All Chapters of The House Beneath the Blood Moon: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Samantha POVAfter everything I’d been through—betrayal, homelessness, vampires—the fact that I was now standing in a kitchen with actual groceries felt like a plot twist.“Look at you,” I muttered, unpacking tomatoes. “Domestic goddess. Saint of carbs.”Brenda flickered a light in dramatic approval.“Yes, thank you, Brenda. I accept your praise.”I cooked pasta, the kind of simple recipe that feels like triumph when life has punched you repeatedly in the face. Garlic hissed, tomatoes bubbled, and for a moment the world smelled like safety.I sat at the table with my fork raised.“You did it,” I whispered. “You made dinner. Take THAT, Ethan.”Three bites later—THUD.Face-first.Out cold.With a noodle stuck to my cheek.Perfect.---Lucien POVThe house warned me first.A vibration in the walls.An anxious hum in the wiring.A whisper that Samantha had pushed herself too far again.When I entered the kitchen, she was collapsed over her meal, cheek pressed to the table, breathing soft

Samantha POVThe three days before the Council felt unreal.Like the world had paused—not out of kindness, but anticipation.Brenda stayed quiet. Too quiet. No flickering jokes. No sarcastic hums in the walls. Just a low, constant awareness, like the house itself was holding its breath.Lucien trained me every night.Not brutally. Not relentlessly.Carefully.As if he was afraid of pushing me too far—physically, emotionally, or otherwise.We practiced control more than power.How to ground myself when the ring pulsed too strongly.How to redirect energy without letting it explode outward.How to breathe when fear wanted to take the wheel.“You do not fight power,” Lucien told me on the second night, as we stood barefoot in the grass beneath a moonless sky. “You negotiate with it.”“Story of my life,” I muttered.He almost smiled.During the day, we stayed inside. Not because of him—because of me.I couldn’t focus.Every quiet moment left room for my thoughts to spiral back to my old l

Samantha POVSleep didn’t come.It fractured.Not nightmares—those would’ve been easier.Memories.Not even mine this time.Every time my eyes slid shut, my mind filled with echoes of what Lucien had been forced to take inside that stone chamber—cities glowing like circuit boards, weapons designed by men who would never touch blood with their own hands, decisions signed in glass offices that killed faster than wars.I woke just before dawn, heart racing, sheets tangled around my legs.“Okay,” I whispered to the ceiling, voice hoarse. “New rule. If your vampire roommate downloads the modern world into his brain… you do not get secondhand trauma.”Brenda hummed softly through the walls, apologetic.I pushed myself upright, rubbing my face. My body felt heavy, like gravity had decided I’d personally offended it. Outside, the sky hovered in that fragile gray-blue moment before morning fully committed—like it was still deciding whether to be kind.Lucien was awake.I knew before I saw him.

Samantha POVThe laptop chimed.Once.Soft. Corporate. Polite.The kind of sound designed to feel harmless—like it hadn’t just delivered a message from a man who considered emotional devastation a hobby.I stared at the screen.Lucien stood behind me, close enough that I could feel his presence without him touching me. Not looming. Not guarding. Simply there—solid, unyielding.The message was short.> You handled yourself well.Public restraint suits you.Let’s see how long it lasts.— SI closed the laptop slowly.“Well,” I said, exhaling through my nose, “that was subtle in the way arson is subtle.”Lucien’s voice was calm. Too calm.“He is testing the boundary.”“By stalking your corporate email like an undead LinkedIn influencer?”“Yes.”I rubbed my temples. “Fantastic. We’ve officially reached the phase where my life sounds fake even to me.”The laptop chimed again.This time, it wasn’t Sebastian.It was an automated calendar invite.GLOBAL IT SUMMIT — EXECUTIVE ACCESSInnovation

By the time we made it back to the hotel, my soul had officially filed a formal complaint with HR. ​The convention had been a dumpster fire. Ethan was a sentient migraine. Sebastian’s "smile" looked like a shark contemplating a buffet. I had been treated like an intellectual ghost haunting the corridors of my own life's work. ​I kicked the door shut with a satisfying thud and dropped my bag like it had personally insulted my ancestors. ​"I need a bath," I announced to the room at large. "A hot bath. A scalding bath. A bath that melts the last twelve hours off my skin and erases today from the space-time continuum." ​Lucien removed his coat with the kind of precise, controlled grace that usually preceded a massacre or a high-end cologne commercial. If repressed rage were an art form, he’d be the Louvre. ​"Before you vanish into the vapors," he said, his voice a low, velvet rumble that did annoying things to my pulse, "what would you like to eat? Room service here is... adequa