She disappeared into the adjacent bedroom, still talking a mile a minute. “Are you hungry? Would you like me to fix you something to eat?”

Jenna walked over to the open doorway. “Tell me what’s going on here. I mean, what’s really going on.”

Finally, Alex paused.

She pivoted her head around and just stared for what felt like a full minute of silence.

“I want to know,” Jenna said. “Damn it, I need to know. Please, Alex, as my friend. Tell me the truth.”

Alex stared at her, let out a long exhalation as she slowly shook her head. “Oh, Jen. There’s so much you don’t know. Things I didn’t know myself until just a couple of weeks ago, after Kade showed up in Harmony.”

Jenna stood there, watching her normally frank and forthright friend struggle for words. “Tell me, Alex. What is this all about?”

“Vampires, Jen.” The word was whispered, but Alex’s gaze didn’t waver. “You know they’re real now. You saw that for yourself. But what you don’t know is that they’re not like we’ve been taught to believe from movies and horror novels.”

Jenna scoffed. “That thing that attacked me was pretty horrific.”

“I know,” Alex continued, imploring now. “I can’t excuse what the Ancient did to you. But hear me out. There are others of his kind that are not so different from us, Jen. On the surface, of course, we aren’t quite the same. They have different needs for survival, but deep down, there is a core of humanity inside them. They have families and friends. They are capable of incredible love and kindness and honor. Just like us, there is good and bad among them, too.”

It wasn’t that long ago—a mere week, in fact—that Jenna would have burst out laughing at hearing something so outlandish as what Alex was telling her now.

But everything had changed since then. A week ago felt like a century from where she was standing now. Jenna couldn’t laugh, couldn’t even muster a word of denial as Alex went on, explaining how the Breed, as they preferred to be called, had come to exist and then thrive for thousands of years in the shadows of the human world.

Jenna could only listen as Alex told her how the Order had been founded centuries ago by Lucan and a handful of others, most of whom were long dead. The men headquartered in this compound were all warriors, including Kade and Brock, even the charmingly geekish Gideon. They were Breed, preternatural and deadly. They were something other, just as Jenna’s instincts had told her.

To a man, the Order’s members, then as now, had pledged themselves to provide protection for both the human race and the Breed, their mission hunting down blood-addicted vampires called Rogues.

Jenna held her breath when Alex softly confessed that when she was a child in Florida, her mother and younger brother were attacked and killed by Rogues. Alex and her father had narrowly escaped with their lives. “The story we told everyone about my mom and Richie when we moved to Harmony was just that, Jen. A story. It was a lie we both wanted to believe. I think Dad eventually did, and then the Alzheimer’s took care of the rest. I almost could have believed our lie, too, until the killings began up in Alaska. Then I knew. I couldn’t run from the truth anymore. I had to face it.”

Jenna closed her eyes, letting all of these incredible realizations settle on her shoulders like a heavy cloak. She could hardly dismiss what she’d been through, no more than she could dismiss the raw pain of her best friend’s experience as a child. Alex’s ordeal was in her past, thankfully. She had carried on. She had found happiness finally, perhaps ironically, with Kade.

Jenna hoped she might be able to move beyond the nightmare she’d endured, but she felt the cold touch of a shackle when she thought about the bit of unknown material floating beneath the base of her skull.

“What about me?” she heard herself murmur. Her voice rose with the spike of anxiety that flooded her bloodstream. “What about the thing that’s inside me, Alex? What is it? How am I going to get rid of it?”

“We don’t have those answers yet, Jenna.” Alex moved closer, concern creasing her brow. “We don’t know, but I promise you, we’ll find a way to help you. Kade and the rest of the Order will do everything in their power to figure this out. In the meantime, they will protect you and make sure you’re well cared for.”

“No.” Jenna wrapped her arms around herself. “All I need is to be back home. I want to go back to Harmony.”

“Oh, Jen.” Alex slowly shook her head. “The life you knew in Alaska is gone now. Everything in Harmony is changed. Precautions had to be taken.”

She didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What are you talking about? What precautions? What’s changed?”

“The Order had to make sure that word of the Ancient and the strange happenings around town didn’t leak out to the rest of the population.” Alex’s gaze stayed steady on hers. “Jenna, they scrubbed everyone’s memories of the week surrounding the killings in the bush and the other deaths around Harmony. As far as anyone up there is concerned, you and I have both been gone from Harmony for months already. You can’t go back and raise a lot of questions. It would all come crashing down around us if you do.”

Jenna forced herself to hold it together as she processed everything she was hearing. Vampires and covert headquarters. An alternate world that had existed alongside her own reality for thousands of years. Her best friend of the past two decades having barely survived a vampire attack as a child.

And then the part that brought back a fresh wave of grief: the recent multiple homicides in Harmony, which apparently included her brother. “Tell me what happened to Zach.”

Alex’s face was full of regret. “He had secrets, Jen. A lot of them. Maybe it’s better if you don’t know everything—”

“Tell me,” Jenna said, hating the gentle treatment she was getting, particularly from Alex. “We’ve never let bullshit stand between us, and I sure as hell don’t want to start now.”

Alex nodded. “Zach was dealing drugs and alcohol to the Native populations. He and Skeeter Arnold had been working together for some time. I didn’t figure it out until just before Zach …” She exhaled softly. “When I confronted Zach about what I knew, he got violent, Jen. He pulled a gun on me.”

Jenna closed her eyes, sick to think that her older brother—the decorated cop she strived to emulate practically all her life—was, in fact, corrupt. Granted, they had never been truly close, siblings or not, and they’d been drifting apart more and more in recent years.

God, how many times had she pressed Zach to look into Skeeter Arnold’s questionable activities around Harmony? Now Zach’s reluctance to do so made a lot of sense. He didn’t really care about what was going on in town. He was more concerned with protecting himself. How far would he have gone to protect his dirty little secret?

“Did he hurt you, Alex?”

“No,” she said. “But he would have, Jen. I took off on my snowmachine, out to your place. He followed me. When we got there, he fired off a shot—to scare me, more than anything. Everything happened so fast after that. The next thing I knew, the Ancient had crashed out of your cabin and took him down. After the initial strike, it was over very quickly for him.”

Jenna stared then, for a long moment, utterly at a loss for words. “Jesus Christ, Alex. Everything you’re telling me here … it’s all true? All of it?”

“Yes. You said you wanted to know. I couldn’t withhold it from you, and I think it’s better that you understand.”

Jenna stepped backward, stumbling a bit. She was suddenly awash in confusion. Suddenly swamped in emotion that shortened her breath and put a tight squeeze on her chest. “I have to … need some time alone …”

Alex nodded. “I know how hard this must be for you, Jenna. Believe me, I know.”