LOGINMy adoptive father sold me to pay his debts. He never knew the billionaire who took me in was the Vampire King. Then my necklace burned, an ancient relic woke at my touch, and Lucien Draven looked at me like I was the one thing he couldn't afford to lose. Because I'm not the unwanted girl they raised me to be. I'm the lost heir of two kingdoms. Now a Werewolf King is watching, a rogue Alpha wants my blood, and someone in the palace is smiling while sharpening a knife. The family that sold me thinks their debts are paid. They have no idea what they gave away.
View MoreLucien's POV The report had reached me at dusk. A single sheet, slid across my desk by an aide who could not meet my eyes. A financial settlement. A human family named Ashford. A debt of nine million, cleared in exchange for a signature, and beneath the signature, in a clerk's tidy handwriting, a line that made my vision go red. Subject to be delivered to the Draven estate by the end of the evening. A daughter, I learned from the next page. Adopted. Twenty-two years old. Photograph attached. I did not remember deciding to leave. I remembered only the engine, the black road, and the rage building behind my ribs like a storm front. I had not requested this. I had not authorized it. Someone in my own organization had drawn up a contract that turned a human girl into currency, and had used my name to do it. I did not take a driver. I did not take guards. I meant to walk into that house, tear that contract in half in front of Richard Ashford, and make certain no one in the Ash
Lucien's POV I had been standing at the foot of her bed for the better part of an hour, listening to the slow, careful rhythm of her heartbeat and telling myself that I was only waiting for Aldous to finish his examination, when that rhythm stuttered, just once, and I understood with a cold, sinking certainty that Evelyn Ashford had been awake far longer than she wanted me to believe. I did not turn my head. Four hundred years of surviving courts full of smiling liars had taught me never to show an enemy that I had noticed the knife. But she was not an enemy, and that was precisely the problem. "The emblem is the same, sire," Aldous was saying, his thin fingers still folded around the strap of his bag. "The crescent and the three curved lines. It is the mark from the sealed archive, the one nobody has been permitted to read in two hundred years. I would stake my license on it." "And the pendant?" "Suppressing her. Every reading I take from her blood is muffled, as though it
Evelyn POV The gates opened before the car even slowed down. No guard, no button, no voice on an intercom. Two towers of black iron simply swung apart, slow and soundless, as if the house had been listening for us. I sat in the back seat with my knees pulled to my chest, my bare feet leaving smears of blood on the leather. I'd been wiping at it with the hem of my shirt for the last ten minutes, but there was less of it than there should have been. When I checked my soles again, the cuts from the garden had shrunk to thin pink lines. I didn't look too hard at that. I had a limit for impossible things in one night, and I'd hit it. "Miss Ashford." The gray-eyed man twisted around in the front seat. "We have arrived." "Wow. Thank you, kidnapper. I never would have guessed." His mouth twitched, almost a smile, and that annoyed me more than anything. "Mr. Draven's staff will see to you. I'd advise you to be polite." "Or what?" He didn't answer. He just opened my door. Cold air ro
Evelyn POV I ran barefoot through my family's garden with three men behind me, and not one person in that house had raised a hand to stop them. Rose thorns tore at my ankles. The wet grass slid under my feet. Somewhere behind me, a man shouted my name like I was a dog that had slipped its leash. "Evelyn Ashford! Stop!" Not a chance. I had been adopted at six weeks old. Raised in a mansion, fed at the same table, and reminded every single day that I should be grateful. And the one time my family finally moved fast, the one time they didn't hesitate, was to hand me over like a package. Twenty-four hours earlier, I still believed I just had a bad family. I didn't know I had a price. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER "Evelyn. Stop standing there like a statue and refill their cups." "Yes, Mom." I lowered my eyes and obeyed. I'd been doing it since I was nine. The living room was full of laughter that didn't belong to me. My adoptive father, Richard Ashford, sat at the head
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