The room fell silent. She blinked several times as she stared down at him. Then she said in a quiet voice, "If you truly want to die, do it. I won't stop you this time. Sun's up in a few hours."

Synjon's chest squeezed with the pain of loss. "It's too late," he uttered.

"It's never too late," she returned.

He turned away. "Not in the way I wished it."

"Going with her," Petra finished.

Intense anger surged through him and he slammed his fist on the table. But when he spoke his tone was soft and deadly. "You took that from me, Veana."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Wise."

His gaze cut to her face. Her expression was anything but remorseful. "No, you're not."

"Right." She pushed away from the table and went to the small wood island in the kitchen, lighting more candles. "How dare I try and save someone's life? How dare I give a shit about someone I've never met, whose skin in burning in the fucking sun? I should have walked away, right? Let you die, let you scream and writhe in agony? What kind of creature helps one who's in pain!" She looked up, pinning him with her pale eyes. "I'm a monster!"

"No, Female," he said softly. "I'm the monster." He watched as her gaze moved over his fire-ravaged face. He sighed, some of his ire falling away. "Look, you were caught up in something that had nothing to do with you, I get that. But you interfered, you changed the plan."

"Was that really your plan, Mr. Wise?" Her brows lifted and she shook her head. "Didn't look like it."

His hands fisted around the wood chair. He didn't answer her. Not right away, at any rate. Maybe because the question was one he never wanted to answer. Juliet was gone, she was dead, he'd done what he came to do-give her a proper burial, say goodbye when he'd never had the chance before.

Now, his focus had to be on one thing and one thing only.

Hunting and killing Cruen.

"You want me to go, and I want to leave," he began with as much control as he could wrangle. "But I can't, not until I am healed. And you, tall drink of throat lashing whiskey, are the only one who can heal me."

Her hands went to her hips. "And how do you figure that?"

"Because you already have."

The surprise he expected to see was right there. "What?"

"The small amount of healing you see on my neck and face is because of you."

She shook her head, grinning like she wasn't about to play along with his joke. "I'm not a magician, Mr. Wise."

"No. But you are a vampire. A Pureblooded female vampire. And as such, you have the power to heal me."

* * *

Petra stared at him, this powerful, terrifying wreck of a male for a second or two, then turned back to the counter, picked up her paring knife, and began slicing fruit. Apple, pear, another apple.

"Did you hear me, Veana?"

He needed to stop calling her that. "I heard you."

"And yet you are not responding."

"This is how I respond to insanity."

"Cutting up fruit."

"That's right."

He released a weighty breath and came over to stand on the opposite side of the counter.

"Brave male, getting this close to my blade," she remarked, glancing up, a nervous energy crackling in her blood.

He didn't respond. Instead he glared at the cutting board. "Do you eat that?" he asked with distaste in his tone. "Food that drops from a tree? Food an animal would eat?"

"If I want to stay alive, yes."

He lifted his gaze. Dark as the night, and deeply intense. "But you aren't alive, Petra. Well, not in the way you think or believe."

His words cut through her well-constructed protective exterior. The one she'd built over her twenty-four years. It wasn't as though she didn't know she was different or that she didn't desire answers about who and what she was. She did. More than anything. But this male didn't seem to genuinely care about offering her that information. He seemed to be baiting her, tossing out little blasts of non-specific information he knew would shock her. Even if he claimed he was telling her the truth-that he absolutely knew what she was-how could she trust him?

She would find out what she was, but not this way.

She tore her gaze from his intimidating face with its painful burn scars and haunting eyes and pointed her knife at the door. "You can leave now."

He sniffed with derision. "That's the last thing you want me to do, Love."

To make her point, she turned the blade on him.

His brows lifted. "Hotheaded, emotional, brave; your doctor is one fortunate bloke."

She couldn't tell if he was serious or not, but she refused to bite. "I have work to do. If you still want to chat about what you believe my true species to be, come back later. Say, in three to four hours."

"The sun will be up, Petra."

"Exactly."

"You saw how that worked out the last time."

"I did," she answered, lowering her blade, her gaze and returning to her fruit. "And I promise not to interfere again."

But the male was not about to give up. He leaned over the counter. All the way until she felt his breath on her forehead. Her hand stilled, the blade of the knife halfway through a pear.

"You want to know who you are," he whispered. "Who you really are."