Bane was nodding at Hunter when the woman he hadn’t even known he’d been waiting three hundred years for ran into the room and started shouting at him.

“Who the hell are you, and where is my staff? My God, you’re not even sterile, and ninety percent of his body is open to compromise!” She ran across the room, put herself between Hunter and Bane, and shoved Bane away from the bed, putting her entire body weight into it.

Bane blinked and actually fell back a step, not from her ineffectual shove, but from the fact that she’d actually done it.

Grown men feared him.

Vampires feared him.

Things that were far worse than even vampires Feared. Him.

And this small human­­—with a face that was all furious, ocean-blue eyes and pale, creamy, glowing, skin—was still pushing him.

And shouting in his face.

Every predatory instinct in his body woke up, shocking his nerve endings into an almost-electric state of heightened awareness, and his mind started shouting a warning at him—threat, threat, threat.

He looked into her eyes, and those same instincts seared a demand into his brain—mine, mine, mine.