Chapter 1

A dull ache spread across my lower abdomen, but before I could recover, more anonymous emails flooded in. Every subject line was the same: Greetings from Adrian Blackwood's one true love.

The photos and videos were crystal clear — some secretly taken, others filmed by my husband himself.

In the darkness outside a hotel, the man stood at the entrance, his black coat hanging open, his profile sharp and striking, yet his hands gently adjusting the scarf around the woman in his arms. She rose on her toes and pressed a tender kiss to his jaw, her eyes crinkling with laughter.

They flaunted their intimacy without a shred of shame, as if they were the devoted couple — with no awareness whatsoever that what they were doing was an affair.

A chill crept through me, slow and heavy. The diamond on my ring finger caught the light, its brilliance stinging my eyes.

But what hurt the most wasn't the photos or the videos. It was the cold, clinical timestamps embedded in each email.

The earliest security footage was from two years ago.

While my husband was making out with another woman at a bar, I was at home, unconscious from blood loss after a miscarriage.

I had called him six times that day. He didn't pick up once. He only rushed to the hospital after a neighbor found me and called an ambulance. He told me he'd been in an important meeting with foreign clients and had his phone turned off.

Getting pregnant had taken everything out of me. It was already incredibly difficult for a human to conceive a vampire's child, and the miscarriage had devastated my body. We'd had a massive fight two years ago, and it was Adrian who stayed by my side, apologizing over and over, swearing I was the only one he loved, until I finally forgave him.

But the photos and videos in those emails proved that during that same period, he'd been whispering sweet nothings to another woman.

Only now did I understand — all those late-night outings weren't because of overtime.

There was also a transaction history in the emails. I opened it, and the endless rows of numbers on the screen made my eyes burn. Two hundred thousand dollars a month, wired to Clara like clockwork, without a single break. The very first transfer had started exactly two years ago.

The day I lost our baby to a miscarriage, he was busy wiring money to another woman.

My husband of ten years, the man I'd loved for twelve, the father of the half-vampire child in my belly — had been lying to me all this time. The vampire who had promised me forever, who swore I was his only one, had been playing devoted lover to someone else.

Looking back, I'd been too trusting. Too foolish.

I had been married to him for ten years. I'd seen his gentlest side. And it was precisely because I'd seen it that I understood how sickening this betrayal truly was.

Just then, my phone buzzed again.

Not an email notification — a new friend request.

The message attached was a single line: "Did you get those photos, Mrs. Blackwood?"

I stared at it, and then, unexpectedly, I laughed.

My finger came down. I accepted the request.

The response came almost instantly: "Haven't you figured it out yet? He loves me. You're the other woman."

I didn't reply. Instead, I tapped her profile picture and scrolled through her feed.

At the top was a selfie. Young, pretty — chestnut curls, red lips curved upward, eyes brimming with undisguised smugness. She wore a silk gown, clutching an enormous bouquet of roses, one hand resting lightly on her slightly rounded stomach. The caption read: Some people are meant to exit the stage.

In the background of the photo, a man's hand rested on her shoulder.

Long, pale, with prominent knuckles.

I knew that hand. It had wiped my tears in the dead of night. It had patted my back again and again during my worst bouts of morning sickness. It had held me through the night after I lost my first child.

Now it rested on another woman.

I scrolled further, finally landing on a photo from six months ago. She was leaning into a man's chest, only a sliver of his shirt collar visible. Anyone else might not have recognized it, but I knew instantly — that was the shirt I'd had custom-made for Adrian. His initials were still embroidered on the cuff.

I turned off my phone and gently touched my belly.

The baby seemed to sense my emotions, suddenly delivering a fierce kick.

I looked down, my voice barely a whisper. "Don't be scared."

"Mommy won't let you lose."

Tears fell, one by one, onto my lap.