few properties. Things were
definitely looking up.

6. Chapter 2
The phone shrilled from the far corner of Aiden’s desk. He lifted the receiver and
gave a terse, “Hello.”
“Aiden, how are things?” purred an all too familiar voice.
“The same, Graham.”
“I see you put in a request for new identity papers for your grandmother..”
Aiden reclined in his chair, tapping his pen on the desktop. “She needs to be up to
date before her next ball. Is there a reason you were checking up on me?”
“The Alliance has to keep tabs on all the Carriers, especially one as influential as
yourself. How’s business?”
“I forge identity papers for vampires.,” hSis words laced with sarcasm laced his
words. “My services are always in demand, as you well know.” Aiden kneaded his temple
with a knuckle and tried to ease the knot of pain throbbing behind his eye. “Is there
anything else?”
“I just wanted to verify that our order would be ready on time.”
“Have your agents at the Center around ten tomorrow night. That should give the
staff plenty of time to reissue their papers.”
“We’ll have to bring a few people in from the field, but that should be doable. See
you then.” The call ended.
The hum of the dead line grated on Aiden’s nerves. He slammed the receiver into
is cradle and fumed over Graham’s subtle reminder of the food chain, and his place in it.
Graham Norton was head of the Vampire Affairs Division, w. Which meant he kept tabs on

7. the community at large, but particularly close tabs on persons of interest, and even closer
tabs ondefinitely each known Carrier.
“Should I leave you two alone or do you still want to see me?”
Aiden glanced up. Pale blue eyes assessed him from the doorway. “Two?” he
asked.
“Sure. You and that big ass chip on your shoulder. I just wondered if you two
needed some alone time.” Jonah’s lips curled back and gave the smallest glimpse of fang.
He sauntered inside and took a seat opposite Aiden.
For a second, last night’s feeding hung in the air between them. Jonah pretended
that he didn’t follow Aiden when the hunger rode him past sanity, and Aiden pretended that
Jonah hadn’t witnessed his humiliation yet again.
Jonah pointed to the phone. “Was that Graham?”
Aiden reclined in his chair, his ink pen tapping on the desktop. “How did you
know?”
“It’s easy. You get this look in your eyes when someone mentions your family,” he
said. “Like maybe that person isn’t going to wake up tomorrow.”
“He wants them dead, Jonah, my mother and father, my grandmother.” The pen in
his hand snapped, black ink dripping between his fingers. “It’s not their fault we were
created.”
“The Alliance has never believed in unsanctioned infections.” Jonah leaned back in
his own chair. “They like the power to veto club membership too much to allow a Carrier
that kind of power.”
Aiden dabbed at the ink with a handkerchief. “My family should not be held

8. responsible for the fact that our maker had his own insane agenda.”
“Think about it, Aiden. The Alliance says the Carrier that infected you was rabid,
that his viral strain was corrupted.” He paused. “What are the odds of an entire family
being infected and surviving? Or, give me one better, w. What are the odds that out of
those four, one becomes the most powerful Carrier on record?”
“What are you suggesting? That I’m defective?” He chuckled. “I thought we
established that a long time agoboth knew that already.”
“You’re not defective,” Jonah thundered. “The Alliance is so freaking scared of
someone having more power than they do that, they’re willing to wipe out an entire family
to keep the balance.”
“I’d kill them.”
“I’d help you.”
Things got quiet. It wasn’t often that you sat around and plotted the downfall of the
singularly most powerful governing body of supernatural citizens. So, Aiden changed the
subject.
“I have a job for you. The estate’s property manager passed away a few days ago.
That leaves the bulk of the company being held by his daughter, Elaine.” He paused when
Jonah muttered something derogatory about working with humans. It was an old argument
and one he didn’t have energy to fight right nowfor. Keeping ties within the human
community made them visible. Visibility equaled safety. “I need to know if she’ll be a
security risk. I don’t want to kick her while she’s down, but I won’t cover for a liability
either.”
“I’ll pull her file and history. Once I get through with the background stuff, I’ll

9. swing by with the information.” Jonah mock saluted, then swept out of the office.
A chuckle escaped Aiden’s lips, just as Jonah had intended. His amusement was
short lived as he turned his attention back to the files littering his desk. He sighed and
shuffled the papers with, his pen poised to sign away the funds and grant the permission
that everyone seemed so eager to have.