Page 13 of Heir of Blood and Moonlight

I shifted my jaw to the side, considering my next words. After a deep inhale and exhale, I continued. “One of them was different from the others,” I said. “Wes. He stood up for me, and he was bigger and older than the other boys, meaner—to them, not to me—so they backed off.” The ghost of a smile touched my lips. “We fell in love. But we were dumb kids, so of course I ended up pregnant.” I paused, closing my eyes as I took a shaky breath.

When I opened my eyes again, I looked at Bastian, but my focus drifted beyond him to the wall. To the past. “Wes convinced me to keep it. The baby. We were going to get out of there, to build a new life.” My eyes stung as tears welled and my nostrils flared.

“A month before I was due, there was a fight over something stupid.” I shook my head, laughing bitterly. “I can’t even remember what anymore.” I swallowed the renewed swell of grief. “The others . . . They killed Wes and threw me out on my ass.” Another bitter laugh shook my chest. He was barely eighteen and just starting to turn his life around. Such a fucking waste.

“Like, literally threw me out the door at eight months pregnant,” I explained. “The fall did something to the placenta and sent me into premature labor, and I stumbled down the sidewalk until some kind stranger noticed the blood soaking my jeans and called 911.”

I blinked, sending tears cascading down my cheeks. “There were complications in labor, thus the c-section scar, but the baby was fine.” I smiled shakily. “A boy.” My chin trembled.

That had been a relief because a male child would be human, whereas a female would have been a living vampire. Only female vampires could be born, while any human could be transformed by a vampire queen into an undead vampire.

“A social worker explained my options to me, how I could keep him, but I was seventeen and all alone . . .” Not to mention being hunted by shifter assassins.

Unbidden, memories of his tiny face, his perfect little fingers and toes, and his first cries flooded my mind. I had only held him once, in those fleeting hours right after birth, before the social worker took him away, but I could still feel the weight of him against my chest, the softness of his skin against mine. The decision to give him up had been the hardest of my life, but I knew it had been the right one. With the House of the Sun hunting me, and Javier gone, I had no way to keep him safe. No way to give him the life he deserved. But that didn’t stop the ache in my heart, the constant longing to be a part of his world. To watch him grow, to hear his laughter, to see the man he would become. Blinking back tears, I pushed the thoughts aside and forced myself to return to the present. To Bastian.

“I wanted my baby to have a good life, a safe life,” I explained, “and I didn’t see how I could give that to him. So, the social worker helped me with the paperwork, and they took him away while I was left to recover in my hospital room.” Not the whole truth, but enough for Bastian to understand why I had reacted the way I had earlier.

I took a deep breath, finally refocusing on Bastian. “And I was too terrified of going through that again to ever, well,bewith anyone . . . until now.”

“Fuck, Sophie,” Bastian said, leaning forward. He reached across the table, pulling my hands away from the paper coffee cup and grasping them tightly. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.” His eyes searched mine. “And I am deeply honored that you chosemeto be with after so long.”

I averted my gaze to our joined hands. I didn’t feel like I had chosen. I hadneeded. Bastian had felt too right. Like we were meant to be together. Like, somehow, the messy path of my life had led me to him for a reason. Not that I wouldevershare that notion with him.

“I’ve never told anyone about Wes and . . . all of that,” I said, little more than a whisper. I felt like some of the suffocating weight had been lifted off my chest. “Thanks for listening, Bas.”

He squeezed my hands. “Any time.”

9

Icouldn’t help butthink about Bastian as I loaded dirty clothes into the washer stacked on top of the dryer in the narrow laundry closet beside the fridge. He was just soyummy. And so thoughtful and kind. He definitely didn’t seem like the friends-with-benefits type.

So, what did that mean? Were we athing? We hadn’t hadthe talk, but we were definitely more than mere colleagues or friends now, as my office walls could attest to, especially after our second, less frantic coupling yesterday evening. He had even walked me home, holding my hand and kissing me on the doorstep of my apartment and everything. It was all very couple-y.

And yet, he had declined my offer to come up. To stay with me. Apparently, he had a prior commitment, but he hadn’t elaborated beyond that. And he hadn’t responded to my text this morning. So, I spent the past twenty hours snuggling with my cat and second-guessing everything that had happened betweenBastian and me while resisting the urge to text him every five minutes.

I paused before stuffing the jeans I had worn to the bar a couple of nights ago into the washer, some inexplicable instinct driving me to check the pockets. It wasn’t something I usually did. More than a few tubes of ChapStick had lost their lives in my washing machine. But the instinct proved valid when my fingertips brushed against the edge of a card tucked into one of the front pockets.

I fished out a business card from the pocket and frowned, studying it. A name—Gavin Lee—and a phone number had been printed on one side of the card. I flipped it over and sucked in a sharp breath when I saw the symbol printed on the other. The celestial seal—the combined sun, moon, and stars representing the three immortal houses, the House of the Sun, the House of the Moon, and the House of the Stars. Wasn’tGavinthe name the hallucination of my sister had used? Gavin, the vampire with silver eyes?

Out of nowhere, a vision flashed through my mind. Amemory.

I was in a public restroom with a tall stranger, as beautiful as he was mysterious. His eyes glowed silver as he fed me his blood from a puncture on his thumb, and I felt inexplicably revived.

“What the actual fuck?” I stared at the card, more of the resurfacing memory from the bar two nights ago replaying in vivid detail in my mind.

My heart thudded in my chest, each individual beat like the hammer of a drum as I processed the recollection.

The stranger was a vampire, obviously, and he had fed me his blood. That must have been why I had felt and looked so much healthier the past day and a half. I had been severely malnourished for years, Javier’s tincture being my only source of immortal blood for the past two decades. As a living vampire,immortal blood was a dietary requirement for me. It was why my health and vibrancy had been waning increasingly as I rationed my dwindling supply of Javier’s tincture.

The mysterious vampire had bent my mind to his will, something that should have been impossible. I didn’t know much about a living vampire’s gifts, but I knew we were supposed to be immune to mind control. My psychic weakness must have been another symptom caused by extreme malnourishment. The realization was surprising but not nearly as shocking as his ability to bend mindsat all.

He wasn’t just an undead vampire; he was a guardian, elevated beyond the base level of vampire hierarchy via a mysterious ritual called the Second Rite, the First Rite being the process of initial transformation from human to undead vampire. From mortal to immortal. Javier had been covered in the striking, glowing sigils that gave the guardians their increased powers, including varying levels of control over mortals’ minds.

Though with Javier, I had only caught glimpses of his sigils a few times, glowing silver like they had been created out of pure moonlight. His sigils’ appearance was usually our first clue that the blood tincture was too potent and needed to be tweaked. Javier and I had sought a fine balance, wanting to keep me healthy but also needing to suppress myotherness.

The only vampires more powerful than guardians were queens, mature living vampires. A queen’s extreme power was balanced by her mortality. Though I was wholly ignorant of the specifics of a queen’s gifts, I did technically fit into that category, weak and powerless as I was.

My need to hide among humans, to suppress my intrinsic powers so Iappearedhuman, was the reason Javier had developed the blood tincture in the first place, rather than simply feeding me his own immortal blood, which would have been much simpler. However, in its raw state, his blood wouldhave amplified my magic, making me a more obvious target. He had planned on awakening my powers and training me when I came of age at nineteen, but he had been long gone for years by then.

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