All Chapters of BLOODBOUND: THE LAST MATE : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

ENCOUNTER WITH VAMPIRE KINGThey brought Lena through iron gates that rose like blackened ribs against the night sky, their sharp tips glinting beneath a thin crescent moon. The Obsidian Crown Citadel stood carved into the mountainside, its towers angular and severe, as though shaped from solidified shadow. Torches burned with pale blue flame along the high walls, casting a light that was too clean to be warm and too bright to be comforting. She walked between armored guards who did not grip her but did not need to. Chains were unnecessary when exhaustion already weighed heavier than iron.Inside, the corridors gleamed with polished stone so dark it reflected distorted versions of her face back at her. The ceilings arched high above, ribbed with silver inlays that caught the torchlight and fractured it into sharp streaks across the floor. It was beautiful in a way that unsettled her, refined and deliberate, like a blade crafted for ceremony as much as for killing. She had expected dun

FIRST LIGHT IN THE DARKShe did not sleep deeply, but she slept. That was the first thing Lena noticed when she opened her eyes in the unfamiliar chamber of the Obsidian Crown Citadel — that her body had surrendered to exhaustion despite everything, despite the auction and the carriage and the mark burning silver against her collarbone and the vampire king with his impossible claim. She had slept because her body was wiser than her pride, and now the grey, sourceless light filtering through tall obsidian-framed windows told her morning had come, or what passed for morning in a realm that seemed to resist the ordinary obligations of a sky. She lay still for a moment, cataloguing: stone ceiling, black-veined walls, a bed too wide and too soft compared to every cot she had ever owned, the faint metallic scent of old power woven into the air like incense. She was still herself. That had been the first question before she slept. She needed it to still be true in the morning.When she sat u

SOMETHING FAMILIAR IN THE DARKMilo was standing in the outer gatehouse with his hands in his pockets and his chin lifted in precisely the way it lifted when he was performing calm he did not feel. He was wearing his slightly-too-large jacket, the brown one he had owned since before she knew him and refused to replace despite its deficiencies, and there was road mud on his boots and three days of travel written in the hollows under his eyes. When he saw her come through the inner gate moving at something between a quick walk and something that would embarrass her if she thought about it too carefully, he exhaled with his whole body — shoulders dropping, face opening, all the held tension leaving at once — and said, "Okay, you're actually alive. I was about seventy percent on that when I left Ravenglade and down to forty by the time I crossed the border." She stopped in front of him. "You came here," she said. "To a vampire realm." He spread his hands. "Someone had to verify the situat

THE COURT SPEAKSOn her fifth morning Sera arrived with information that Rafael had requested her presence at the mid-morning assembly, which was a regular gathering of the court's senior figures and not, Sera was careful to note, a formal tribunal or a political proceeding, simply the routine business of the court conducted in one room. "He wants me there," Lena said, and made it not quite a question. "He wishes you to be introduced formally," Sera said, with the measured diplomacy of someone delivering news they've been rehearsing. "It gives the court's senior members the courtesy of meeting you directly rather than allowing rumour to occupy the space where fact should stand." Lena thought about what rumour was probably already saying — werewolf girl, sold at auction, claimed as mate by the Crimson King — and decided that Sera was being tactfully understated. "What should I wear?" she asked. Sera looked at her with an expression of considering. "Something," she said, "that does not

NYRAShe told Rafael about Nyra that morning — she went to his study before breakfast and knocked and told him everything about the courtyard, about the woman who appeared and disappeared, about what had been said. He listened with the particular quality of attention he brought to important things — completely, without rushing to respond, giving her account the full consideration it required. When she finished, he was quiet for a long moment. "Nyra," he said. The name had a quality in his voice: not surprise, but the weight of familiarity — a name encountered many times in reading and now arrived in the room. "You know who she is," Lena said. "Of her," he said carefully. "In the oldest texts she is referenced — always at the periphery, always at the edge of events of significance, always described as a watcher and a keeper of things too important to be lost and too dangerous to be widely known." He met her gaze. "I did not know she was here. But I am not surprised that she has come."