Sin Undone

She chuckled. “Sounds so normal. I wouldn’t know what to do.” She lifted her head, stared into his eyes, and her smile faltered. “What if… What if I could get out of my commitment to the Assassin’s Guild?”


Grief hollowed out his chest, turning it into a bottomless pit as he brought his hand up to cup her cheek. Even if she could get out of it, he couldn’t get out of his own obligations. And he definitely couldn’t risk hurting or even killing Sin. “Don’t. Let’s not go there.”

She nipped the pad of his finger. “Come visit me. You can come to the den—”

“Sin…”

“Please.” The strain in her voice matched the pain in her eyes. “I’m not… I’m not ready to give you up.”

God, his heart broke wide open, and he heard himself reply with a serious disconnect between his mouth and his brain. “Yeah, I’ll go to you,” he said.

But it was a lie.

Sin Undone





Twenty-one


The emergency department was in chaos when Con stepped out of the Harrowgate, leaving Sin inside, her lips swollen from his good-bye kiss. Don’t think about it. Not thinking about it actually turned out to be easy, given the crazy medical situation. The injured wargs from the battle in Canada had been triaged, were lying around the emergency department on stretchers and on the floor, lined up all the way down the two hallways leading from the area.

Con immediately jumped in to help, and it was nearly four hours before the situation was under control. He spent the next hour with Bastien, doing what he could to comfort the warg until Con called time of death. Afterward, Sin’s brothers, Tayla, and Luc joined him in the waiting area.

“Where’s Sin?” Shade asked as he stripped off his bloody surgical gloves. Con’s own gloves got tossed in the trash, and man, he couldn’t wait to get in the shower. “On her way to the den.” Eidolon swore. “I thought you were going to talk her out of that. She didn’t need to go back there. She’d be safe here.” Unbelievably, Lore came to Con’s defense. “She’s better off there. She needs to get back to normal.” Normal. What a fucking joke that was. Her normal was pain and isolation. And meaningless sex. Probably with that Lycus guy. Jealousy expanded in Con’s chest as an inappropriate blast of heat curled through his veins. There had been nothing meaningless about what he and Sin had done at the mountain safe house. Or in the snow. Every cell in his body vibrated with hunger for her, both for her body and her blood, and just thinking about it was revving him up again.

“What about you, Con?” Shade asked, and Con took two deep, calming breaths before he answered. “What about me?”

“You aren’t a danger to her, right?”

“No,” Con said levelly. “I’m not.” But even he didn’t believe his own words.

Wraith flipped a blade in the air, a very Sin-like move. “Okay, what the fuck is all the subtext here?” He blinked when everyone stared at him. “What? Like I don’t know what subtext is? I watch movies.”

“That’s because you can’t read,” Tayla said brightly, and the demon shot her the finger. One on each hand. E and Lore returned their focus to Con with varying expressions of confusion, and Shade looked like he might want to rip Con’s throat out. Yeah, Con’s secret was about to be revealed. “Male dhampires are prone to blood addiction if they feed off the same female host more than a few times,” Shade said. “Isn’t that right, Con?”

Eidolon swore under his breath. “How did I not know that?”

“Ever had to chain up a female dhampire and, ah, coax out her deepest, darkest secrets?” Shade asked, every word laced with dark sarcasm. “Well, that’s why.” Con’s entire body jerked with surprise. “You tortured a dhampire?” “Trust me, she didn’t get anything she didn’t want.” Shadows writhed in Shade’s eyes as he locked them on Con, as if daring him to challenge him. “There were things Shade had to do before he met Runa,” Eidolon said quietly. “So let’s drop it.” Damn. Con had seen Shade’s little BDSM cave hideaway once, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Shade had used it for anything other than pleasure. And what did E mean by “had to”? Con wondered what other information Shade had gotten from the dhampire female.

“So?” Shade asked. “Are you a danger to our sister?” Con struggled to keep his voice level, to convince these guys that he was no threat to her. To convince himself. But the image of her being with other males was making his blood boil and his temper flare.

And he was… hungry.

“I am not a danger,” he swore. “I’m never going to see her again.”

Lore’s gloved hand worked into a fist at his side, something Con had noticed he did when he was agitated. “Why not?” “I’m quitting Underworld General as of now, and after I take care of a few things, I’m going back to my clan’s lands in Scotland.” “Ah… does Sin know?”

“No.”