His moan reverberates against my lips as I drink from him. I relish each drop of his precious blood, careful not to take too much. The world around us fades away until all I am aware of is him beneath my touch, his life flowing into me.

  My fangs retract and I pull back slowly, licking the puncture wounds closed. His skin is warm against my tongue, and I place soft kisses over the healed wounds.

  “Sated?” he asks.

  “For now.”

  “Then it’s time for you to sate me, princess.” He lifts me into his arms.

  63

  He carries me to the shower and turns on the water.

  When the air becomes steamy around us, he sets me gently onto the tiled surface. I close my eyes as the warm water pelts my aching body. Rogan reaches for a bottle of body wash and pours some into his palm. He slides it over me in gentle strokes, navigating every curve and crevice.

  His touch is like therapy. It’s like he’s healing the superficial wounds Eris inflicted. But more powerful is the emotional healing, the soothing salve of his strong hands on my weary body.

  He wants me to sate him.

  I’m ready.

  I grab his cock.

  “Let me take care of you first,” he says.

  And I fucking love him all the more.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispers against my ear.

  His words make me shiver despite the hot water cascading over us.

  “I feel like a bruised peach,” I say with a chuckle as I lean against his hard golden body.

  “Then you’re the most exquisite bruised peach I’ve ever seen.”

  I open my eyes to meet his gaze, and there it is—the love and the affection that I’ve been craving. It’s an affirmation that I’m not just a creature of darkness, not just a pawn in a deadly game. To him, I’m more than what my blood makes me.

  After all, he defied fate for me.

  He continues the slow exploration of my body, tracing the contours of my muscles, lingering over the jagged scars that litter my skin. He kisses the hollow of my throat, the curve of my shoulder, the rise of my breasts.

  “I see you,” he says. “I see you as you are, princess.”

  I meet his gaze in the steam-filled shower, and I see a depth of love and understanding that takes my breath away. His green eyes shine with affection.

  He sees me. Not the human, not the vampire, not Richard’s stepdaughter. Not even the mother of his child.

  He sees me.

  Just me.

  A sob wrenches up from my chest.

  I’m not a crier. But the sob is a release.

  Rogan holds onto me as I let the tears fall onto our entwined bodies, washing away with the steady stream of water. It’s a purge of fear and guilt and rage that have coiled tight within me for so long.

  “I love you,” he whispers into my ear. His voice is raw, stripped of all pretenses and full of sheer honesty.

  Before I can respond, he takes my lips in a searing kiss. The utter intensity of it steals my breath. I can taste him on my tongue—earthy and wild, unmistakably Rogan. He’s all around me, inside me, filling me with his warmth, his scent, his essence.

  Slowly the tension starts to leave my body. The aches and pains recede, and in their place comes a sweet surrender—a submission that I’m glad to give him.

  His hands are everywhere—stroking, kneading, caressing until I’m lost in sensation. Until I’m nothing more than a bundle of raw nerves strung high with desire and anticipation.

  The world outside ceases to exist, the only reality being Rogan’s touch, his scent, his taste. The ether seems a distant nightmare as we move rhythmically against each other, erasing painful memories with each stroke and caress. We are lost in each other, finding comfort and salvation in our shared desire.

  This is what Eris could never take away from me—Rogan’s love. Deep love. True love. Love that conquered fate.

  Our love is more potent than any magic, any bloodline. The realization sweeps over me like a tidal wave, leaving me breathless.

  He lifts me then, his strong arms holding me like a vise, and shoves his cock into me with one smooth thrust.

  The time for gentle exploration is over, and I’m good with that.

  As Rogan’s movements grow more insistent, I match his pace, losing myself further in the rhythm of our bodies. His grip on me tightens, tightens, tightens, as he fucks me harder and faster.

  Our moans get lost in the rush of water around us.

  I cling onto him as a powerful wave of pleasure crashes over me. It breaks against the walls of my senses and washes away horror-filled memories of death and bloodshed.

  “Rogan,” I whisper against his lips, my voice shaky with need.

  “Shh,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead. “I’ve got you.”

  But it’s more than that—he has me. All of me, every scarred piece and ruined fragment. And in his arms, I’m whole again.

  When he growls into me, releasing, I swear we’re one body, complete in each other.

  When we finally emerge from the shower, our skin pink from the hot water and the raw passion, I feel lighter. The harsh reality of my situation still lingers, but for now, it’s muted, pushed to the background.

  In this moment, I feel only the power of Rogan’s love.

  Rogan wraps a soft towel around me, his touch gentle as he rubs the fabric against my damp skin. He doesn’t utter a word as he leads me to our bed, tucks me under the covers and slides in beside me.

  I turn to him, curling against his side as he wraps an arm around me. His heartbeat is steady beneath my ear, and though I hear his delicious blood flowing through his veins, the sound is more of a comfort than a craving.

  For now.

  Because tonight, I don’t want to feed.

  I want to feel.

  But the hunger is always there. Just beneath the surface. Coiled. Quiet. Waiting.

  Rogan traces slow patterns on my back, soothing and calming.

  “I can’t promise that things will be easy,” he whispers, “but I’ll be right here, through every storm, every scar, every moment you want to run.”

  I close my eyes.

  Let myself surrender to the feelings for this man.

  Because tomorrow…

  Tomorrow comes the storm.

  And I will not run.

  64

  She’s standing at the edge of the garden again.

  The flowers are in bloom, and the air smells like summer and cinnamon, like her kitchen always did. I know it’s a dream—my grandmother has been dead for a long time—but still, I walk toward her. Because how can I not?

  “Hannah,” she says, just like always, like the years and the grave and my blood don’t matter. Her voice is warm as she picks string beans from the vines and places them into a basket. Her name is Theresa, which means harvester, and she is my mother’s mother. Even in my dream she reminds me that the harvest gives us hope—that nothing is truly lost, only carried into the next season.

  My throat tightens. I forgot how soft her eyes were. How she looked at me like I was good.

  “I’ve missed you.” My voice breaks. “So much.”

  “I know.” She cups my cheek.

  Her fingers are cool, but not cold like mine. Mine are always cold.

  “You’ve been walking through fire, haven’t you?”

  I nod. There’s no point lying. She never knew my true heritage. She died before I found out myself.

  But did she know?

  She always hated my father. Hated that my mother married him.

  She hated the divorce, hated my mother’s remarriage, yet she seemed to hate Richard less than she hated my father.

  If she only knew…

  She knows in my dream.

  She knows who and what I am, and she loves me. Still, I’m her favorite of five grandchildren.

  And she knows who and what my stepfather is.

  I kneel and help her with the green beans. “I took the life of another,” I say.

  “I know,” she says softly.

  I look around the backyard in suburban Colorado, at the large olive tree, the ponderosa pine that she transplanted from a mountaintop, the concrete deck with the chairs I remember.

  “Is this the ether?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Not as you know it. This is the dream world, and I’m not really here in this garden. It’s a way for me to communicate with you that your brain can comprehend.”

  I nod again. “Grandma, I have something I have to do.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I may lose my mother when I do it.”

  Grandma turns away from the green beans and meets my gaze. She looks younger than I remember. Her hair is no longer gray but a beautiful brown, lighter than my own.

  “Your mother is one of my biggest regrets,” she says. “I shouldn’t have been so hard on her. I should have taught her what she was worth. She was beautiful and smart, but I told her she was merely average.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Why would you do that?”

  “It was the way,” she says. “It was how my father raised me. I didn’t know any better. It led her to marry two men, neither of whom were worthy of her. She has never been happy, your mother.”

  “Never?” I ask.

  “Not like I was. Your grandfather plucked me out of a life of poverty and gave me a beautiful home and three wonderful children. If only…” She stares wistfully over the fence at the High Line Canal behind the house. A few horseback riders pass by.

  “If my mother was wonderful, as you say, why didn’t you tell her?”

  “I should have,” she admits, “but if I had, she wouldn’t have married your father, and then you wouldn’t exist.” She drops her gaze to my abdomen. “And neither would my great-grandson.”

  I slide my hand over my belly. The love I feel for him and his father washes over me in such a huge wave that it almost hurts.

  “Yes,” I reply. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”

  “It’s the only way to look at it, Hannah,” she says. “Because it can’t be changed. Wishing doesn’t make anything so. And I wouldn’t give you up for anything.”

  “Would you have loved me so much if you knew I was half vampire?”

  She cups my cheek again. “I have no doubt.” She brushes a strand of hair from my face like I’m still six years old and safe in her lap. “You always had the fight in you. Even when you were just a little thing. You think I didn’t know there was something different about you?”

  I freeze. “You did?”

  “I didn’t know what,” she says gently. “But I knew you weren’t like the others. You saw things. Felt more. Held pain in those little shoulders like a grown woman.”

  She presses her forehead to mine, and I swear I can smell the flour on her apron, feel the thrum of her heartbeat like it’s meant to sync with mine.

  “You are not your bloodline. You’re an individual who is capable of so much love. Does it matter that you’re half vampire? Of course it doesn’t. All that matters is that you are you. Do you understand?”

  I nod, too fast.

  “Then act like it,” she whispers. “Stand up. Take back what’s yours. If it costs you the love of your mother, then I shall take that blame, not you. I should have given her more while I was on earth. I should have shown her how much she was valued. That is on me. It was never on you, Hannah. Don’t you dare let the darkness make you forget who loved you first.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, honey. Me. And your mother.”

  She’s not wrong. My mother did love me once. Before Richard.

  She places something smooth in my hand, and⁠—

  I wake up gasping, fists clenched in my sheets, eyes burning with something that isn’t blood lust for once. Just memory.

  And something that feels like hope.

  The dream clings to me like smoke. But my grandmother’s voice is a blade in my chest. Clean. Unshakable.

  All that matters is that you are you.

  I sit up, the sheets twisted around my waist, my body thrumming with something ancient and sharp. Not just thirst. Not just rage. Purpose. My grandmother saw me. She knew. Maybe not the name of what I was, but the shape of it. The weight.

  And she still loved me.

  She would’ve fought for me.

  So now I will fight for my child, for Rogan.

  For myself.

  Rogan sleeps next to me. I smooth my hand over his stubbled jawline. In sleep he looks almost gentle. Awake? Not so much. I wouldn’t have him any other way. His wolf blood will give our son that feral strength that will make him unstoppable when cornered, savage when threatened, loyal beyond reason.

  My vampire half will give him the shadows, teach him how to move through them, how to command them. Visual and auditory acuity and supernatural speed. Power stitched into every heartbeat.

  And my humanity will… God, I hope it gives him mercy. The ability to choose softness when the world demands violence. To love without needing to destroy.

  Because he’ll have enough monsters in his blood. He doesn’t need to become one.

  Rogan stirs next to me and lets out a yawn. “Princess?”

  “I’m here.”

  But I won’t be for long. Already I feel the storm raging, my blood preparing me for what I must do.

  Not merely dethrone the demon king.

  But end him.

  And then face the consequences.

  65

  The moonlight spills into my room, tracing the outlines of my crumpled sheets with an iridescent glow. Here, surrounded by quiet and the gentle hum of the night outside, I make a promise to myself, one whispered into the darkness that wraps around me like a protective shroud.

  “I will fulfill my destiny,” I say to the shadows. “I will no longer cower in fear, ashamed of my identity.”

  Rogan has fallen back to sleep, and I lean to kiss him when⁠—

  My hand unclasps, and a small object tumbles to the floor.

  I swing my legs over the side of the bed and pick it up. It’s smooth as river glass, cool even in the heat of my palm.

  It’s deep green, flecked with red, like it bled once and never quite stopped.

  My grandmother pressed it into my hand in my dream…

  My dream…

  Was it a dream? It wasn’t the ether. She told me so.

  It was a place where I could commune with my grandmother in a way I could understand.

  I feel the weight of the bloodstone in my palm.

  It’s here. It’s real.

  I pulled it out of the dream.

  And in my mind, I hear what I think for a moment is Alara’s voice. But it’s not.

  It’s my grandmother’s.

  This will keep you anchored when the world forgets what you are.

  “Grandma?” I eke out.

  I rise, cover myself with a robe, and walk out of the bedroom.

  Alara stands there, her violet eyes shining. “I see you have your amulet.”

  “Are you…”

  Alara smiles. “Am I your grandmother?” She shakes her head. “I’m not, Hannah.”

  “But how…?”

  “You went to her in your dream so she could give you the strength you need.”

  “I have my strength. I have Rogan and his blood, the child inside me, and I have your teachings. I was strong enough to defeat Eris, wasn’t I?”

  “You were, and I’m proud of you, but your grandmother serves a much deeper purpose.”

  “Which is…?” I rub the bloodstone in the palm of my hand. I feel tethered to it somehow.

  “The strength of a mother’s love.”

  “She’s not my mother.”

  “No, but she loves you as if she is…or was. She made mistakes with her own daughter, your mother, and she made it up with you. Nothing is stronger than a mother’s love, and it is the ultimate shield. It’s more powerful even than your love for Rogan and his love for you.”

  I swallow. “I see.”

  “I know you do, for you feel it for the child growing inside you.” She takes my hand, closes it around the bloodstone. “Keep it with you. Your grandmother’s love. It’s the best protection you’ll ever have.”

  I close my eyes, see my grandmother in her garden.

  And I remember her hands. Her voice. The way she loved me fiercely, without needing to understand the monster curled beneath my skin. That though my mother forsook me for the demon king, my grandmother always loved me without condition.

  I cling to that.

  I turn back to Alara, but she’s gone, vanished without even a trace of smoke.

  I return to my bedroom. A rustling wind sweeps past my window, and I know.

  I know it’s time.

  I think about Richard—the man who became part of our lives uninvited, like a weed sprouting among flowers. Then I think about my mother—a woman caught in his poisonous web, and the person I could lose when I do what I must. A part of me aches at the thought, yet another resounds with my grandmother's wisdom. She bore her regrets and now she has passed them onto me in hopes that I might do better.

  Rogan still sleeps.

  I have to go. But first, I must feed.

  “Rogan.” I shake him gently.

  “Princess…” He opens his eyes once more.

  “I need you.”

  “Mmm….”

  He pulls me on top of him and I sink down onto his cock.

  My eyes spring open, my fangs extend, and I bite into his neck. His blood flows into my mouth and I drink with an urgency that scares me. Wild wolf, sexy man, dark elixir. The nectar feeds me, sustains me, strengthens me. All while I ride him, letting him fill me in every way he can.

  “Fuck, princess,” he grits out.

  It's not just hunger that fuels me tonight. It’s a voracious need to fuck Rogan hard and fast, to take his strength into me, to prepare for what lies ahead. The dark and intoxicating taste of him seeps into my veins, burning away all fear, all hesitation.

  He would give me everything he could—his blood, his life—if it meant helping me fulfill my purpose.

  I know he wants to go with me.

 

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