Free Dominion by Marissa Farrar

again?” he suggested.
    “And doors slammed. The front door burst wide open!”
    “I’m not sure what to say.” He frowned. “Perhaps I didn’t close it properly when I left.” He considered the possibility. Things weren’t right with him. He may have made a mistake and not closed the door on his way out.
    Her shoulders sagged and she sighed. “So you think I’m just being paranoid?”
    “I don’t know, Serenity. Are you sure you didn’t actually see anyone?”
    “I thought I did, a movement perhaps, but now I’m not sure. Perhaps I freaked myself out for no reason.”
    Unprompted, she burst into tears.
    “Hey, Serenity, it’s all right. Everything is all right.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She buried her face against his chest and he lowered his nose to the top of her head, breathing in her familiar scent.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away from him to look up into his face. “ These past couple of days have been awful. I hate us fighting, but sometimes the things you do frighten me.”
    “I don’t mean to scare you. I’d never do anything to frighten you on purpose.”
    “You went out and killed a man when you didn’t need to.”
    He took a deep breath. Telling her would be opening up a whole new world of worry for Serenity—something he didn’t want to do. But what other choice did he have? Keeping things a secret from her would only drive them apart.
    He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “You’re right, I did kill a man, but I don’t remember doing it.”
    She sniffed and wiped a tear from her cheek. A little line appeared between her eyebrows as she asked, “What do you mean?”
    “Exactly what I said. One moment I was walking down Venice Beach and the next I was standing in the street with a dead body at my feet.”
    “Are you sure you killed him?”
    “Yes. I had his blood in my veins. I could feel it.”
    Serenity glanced away, her lips pressed together. Despite all their time together, he knew she still found it difficult to accept that he killed on a regular basis. Serenity had killed as well—to protect herself from Jackson, and from the vampires, Madeline and Demitri, who had threatened her family’s safety— but knowing someone you loved hurt others was never an easy thing to bear. He tried to keep that side of his life away from her as much as possible, tried to allow her to pretend it didn’t happen, but sometimes occasions arose where they both needed to face what he was head - on.
    He debated telling her about what happened in the forest, but realized keeping something from her may only prove to be dangerous. “There’s something else. The body came back.”
    “What?”
    “After I’d drained him, I took the body to the forest to hide it, but it started to come ba ck and not in the normal way. The body acted as though it was aware and wanted to hurt me. I broke its neck , but it kept coming. In the end, I had to rip off its head.”
    She pushed him away and took a step back , her eyes wide with alarm. “Jesus, Sebastian! How could that even happen?”
    He shook his head. “I have no idea.”
    She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again.
    “What?” he prompted. “What is it?”
    She glanced away and shook her head. “This is going to sound weird, but tonight isn’t the first night I’ve felt like something strange is happening around here .”
    He frowned. “ What do you mean ?”
    “Things moving. Feeling like I’m not alone.”
    Alarm raced through him. “S o s omeone else was in the house. ”
    “No one I saw.”
    He risked a smile. “Do we have a ghost?”
    She smiled back and ducked her head in embarrassment. “I thought the same thing myself.”

“You think it’s a possibility?”
    She lifted her gaze back to his. “I doubt it, but something is going on. It’s not a coincidence that after I saw something in your fa ce at the restaurant, strange things start happening in the house and