LOGINSoren arrived at the Vampire King’s castle to deliver a report—and they made him wait six hours.Six hours sitting on a black stone bench, in a windowless corridor where the cold seeped into the marrow and blue-flamed torches gave off no warmth. The King’s guards passed by every so often, looked at him the way one looks at an insect that slipped in through a crack in the door, and kept walking.Soren didn’t move. Didn’t complain. Didn’t ask for water, food, or a damn blanket. Because he understood exactly what they were doing: measuring him. A sorcerer who shows up uninvited at the Vampire King’s castle, asking for a direct audience and bypassing a General, has exactly two options. He’s either insane—or he has something worth more than his life. The six hours were meant to determine which.On the seventh hour, the guard with the scar on his jaw returned.“The King will see you now.”They led him through three more corridors, all identical, all designed to disorient. But Soren had memo
**EMILI**I woke with the taste of blood in my mouth and Alaric coiled around me like a ninety-kilo possessive serpent.His arm circled my waist with that anchor-like firmness I already knew—the kind that said *“I almost lost you, and now I’m not letting go, not even to use the bathroom.”* His breathing was deep and steady against the back of my neck, but the tension in his muscles gave him away. He wasn’t fully asleep. He was watching. Even asleep, he was watching.I stayed still. Not because of him—because of me. Because in that space between sleep and wakefulness, before reality fully settled, I tried to remember.The vampires surrounding us in the ravine. Silas going down from the witch’s spell. The four of them closing in on me. The silver chain.And then…Nothing.Darkness. That familiar void that swallowed me every time the shadow took control. Like a clean cut in a film: one frame I’m terrified against a rock wall, and the next I’m here, in my bed, with Alaric’s blood on my li
**ALARIC**The mark woke me.Not with pain. With emptiness. As if someone had reached into my chest and ripped out something essential, leaving behind a cold hollow that pulsed with every heartbeat. One moment I was in my study reviewing territorial agreements with the northern alphas, and the next I was on my feet, chair overturned, papers flying, eyes red, my Lycan howling a single word inside my skull.*Emili.*I didn’t need more. I didn’t wait for explanations. I didn’t give rational orders. I burst out of the study fast enough to crack the doorframe, took the stairs shifting mid-stride, and tore through the mansion’s front door in full Lycan form, splintering the wood like cardboard.Damián caught up to me before I reached the forest. Enzo and the twins joined seconds later, alerted by the mental link we shared. I didn’t ask who was available. I ran—and those who could keep up did.The mark guided me. Not like a map, but like an emotional compass pulling at my sternum toward the
SORENHe had never made a smarter decision in his life.When Malik ordered him to open the portals for the second wave, Soren obeyed without question. He opened three: one for the assault vampires, another for the reversal spell that neutralized the blond guardian, and a third—tiny, invisible, no bigger than a keyhole—which he positioned between the branches of an oak tree overlooking the ravine.An observation portal. His specialty. The reason he was still alive after decades of serving creatures who killed sorcerers as casually as one swats flies.Through that keyhole, Soren saw everything.He saw the blond guardian fight. Impressive, he had to admit. The fastest Lycán Soren had ever observed in his sixty years, dispatching vampires with an efficiency that bordered on artistry. If the reversal spell had failed, that wolf would have torn the entire squad apart in less than a minute.But the spell didn’t fail. Soren didn’t fail with spells. It was his one real talent, and he had perfe
LYRAWe’d been running for ten minutes when I knew we weren’t going to make it.Not because of Silas—who, in Lycán form, was a blond demon capable of leaving all of us eating dust. Not because of me—despite the wound in my side, I could still keep a decent pace. The problem was Emili. She ran at human speed, which compared to two Lycans was like riding a bicycle behind two fighter jets.Silas picked her up onto his back without anyone having to ask. He crouched in front of her, his ash-blond fur gleaming under the shards of sunlight filtering through the canopy, and Emili climbed on with that clumsiness she was starting to make a habit of. The guardian was leaner than me in Lycán form, but his speed made up for everything else. When Silas ran at full power, not even Alaric could catch him. He was the fastest of all of us, and we all knew it—even if no one said it, because his academic ego didn’t need more fuel.We ran. Silas in front with Emili clinging to his fur. Me flanking on the
EMILIThe eyes emerged from the darkness of the corridor. Two points that didn’t glow red like demons or amber like wolves. They were green. A familiar green it took me three heartbeats to recognize—because they didn’t belong to the face I remembered.Vera stepped out of the shadows.But it wasn’t Vera. Not the Vera who peeled potatoes in the kitchen, who flinched when someone raised their voice, who clutched a brass key to her chest like it was treasure. That Vera was gone. The woman in front of me held herself with a posture I recognized from somewhere else—another life, another kitchen, in Gustavo’s mansion, where they’d called me stray dog and walking curse.The features were different—softer, hair darker, face rounder. But the eyes. Those green eyes that calculated the value of everything they looked at couldn’t be disguised by any magic.“Valentina,” I said, and the word felt like a slap I gave myself.The smile that crossed her face confirmed it. Not Vera’s shy smile. The sharp
EMILIThe first thing I did when I got out of the car was assess the damage.The three armored trucks that had brought us here were, in technical terms, destroyed. The first had its hood crushed by the tree trunk Alaric had used as a projectile against a vampire. The second—ours—had a cracked winds
ALARICI looked at her standing naked among the trees and my brain stopped functioning for approximately three seconds. Which, for a Lycán King who makes life-or-death decisions in milliseconds, was an embarrassingly long eternity.But this woman. This damn woman with her scars and her skin prickli
**ALARIC**We had been back at the mansion for two days, and something didn’t add up.It wasn’t anything big. Not a red alarm or a sign of danger. It was a hum. A dull irritation, like a splinter lodged somewhere you can’t scratch. And that splinter had a name and a surname: Silas.My most loyal gu
****LYRA**Three demons. Bleeding flank. A defenseless omega clinging to my back like a terrified sack of potatoes.The Moon Goddess had a shitty sense of humor.The first one attacked from the right. The big one — charcoal skin threaded with veins of lava. It moved faster than something that size







