Chapter 1

A century ago, the great war between vampires and humans left both sides devastated. They had maintained an uneasy truce ever since.

No vampire dared to openly kill a human.

Until my body was found in an abandoned cellar at the edge of the Blood Court's domain.

A patrol guard discovered me and immediately sent word to the Enforcer's Hall. A human woman, tortured to death, dumped right inside vampire territory.

My husband Damien rushed over from the Elder Sanctum, where he had been accompanying his ex-girlfriend Vivienne for her Blood Withering treatment.

Damien was the Vampire King's Chief Enforcer — the most powerful authority beneath the throne. Three hundred years of service. He had seen every kind of brutality vampires were capable of.

But even he flinched when he saw my body.

Days of decay in the cold cellar. My face smashed beyond recognition. Deep cuts everywhere. My neck nearly severed.

Damien steadied himself, then crouched down to examine the body.

I watched, heart pounding, as he lifted the blood-soaked cord from my neck.

A braided obsidian rope with a small crimson gemstone pendant.

I had spent weeks making it for him. Braiding the cord by hand, choosing the stone, having our bonding vow engraved inside the setting in letters so tiny only vampire eyes could read them.

"It's obsidian," I had told him, pressing it into his hands. "In the old stories, it wards off curses. I want you to be safe."

He had looked at it for a long moment. I thought I saw something warm in his crimson eyes.

Then Vivienne came over the next evening.

She picked up the pendant between two fingers, her lip curling. "What is this? A trinket from a human market stall? Damien, you cannot possibly wear this in the court."

He ripped it off instantly and threw it back at me.

"You are my wife," he said coldly. "Your role is to elevate my standing, not humiliate me."

That memory still burned. But surely — surely he would recognize it now. This cord I had woven with my own hands. This stone that held our bonding words.

Damien turned the pendant over once, then handed it to his deputy Marcus.

"Bag it with the evidence."

Nothing. Not a flicker of recognition.

Marcus continued the examination, then stopped abruptly.

"Damien. She was pregnant. About two months." He hesitated. "The energy signature suggests the father was a vampire. This child would have been a dhampir."

Damien's fist slammed into the stone wall. "What kind of animal does this to a pregnant woman? If the humans find out about this, the truce is over."

I wanted to scream.

It had only been days since Vivienne's diagnosis. Blood Withering — a rare and fatal condition among vampires.

The only treatment required blood from a compatible human donor, drawn in large quantities over several sessions.

And I was the only match.

Damien had come to me that night. "You have to do this, Lena. She will die without your blood."

"I'm pregnant, Damien. Two months. That much blood loss could kill me and our baby."

His eyes went cold. "Another lie? You'll say anything to let Vivienne die."

He drove me to the edge of the territory and left me there. A human, alone, in the wilds after dark.

Now Damien stood over my corpse, full of righteous fury for a woman he didn't even know.

But his own wife's pregnancy? A lie. A manipulation. Not worth a second thought.

"Flag the pregnancy and dhampir status in the report," he told Marcus. "This is highest priority."

I shouldn't have hoped. I never existed in Damien's heart. Every word from my mouth was a suspected lie. Every plea was a trick.

All his trust, all his tenderness — it belonged to Vivienne. Every bit of it.

Clara, my only friend in vampire world, had warned me before the bonding. "He only chose you because Vivienne left him first. She walked away when he was nobody — a common foot soldier. But she is the one he loves. She always will be."

I didn't believe her then. I thought love could be built over time.

After the bonding, I couldn't pretend anymore. Every room in our quarters was filled with traces of her — old portraits, letters in her handwriting, a sword they had shared in battle mounted on the wall. Every story he told circled back to Vivienne's name.

I was just a placeholder. A human substitute keeping the seat warm until the real heroine decided to return.

Marcus wrapped up his notes. "Young human female. Throat cut. Signs of prolonged torture before death."

"If this leaks before we find the killer, the human factions will use it to break the truce," Damien said. "We close this fast."

Even in death, I was just a problem for him.

Marcus glanced at Damien. "Warn the people close to you. Whoever did this is still out there."

"Vivienne is safe at the Elder Sanctum," Damien said dismissively. "It's Lena I can never keep track of."

He pressed a hand to his chest, wincing.

Marcus noticed. "Blood thirst again?"

"It's fine. Lena made me a tonic — it's back at the quarters."

He went quiet.

His supposedly defiant human wife had always tended to his condition with care.

He suffered from blood thirst, requiring him to drink large amounts of human blood daily to alleviate his physical pain.

However, after the great war between humans and vampires, the supply of human blood had long been insufficient.

He lived in extreme restraint and agony every day. It was I who painstakingly concocted a special blood-based medicine to alleviate his blood thirst.

Marcus patted his shoulder. "Be kinder to her. A human who chose to live among us — that's not nothing."

Damien shook his head. "Vivienne has Blood Withering. Lena won't even give blood to save her. Made up some pregnancy story to get out of it."

"What if she really is pregnant?"

"Impossible. I haven't touched her in over two months."

"But the autumn blood feast — two months ago — you drank too much and could barely stand—"

"Vivienne was with me that night," Damien cut him off. "She said Lena never showed up."

My soul ached.

The one by your side that night was me, Damien.

I held your hand while the blood fever shook your body. I pressed cool cloths to your skin until dawn. I stayed awake, terrified, watching you until the shaking stopped.

But Vivienne told you I never came. And you believed her. You always believed her.

"Lena hasn't been back in days," Damien went on. "Probably off somewhere causing trouble. I never should have bonded with a human."

I listened to him say these things, standing right over my body, and felt the last warmth inside me go cold.

Damien, I didn't choose to stay away.

I can't come back anymore.

Your defiant human wife died the night you left me alone in the wilds.

My body is right here in front of you, carrying the child you refused to believe in.