Novels by KAYLEB .R.

Sean’s POVBlood Carticons to Athdal HavenThe witch started screaming before she even opened her eyes. At first it was not loud. It was more like a sound stuck in her throat, half a breath, half a noise. Then it got louder. Every vampire in the room stopped moving, except me. I just stood there and watched her.She sat up really fast. The chains on her wrists made a loud noise against the stone floor, and her body jerked forward while her eyes looked at empty air, but I knew she was seeing something that none of us could see. That is the problem with witches. They see too many things.“Stop her,” Raze said quietly,“No,” my father said.The witch was breathing hard and fast, not steady. Then, slowly, her eyes moved and looked right at me.“She’s awake,” she said in a rough voice.My jaw got tight because I did not like where this was going. “Who?”The witch’s mouth moved at the corner, like she was almost smiling. “The one you touched,” she whispered. “The one who almost pushed death

Zara’s POV Athdal Haven, home of wolvesThey had already started Kain’s burial and nobody asked me if I was ready for it. The air smelled sharp with pine and crushed sage, and I hate both smells now because they will always remind me of this moment.His blood was still under my fingernails, dried in the little lines, and I would not wash it off because cleaning him away felt like telling a lie. I kept telling myself not to look at my hands. I looked anyway. I could not stop seeing his eyes when they ripped his heart out, and that picture wakes me up every damn night before my brain remembers that it really happened.They laid him on the stone. The burial slab sat right in the middle of the clearing, cut from old rock, and we call it the Breath Stone because it is where the living give a dead wolf’s last breath back to the earth.Today it did not feel like a stone, it felt like a place where they sacrifice people. White cloth wrapped him, neat and horrible, hiding where his chest had

Sean’s POVBeyond the Boundary / Blood Carticons, The Cave of VampiresWe had a plan before we went into the woods, because my father never sends us out without a map and a list of who might die. But everything went bad the second we stepped into their land.We moved through the trees without making a sound. You cannot see the border line, but you can feel it under your feet. I should have been nervous, but I wasn’t.The smell of wolfsbane hit me first when we got close. My jaw got tight. “Stay alert,” I said in a low voice.The two with me, Raze and Corvin, nodded. We had one job and that was to find the wolfsbane, take it, and leave before the wolves knew we were there. That was Lord Vale’s order, and his orders are not choices.Then we saw two people, a man and a woman, standing near the edge of the border. Wolves... you could tell by how they stood and how they smelled.They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, because nothing was going to stop us from getting the wolfsbane.

Zara’s POVAthdal Haven / Western BoundaryThe forest felt really wrong tonight, and I mean the kind of wrong that makes your skin feel cold because it was way too quiet and even the crickets were too scared to make any noise.I was out there anyway, standing right on the border line. Everything felt different now and I couldn’t do anything to change that.Dain, god. I could not get him out of my head. I kept seeing the same thing again and again. Those black lines moving up his neck while his eyes turned completely white. I don’t even have the right words to explain how that felt.My stupid hands failed him. I’m supposed to be the last Liphra with healing powers, but I couldn’t save anyone, and everyone in that room watched it happen. My fingernails dug into my arms so hard that they were probably going to leave bruises. I did not care about that at all.“I felt it slipping away from me,” I said out loud like there was someone there listening to me. “I had it in my hands... I was so

Zara's POV Athdal Haven, Home of WolvesWerewolves and vampires have hated each other for hundreds of years, but for a pack like mine that shares a border with the most dangerous vampire tribe, living here felt like being stuck in a nightmare every damned day. But we hadn’t been attacked in ten years. Not one time. Not until now, apparently, because the universe has a fucked up sense of humor.So when Karin and Zero dragged someone into the packhouse, with blood all over his stomach and neck, my stomach dropped hard because I knew exactly what that meant. These fucking bloodsuckers crossed the line."...please... a healer"Karin’s voice was so quiet I almost missed it, but it was enough to make everyone’s jaws lock and their hands turn into fists. The whole room changed in that second. Everybody knew what a vampire bite does to one of us, but no one wanted to say it first.Rhida stood up slowly, with that old-person bend in her back that she acts like isn’t there, and she started w