The older male's eyes drifted downward, dropping the connection. "He was no human."

Heat slammed into Gray's skin, blood, and he nearly shouted his reply. "What?"

"Your father." He swallowed, licked his dry lips. "He was an Impure." His gaze flickered back up. "One of the most powerful Impures in the Eternal Breed."

Gray shook his head. No. No. This wasn't happening-not this way. Not in a cage, stripped nude, waiting for his blood and his sex drive to run from two puncture wounds in his neck.

"Your father led the resistance," the older male continued. "He was raising an army to take down the Order. He had escaped his credenti when he was still a balas himself. He took care of himself, educated himself, and after he met your mother and gave life to you and your sister, he continued to protect Impures who had left their homes just as he protected you and your sister from being found."

"How?" Gray uttered, his throat as tight as the rest of him. "How did he protect us?"

"He fed you human blood."

"Oh, Christ," Gray whispered.

"It was the only way to tamp down your vampire side, your Impure blood so that the Order wouldn't find you."

Gray's mind spun. He didn't remember this-any of this. The blood meals-it didn't happen.

"But the Order found him."

The older male's words stalled Gray's heart. "What do you mean? What are you saying?"

Tears pricked the male's eyes and his daughter took his hand in hers. "After your birth, the Order found him, brought him here."

Bile rose in Gray's throat, and he shook his head. "No."

"They blood castrated him. And it wasn't just his desire they stole, but his drive, his hunger for the resistance. He wasn't himself again. It was no wonder that your mother turned-"

"My mother?" Gray interrupted. "They didn't take her? Drain her?"

"No. She is Pureblood after all. But by taking your father's desire from him, they forced your mother to turn to another for companionship." His eyes dropped again as if the words he spoke held shame for them all.

And perhaps they did, Gray thought, his mind, his world completely shattered into puzzle pieces he had no idea if he could ever reconstruct.

"Your name?" Gray asked softly.

The older male smiled. "Samuel Kendrick."

Yes. That name sounded right, sounded familiar. "You saw us, me and my sister, before the fire?"

Samuel's gaze shifted to Gray's fire damaged hands. "I did. Your father loved you so very much. I know he would've hated to leave you in such a way, and by the hand of ones he sought so hard to destroy."

Sara's face came before him in his mind. "My sister never meant for it to happen. She was a child, not-"

"No," Samuel said, his eyes now resolute. "That fire was no accident."

So caught up in the moment, in the sudden fierce protectiveness that only a brother feels for his sister, Gray didn't hear the bars pull back behind him, didn't sense the footsteps of the guards as they entered the room.

But Samuel and his children did.

"Don't fight them," Jacobi called, as one guard wrapped his wrists in rope behind his back. "It's not worth it. There is more pain to be had than just the drain of blood."

Instinct struck at Gray just as a guard reached for his arms. A stray dog unwilling to be caught and hauled to the pound. He turned fast and furious and punched the male in the face, then sent a hard kick into one knee. The guard went down with a groan and crash, and Gray leapt at him, ready to keep his back to the dirt, his hands off Gray's flesh. But before his feet even left the ground, he was suddenly rendered immobile.

Jacobi found his gaze and shook his head. "I told you not to fight. It's useless."

Once bound, all four of them were led out of the cell and down the dirt path that bordered the field and its stone tables. The Impure rats in their cages reached out to them as they passed, and Gray's mind was slammed with feeling and with cries and with a rage he now completely understood. They were halted on the path and ordered to stay put. Then Samuel was yanked forward by two guards and pulled toward the nearest stone slab.

Jacobi and Uma screamed for him, struggled against their captors and their bindings, but it was impossible. Their fate, all of their fates were not of their own making anymore.

As Samuel was placed on the slab, his arms and ankles bound, Jacobi strained like an animal at his bindings, and before Gray could say a word or warn him, the male got free and ran at his father.

He got only three feet before he was turned immobile and dropped to the ground.

His heart slamming in his ribs, his gut constricting, his limbs unless, Gray stared at the young male on the ground and at the tears that leaked from his eyes and ran heavy and grief stricken down his cheeks.

Oh, god . . . Oh, god . . .

It was Uma. Beside him. Her silent plea continued, and Gray looked up, followed her line of vision.

A female clad in long red robes had appeared directly at the side of the stone slab. Gray watched as her mouth opened, so wide it split her features in two, and brick red fangs descended menacingly. She was on Samuel in less than an instant, striking hard-entering his vein with a hiss and a crack, sucking the life's blood from his desire and his maleness as though it belonged to her.

Gray opened his mouth to yell, scream, curse his hatred and his vow to see every last member of the Order dead as the dirt at his feet. But no sound left his throat. A hand stole around his chest and he was pulled back so fast he lost his breath and his vision for several seconds.