And to my readers, a debt of gratitude for embracing my characters and for honoring me with the gift of your time and friendship whenever you sit down to read one of my books. I hope you continue to enjoy the ride!

CHAPTER

One

Life … or death?

The words drifted at her through the darkness. Detached syllables. The rough scrape of a flat, airless voice that reached into the heavy drowse of her mind and forced her to come awake, to listen. To make a choice.

Life?

Or death?

She groaned against the cold plank floor beneath her cheek, trying to bar the voice—and the relentless decision it demanded—from her mind. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard these words, this question. Not the first time in the space of some endless hours that she’d peeled one heavy eyelid open in the frigid stillness of her cabin home and found herself looking into the terrible face of a monster.

Vampire.

“Choose,” the creature whispered thinly, the word drawn out in a slow hiss. He crouched over her where she lay, curled and shivering on the floor near the cold fireplace. His fangs glistened in the moonlight, razor sharp, lethal. The tips of them were still stained with fresh blood—her blood, drawn from the bite he’d made in her throat only moments before.

She tried to get up, but couldn’t rouse her weakened muscles to so much as flex in response. She tried to speak, managed only a rasping moan. Her throat felt as dry as ash, her tongue thick and listless in her mouth.

Outside, the Alaskan winter roared, bitter and unforgiving, filling her ears. No one to hear her screams, even if she’d tried.

This creature could kill her in an instant. She didn’t know why he hadn’t. She didn’t know why he kept pressing her for the answer to a question she had been asking herself nearly every day of her life for the past four years.

Ever since the accident that had taken her husband and little girl.

How often had she wished she’d been killed along with them on that icy stretch of highway? Everything would have been so much easier, less painful, if she had.

She could feel a silent judgment in the unblinking, inhuman eyes that fixed on her in the dark now, searingly bright, pupils as thin as a cat’s. Intricate skin markings tracked all over the creature’s hairless head and immense body. The webbed pattern seemed to pulse with violent color as he watched her. Silence lengthened while he patiently examined her as he might an insect trapped inside a glass jar.

When he spoke again, this time his lips did not move. The words penetrated her skull like smoke and sank deeply into her mind.

The decision is yours, human. Tell me what it will be: life, or death?

She turned her head away and closed her eyes, refusing to look at the creature. Refusing to be part of the private, unspoken game he seemed to be playing with her. A predator toying with his prey, watching it squirm while he decided whether to spare it or not.

How it shall end depends on you. You will decide.

“Go to hell,” she slurred, her voice thick and rusty.

Iron-strong fingers clamped onto her chin and wrenched her around to face him once more. The creature cocked his head, those catlike amber eyes emotionless as he drew in a rasping breath, then spoke through his bloodstained lips and fangs.

“Choose the course. There isn’t much time now.”

There was no impatience in the voice that growled so near her face, only a flat indifference. An apathy that seemed to say he truly didn’t care one way or the other what answer she gave him.

Rage boiled up inside her. She wanted to tell him to fuck off, to kill her and get it over with, if that’s what he meant to do. He wasn’t going to make her beg, damn it. Defiance churned in her gut, pushing anger up her parched throat and onto the very tip of her tongue.

But the words wouldn’t come.

She couldn’t ask him for death. Not even when death might be the only escape from the terror that held her now. The only escape from the pain of having lost the two people she’d loved the most and the seemingly pointless existence that was all she had left since they’d been gone.

He released her from his hard grasp and watched with maddening calm as she sagged back down to the floor. Time stretched, impossibly long. She struggled to summon her voice, to speak the word that would either free her or condemn her. Crouched near her still, he rocked back on his heels and cocked his head in silent consideration.

Then, to her horror and confusion, he extended his left arm and sliced one talonlike fingernail deep into the flesh above his wrist. Blood spilled from the wound, dripping wetly, scarlet raindrops falling to the wood planks below him. He thrust his finger into the open cut, digging into the muscle and tendons of his arm.

“Oh, Jesus. What are you doing?” Revulsion squeezed her senses. Her instincts clamored with the warning that something awful was about to happen—maybe even more awful than the horror of her captivity with this nightmarish being who’d taken her prisoner hours ago to feed off her blood. “Oh, my God. Please, no. What the hell are you doing?”

He didn’t reply. Didn’t even look at her until he’d withdrawn something minuscule from within his flesh and now held it pinched between his bloodied thumb and finger. He blinked slowly, a brief shuttering of his eyes before they pinned her in a hypnotic beam of amber light.

“Life or death,” the creature hissed, those ruthless eyes narrowing on her. He leaned toward her, blood still dripping from the self-inflicted wound in his forearm. “You must decide, right now.”

No, she thought desperately. No.

A rushing surge of fury rolled up from somewhere deep inside her. She couldn’t hold it down. Couldn’t bite back the burst of rage that climbed up her raw throat and exploded out of her mouth in a banshee scream.

“No!” She raised her fists and pounded on the hard, inhuman flesh of the creature’s bare shoulders. She thrashed and raged, railing at him with every ounce of strength she could summon, relishing in the pain of impact every time her blows landed on his body. “Damn you, no! Get the hell away from me! Don’t touch me!”

She beat her fists against him again, over and over. Still, he crept closer.

“Leave me alone, damn it! Get away!”

Her knuckles connected with his shoulders and the sides of his skull, blow after blow, even as a heavy darkness began to descend on her. It felt thick around her, a sodden shroud that made her movements sluggish, her thoughts muddled in her mind.

Her muscles slackened, refusing to cooperate. Yet still she pounded on the creature, striking slowly, as though she were throwing punches in the middle of a black, tar-filled ocean.

“No,” she moaned, eyes closed to the darkness that surrounded her. She kept sinking deeper. Farther and farther into a soundless, weightless, endless void. “No … let me go. Damn you … let me go …”

Then, when it seemed as though the darkness that enveloped her might never release her, she felt something cool and moist pressed against her brow. Voices speaking in an indiscernible jumble somewhere over her head.

“No,” she murmured. “No. Let me go …”

Summoning the last shred of strength and will she possessed, she threw another punch at the creature holding her down. Thick muscle absorbed the blow. She latched on to her captor then, grabbing at him, clawing at him. Startled, she felt the crush of soft fabric bunching in her hands. Warm, knit wool. Not the clammy, bare skin of the creature who’d broken into her cabin and held her prisoner.

Confusion fired a warning shot in her sluggish mind. “Who … no, don’t touch me …”