-Valentine-I open my eyes, and it feels like a jackhammer is hitting me right between the eyes. Constant thrumming and my body hurts all over as if I’ve been in a sparring match with Gabriel. Immediately sitting up straight at the thought of my Maker, I realize my error too late when my eyesight goes white.“Easy there, cowboy; still got a buncha these in ya,” a soft, gentle voice speaks to me and slowly pushes me back down.“W-what… who…?” I stutter, trying to get my eyesight to focus on my surroundings, but all I see are stark white and bright lights. “Where… am I?”“In my clinic,” she answers again and I feel something being pulled out of my chest and clattering on a tray. “There ya go, good as new! Well, almost new; here.” A clinic? Wait, is this a human? She shoves the end of a blood bag in my mouth before I can ask her, and my bloodlust takes over. When that bag is finished, she hands me four more. I can feel my wounds slowly healing and my eyesight slowly comes back just as

-Autumn- They used to call us The Asa; medicinal women trained in human sciences as well as supernatural medicines and healing. We don’t have any magical powers, we’re simply humans trained and used by creatures who use our mortality against us. I used to hate it, but my seeing the women in my family heal so many, made me grow to love it. Now it’s my greatest passion and I get the rewards ten times over. Well… except for this afternoon when I was face to face with something that made my heart beat a little too fast for my liking. I try to focus on the paperwork in front of me, but my mind is not cooperating. Instead, all I can see are those seductive green eyes belonging to the definitely off-limits vampire, Valentine. When I found him that morning, I had decided to leave for work a little earlier - not something that I usually do. But the second I saw him, my instincts kicked in and I dragged the heavy, muscle-bound man into my tiny Mini Cooper. The rest is history, I guess, a

-Autumn- When I woke up this morning, I expected another usual day; I didn’t expect to end it off with Valentine asking me to drink his blood. Then again, I didn’t expect my husband to come here and beat me within an inch of my life either. It’s been close to two weeks since I last saw Valentine, I actually thought he’s forgotten about me by now. But then he showed up here at my weakest moment like some vampire knight in shining armor, eyes blazing red, and yet I have never felt safer. He strokes my cheek, then holds up his wrist to his mouth and pierces a vein. “Drink; I promise nothing will happen,” he says, holding his wrist out to me, the blood slipping out of two perfectly spaced holes. “Preferably before I heal.” I blink, then realize what he’s saying and raise his wrist to my mouth. To be honest, I expected to be grossed out by the average iron taste of blood… I did not expect it to taste sweet at all. Like something similar to cherry wine. Not only that, but the dull thr

-Autumn-For ten years I’ve suffered under the hand of Marcus Hayes and yet every eulogy spoken about him mentions what a great guy he was. For years I’ve had to grin and bear it, so I’ll do it for another few hours before I get to put it all behind me forever.His parents wanted to plan the funeral pyre themselves, so I let them. They were all cut up about it, sobbing in church and screaming as the pyre burned. But not me. His mother called me heartless for not even shedding a tear and I gave her nothing but a smile. I have nothing to prove to them; today I washed my hands of them for good.It’s early evening and everyone has left my house now, so now I’m busy cleaning up after them. Five different casseroles will go to a soup kitchen later, and the leftover sodas and finger food platters will go along with them. I fall down on my sofa and look around the living room; I don’t feel attached to anything here. Nothing in here remotely feels like home. Everything reminds me of violence

-Xenia-It’s 4 am and I’m sitting in the passenger seat of this SUV, glaring at the disgustingly sexy man driving. We took a plane over, now we’re driving towards the mansion Kat is holed up in; not that I needed him to come with me, anyway.“You know that I could’ve come here alone, right?”“So you keep on telling me, but there’s no fucking way I would have let you come alone,” he says, repeating his possessive words and pissing me off more.I cross my arms and turn away from him in a huff, but he only chuckles at this. “You’re such a fucking brat,” he comments, and as much as I want to argue with him about how much I’m not a brat, that would just prove his point.So I shut up.For the last few weeks, I’ve been worried sick about Kat. She didn’t contact me as promised and to say I’m going crazy is an understatement. Gabriel also found that she got rid of her cell phone, so there was no way for us to track her either - she wanted to completely disappear and she succeeded. I see the m