Chapter 1

Elena's POV

Even before the engagement banquet began, I'd noticed that my parents had been acting strangely lately.

The banquet hall blazed with light.

The Vampire Elder Council, the human nobility, the heads of all the great Houses—almost everyone had come.

By rights, my parents should have been the happiest people in the room, since our House was about to marry into the line of the vampire heir.

But from the moment the banquet began, my father's face had been dark.

And my mother was clearly somewhere else in her head. When I slipped my arm through hers, she actually flinched and pulled away before she could stop herself.

My father just stood there with that grim look, murmuring with the Elder beside him.

The air in the hall felt heavy enough to choke on.

The unease in my chest kept growing, and almost without thinking, I turned to find Alexander.

He was standing on the other side of the crowd.

The black suit made his face look cold and aristocratic.

The moment our eyes met, he came over to me the way he always did.

"What is it?"

He kept his voice low.

Then his hand came up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture was easy, practiced.

That familiar gentleness finally let me breathe again.

"Something feels off tonight," I said quietly. "I can't shake it."

Alexander looked down at me, and his eyes softened.

"Don't overthink it. I'm here."

He smiled and ran a fingertip along the bridge of my nose, the way he always did.

"It's normal for a bride-to-be to be nervous, isn't it?"

I couldn't help laughing.

He was right.

Whatever happened, Alexander would stand on my side, the way he always had.

We'd grown up together.

He'd always cared about me more than anyone else did. When I was little and afraid of the dark, he'd stayed with me through the night. The first time I'd had to attend a noble banquet and was so nervous I couldn't get a word out, he'd held my hand the entire evening. And ten years ago, the fire that nearly killed me, he was the one who'd run into the flames without a second thought to get me out.

Everyone in the noble circles knew Alexander treated me like his own life.

He'd overturned the dates the Elder Council set for our wedding, again and again, because he couldn't wait to marry me.

He'd promised me I would be the happiest vampire bride in the world.

The thought of it finally slowed my pulse.

Then the bell at the center of the hall began to ring.

The engagement ceremony was beginning.

Every gaze in the room turned toward the high platform.

My father and mother walked up together. They were supposed to give the parents' speech, the one that opened the ceremony.

I should have been happy, I should have been excited, but standing there and watching their faces from a distance, both of them so grave, I couldn't push the dread back down.

The hall went very quiet.

I stood beside Alexander, and my heart was beating faster and faster for reasons I couldn't name.

My father didn't speak for a long time.

Long enough that the whole room began to feel airless.

Then, finally, he opened his mouth.

"Before the engagement ceremony begins, there is something we need to tell Alexander, and the Council."

I froze.

I don't know why, but a wave of pure dread crashed over me.

Up on the platform, my father closed his eyes for a moment.

"Twenty years ago, a maternity nurse at the hospital made a mistake."

"She gave us the wrong child."

The air went silent all at once.

My whole body locked up.

What?

I thought I must have misheard him.

But my father kept going.

"Three days ago, our biological daughter found us. The bloodline test has been done."

"Elena is not, in fact, our daughter."

A roar went off inside my head.

I couldn't hear anything else.

For two whole seconds the banquet hall was dead silent.

Then it erupted.

"They had the wrong baby?"

"So she has no noble blood at all?"

"My God."

A hundred pairs of eyes whipped toward me.

Shocked. Sizing me up. Mocking. Eager for a show.

The color drained from my face.

Without thinking, I grabbed Alexander's hand.

"Alexander."

My voice was shaking.

"What are they saying?"

I looked up at him, almost on instinct.

A part of me was even worried for him. Worried that something erupting like this at our engagement banquet might make him lose control. A vampire in a rage was a dangerous thing, and when he was a child, the first time he'd lost control, he'd nearly hurt the people around him. So for years, I'd been the one who reached him first, every time.

But this time.

Alexander didn't respond at all.

I stared up at him, slowly, and that was the moment I finally saw his eyes clearly.

Cold. Strange. Almost appraising.

Like he was reassessing the value of something he'd bought.

My heart dropped into nothing.

"Alexander?"

I tightened my grip on his hand, my voice coming out panicked now.

"Please say something."

But he didn't comfort me the way he always had.

He didn't even squeeze back.

In the next moment, the great doors of the banquet hall swung open.

A girl in a white dress stood there.

Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face pale, and she looked fragile and lost and entirely out of place.

What turned me cold was something else.

Alexander gave that girl a faint smile.

And the look in his eyes when he saw her was every bit as tender as the look he'd given me only minutes ago.