Chapter 6

The cold night air bit into my skin as I stepped out of the safe house’s rear entrance, the last duffel bag heavy in my hand.

My father’s man was supposed to be waiting in the alley, engine running.

I made it three steps onto the cracked pavement.

A blur of motion, faster than sight. A cold, vice-like grip clamped onto my arm, spinning me around.

My back hit the rough brick wall of the neighboring building, the duffel bag thudding to the ground.

Vincent stood before me, materialized from the shadows themselves. His eyes burned with a feral, crimson light, his perfect composure shattered. The streetlight painted his face in stark, angry angles.

“Found you,” he growled, the sound more a vibration than a voice.

My hand flew toward the concealed silver dagger at my thigh. His movement was a blur.

One moment, my wrist was caught in a grip like frozen iron, my back slammed against the wall.

“Where,” he snarled, his face inches from mine, his breath carrying the frost of the grave and the sour tang of what might have been despair, “did you think you could go?”

I fought against his hold, but it was useless. He was pure vampire, and I was suddenly just human without blood bond.

Then, the fury in his eyes fractured. His forehead dropped against mine, not in affection, but in a posture of stark exhaustion.

The cold of his skin was a shock. “I have searched every shadow in this city for you,” he whispered, the rage gone, replaced by a raw, bewildered strain.

“I felt your absence like a silence in my own blood. I thought the hunters, or a rival clan…”

A treacherous ache, old and deep, spiked in my chest. My mind screamed a warning: This is the trap. The appeal to the loyalty he broke.

“Let me go, Vincent.”

“Not until you tell me why.” His grip tightened. “Why run? After I spared you. After I… considered your future.”

A hollow laugh escaped me. “Considered? You mean when you and your bride discussed turning me into her pet ghoul? What a generous future.”

His expression hardened, the momentary vulnerability sealed away. “It was a position of honor and continuity. You spat on it.”

“It was a leash. I’d rather be free and fragile than immortal and owned.”

“You are owned!” The words burst from him with a force that shook the room.

He released my wrist only to seize my chin, forcing my gaze to his. “You have been mine since the night your father brought you to me, a scared girl with precious blood. Every breath you’ve taken since has been by my leave.”

He shoved me back against the brick wall and reached inside his coat.

What he drew out wasn’t a scroll. It was a locket—a small, ancient oval of tarnished silver on a broken chain.

He held it up between us, and with a click of his thumbnail, it sprang open.

Inside, on one side, was a miniature portrait of my father as a young man. On the other, instead of a picture, was a dark, resinous cavity. Sealed within it, like a trapped insect in amber, was a single, dried drop of blackened blood.

“Recognize it?” Vincent’s voice was a lethal whisper. “The Rossi Blood Locket. Your father gave it to me the night when my uncle died for saving your family from other vampires. Your obedience, your very life force, is the currency of this oath. You. Are. The. Interest.”

“You keep my father’s blood in a locket like a trophy?” My voice trembled with disgust.

“I keep his oath where I can see it.” He snapped the locket shut, the sound final. “And I will use it to remind you. The bonding ceremony for me and Lilith. You will be there.”

He leaned in, his next words carving the humiliation deep.

“And you will kneel before the assembled clans. You will present Lilith with the Sanguine Scepter, the symbol of our alliance. You will bow your head, and you will show every ancient creature in that hall what it means for a Rossi to honor her blood-debt.”

I stared at him, at the man whose bed I had shared, whose battles I had fought, whose survival had once been the only purpose of my own.

He was using my family’s honor, my father’s sacred vow, to force me to kneel and sanctify my own replacement.

“I understand,” I said, the words ashes.

“Good.” He turned to leave, his silhouette once more the implacable ruler. “Remember this, Elena. You are not my enemy. You are my property. And property does not run.”

He and his silent ghouls vanished into the night.

I stood alone in the wrecked safe house. Cold air made my heart numb.

A blood oath.

My father’s oath. My prison.

“A blood debt,” I whispered to the empty sky, the sound feather-soft yet final.

“Must be repaid in blood.”