I moisten my lips, my gaze slipping to the pool of blood and back to him again. “Y’all really need to work on your welcome here.”

His mouth lifts in a half smile. “Your voice should recover.” His gaze flicks to my shoulder. “Anything else wrong?” He peels back my collar. “How are your stitches?”

I shake my head.

He nods. “Okay. I’ll stitch you back up, but shower first.” His lip curls as his eyes skim me. “You’re a mess.”

I glance down. Every inch of me is covered in blood.

“C’mon. You treat carriers.” I swallow against my ravaged throat. “You must see this all the time.”

“We rarely have violence here,” Rhiannon defends, a touch of accusation in her voice, a sharpness to her eyes. Like I somehow brought this with me.

I grunt. “It’s just me then. I incite violence by . . . taking up space.”

Her lips compress.

Just then Caden approaches, the lines of his face set grimly as his amber eyes assess me.

I look up at him and swallow before speaking, trying to work moisture into my mouth and ease the words out. “Rhiannon was just telling me about what a peace-loving operation you run here.”

The corners of his mouth pull downward, and he suddenly appears older than his nineteen years. “This isn’t usual.”

This only aggravates me further—and the fact that I had started to believe myself safe. That I was beginning to relax here.

He continues, “Hoyt has been with us for a while and never showed any signs. . . .” His voice fades. A muscle ticks in his jaw. He glances to Terrence, who stands silently beside him, taking in our little play.

“Never showed any signs of violence,” I finish for him. “Right? That’s what you were going to say?” My last few words are just a rasp, a scratch of whispery sound, but he hears them.

“That’s right,” he agrees, his eyes like molten earth as they peer down at me, his expression unnerving in its intensity.

Am I the only one here who hasn’t forgotten what we are? No one is trustworthy. Deep down they know that, or they wouldn’t be concerned about blindfolding people.

Marcus materializes beside Caden and Terrence. “Why should he have wanted to kill you?”

“I don’t know,” I growl. “I didn’t know him. Did he need a reason?”

Marcus snarls. It’s the only word for it, and I go from strongly disliking him to hating him right then. I was the one nearly strangled.

“Maybe you invited him in here and then turned on him?” Marcus arches an eyebrow like he’s landed on some genius possibility.

“When would I have done that? I’ve been escorted anytime I’ve ever left this room.” I snort. “And why? Just for the pleasure of killing him?”

Marcus shook his head. “There must have been some reason my cousin came in here.”

That’s right. Hoyt was his cousin. Great. Now this guy will never get off my case.

“I don’t know why he wanted to kill me.” I ignore the way every word I utter feels like a razor slashing into my windpipe. “Maybe he just wanted to kill me because, oh, I don’t know”—I angle my head to the side and look from Marcus to Caden—“he’s a carrier and that’s what carriers do?”

This shuts them up. They look to each other and back to me again.

“That’s not what we believe here,” Caden says, and he actually looks slightly disappointed in me. “We don’t prejudge.”

I blink. “So this is some perfect utopia you have here then, is that it? Really? How’s that working out?” I motion to myself as evidence. “And that’s why you locked me in? Why you guard new carriers? Right.”

Marcus’s expression shifts from angry into something mild, but there’s a sly cunning there, just beneath the surface. It reminds me of so many other carriers to cross my path lately. I suppose there is uniformity, a sameness to be found within people whose moral compass isn’t quite set right. Not a comfort, though. I would actually prefer open hostility.

“Maybe it’s you,” Marcus suggests in a silky voice. “Maybe Hoyt recognized a bad seed. Maybe he saw something in you that needed eliminating.”

“Marcus,” Caden warns.

“She’s not all she seems, Anderson. You might be blinded by a pretty face, but I’m not. Why don’t you let me handle her? I think you’ve lost objectivity.”

I suck in a tight breath, waiting, watching. Tension feathers Caden’s jaw before he speaks. “And you just lost your cousin. You’re lacking objectivity, too.”

Terrence nods in agreement beside them, but I am stuck on one word. Too. As in Caden agrees with him that he has no objectivity when it comes to me?

“Give her to me,” Marcus insists. The hands curling at his sides tell me he’s not that unlike his cousin. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

A growl escapes me. Builds up inside my chest. For some reason my primitive side surfaces around him. Or maybe that’s just an excuse. Maybe it’s just a result of coming out on top of a death match not even a half hour ago. Maybe this is my norm from here on out. A bracing thought, but nothing that really shakes the foundations of my world. This is what I’ve become. I kill when I need to.

Like before.

And yet not like before. Yes, I just killed someone, but this time is different.