Pain slammed into me, radiating through my body in waves that took my breath. As I fell sideways, blood splattered onto the already crimson-stained floor. I sucked in a harsh breath as the wounds on my cheek healed themselves within seconds. Dimitri hit me with his clawed knuckles again, and I rocked backward, gasping for breath, but unwilling to make the slightest sound of pain. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he hurt me.

“You realize patience is a virtue I learned before you were born.”

I shivered at his voice, and even my wings seemed to have a mind of their own when they folded flat onto my back, protecting their spines from his wrath. After he broke one, Shane’s blood—along with my extra healing ability—healed the bone. Before anything else could happen—including finding out what becoming half vampire, half angel meant—Dimitri had dragged me from my cell and chained me in the middle of the hall again. He used me as his personal punching bag, each time throwing me back in with Shane when he got bored. I was too tired and wounded from blood loss to have any conversation with Shane, and he didn’t speak either. Each time, he just held me close, comforting me and healing me with his blood without a second thought.

I’d lost count of how many times his blood had healed me. I didn’t want to drink his blood, didn’t want to make him weak, but he insisted. Even when I accidentally cut my finger on the rusted bars of our cell, he gave me his blood to heal the wound despite the fact that my body could heal quickly on its own.

He was too kind and considerate. He should have tried to kill me to save his own neck, but that thought never crossed his mind. He stuck by me, and protected me the best he could.

“You realize I don’t give a crap,” I replied to his comment, spitting blood from my mouth. Thinking about Shane strengthened me a little, and I glared at him through the sheet of my wet hair, still breathing heavily. The pain from his blows had gone, but the pain from the sun rising still pulsed through my body, and my muscles twitched. I’d barely been able to handle the pain when I was human and blocked from the moon, but I was a lot stronger in this form, and the pain gave me a slight headache and made my muscles ache.

In some ways, I was grateful, because I knew I wouldn’t have been able to handle the pain from not changing, as well as the pain Dimitri dished out with his fists. Plus, there was the problem that I could die if I changed back into a human.

And I wasn’t ready to leave this world yet. Not until I finished what I swore I’d finish, and destroy all the vampires who hunted and killed the humans.

It was a small thing to be grateful for, but something nonetheless.

He raised his brow and inspected his claws, watching in fascination as my blood dripped from the ends, then cast his eyes upward. He knew the sun was up, but I knew he wouldn’t expose the light and make me human.

Vampires couldn’t stand the sun, no matter how strong they were.

And that was the reason I was only slightly grateful—I was immortal and couldn’t die, which meant Dimitri could do whatever he liked with me without fear of killing me. As he was my sire, I couldn’t do anything to repay the favor.

I didn’t know exactly how the bond between a sire and the ones they turned worked, having not planned on becoming a vampire myself. Shane explained that when you had the blood of a vampire in your body, it gave them the connection they needed to keep track of their newly turned and control them.

Some vampires did this to protect the humans—something I struggled to believe after the vampires had destroyed my life, and having seen first-hand what most of the vampires were like with humans. Others, like Dimitri, controlled his young to form an army, to hunt the humans in large groups, making him and his young deadly and unstoppable.

To say he was a bad example for other vampires was an understatement.

The vampires I’d killed before Shane found me had been Dimitri’s young, and he’d felt each of their deaths. Apparently, he used the bond as a beacon to find me, and Shane had taken the opportunity to find me first and save me.

I turned my attention to the humans lined up against the wall, chains around their necks, wrists, and ankles, their surviving tormentors at their side. They were the reason I put up with the pain without complaint. I had to save them from the fates I could see gleaming in the vampires’ eyes.

Dimitri tutted and threw his clawed knuckles across the room. They screeched across the floor. A shiver ran down my spine. He crouched in front of me and gripped my face between his long fingers. “It would be so easy to open up that ceiling and kill you with my bare hands.”

“So why don’t you?” I knew he wouldn’t. He had a one-of-a-kind half angel, half vampire in his grasp. He wouldn’t let that go so quickly.

Not when he could turn me into the ultimate weapon.

“Because what would the fun in that be?” He laughed before becoming serious again. “But you, my little flower petal, do not break easily, and I find myself... bored. But what to do? What to do?” He stroked his thumb over my thumping vein and smiled.