Scorched by Sharon Ashwood

sunbathing before I ask Holly to choose between her lover and her sister.”
    “Who says she gets to choose?”
    “Don’t push me.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Ashe let the helmet dangle from her hand, appearing to relax a degree. Above her, the stars were faint pinpricks, dimmed by the ambient city light. “Clear something up for me. Grandma wrote to me once that she knew you years ago. Is that true?”
    “I’ve been in Fairview a long time.”
    “Then how come I never saw you around when I was growing up?”
    “Vampires make parents and grandparents nervous.”
    “Now there’s a shocker.”
    “I would never hurt a child. I do what I can to respect families, which is why you’re still breathing.”
    Ashe laughed, and it hung in the air like a chemical accident. “Sure. Did you know there’s a family reunion in Hawaii? That’s where Grandma is right now, but Holly’s not there.”
    “Why aren’t you?”
    “Because of you. I couldn’t exactly play on the beach knowing my sister was sleeping with the dead.”
    “That’s your decision.”
    “Yeah, before you blow this off, think a minute. If Holly went, she’d have to explain to the relatives that her main squeeze is an animated corpse. Like that’s going to go down well with a bunch of witches hoping and praying for the next generation of magical babies. We’re a dying people. Children mean a lot to us.”
    Alessandro stood silent and expressionless, letting the implication of her words turn him to stone. Holly hadn’t said a thing about the reunion. “She’s in school. She couldn’t go anyway.”
    “We’re her family, Caravelli. You say you respect the concept. Try and remember what it means.”
    “I would never stop her from going if she wanted to.”
    “Yeah, yeah, you love each other, blah blah blah.”
    Alessandro pressed his lips together. He wasn’t sure what Ashe had in life besides attitude, but it wasn’t making her a happy person. “Is there a point here besides the stake in your back pocket?”
    “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing to my sister ? She’s a warm-blooded young woman who deserves a real, live man. You leave her in peace.”
    Ouch .
    Ashe walked toward her bike, cutting across the grass to give him a wide berth. “See you around, fang-boy.”
    Impassively, Alessandro watched her put on her helmet and mount the Ducati. The bike pulled away, the motor snarling through the still, dark streets. With a disgusted sigh, he headed up the front steps, trying to shake off the dirty feeling Ashe had left in her wake.
    Surely if Holly was unhappy, she’d say something....
     
    So much for my first hunt . I am the most pathetic vampire ever to rise. After Constance’s dismal attempt to bite Conall Macmillan, the Castle might as well crumble around her ears just as Reynard had feared. At least the rubble would hide her shame.
    For a fleeting moment, she wondered whether there was any truth to Reynard’s doomsday rumors, but she had far more immediate things to worry about, like rescuing her son. Keeping her family together. Anything else, however urgent, fell to a distant second.
    Constance wandered slowly back toward Atreus’s rooms, looking for Viktor. The beast had wandered off again. Like most canines, he’d come back to the last place he’d considered home. The question was always when.
    She’d been searching for the werebeast when she’d seen Bran. She’d followed the guardsman, hoping he’d lead her to Reynard’s headquarters. It was likely that’s where they had taken Sylvius’s box.
    Constance stopped, twisting her long hair into a rope, a nervous habit from childhood. Then Conall Macmillan had come along. And didn’t he make a fine mess, knocking Bran unconscious so I couldn’t follow him? On top of that, after she had decided Macmillan would do for her first meal, he went and turned into a cloud of dust. Blast him!
    She still felt Macmillan’s touch on her flesh, a brand that marked her as a