"And why is that?" Gray pressed with little patience.

The male shook his head. "Your Impure blood, of course."

A thread of unease moved through Gray. It was a thread born out of suspicion and all that he had learned living with the Roman brothers. "Why would they want my blood? It's weak-it's nothing."

The male tipped up his chin. "Exactly. And they don't want it reproduced, combined with the Pure-they don't want you spreading your Impure seed."

The thread expanded and made his heart constrict in his chest. "They wish to take my blood? Is this a death camp?"

'Tis the death of life as you know it, surely.

The silent words came from the female. Gray's eyes attempted to connect with hers, but she refused to look up.

Near rage began to bubble within him. This was bullshit. This wasn't happening. The Order would take nothing from him-not a hair on his head, not a drop of his blood. He whirled around, fisted the metal bars and started yelling. "Hey! I want out of here now!" His voice echoed in the massive space and spurred on a mental cacophony of pleas for help and whimpers of fear. "I don't belong here! Get me the fuck out-"

Before he finished his demands, he was yanked back by strong arms and landed on his ass in the dirt. The three naked Impures crowded around him.

"Christ!" said the young female.

"Are you trying to get us all killed?" muttered the male.

Trembling, their eyes frantic, unsure, the older male chastised him, "What's wrong with you? Do you want to be dragged from here, laid out on the stone this very moment?"

Snarling, Gray was off his ass and on his feet in seconds. "I don't belong here. This is some kind of mistake."

All three stared up at him, their eyes first angry, then confused. Finally, the female released a weighty breath. "You really don't know, do you? You don't know why you're here-why any of us are here."

Gray just stared at them, his nostrils flaring, his breathing abnormal.

"You weren't born in a credenti, then?" the younger male asked.

"No," Gray said through gritted teeth.

The male looked at the older one, then at the female, then back at Gray. His eyes were touched with pity now. "The Paleo has been in existence since the Order took power. It is where they perform the blood castration ritual."

A slow, sickening feeling moved through Gray's body. There was much he didn't know, so many terms he hadn't been brought up with, but these two words-blood castration-these two words he knew. He had heard about them from the Romans, from the dizzy and despondent minds of nearly every male and female under Ethan Dare's command.

Blood castration.

It was how the Order controlled their Impure population-kept them amenable. By draining all the desire, all the need, all the ability to fuck and to impregnate or be impregnated out of them...

He felt his cock stir against his leg and shook his head. "No. This cannot happen. We will not be forced into such-"

The older male laughed, such a bitter sound Gray could nearly taste it on his tongue. "There is no fighting them, young Impure." His face, so ancient and gaunt, so strangely familiar, softened. "We do not have the strength or the power to fight them."

This was madness-sick and inhumane. This was it, wasn't it? What the three Impure warriors were fighting against? Why they wanted him-needed his help? Gray's head buzzed. And he'd just run from them, like a child to a pretty toy.

Jesus, he should be ashamed.

"How long have you all been here?" Gray asked them. "Days? Weeks?"

"We have avoided the fangs of the Order for nearly three weeks now," the older male said.

"And you were taken from your homes?"

He nodded. "Inside our credenti in Wisconsin. My children here, Uma and Jacobi, were taken first. I, a few days later."

His children. Gray eyed the pair, both somewhere in their mid to late twenties. The female who wouldn't meet his gaze and the male who Gray had spoken to so harshly, the male he had distrusted. Reaching out, he offered his hand to the female, then to her brother. "My name is Gray. Donohue. I live in New York, was taken from there-right off the streets. I swear I'm going to do everything in my power to get us out of here."

Jacobi shook his head. "There is no way out of here but through the Order."

"Donohue?"

It was the older male who spoke. And the sound was riddled with shock. His face no longer held the calm sadness of a moment ago. It was tense and ashen.

"Father?" the female, Uma, said, gathering close to him, concerned. "Father, what's wrong?"

"It can't be." The older male stared at Gray, looked him up and down, shaking his head as he said, "No . . ."

Gray felt the man's anxiety, his deep stare. "What is it?"

"Father," Jacobi urged when the male said nothing. "Please."

"My closest friend, for fifty-two years . . ." uttered the older male. His eyes locked with Gray. "Jeremy Donohue."

The air rushed out of Gray's lungs and was lost. "You knew my father?"

The male reached for Gray's hand and squeezed it hard. "How is it you are here? It is not supposed to be. Your father took great pains to keep this a secret from you, from your sister."

"What secret is that?" Gray asked, his mind and his body pounding with the rapid beats of his heart. It was the sound, the pressure-filled sound of inevitability. He was about to hear-to learn things he wasn't sure he wanted to learn. And yet, he pressed on. "That my mother is a Pureblood? That she mated with a human and gave birth to two Impure balas? That much I know."